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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS, THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE AT ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE, AUGUST 2011
By Lise van Boxel
Congratulations on your successful completion of the Master’s Program in
Liberal Arts!
Now that you have your M.A., it is a good time to reflect upon what you have
learned and the reasons why you began the journey that led you to your degree.
What knowledge have you acquired at St. John's College? Have you gained any
practical skills here? Your employers or potential clients, your friends and your
family will certainly ask such questions. What will you say to them? What do you
say to yourself?
Before turning to a consideration of possible answers to such questions,
consider briefly some of the pre‐suppositions that often underlie them. Frequently,
the real meaning of, “What did you learn?” is, “In what way has this education
contributed to your value as a worker or to your ability to earn a living?”
These questions are not ridiculous. Unless you are lucky enough to be
independently wealthy or you have a patron, you have to think about how to
support yourself. On the other hand, it is wrong‐headed to think of education
simply or primarily in these terms, as if employability and income were the highest,
most important considerations for a human being.
Friedrich Nietzsche offers a vivid description of this impoverished
understanding of education—an understanding that characterizes the modern era.
In sum, he argues that an education that looks solely or primarily to the marketplace
deforms the souls of its students because it is ignorant of, or denies, the proper
fullness and activity of the human soul:
[T]he present age is . . . supposed to be an age, not of whole, mature and
harmonious personalities, but of labor of the greatest possible common
utility. That means, however, that men have to be adjusted to the purposes
of the age so as to be ready for employment as soon as possible: they must
labor in the factories of the general good before they are mature, indeed so
that they shall not become mature—for this would be a luxury which would
deprive the ‘labor market’ of a great deal of its workforce. Some birds are
blinded so that they may sing more beautifully; I do not think the men of
today sing more beautifully than their grandfathers, but I know they have
been blinded. (Nietzsche, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, §
7)
Nietzsche grants that the emphasis on science, and more specifically on
science directed by the marketplace, will indeed produce economic success, at least
in the short‐term. However, he adds that this kind of science is a desiccated version
of the comprehensive understanding that is the proper goal of science or higher
learning more generally—the goal that the modern world has largely abandoned:
1
�I regret to use the words of the slave‐owner and the employer of labor
to describe things that in themselves ought to be thought of as free of utility
and raised above the necessities of life; but the words “factory”, “labor
market”, “supply”, “making profitable”, and whatever auxiliary verbs egoism
now employs, come unbidden to the lips when one wishes to describe the
most recent generation of men of learning. Sterling mediocrity grows even
more mediocre, science ever more profitable in the economic sense. . . . Those
who unwearyingly repeat the modern call to battle and sacrifice—“Division
of labor! Fall in!”—must for once be told in round and plain terms: if you
want to push science forward as quickly as possible you will succeed in
destroying it as quickly as possible; just as a hen perishes if it is compelled to
lay eggs too quickly. (Ibid)
If Nietzsche’s account of the trend in modern education aptly describes the
kind of education you did not receive and to which I think St. John’s is opposed, how
might you describe what you did learn here?
While denouncing an overly narrow view of education, Nietzsche alludes to
the effect of a complete education: it would create “whole, mature and harmonious
personalities” (Ibid). Neither you nor I can honestly claim that you acquired a
complete and harmonious soul as a result of several years of education at St. John’s.
This is not to say that I abandon the idea that the truly authoritative education aims
at, and can produce, a harmonious soul. Rather, I think this education is the ongoing
activity of a lifetime. I do think that the liberal education you received here can
contribute greatly to the attainment of this goal. However, I will put aside these
ideas for the moment, and I will turn instead to a more modest articulation of what a
liberal education is and what skills may be acquired as a result of it.
To do so, I will replace Nietzsche’s high‐flying, though accurate, description
of a complete education with Aristotle’s sensible, though still ambitious, account of a
liberal education. In distinguishing a specialist from someone who, like you, has
been generally educated, he says:
With regard to every [kind of] contemplation and inquiry, both lowlier
and more esteemed, there appear to be two ways of being skilled, one of
which it is well to call the science of the thing, and the other . . . a kind of
educatedness. For it is characteristic of an educated man to be able to hit the
mark and judge appropriately what the speaker sets forth finely and what he
does not. For something like this is in fact what we suppose the generally
educated man to be, and . . . to be educated is to be capable of doing this very
thing—except that we believe this one, the generally educated man, is able to
judge about virtually all things, though being one man, whereas the other one
[the scientist or specialist] is able to judge [only] about some limited nature.
(Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, 639a2 – 15)
I do not recommend launching yourself into this quotation when asked what
practical skills you acquired at St. John’s College, though if you decide to do so, take
2
�a deep breath, and deliver it with panache. You can, however, capture the essence of
what Aristotle says in your own words.
In my own words, I say that, as a result of your liberal education, you are
better able to judge when an argument or account is adequate and when it is not.
When it is inadequate, you are more capable of seeing how it is deficient and what
would need to be addressed to alleviate this shortcoming. Such judgment can be
brought to bear on any argument, regardless of the field. If the argument includes
technical language, all you need is the time to look up the definitions of these words
before you are able to proceed as you would with any other account. At bottom,
such an argument is no different from any other.
To Aristotle’s description, I would add that, as a result of your education, you
are now better able to admit when you do not know something, and to do so without
embarrassment. Do not underestimate the value of this intellectual honesty. It will
help you to continue to learn. In addition, it will be greatly appreciated by other
people, most of whom are anxious about their own ignorance, but are afraid to
admit that they do not know. It can be a tremendous relief to encounter someone
who can say without shame that he does not know, but that he wants to learn.
This training in judgment—in clear thinking—is an essential part of a liberal
education. And it can indeed help you to advance your career. I advise you,
therefore, to consider how you can describe this skill to others so that you can
represent it with the full strength that it deserves and in a manner that is readily
apparent to others. If you do this, you will be well equipped to respond to those
who want to know how what you learned can be applied to the workplace.
This account of your education, however, is neither complete nor does it
capture the most important part of it. Aristotle would agree that, in order truly to
judge well, one must have a satisfactory understanding of the ultimate end at which
one aims. It is not enough to have an idea of the proximate goal that one seeks to
fulfill. One must have adequate knowledge of whether and how this proximate goal
accords with the highest and most comprehensive goal at which human beings can
and should aim. Without a sufficient account of this authoritative, supreme good—
The Good—no judgment is adequate, strictly speaking, and one cannot truly be said
to know. Thus, any education can and must be considered in terms of whether and
how it can contribute to The Good. Regarding questions about whether your
education here was practical, therefore, the real issue is not whether this education
will contribute to your employment opportunities, but whether it contributes to
your knowledge of the good. And the real question about you job is not whether
your education has made you suitable for it, but what impact it has on your ability to
lead a good life.
No, I will not let go of the highest account of education to which Nietzsche
alludes and that I dare say all great thinkers share. Moreover, I expect that you
empathize with me in my refusal to forgo these highest goals.
While some of you came to St. John's partly in order to advance your career, I
doubt that any of you came here primarily for this reason. You came because you
had questions—questions that perhaps you could not quite articulate, even to
yourself, but that you could not put aside. As you made your way through the works
of the program, I suspect many of you began to recognize your questions reflected
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�back to you in the Great Books: “What is justice?” “What is love or friendship?”
“What kind of beings are we, and what is our place in this world?”
Many and perhaps all of these questions arise from a common origin: the
yearning to have a good life, combined with the realization that you do not know
clearly enough what this is. I suspect, in other words, that the fundamental reason
why you came here was because you thought this education might help you to
understand The Good.
Since our human life is limited, and since the clock is already ticking on the
time that we have, this question of the good is urgent. No one wants to realize at the
end of his life that he misused or wasted his time. And since none of us know how
much time we have, it is foolish for any of us to postpone the question of the good
indefinitely.
Such talk of mortality and The Good sounds very serious. Well, what did you
expect? Has anything valuable that you have read or discussed here been
unserious? Thankfully, seriousness does not have to be grave. You need only recall
the company you have kept as you have pursued your questions, and you will feel,
not weighted down, but elevated by the astounding souls who have walked
alongside you.
Here is Plato, on the same journey as you, speaking with a voice as nuanced
and relevant as it was some 2,400 years ago. With a touch of mischief, he doubles
himself, adopting the voice of Socrates, who recollects taking this same path, just a
day earlier: “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston”
(Plato, The Republic, 327a).
Another man introduces himself with the words: “Thucydides, an Athenian,
wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians,
beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great
war” (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 1.1). He hands you his book, which
contains his thoughts about your shared questions, saying as he does so: “I have
written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as
a possession for all time” (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 1.22).
Homer turns his blind eyes upon you and points to Achilles and Odysseus,
each of whom tackles the questions of the good life and what it means to be a good
human being. Shakespeare speaks to you with a profundity that is surely expressed
in some of the most beautiful language ever heard. Nietzsche reaffirms life with cry
from his electric soul: “We still feel it, the whole need of the spirit and the whole
tension of its bow” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, “Preface”).
These souls are among the best students and teachers ever to have lived.
Their greatness consists largely in the fact that they investigated the most serious
eternal questions with unmatched comprehensiveness and depth. What have you
learned from them about The Good?
If you have learned anything, it is that, when speaking to one who does not
already know the answer, you cannot respond meaningfully to this question in a
single sentence or two. You might say, for example, that they taught you that the
good life is the philosophic life or the life devoted to the Divine, but then you would
have to explain what philosophy or the Divine is and what it would mean to dedicate
your life to such things.
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�While there are answers to these questions, each answer leads to a new
question—and this is not the occasion for a long conversation. It is the occasion,
however, to remind you that all of these great students and teachers spent their
lives engaged with such questions. Inquiry is thereby shown to be central to, if not
the essence of, a good human life. Furthermore—and this is worth emphasizing,
since you are have now exited the Master’s Program—these students were able to
learn from virtually everything and everyone, if not directly, then indirectly. Life
after your M.A. may not be as leisurely as it was when you were a student, but you
can and will find opportunities to learn, if only you come to embrace life itself as a
learning opportunity.
I hope and expect that something of this way of life has become a part of you
and that, if you look around now at the faces of your fellow students, you will see in
their eyes something of the souls of those great human beings who are your models.
Continue to be thoughtful. Be open‐minded. Retain the flexibility of soul that
is necessary for continued learning. In sum, keep the goal of a good life always
before you. Use The Good as your North Star to guide every significant action and
decision you make. Doing this will not guarantee that you always make the right
decision, but it will mean that will have done the best that you could do, and that,
whatever contingencies you may face, you will have led the best life that is possible
for you.
Let me conclude with one of Plato’s favorite salutations: “Have success in
action, and do what is good.”
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�
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Commencement
Graduate Institute
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What Are You Going To Do
With It?
Commencement Address, August 2, 2013
Creig Hoyt, SFGI10
Dean Sterling, Director Carl, esteemed faculty, staff, fellow
graduates of the Institute and friends. I am deeply honored to give
this commencement address. As a recent graduate of the Eastern
Classics program I remain in awe of the uncompromising
commitment of St John’s College to engage in a long-term
community discourse in order to glean meaning and clarity from
the writings of the world’s great thinkers. I also am mindful that
some of the tutors who sit here today on the podium have given
this address at previous graduation ceremonies. That I do not
possess their depth of knowledge of the great writings you have
studied is obvious. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to
base my presentation on an analysis of one or some of the
thinkers you have read here.
Moreover, you can hardly expect to receive wise career
counseling from one who stumbled from a flirtation with music to
philosophy in undergraduate school, who became enamored by
neuroscience in medical school primarily because of the beauty of
the brain’s organizational structure, but who fled from a career as
a neurologist because it involved caring for patients I could not
cure and finally stumbled into a rewarding career as an
ophthalmologist specializing in infant visual problems: rewarding
not because the problems primarily involved the visual brain but
because I discovered I loved caring for children despite an
intense dislike of pediatrics in medical school. I hope that by
offering you some personal reflections on the ongoing impact that
�my St John’s education has had on my life and work I will provide
you some useful reflections.
Today we salute these new graduates of the Graduate
Institute. We know the rigor involved in the academic programs
they have completed. We recognize and admire their fortitude and
considerable academic accomplishments. Today is a day of
celebration not only for them but for all of us who deeply care
about the uncompromising scholarly traditions and demands of
this extraordinary college. So let me speak for all us when I say to
the new graduates, “Yours is a noteworthy accomplishment at a
unique institute of higher learning. You have much to be proud of.
Bravo”.
Ok, now let’s get serious. “What are you going to do with it?”
Those were the exact words of my ninety-four year old mother
four years ago when I informed her that I hoped to be a student in
the Graduate Institute. These were not the words of
encouragement a son craves. Adding insult to injury, this was the
first time in my educational wanderings that I was not seeking any
parental financial assistance. So what did she have to lose in
offering her moral support? You would have thought a woman
who lived with a single abiding passion during her 70’s and 80’sto win as many tango competitions as possible- would have
embraced the novelty of her aging son’s desire to become a fulltime student in an area about which he knew absolutely nothing.
What was I going to do with it? I was not even certain I could
qualify for the program let alone complete it. I no longer recall
what attempts at justification I mumbled to her, but the notion that
my adventure was to be judged by what I might “do with it”
irritated me. It reminded me of European colleagues who find it
insulting that the first question Americans ask on meeting them is
“what do you do?” In the remainder of my talk I will reflect on the
�primacy of the notion that one’s education is to be judged by what
one can “do” with it.
Regrettably, the sentiments expressed by my mother have been
heard by all of you in many different guises, all of them cloaked
and protected by the seemingly impervious provenance of real life
experience and practical counsel: “What kind of job can you get
with that degree?”, “Wouldn’t computer science be more
sensible?”, “Can you justify the cost for something so
impractical?” “No one studies humanities anymore!”
No one doubts that it is prudent and wise to carefully consider and
reconsider each step in one’s educational journey. Accumulating
unreasonable amounts of school-related debt can restrict future
life choices. Some professional degrees no longer guarantee an
interesting and well-compensated career: this has become a
serious concern for many of our law schools. Other career
choices apparently require a carefully structured path consisting
primarily of educational prerequisites that permits little time for
exploring what might be simply interesting or enlightening. Note
that I said, “apparently require”. In the case of medical schools
there are some educational prerequisites that absolutely must be
completed, but I can assure you that we who are involved in
medical education are always looking for applicants who are not
only capable of completing the scientific studies in our medical
curriculum, but who also bring to medicine unique educational
and work experiences.
Even though I intensely dislike her question can I now provide my
mother a satisfactory answer? Can I explain in what ways my St
John’s experience has changed not only how I think but what I
do? Undoubtedly, a startling result of my graduate study at St
John’s is that instead of remaining permanently retired I have
resumed my position on the faculty of UCSF Medical School
albeit on a part-time basis and without any administrative duties.
�Why? In no small part because St John’s re-energized my
intellectual curiosity after a long period of time when my career
had become dominated by all-consuming administrative duties
that left no time for the pursuit of my research and creative
activities. I realized I wanted to spend a few more years in the
University concentrating on teaching and completing several
unfinished research and writing projects. It also became clear to
me that I missed caring for children and their parents. I agree with
the Dalai Lama who in his commencement address at Tulane
University this year said, “A pathway toward a meaningful life lies
in caring for other people”. I have returned to what I know how to
do- caring for vision problems in children.
Perhaps surprising to some of you, my St John’s experience
stimulated new research interests that I believe I can study with
the assistance of my UCSF colleagues. Those many seminars on
Buddhism radically disturbed my previously unchallenged notions
concerning certain aspects of what we mean by “perception” and
“cognition”. In particular, I think the techniques of neuroscience
may provide an interesting framework with which to explore the
limitations and unreliability of sensory perceptions.
I am currently studying unusual visual percepts that occur in many
adult patients who experience visual loss. I appreciate that no
Johnnie wants to hear an oversimplified bottom line statement
without first hearing all the details that lead to that conclusion, but
our time today is short. Therefore, let me simply summarize some
preliminary impressions and conclusions. It seems that the
inherently high run rate of the brain does not allow it to turn off or
suppress higher centers when peripheral sensory input is denied
it. In the case of some visually impaired patients the brain will
create a recognizable formed visual image even when the patient
cannot process visual input in the eyes due to pathological
changes such as macular degeneration. This can be profoundly
�unnerving for the patient who is already coping with a serious
visual impairment. From the point of view of the student of
Buddhist thought the only reassuring aspect of this phenomenon
is that the patients are fully aware that the created image is false
although they are often afraid to talk about it for fear that the
listener will conclude they are demented or mentally ill.
Yet, more important than this example of a specific research
question that was initiated and nurtured by my St John’s
experience I would like to consider the learning skills that I and all
students acquire on this campus. Numerous newspaper articles
and news broadcasts have recently addressed the question of
whether American colleges and universities are adequately
preparing students for future employment in a rapidly changing
marketplace.
In a recently published special report of The Chronicle of Higher
Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace half of the
employers in the study reported that they had trouble finding
qualified recent graduates. Most of you will not be surprised by
this jeremiad; you have undoubtedly heard or read similar
complaints. What is noteworthy about this study is that
responding employers were not speaking of deficiencies in
specific educational training or technical skills. Their complaints
were more fundamental: they insisted that the primary obstacles
were that the graduates were deficient in essential core skills. I
quote from the New York Times, dated June 29, 2013: “When it
comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are
lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability
and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and
problem solving.” In this same article a vice-president of a human
resource organization was even more explicit when he said,
“young employees are very good at finding information, but not as
good at putting that information into context.”
�If we believe these criticisms accurately describe the major
obstacles facing recent college graduates seeking employment,
how are St John’s graduates likely to fare in their attempts?
Perhaps, the most straightforward way to assess this is to ask,
“What does St John’s do best?” My evaluation will be from a
student’s point view and I am aware that some of you may feel I
am oversimplifying the issues. Nevertheless, I think St John’s
prepares students to do exactly what these critics claim today’s
young employees cannot do well. In my experience, the
keystones of the St John’s educational process are learning how
to:
1. read carefully and critically some of the most challenging
literature, and
2. express and defend one’s ideas clearly in a seminar, but also
3. evaluate and integrate the conversations of other students and
tutors into one’s understanding of the problems under
discussion.
I thought I was a reasonably skilled reader until I enrolled here. I
was adept in my professional reading and could quickly find and
prioritize the central issues in a reading a scientific paper. I
successfully edited an international ophthalmology journal that
required me to read and review a few thousand manuscripts a
year. I even imagined myself to be reasonably “well read” outside
my medical field of expertise. Naively, I was not particularly
perturbed by the breadth and length of the reading list sent to me
by the Graduate Institute prior to my enrollment. I was in for a
rude awakening. It became apparent in early seminars how many
details, subtleties and inferences I routinely missed in my
readings. Learning how to be a more nuanced reader was a slow
process and that process continues.
Yet, it is the uniqueness and central importance of the St John’s
seminar that I especially want to highlight and examine. I have
�attended many seminars as a student in undergraduate school
and medical school and as a faculty member of a medical school.
When I came to St John’s I was confident that I understood the
dynamics of a successful seminar and how to function effectively
in it. I was wrong, at least in regards to what was expected here. I
had never been in a situation where my education depended
primarily on the quality of thinking and conversation of my
classmates. My classmates weren’t my competition but rather
they were my teachers. I was amazed by the ability of some of my
classmates to penetrate and analyze texts that appeared to me to
be nothing less than incomprehensible. In particular, I am
recalling certain Vedic texts, Yoga sutras and Nagajura’s notions
of truth, but there were plenty of other readings that I found more
perplexing than enlightening. I remain indebted to my classmates
for so much of what I learned here. I still seek the advice of
several of them about their recommendations for further reading.
Of course, one quickly learns that different skills are brought by
various classmates to the seminars. A small cadre of my
classmates seemed to be able to hold forth on any topic and at
least sound informed and thoughtful. Others enjoyed slowly
mulling over the arguments of other classmates and only adding
an occasional insight or critique and then quickly retreating once
again to the role of thoughtful observer. However, some of this
latter group proved to be essential in keeping conversations
moving forward and exploring avenues of thought untested by the
rest of us. That at times some classmates substituted a bit of
blarney masquerading as insight should surprise no one. Indeed,
one of the endearing features of a St John’s seminar is its
tolerance of what might be called Brownian thinking and even the
occasional complete collapse of group focus resulting in an
unintentional homage to Jabberwocky. A St John’s graduate’s
ability to negotiate through the verbiage of a two hour seminar
�and condense the essential elements of it into a few coherent
sentences is a skill that any potential employer should prize.
Having returned to the clinical practice of medicine I now realize
how invaluable the listening skills that I learned at St John’s are in
my work. Yes, they are helpful in the give and take with student
physicians and in navigating the still far too frequent committee
meetings. More importantly they are critical in the most essential
aspect in caring for a patient: obtaining a history of the patient’s
illness. It may seem counterintuitive to you, but the medical
history obtained from a patient is usually far more important in
establishing the correct diagnosis than the physical examination
or laboratory testing. I remember a wise senior professor of
medicine reassuring me when I was nervous 3rd year medical
student that history taking would be the most difficult skill I
needed to learn in order to be a good physician. Why is this true?
A patient comes to a doctor’s office with a specific complaint: in
most fields of medicine it is pain or physical discomfort but in
ophthalmology it is usually visual loss. The problem is to identify
the cause of the pain or visual loss. The art of history taking is to
question a patient in such a way that they provide the clues to
lead you to the correct diagnosis. This involves ignoring a lot of
the conversation that the patient deems essential but that you
judge to be extraneous or even misleading and diverting. On the
other hand, it is sometimes vital to focus on a seemingly trivial bit
of information that ultimately points you directly to the diagnosis.
Shortly after I returned to clinical practice I was asked to see a
young teenage girl who had suddenly become blind in one eye as
the result of bleeding within the eye. Her referring
ophthalmologists were unable to identify a cause for the bleeding.
Her blood count and clotting studies were normal. She was not a
diabetic. She denied experiencing a blow to the eye. She and her
parents were extremely nervous because of the understandable
�fear that she might become blind in both eyes. I proposed that we
start from the beginning and have her describe how this problem
had come about. She grew frustrated with my suggestion since
she had told her story several times to numerous doctors. She
finally agreed and in a disgusted tone of voice said, “It is simple. It
was the end of my vacation and I woke up one morning and could
not see out of my right eye.” I thought for a moment and then
asked her where she had gone on her vacation. When she said
she had traveled to East Africa a new list of possible diagnoses
entered the picture. After surgical removal of the blood in her eye
we were able to identify a bot fly larva in the retina that
subsequently was destroyed with a laser. I confess I am not
certain why I asked her where she had gone on her vacation
except it seemed to be the most important aspect of her
statement. Moreover, she and her family were extremely nervous
so I had to say something. I often finding myself pondering how
much a St John’s education prior to my medical training would
have improved my skills as a physician.
In concluding these remarks I would like to tell you a story that I
believe highlights the breadth of options that your St John’s
education provides you. When I was chair of our department of
ophthalmology I was anxious to expand our research activities. I
knew that a very innovative retinal surgeon was unhappy in the
university where he was employed. He was working on an
exciting prototype of a retinal prosthesis that could be implanted
directly in the retina of blind patients. I thought he would be an
outstanding addition to our department. I called him and asked
him if he might be interested in joining our faculty. After several
conversations it became apparent that both he and his wife were
excited about the possibility of relocating to the Bay Area. Yet, I
could not make a formal offer to this internationally famous retinal
surgeon until he gave a research lecture not only to the clinicians
�but also the basic scientists in our department. I knew this
potentially might be a deal breaker.
In the past 30 years the top medical schools in the country have
become major biomedical research centers and not simply
professional schools were future physicians are trained. In many
departments basic scientists now outnumber the clinicians. In our
medical school the standing of basic scientists has been further
enhanced by the fact that five Nobel Prizes in Medicine and
Physiology have been awarded to UCSF basic scientists since
1989. We would need to convince our basic scientists, a tough
audience, that this retinal surgeon was qualified to join the UCSF
faculty.
To highlight our problem let me say that as a clinician I see basic
scientists as having much in common with Sanskrit grammar.
They love the passive voice especially in journal articles- “A new
gene has been discovered” or “The sample was divided into equal
aliquots”. New discoveries are often named with mind-numbing
compound nouns- proto-oncogene, macrosquare- wave jerks, or
proximity-luminance covariation. I must admit that most basic
scientists would respond by asserting that clinicians lack the
precision and concern for detail so characteristic of Sanskrit texts.
The tension between these two faculty groups is never more
apparent than in research seminars. I discussed this issue with
my new faculty candidate but he assured me he could deal with it.
You can imagine how stunned I was when he began his research
seminar with this story: “A surgeon is walking beside a river when
he suddenly sees a man struggling as he is swept down river. The
surgeon jumps into the river, swims to the man and grabs him
under the chin and pulls him to shore. A few minutes later the
surgeon while continuing his journey up river hears the calls of
two men who are drowning in the turbulent river. The surgeon,
being a man of action, jumps into the river, swims to the two men
�and holds one with his right arm and the other with the left and
drags them to safety. A few minutes later the surgeon resumes
his walk upstream but almost immediately sees three men being
swept downstream in the river. He jumps in the river but realizes
he is unable to pull all three of them to the shore. He looks up and
sees a basic scientist walking upstream on the other side of the
river. The surgeon calls out to the basic scientist and pleads with
him to jump in the river and help with the rescue effort. The basic
scientist replies, ‘No, I am going to walk upstream and see who is
throwing these guys in the river.’”
What are you going to do with it- your St John’s education? No
doubt some of you firmly believe you have your future planned out
in detail; others of you in a candid moment might admit you
haven’t a clue. For myself, I like to think that at St John’s I learned
to swim more effectively while also being encouraged to walk up
river more often. I envy the many opportunities that await all of
you. Congratulations again. There are great adventures and
challenges ahead. What will you do with them? Ah, that will be an
interesting story.
Dr. Hoyt received his bachelor’s degree from Amherst college,
and his MD from Cornell University Medical College; he served as
Intern in Medicine at Stanford University and as a Resident on
Neurology and then in Opthalmology at University of Californa in
San Francisco. He has served as a flight surgeon in the US Navy,
as a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and from 1978 to the
present he has practiced medicine, taught, and performed
research at at the University of California, San Francisco, where
he is currently Emeritus Professor and Chair of the Department of
Opthalmology. He has authored over 170 peer reviewed scientific
articles, among other publications. In 2010 he received his Master
of Arts in Eastern Classics from St. John’s College. A classmate
reported that he was an anchor of the group, widely respected by
�his fellow students. He is now a member of the Presidents’
Council of St. John’s College.
�
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Commencement Programs and Addresses
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Annapolis, MD
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Addresses given at commencement and programs of events related to, and including, the annual commencement ceremonies at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />The College Archives holds programs and/or addresses for the following years:<br />
<ul>
<li>1796</li>
<li>1835-1836</li>
<li>1842</li>
<li>1852</li>
<li>1856-1857</li>
<li>1870</li>
<li>1878</li>
<li>1880</li>
<li>1890</li>
<li>1893</li>
<li>1895</li>
<li>1897</li>
<li>1907</li>
<li>1910-1918</li>
<li>1920-1924</li>
<li>1928-1929</li>
<li>1932</li>
<li>1936-1937</li>
<li>1939-1945</li>
<li>1947-present </li>
</ul>
Click on <strong><a title="Commencement Programs and Addresses" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=18&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the Commencement Programs and Addresses Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Hoyt, Creig
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Commencement Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2013
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2013-08-02
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Annapolis_GI_Summer_2013_Commencement
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St. John's College
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pdf
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Typescript of the commencement address for the Graduate Institute given by Creig Hoyt at the end of the Spring 2013 semester in Annapolis, MD.
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Commencement
Graduate Institute
Tutors
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GI Commencement Address
Summer, 2014
Ms Kraus, Mr. Black, graduates, colleagues, and friends:
Contrary to what you might be expecting, St. John’s is not today conferring a
degree on you. Rather you are conferring it on yourselves. You have been both
students and teachers during your time here, all of you together, in a common
activity that has produced effects both public and private. Who better than you can
attest to the transformations your minds and souls have undergone? Who better
than you knows how you have learned that it is both more profound and more
elevating to ask a single question than to listen to a hundred answers? For a
thinker, which each of you is, an answer is a wall, while a question is a door. At
St. John’s we, all of us thinkers, open doors. That’s all we do, really.
I have been thinking a lot about memory and memories and remembering over this
past year. As the summer session began, I realized that I was starting my fortieth
year as a tutor, a long time to be reading and talking about the same books. My
memories of St. John’s are longer than yours, but not on that account more
revealing or insightful. I was a terrible tutor at first. I wanted desperately to make
my students thinkers, help them see the pathos in the opening lines of the Iliad or
the elegance of a Euclidean demonstration. Then I realized that most of my
students were already well on their way to becoming thinkers and that maybe it
was I who needed to try harder to become one. They were already dissatisfied with
mere answers and eager to question. That’s why they came to St. John’s. That’s
why they stayed. The false starts in seminar, the conversational dead-ends, the
misreading of the books, the self-centered perspectives that adolescents and even
�many adults are apt to have: these could all help constitute an education if only the
question remained alive. I sensed that what I needed most to do was to stay out of
the way, and not erect the walls that would deaden thought. I learned to ask my
questions along with theirs. Socrates helped me to see that this really was the only
way to pursue a philosophical life, if a philosophical life is what one values. I
caught on mostly by recognizing the effect the College was having on me, on my
soul. This is why, almost forty years later, I am still here at this place, this special
place. I suspect you all share my feelings to some degree.
You have acquired many memories while you’ve been at the Graduate Institute,
memories of the books you’ve read, the discussions you’ve shared, the people you
have depended on, and who have depended on you, for help in becoming thinkers.
How do these memories stay alive after you leave this place, this special place?
What are memories, anyway, and why do we think them worth holding on to? As
Augustine says about time, if you don’t ask me, I know, but as soon as I’m asked, I
cannot say. But we must try to articulate what they are, because you will be taking
them with you as you leave the College today. Perhaps they are true thoughts or
images of my past experiences. But what is the past? Once again, Augustine tells
us that whatever the past is, it no longer exists. It’s not trapped in a cave
somewhere, waiting to be released. We live only on this razor’s edge of the
present, the moment that has no duration, no width, just the now, the abyss of the
past on one side and that of the future on the other. Has the past left traces or marks
in me that I can call up like I might open an album and view pictures? This is not
an uncommon view of memory and how the past remains within me. And
something about it feels right. But even so, the calling up or viewing is something I
am doing now, something in the present, something on that ultra-thin line on which
I forever try to maintain my balance. How could any memory display its pastness
�and reassure me that time stretches back behind me? In Borges’s tantalizing short
story, “Funes the Memorious,” after an accident a young man gains what the
narrator takes to be infallible powers of perception and memory. Funes , we are
told, “remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of
April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled
grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with
the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle
of Quebracho.” Funes’s memory, if it can even be called that, is incomprehensible,
and can barely be described by the narrator. Or are these thoughts and images
merely imaginings, inventions of a disturbed and lonely mind? Is Borges
challenging our own cavalier attititudes memory as a storehouse of the past?
Memories don’t carry with them marks or signs that they are true memories and
not imaginings of the present. I have no feeling that guarantees for me that this is a
memory, this is from my past, this really happened. If I had such a feeling,
wouldn’t I have to remember that this feeling is the “memory feeling”? And
wouldn’t that demand a further feeling, a “meta-memory feeling,” to distinguish it
from my imaginings? No, memories are not what they are because they announce
that they come from the past. To decide if what I am now thinking about or
experiencing is in fact a memory, I don’t turn inward to examine it more closely. I
look outside myself. I dig up evidence, I talk to others, I ask questions. This most
intimate of mental experiences, most private we’d like to say, is in fact radically
public.
(Of course many of my memories just seem so true that I harbor no doubts about
them. For example, one fall I offered a laboratory Preceptorial in the Graduate
Institute. It included a demonstration of Newton’s Pail, which some of you may
have seen in the Math and Natural Science Seminar. Newton’s Pail is a bucket with
�some water in it, suspended from the ceiling by a rope. The rope is twisted tight,
the bucket given a good spin, and as everyone gathers around they can watch the
water rise up the side. That year, however, I—either inattentively or intentionally, I
don’t remember which—put too much water into the bucket. My innocent class
watched closely as the water not only rose up, but over and out, escaping the
bucker and spraying them all. A memorable demonstration, I think, whether it
actually happened that way or not.)
When alumni tell me what they remember about their time at St. John’s, of course
they have a lot to say. What sticks out most in their minds, however, whether they
be Graduate Institute or undergraduate alums, are not the books or the discussions.
What they remember best, and delight most in remembering, are the questions:
opening seminar questions, those questions that never cease to arise during a class
discussion, the questions they asked themselves as they were writing essays or
preparing for orals. They’ve long forgotten what anyone said in answer to them,
but the questions remain. Questions move us in the present, as much as or more
than they did in the past. “Why did God reject Cain’s offering?” asked of Genesis.
“Why are these men fighting?” asked of the Iliad. “Why is Hell shaped like a
cone?” asked of Dante’s Inferno. “Can one be both a philosopher and a Christian?”
asked of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. Rather than fade as time passes,
they seem as alive and urgent now as then. They demand our attention anew
whenever we bring them to mind. And they move us into the future. Maybe this is
what we mean by calling them timeless. A gift, isn’t it, that we remember so well
what has never been trapped by the illusion of time?
And so, dear graduates, as you confer on yourselves the degree of Master of Arts in
Liberal Arts, as you think back over the time you have spent here at St. John’s,
�realize that the way to keep alive the memories of these days is never to grow
weary of questioning. Never stop at that comfortable wall which is the answer, but
remain vigilant and seek the door of the question. Show it to others, especially to
those you care about, because friends ought to have all things in common. In that
way you will be remembering what happened here by living it, which is the only
kind of remembering worth doing.
Good luck, wherever tomorrow finds you. Thank you.
John Verdi
Annapolis, MD
August 8, 2014
�
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Commencement Programs and Addresses
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The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Description
An account of the resource
Addresses given at commencement and programs of events related to, and including, the annual commencement ceremonies at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />The College Archives holds programs and/or addresses for the following years:<br />
<ul>
<li>1796</li>
<li>1835-1836</li>
<li>1842</li>
<li>1852</li>
<li>1856-1857</li>
<li>1870</li>
<li>1878</li>
<li>1880</li>
<li>1890</li>
<li>1893</li>
<li>1895</li>
<li>1897</li>
<li>1907</li>
<li>1910-1918</li>
<li>1920-1924</li>
<li>1928-1929</li>
<li>1932</li>
<li>1936-1937</li>
<li>1939-1945</li>
<li>1947-present </li>
</ul>
Click on <strong><a title="Commencement Programs and Addresses" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=18&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the Commencement Programs and Addresses Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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commencementprograms
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5 pages
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digital
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Verdi, John
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Commencement Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2014
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2014-08-08
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Annapolis_GI_Summer_2014_Commencement
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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pdf
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Typescript of the commencement address for the Graduate Institute given by John Verdi at the end of the Spring 2014 semester in Annapolis, MD.
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Commencement
Graduate Institute
Tutors
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1
Commencement, May 21, 2016
St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM
“CHANGING THE WORLD”
Eva Brann, Tutor, Annapolis
Parents and Relatives, Fellow Tutors and Mr. President, Board Members and, above all,
Santa Fe Seniors and Graduate Institute students!
Some of you will remember that radiotelephone distress signal of old: “Mayday,
Mayday.” It had, alas, nothing to do with the “merry month of May.” Our seniors, who have all
learned a lot of French, will recognize the call right away: “m’aidez, m’aidez!,” help me, help
me!
All over our continent there are the same weekend events this month: commencements
and graduations. Those organizers who think of this day as a beginning for you, as launching you
into a new, the so-called real world, will have the printer put “Commencement” on the program.
Others will interpret this ceremony as the entering into a higher kind of being, by the bestowal of
the degree (gradus in Latin) of a Bachelor of Arts, in fact, of the Liberal Arts, and for them it
will be a graduation.
For us, your tutors, this day also has two aspects. Yesterday we were to each other, by the
custom of our college, Mr. or Ms. From today and forever after, you will be to us Joan or John,
and eventually we too will be given our first name. (To be sure, I’m in fond communication with
certain alumni of my first graduating class, that of 1961, who cannot bring themselves, silverhaired though we’ve grown together, to call me Eva. —Well, we’re working on it.) This first
moment, this transmutation from the style of cooperative respect between tutor and student to the
affectionate familiarity of mutual friendship, is always poignant to me, and I think also to the
alumni in their first hour.
�2
For the tutors, too, there is a beginning—the beginning of an absence. Last week in
Annapolis, the seniors I’d been with in seminar commenced not being on campus—gone off into
the world. I went there on Sunday to meet a fellow tutor, and we confessed to each other a sweet
nostalgia—“nostalgia” because those quondam-seniors were still such vivid ghosts, “sweet”
because it is the way of our college that we don’t become estranged from each other through the
phases of our lives. Be you known to us as undeflectable paragons of virtue or as irremediable
scamps—when we see each other again, we’ll be, so to speak, on the same page right away,
some page of those great books we’ve read together, in the midst of that lifelong, uninterruptible
conversation we began here. And the truth is that our post-graduate friendships don’t much
depend on actually having known each other. Sad to say, I know very few of you, but who
doubts that we can be in the middle of satisfyingly significant talk within minutes of having met,
not least because Annapolis and Santa Fe are—what a miracle!—Siamese twins living twothousand miles apart.
But back to the mayday distress call. All over the country, speakers who accepted the
invitation to talk to you on this last and first day, feeling as touched and honored by it as I was,
soon began to agonize (somewhat as, to compare small matters with large, seniors do about the
choice of their senior essay topic) about a fit subject for this great moment—one that alumniabout-to-be, the chief addressees, will find congenial and that our honored guests can listen in on
with interest—the parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles who made all this possible and the
brothers and sisters and childhood friends who put up with it all.—I won’t specify what there
was to put up with, but I can imagine. So we call for aid on whatever power will come. As for
me, I remembered a recent conversation, actually with one of our graduate students. I’ll
transcribe it from my memory, abbreviated.
�3
Student: “How will my St. John’s education help me to do what I want?” Me: “And
what’s that?” Student: “I want to change the world.” Me: “For the better?” Student looks totally
abashed; I’m a bit abashed as well, for being a smart-aleck. But he took it well, and the ensuing
conversation was illuminating to both of us. At this point I want to assure you that at a thousand
schools this May speakers will be alluding to this conversation. They will bid the graduates “Go
forth and change the world,” or alternatively, “Go forth and make a difference.”
I say, let us have a little last-moment language tutorial. Let us, Johnnie-fashion, analyze
the sentence “I want to change the world.” But no, it’s not a real class conversation because in a
St. John’s class you and your tutors were committed to making the best possible sense of what
the people around the table and the books on the table were saying. But I, in all candor, will try
to show that “I want to make a difference, I want to change the world” aren’t very sensible
sentences. So here goes.
This announcement has three parts: first, I want; second, to change; third, the world. So,
first, “I want.” “I want” is about me, and if what I want is to be a “difference-maker,” it’s about
my self-satisfaction. Recall yourselves as Juniors, when you struggled with Kant on morality. No
one expected you to get it all. (In fact, there are some books we ask you to read largely so that
you can reread them later in life, on the logical hypothesis that you just can’t read them for the
second time unless you’ve read them for a first time.) As regards Kant, this much may have
stuck: He thinks that doing right is not doing what you want but what you ought, and that, in fact,
the only proof of your doing as you ought is that it hurts some, that your mere wanting is
thwarted. So when it’s the world I’m planning to change, maybe “I want” should yield a little to
“I should.”
�4
Second, “change.” Why exactly “change”? There are many others modes of action
besides this current mantra. There’s protecting and maintaining, activating and fulfilling,
restoring and reviewing. Talk of mere change is just terminally vague babble—vague promise
and vague threat. Its antidote is specific thinking expressed in adequate language. That very
requirement, thoughtfulness and its articulation, was an explicit aim of the Program, to which
you devoted the last four years.
Third comes “the world.” It’s a big space in which to thrash about. In choosing it as the
venue of my action, I’ve pretty much committed myself to the silliest of all maxims of action—
another current mantra. It goes: Only if x happens, can y occur. Filling in the most common
variables for this formula: “Only if the world changes radically, can little kids learn to love
reading,” in other words, never—guaranteed. The implied lesson is: Forget about “the world”—
stay local and avoid stymieing preconditions.
And now the usually missing fourth part to the saying “I want to change the world,”
namely, “for the better.” Your four years with us were, I think, above all intended to give you a
head start in answering for yourself the most crucial of human questions: What is good? For
making anything better without a view of good seems to me just groping in the murk of
possibility.
So, you’ll recognize two of the ways that the Program and the College were meant to
help you with making the here better now. One was that we, students and tutors together, read
remarkable books by unusually gifted authors, books that offered us various, often contrary
models of the good life and its conditions. You may often have thought that our, the tutors’,
intention was to throw you into a permanent muddle. But, of course, the opposite was our hope:
It was that you would find in your reading the elements of your own firm view of what is good
�5
universally and therefore what is better in particular. This crystallization is surely still in process
for many of you. But my experience of six decades of alumni tells me that it does happen,
perhaps over the next score of years. Much more will go into it than what you learned here, but
that learning will, so alumni often say, be the informing reference of your experience. That
ability to specify the universal is the second of the two ways our Program readied you for great
deeds.
Now, in the spirit of that specificity, I owe you an example of what I think of as actual
action, local in worldly coordinates but grand in human scope.
Most of you will, I’d guess, work in an office at some point. Proper offices have watercoolers, Xerox-rooms, galleys with hot-plates. People spend as much time there as they dare. So
post a note: “Would you be interested in reading some poetry together during lunch hour? I
propose Wallace Stevens’ ‘Sunday Morning.’ Copies are on the counter. Let’s meet next
Wednesday in Room 666. Bring your lunch, I’ll bring cookies. Expertise inessential. Signed…”
If no one turns up, which is unlikely, keep trying. Something will come to pass. Incidentally,
don’t you eat yourself all the cookies (which are essential).
Before I finish and let our seniors receive their degrees, I need to say that what I’ve done
here isn’t quite right: I’ve told you what’s what and you’ve sat silent, except perhaps for an
occasional guffaw. All my points were left unquestioned—deep metaphysical maxims such as
cookies being essential to meetings and expertise inessential to poetry, and large practical claims,
such as local happenings having more actuality than global commotions—Don’t let it happen to
you very often, though these occasional one-way ritual performances are also necessary to
human life.
�6
So then: I wish you a life of genuine action and of actual happening, a life of as much
happiness as you know what to do with—and a bit more. Go forth, find a place you can love, and
help to make it “what it was always meant to be.”* Go forth and change the world—for the
better.
Thank you.
*
To ti en einai, “essence.” Aristotle, Metaphysics. (I bet that no other graduation speech in this country sported a
footnote, least of all to Aristotle.)
�
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The St. John's Review
Volume XL, number one (1990-91)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cmy Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions Assistant
Deirdre Routt
The St, John's Review is publishet.·~ three times a year by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis; Donald J. Maciver, Jr., President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stmies, poems,
and reasoned letters are welcome. Address coiTespondence to the Review, St. John's
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per
issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1991 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
�Correction
In the last issue of the Review (Volume XXXIX, number three) the title of the
first essay was printed incorrectly. The con·ect title of the essay by Joe Sachs is
"Antigone: All-Resourceful I Resourceless."
�Contents
1 ...... Bramante and Michelangelo at Saint Peter's
Ralph Lieberman
39. . . . . . Of Lice and Men: Aristotle's Biological Treatises
Linda Wiener
53. . . . . . The God Who Is and the God Who Speaks
Thomas J. Slakey
71 ...... A Meditation on the Present Plight of Philosophy
and the Pursuit of Truth
Monica C. Homyansky
81 . . . . . . Toucan Dreams
James Fox
85. . . . . . St. John's Crossword Number One
Cassandra
��Bramante
and
Michelangelo
at Saint Peter's
Ralph Lieberman
Starting in 1505, and for well over a century after, the church of Saint Peter in
the Vatican was the most important architectural undertaking in Europe. Its
building history is complex, but nothing compared to its diabolically convoluted
design history, which more than one scholar has abandoned in despair. Without
subjecting you to an exhausting presentation of the building's assorted design
stages, I would like to familiarize you with the nature of the problems faced by
the architects of the church, and the architectural historians who choose to study
it.
Donato Bramante was the first architect of new Saint Peter's, but his church
does not exist - in fact a convincing argument can be advanced that it never
did. Nonetheless his first design for it was extremely important. An integral part
of a pivotal moment in Western culture, the Saint Peter's project is a perfect
crystallization of its time, reflecting in its form and scale, among other things, a
dramatic change in the status of the Vatican, a radical break with Christian
architectural tradition, a new attitude toward the Papacy, and a response to the
fall of Constantinople; the design was the culmination of a half century of highly
philosophical architectural theorizing, and the building translated into colossal
scale arrangements that had existed previously only in tiny sketches in which
Leonardo da Vinci wrestled with the most difficult problems of architectural
organization. If we do not consider this complex background, however briefly,
we will misunderstand the building and the accomplishments, as well as the
failures, of its many architects.
Ralph Lieberman is an art historian who lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, and
now teaches at Williams College. This essay is expanded from a lecture first delivered
at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in March, 1988. It will serve as a chapter in a history
of architecture to be called Twenty-Six Buildings.
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
To put the Saint Peter's problem in context, it is necessary to start at the vety
beginning of Christian architecture.
Constantine's first donation to the Church he recognized in 313 was some
imperial real estate at the Lateran. Saint John in the Lateran is the first church in
Christendom and the palace next to it was the first official residence of the Pope
and the headquarters of the Curia. In the course of the Middle Ages, however,
the presence of the Pope notwithstanding, the Lateran slowly yielded its place
as the most important Roman church to the Vatican. There were a number of
reasons for this. One is that the tomb of Saint Peter was a major goal of pilgrims,
and the basilica that enshrines it, built by Constantine a few years after the
Lateran, was the most popular church in the West (Fig. I). The Lateran, on the
other hand, was simply the cathedral of Rome, and could boast nothing to rival
the grave of Saint Peter. Another reason is that the Lateran, on the eastem edge
of the city and well outside the center of the great imperial capital even in
Constantine's day, was farther still from the center of the small town to which
Rome shrank in the Middle Ages (Fig. 2). As the city slowly contracted westward
.77-+ .· ..·::
~
··.
(Fig. 1) St. Peter's around 400 (after Krautheimer).
�LIEBERMAN
3
Saint Peter's
()
Pantheon
~mperial
~Fora
Ocolosseum
Palatine
City Walls
city Gates
~
(Fig. 2) Map of Rome showing the Lateran and the Vatican.
into the bend in the Tiber near the Pantheon, just across the river from the Vatican,
the Lateran was increasingly remote, Saint Peter's more and more convenient.
For much of the fourteenth century the Popes lived in Avignon, and without
the Papal presence the eclipse of the Lateran was accelerated. When the Popes
were firmly re-established in Rome about 1420 the Lateran was still their home,
but in the late 1440s Nicholas V officially moved the Papal residence, which in
effect meant all the apparatus of Church administration, to the Vatican. Saint
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Peter, as the founder and first leader of the Christian community in Rome, was
the first Pope, and the decision of Nicholas V reflects a strong feeling that the
most appropriate headquarters for the Popes was at the Saint's church.
With the Pope and the Curia permanently established next door, Saint Peter's
became the Papal palace church. By 1450 the Constantinian basilica was nearly
1100 years old; fifteenth-century surveys of the building revealed weakened
masonry, subsiding foundations, and walls tilted out of plumb. Furthermore, the
church had no choir- only an apse extended beyond its transept- and was
therefore quite old-fashioned (Fig. 3). In the 1450s Bernardo Rossellino began
a project for Nicholas V that was to strengthen the Constantinian church, and
bring it up to date, by jacketing the entire building with new walls, constructing
a larger transept, and adding a choir (Fig. 4 ). Three walls of the enlarged transept
and new choir were to stand outside the old basilica, so work could be started
without requiring the destruction of any part of the Constantinian church. We
can see what was built of the Rossellino project in drawings by Maerten van
Heemskerck that show new Saint Peter's under construction in the early 1530s
•
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(Fig. 3) Plan of Saint Peter's (after Krautheimer).
�LIEBERMAN
5
(Fig. 5). In an unanticipated way the Rossellino transept and choir were to be
determining factors in the design of new Saint Peter's, for the need to make
economical use of available foundations established the dimensions of parts of
Bramante's plan (see Fig. 12).
Work on the Rossellino project ceased with the death of Nicholas V in 1455;
it was taken up again briefly under Paul II in the late 1460s, but most of the Popes
who reigned for the half century after the death of Nicholas V preferred to
concentrate their major building efforts on improvements to the Vatican palace,
and put off dealing with Saint Peter's because it was going to be extremely
expensive, and meant tampering with the Constantinian church.
Julius II, elected in 1503, was not a man to tum from hard challenges; he
thought in very grand terms and he refused to recognize financial limitations.
Around 1505 he decided not to bother repairing or modernizing Old Saint Peter's,
ordered the demolition of Constantine's church, and commissioned a new one.
Driven by an ambitious vision of Papal Imperialism, Julius had as his determined
policy the expansion of the political sway of the Papacy, by the sword if need
•
•
••
..
•
•
•
(Fig. 4) Rosselli no project for remodeling of Saint Peter's
(alter Heydenreich).
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 5) Saint Peter's under construction. Drawing by Maerten van
Heemskerck. Berlin-Dahlem Museum.
(Fig. 6) Istanbul. Hagia Sophia. Exterior.
�LIEBERMAN
7
be, and he saw himself, by no means inaccurately, as the equal of any European
king or emperor. In his reign it was understood that in selecting for himself a
Papal name unused since the mid-fourth century, one that inevitably evoked the
Caesars, Julius was making a declaration of his ambitions. And he wanted the
new Saint Peter's, and for that matter the entire Vatican complex, to be the
unambiguous architectural expression of papal power and authority. There had
been no comparable imperial church construction for nearly a millennium, not
since Justinian's Hagia Sophia (Fig. 6) was built in the 530s. Behind Julius II's
Saint Peter's project there may in fact be the specific influence of Hagia Sophia:
not its form, but its scale. Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in
1453, and Hagia Sophia, the largest building in the world, and surely also the
most splendid (Fig. 7), was quickly converted to a Mosque and lost to Christianity forever. It would not have been out of character for Julius II to think that
the honor of possessing the biggest building in the world ought to be restored to
the Church, and that such a building should be in Rome, over the tomb of the
Apostle charged by Christ to found the Church. That the Apostle's church was
also the Pope's was a factor as well, for Julius II identified with Saint Peter's in
a particularly strong way. He had in mind for himself a very elaborate tomb,
commissioned from Michelangelo in 1505, that was intended to stand prominently in the building that was to be his own tomb church as much as Saint
Peter's. Furthermore, it may be that with the fall of Constantinople and the end
of the Roman Empire in the East, Julius felt that the mantle of Constantine, as
well as that of Saint Peter, now rested on his shoulders; by totally replacing one
of the two great Roman churches founded by Constantine, Julius quite strategi-
cally put himself in a small club of imperial church builders.
In many respects the razing of Old Saint Peter's was one of the most fateful
steps ever taken by a Pope. It would be too much to contend that it provoked the
Reformation, but the sale of indulgences to raise money for the ruinously
expensive project antagonized many people, Luther chief among them, and the
increasingly worldly concerns of the Imperial Church, of which new Saint
Peter's was the symbol, inspired the Protestant revolt.
For the design of his new church Julius called on Donato Brarnante. Bam
near Urbina around 1444, Bramante was originally trained as a painter, but we
know little of his early career. By the late 1470s he was in the employ of the
Duke of Milan, and he remained in that city working as a painter - and
increasingly as an architect- until1499, when the French attacked and occupied
the city, bringing to an end the brilliant Milanese court.
Bramante is first documented in Rome in 1500, painting a fresco in the
Lateran. Very soon, however, he turned his attention exclusively to buildings,
and in the years from around 1501 until his death in 1514, he became the most
important architect in the capital.
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 7) Istanbul. Hagia Sophia. Interior.
Nothing in Bramante's Milanese work prepares us for what he built in Rome.
In fact, his emergence as the first great High Renaissance architect at the age of
nearly sixty is one of the major surprises of the epoch. The change in Bramante's
style is often cited as evidence of the power of Rome to stimulate creative artists
and bring out their potential. Had he never come to Rome, Bramante would have
remained a second-rate Milanese architect; in the last fifteen years of his life,
which he spent in the ancient capital, he established, if he did not invent, the
High Renaissance architectural style.
�LIEBERMAN
9
(Fig. 8) Rome. San Pietro in Montorio, Tempietto.
The surviving building with which Bramante gave the clearest evidence of
his new style is the so-called Tempietto (literally "little temple") at the church of
San Pietro in Montorio (Fig. 8), on the spot long thought, inconectly, to be the
place of Saint Peter's martyrdom. It is worth a careful look.
Composed of a two-story domed cylinder surrounded by a single-story
colonnade, the Tempietto is characterized by a bold new treatment of volume.
Niches with scallop-shell inserts reveal the thickness of the cylinder walls. The
dome that caps the cylinder is raised on a drum in an arrangement that has no
precedent in ancient round temples with colonnades. The architect appears to be
thinking here of a miniature Pantheon atop a circular Roman temple, for the drum
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
10
. !,: ,ff1t j".lre it pr;:jutd P.f.tMaiJte. Le mijim: del qqdie in f'H
dJdHJ'. fo. m.J
ue'le kt.11~'1ti1arte /i dhnojhe,.amw. Delle mifitre. diqtu:fiflli4nf~ nc~~ Jico
uj:, .1/tun.t ,_ ma {tJI.vnente io f/Jtl jMt4 perL'i1mtntione ,.dell.~ qul{le l'vlr'fhittt
., 1/ ,n-.n·} ·/l"f''tir,..
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(Fig. 9) Plan of Tempietto from Serlio, Cinque Libri deii'Architettura.
�LIEBERMAN
11
(Fig. 10) The Tempietto in a circular courtyard (after Bruschi).
of the second story of the Tempietto is approximately as high as the radius of the
hemispherical dome, the proportions found at the Pantheon. The powerful
interpenetration of the cylinder and the colonnade gives the Tempietto a new and
dramatic sculptural mass, its elements conceived as fully three-dimensional
solids.
As it appears today the Tempietto does not reflect Bramante's intentions either
accurately or entirely, in part because it has been changed (the dome now has a
higher profile than it did originally, and the present lantern is a seventeenth-century addition that is out of keeping with the rest of the building), and in part
because the little temple itself is only the hub of a project that was never
completed. In 1537, nearly twenty-five years after Bramante 's death, Sebastiana
Serlio published a plan of the Tempietto (Fig. 9) that shows it surrounded by a
circular courtyard in which he says Bramante intended it to stand. There was to
have been a ring of columns, half again as thick as the columns in the Tempietto
and therefore higher in the same proportion, that lay on the same radii as the
columns of the temple itself; niches in the encircling wall correspond to those of
the Tempietto. The circular courtyard may be considered the Tempietto turned
inside out; the play of mirrored forms that enclose space on the one hand and
shape a solid object on the other, would have made the completed project
astonishing (Fig. I 0).
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
12
•
:
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.,·
.. J
(Fig. 11) Leonardo da Vinci. Drawing of churches with circular plans.
Paris, lnstitut de France.
�LIEBERMAN
13
The courtyard that appears in Serlio 's plan would not fit in the space between
the Tempietto and the flank of San Pietro in Montorio, which makes one wonder
whether it could ever have been a real project. It is impossible to determine now
what Bramante 's expectations were: perhaps he made a complete design although he knew from the stat1 that only its central element could be built. On the
other hand, as we shall see, it would have been in character for him to expect
that someday the church would be tmn down to make room for his courtyard.
While the influence of ancient Roman buildings was surely important in the
development of BratUante's style after 1500, it does not explain everything, for
his works in the papal city depend in important ways on ideas he brought with
him from Milan, ideas that must have their origin in Leonardo da Vinci's musings
on architecture. In the years that Bramante was in Milan, Leonardo was also
there, engaged in a number of projects, some architectural, for the Milanese
Dukes, and it is beyond doubt that the two men knew each other well. Leonardo
intended to write a treatise on architecture, and for years he collected his
thoughts, making notes and drawings of various building types for it. Certainly
it was he who pondered the possibilities of the centrally planned church more
thoroughly than anyone before him, and in scores of drawings he indulged his
imagination with elegant anangements unassociated with any actual architectural projects (Fig. II). The nature of Leonardo's contribution to the growth of
Bramante 's ideas about architecture is difficult to establish with certainty, but an
excellent case can be made for its having been fundamental. Before Bramante
went to Milan, he seems to have cared little about architecture, and there is no
evidence that he worked at it in any way. After sixteen years in the company of
Leonardo, Bramante was a busy architect. When he left for Rome he was fully
primed with Leonardo's profound ideas; in the Tempietto, and in Saint Peter's,
Bramante reveals himself to have been more than just the principal beneficiary
of Leonardo's thoughts: it fell to him to serve as the instrument of their
realization. In Rome Bramante had a fundamental advantage over Leonardo, the
one thing without which even the greatest architectural ideas are still-born: the
opportunity to build.
When Julius II selected Bramante to design the new church of Saint Peter he
brought into his service an architect who understood his vision. The two men
were ideally suited to each other; a pontiff who was prepared to tear down the
great Constantinian basilica found an architect who was not the least bit sentimental about hallowed buildings or doubtful about the wisdom of replacing
them. A contemporary satirical poem has Bramante trying to convince Saint Peter
to authorize the demolition of Heaven so it could be reconstructed more commodiously and in a better style. In fact Bramante's wild enthusiasm for tearing
down old buildings and constructing new ones in a more lavish and up-to-date
manner outran what even Julius was prepared to do at the Vatican; when the
architect suggested that the bones of Saint Peter be relocated so the new church
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
could be positioned more favorably on the site, the Pope drew the line. Although
Bramante was sometimes reckless in his hurry to replace old buildings with new
ones- several of his buildings, Saint Peter's in particular, had to be strengthened
considerably as work progressed, and some of them actually suffered partial
collapse- his haste reveals the feverish energy and eagerness for the transformation of the Vatican that characterized the ten-year reign of Julius II, who was
notorious for wanting everything done immediately. It was in this hot-house
atmosphere that the High Renaissance style matured; in the same years that
Bramante was at work on Saint Peter's Michelangelo began work on the tomb
of Julius II, then painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael painted the
Vatican Stanze.
Julius II and Bramante were both over sixty when they began to collaborate
on the new church, and they knew that elaborate and expensive projects such as
theirs had a way of being altered as time went by. Each, for his own personal
reasons, therefore felt the necessity of making a bold and ilTevocable start at
Saint Peter's to guarantee that subsequent generations would be unable to
abandon their grand plan. The start they made was surely dramatic - and if
nothing else the demolition of the Constantinian basilica guaranteed that there
would be a new church- but it failed in its specific aim, at least from the point
of view of Bramante, for the design of the building was altered frequently while
it was under construction, and what was finally finished in the 1620s bears almost
no resemblance to his original project.
Bramante's Saint Peter's is enormously difficult to study in detail. This is not
simply because the church does not exist. Nor is the obstacle that construction
had advanced only very little before both the architect and the patron were dead
and the project altered, for this would not necessarily prevent us from considering
their intentions. The problem is that the architect seems never to have had an
exact and definite idea of what he was going to do, or what he would be permitted
to do. After building had begun Bramante frequently changed his mind (or was
told to change it), modified his earlier ideas, altered the design, and offered new
solutions to the Pope. Although something about the form and character of the
new church was clearly implied at the beginning of its construction, much was
also left vague and unspecified. As a result, students of the most ambitious of all
Renaissance architectural projects must deal with a bewildering welter of ideas
and conflicting interpretations of Bramante's intentions; the fact that many of
them are mutually exclusive is no argument against their authenticity, for the
evidence is clear that the architect tried out many ideas, and when one talks about
"Bramante's design" for Saint Peter's one must be prepared to be asked "which
one?" I shall deal here primarily with his first plan; even though Bramante was
forced almost immediately to give it up, it is more interesting and important than
any subsequent version. While many of its details are vague, it has a significant
place in Renaissance architectural thought.
�LIEBERMAN
15
By the end of the fifteenth century there was a thousand-year-old tradition of
church building in which longitudinal and central plans had firmly fixed places.
As early as the fourth century, domed central-plan churches, which tended to be
much smaller than longitudinal ones, were associated with places of martyrdom
or burial. For parish churches and cathedrals, on the other hand, where the
primary concern was to house a congregation, there was a clear preference for
longitudinal forms.
In the fifteenth century central plans became popular among architectural
theorists for philosophical reasons. Alberti suggested that the circle could be used
to serve as a symbol of the divine in Christian buildings, suggesting that "Nature
delights principally in round Figures," as proof of which he cites the Stars (by
which he means the Sun and Moon) and birds' nests, among other things. Circular
plans nevertheless remained extremely rare, but a centrally planned building may
also be polygonal, or have four equal short arms extending from a crossing that
is usually, but not always, covered by a dome, an arrangement known as a Greek
cross. While the four arms of such a church conespond roughly to a nave,
transepts, and choir of a longitudinal church, their equal size, and the relatively
greater importance of the crossing, give both the plan and the interior of a
centralized church a very different character. In a longitudinal church the
worshiper is drawn down the longer axis and the primary ceremonial approach
to the altar is clearly established, with the clergy in the choir and crossing and
the congregation in the nave. In a Greek-cross church, on the other hand, the
worshiper is not directed in the same way; the interior is perceived equally no
matter which ann is entered, and no major processional axis asserts itself.
The centralized plan was understood to be completely compatible with
Christian theology, in fact to celebrate God in a more direct and obvious way
than was possible in a longitudinal church. Proponents of this view rejected the
notion that the altar should be as far from the church entrance as possible because
God is infinitely far from us, arguing instead that it should be placed at the center,
just as God is at the center of the Universe, with all things emanating from him
and all things returning to him like the radii of a circle. In the late fifteenth century
and the first years of the sixteenth, the central plan was so popular, and so
enthusiastically regarded as the most perfect form of Christian church, that it is
unthinkable that in 1505 Saint Peter's could have been designed according to
any other plan. At the same time, however, there was another highly significant
factor that bore on the choice of plan for new Saint Peter's: Old Saint Peter's.
The church that Julius II tore down had been built to house a major burial
site, but rather than a centralized domed structure Constantine's architects
had designed a longitudinal basilica, positioned so that the Saint's tomb lay
on the chord of the apse, with a transept to accommodate crowds of visitors
(see Fig. 3). It was likely the Emperor's concern to enshrine the spot quickly
and economically that resulted in the choice of a timber-roofed basilica, a
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
much simpler sort of structure than one with a dome, and one that allowed a
large area to be enclosed at relatively low cost. By the time Julius II
demolished Constantine's church, the longitudinal basilica, originally selected for practical considerations, had been firmly identified with Saint
Peter's for over a thousand years, and the ground it covered had become
sacred. Furthermore, there were hundreds of ancient graves in the church; for
several centuries after it was completed Old Saint Peter's served as a covered
cemetery, and by the late Middle Ages was so crowded with the bodies of
Christians who wished to lie near the Apostle that further burials were
permitted only in exceptional cases.
That the most important Christian tomb in Rome had been covered by a
longitudinal church rather than a dome was a rather anomalous situation, and for
more than a century it resulted in strong disagreement over the form the new
church was to be given. Bramante's first designs for Saint Peter's called for a
... ,
... J
(Fig. 12) Plan showing Constantin ian Saint Peter's, the Rossellino
choir and transept, and a centralized plan for the new church
(after Metternich).
�LIEBERMAN
17
·:..n
··~~
(Fig.13) Bramante. Drawing for Saint Peter's. Florence, Uffizi.
centrally planned church, and in favoring such a building he was following the
Christian tradition of domed churches over tomb sites as well as contemporary
ideas about religious architecture that had developed in the course of the
Renaissance; but there were others- the Pope apparently among them- who,
no matter how strongly drawn to a centralized church, felt that new Saint Peter's
had to have a longitudinal plan because the Constantinian church did. With the
dome of the new church to be centered over the Saint's tomb, even a very large
centralized building could not cover all of the original nave; ground once within
Constantine's church would therefore lie outside the new one (Fig. 12). Extending one arm of the new church to form a nave would, on the other hand, cover
all the old ground, and Bramante was under great pressure to build a longitudinal
church. He tried to resist that pressure, however, and from the time construction
on the church began until his death, he continued to hope that the church would
be a Greek cross.
Bramante began the construction of the new church in such a way that he
never really committed himself to a longitudinal plan, first building the parts that
would be included whichever form the church ultimately took. The essential
feature of the new church was the huge dome over Saint Peter's tomb. The first
elements to ris'e were the four crossing piers that carry it, and then these had to
be connected by arches (see Fig. 5). This was required whether the building
would be perfectly centralized, or its eastern arm extended to form the nave of
a longitudinal church. The fact that at a certain point after construction began
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Bramante increased the size of the piers and changed the design of their elevation
does not indicate anything about the plan he hoped to see at the church.
There are three pieces of direct evidence that serve us in reconstructing
Bramante's first project for Saint Peter's. The first is a half-plan drawing in the
Uffizi in Florence, known from its catalogue number there as Uffizi I (Fig. 13):
the only sheet generally accepted as by Bramante's own hand.
The second source of knowledge about Bramante's initial intentions - a
medal by Caradosso struck to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone in
April, 1506 (Fig. 14)- is the pJimary means we have for establishing how the
exterior of the new church was to look. In the reduction of the huge building to
an image only a few inches high, much was surely simplified and lost, but the
medal shows a building that corresponds quite closely to Uffizi 1 in the projection
of the anns of the cross beyond the square fmmed by the corner towers, the
free-standing piers between the towers and the anns, and its general propmtions.
The third major visual source is a pair of woodcuts in Serlio's treatise that
shows Bramante's dome in plan and elevation (Figs. 15 & 16). Bramante is
supposed to have said that at Saint Peter's he wished to place the Pantheon (Fig.
17) over the vaults of the Temple of Peace -by which he meant the coffered
(Fig. 14) Caradosso Medal.
�LIEBERMAN
19
15. Plan of Bramante's dome for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque
Libri deii'Architettura.
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16. Elevation of Bramante's dome for Saint Peter's. From Serlio,
Cinque Ubri dei/'Architettura.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 17) Rome. The Pantheon.
bane! vaults in the side bays of the Basilica of Maxentius (Fig. 18). The dome
of Saint Peter's was to be almost exactly the diameter of the Pantheon, and
therefore the biggest built in nearly fourteen centuries. From Serlio 's illustration
it is clear that the architect had the form of the Pantheon quite specifically in
mind, for his dome is essentially the Pantheon with its rotunda ringed with
columns, a lantern placed on its top, and raised high in the air on the crossing
piers. To some extent the design of Saint Peter's is an enlargement of ideas we
have already noted in the Tempietto (Fig. 8), where Brarnante placed a miniature
Pantheon on a circular colonnaded temple.
That Brarnante and Julius II would feel themselves in competition with the
Pantheon is understandable, for the awesome Hadrianic temple was the greatest
ancient building to survive the Middle Ages, and a Pope of imperial ambitions
who used architecture to express the power of the Church would inevitably think
of trying to surpass it. If Julius had in mind a building that would also outdo
Hagia Sophia, it would have been in keeping with his personality to think of
killing two birds with one dome.
When Bramante's autograph drawing is doubled (Fig. 19), the result is a plan
based on a Greek cross contained, except for the apsidal ends of each arm, within
a square. In the four corners, formed by the central cross and the circumscribed
square, are pmtial Greek crosses of a design quite similar to the central one,
�LIEBERMAN
21
(Fig. 18) Rome. The Basilica of Maxentius.
(Fig. 19) Central plan based on doubling of Uffizi 1 (see Fig. 13).
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 20) Raphael. School of Athens. Rome. Vatican Stanze.
square bases for bell towers, and niches open on the exterior of the church. The
plan is very elegant, and the way in which the smaller crosses are placed in the
angles between the anns of the central one is extremely well worked out. While
there were a few Greek-cross churches built in the last decades of the fifteenth
century, none ever looked even remotely like this plan. Bramante 's inspiration
must have been Leonm·do, who frequently sketched central-plan churches with
superbly interlocking architectural forms (Fig. 11).
A visitor to the church in the Uffizi 1 plan would have been in a space
composed of roughly identical units that grow in size toward the center, with the
main cross more than twice the size of the four partial ones. A similar sort of
arrangement is to be found in the design of the Tempietto, where the careful
scaling of the columns of the temple itself and those of the circular colonnade of
the courtyard established compelling resonances between identical forms of
changing size. At the Tempietto it was carried out on a minute scale, at the Vatican
in heroic proportions. In one the forms expand toward the center, in the other
they expand toward the edges- but both are based on the smne idea.
We do not have much direct evidence to suggest how Bramante intended to
articulate the interior of Saint Peter's, but there are echoes of his ideas in Raphael's
School of Athens (Fig. 20), painted in late 1509 or 1510, when Brarnante was hard
at work on the church. The architect appears on the right side of the fresco as Euclid,
holding compasses and leaning over a slate (Fig. 21). Raphael was a friend, and
perhaps a kinsman, ofBramante, and would succeed him as architect of Saint Peter's,
�LIEBERMAN
23
(Fig. 21) Raphael. Schoof of Athens, detail. Rome. Vatican Stanze.
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 22) Michelangelo. Plan for Saint Peter's.
(Fig. 23) Bramante. Drawing for Saint Peter's. Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
25
so he was surely well-infmmed about Bramante 's ideas. Vasari goes so far as to say
thatBramante himself designed the background architecture in the School ofAthens,
but even if he did not, there is little doubt that the deep space covered by a coffered
barrel vault with a large dome over the crossing reflects Bramante's thoughts about
the church interior.
The most startling thing about Uffizi I is that no large church could ever have
been built according to it. While it has a lacy openness that is very appealing in
a design on paper, with virtually every bit of solid masonry hollowed out by
niches and thinned to an extreme degree, it is the plan of an impossible building.
The four central piers were intended to support a dome as large as the Pantheon,
but they could never have done any such thing. Even Serlio, the first and most
enthusiastic publicist of Bramante 's ideas, had to allow that the design of the
crossing piers and dome was not a very great one, saying that it would have been
better to build it on the ground than on piers connected with arches. Nothing
suggests the weakness of Bramante's church so clearly as a comparison of Uffizi
1 with Michelangelo's plan (Fig, 22); the proportion of solid to space makes the
point better than words can. Yet Bramante's plan is much more interesting that
Michelangelo's. If architecture is an art of the possible, then Bramante's design
is absurd; but if architecture is understood also as an abstract discipline of which
the fruits must not necessarily be physically possible to be great, then the Uffizi
I plan is one of the authentic masterpieces of Renaissance thought. In the
superbly coherent interlocking of its principal forms, in the careful shaping of
its supporting units to the spaces they create, in the clear hierarchy of its interior
voids, in the tense balance between the main cross and the slightly smaller square
that nearly contains it, and in the penetration of the exterior by niches between
the apses and the corner towers, Bramante 's plan is a triumph of the imagination.
The most influential element in Bramante 's plan was the design of the four
main crossing piers. Their shape was very carefully studied by Bramante. A
drawing in Florence (Fig, 23) shows that he worked on them on a survey of the
Constantin ian basilica and the Rosselli no choir. Bramante 'spiers are remarkably
effective in achieving the transition from the crossing to the dome, and they were
recognized as a major contribution by all the architects who subsequently worked
on the church, Although it was necessary to strengthen them, their basic form
was consistently retained. Even Michelangelo, who radically altered virtually
everything that was left of Bramante 's design in the late 1540s, did not modify
their plan appreciably.
For a reconstruction of how Bramante intended the exterior of the church to
look we do not have nearly as much to go on as we would like. While Uffizi 1
is fascinating for its organization and sense of developing spaces, what we can
determine of the elevation atop it is another matter. Perhaps the architect's
reputation suffers because the Caradosso medal (Fig. 14) is an inadequate means
to convey to us his ideas for the outside of the church, but even allowing for the
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 24) Agostino Veneziano. Engraving after Caradosso Medal.
impossibility of showing Bramante 's scheme in a very small relief, the medal
presents a building one would not particularly wish to see full size. While the
idea of the Pantheon raised high in the air is very interesting and was eventually
to prove effective, Bramante's organization of the forms that were to have held
it up is not compelling. From the medal, or engravings made after it (Fig. 24), it
is clear that for the exterior of the building his imagination had failed him, and
he could only think in terms of stacking elements one on top of another. This is
most apparent in the ends of the arms, particularly where the half dome over the
apse is fitted under a pediment, its lantern breaking into the triangle above. The
medal shows one of the arms seen straight on, and in this view the array of domes
and half-domes of three different sizes is out of control, especially where the
domes over the subsidiary crosses seem squashed between the corner towers and
the main arm.
�LIEBERMAN
27
The odd dichotomy between Uffizi I and Bramante's elevation reveals
that while he could draw superb designs and marshal spaces in a powerful
way, he was not equally capable of arranging the solids that create them. The
tightly interconnected and related interior spaces do not translate well into
exterior volumes, and had it been built according to Bramante 's intentions,
Saint Peter's would have been a rather unsuccessful building from the
outside. It is my somewhat heretical view that Uffizi I is brilliant because
Bramante had Leonardo's ideas to go on, while for the elevation of the
building he was on his own. This is to assume that Leonardo, who never got
to build any of his circular designs and therefore never had to work out the
elevations over his sketched plans, could have solved the problems to which
Bramante was unequal. I am persuaded that such an assumption is warranted:
Leonardo could accomplish virtually anything he set his mind to.
Nothing reveals the problems of studying Saint Peter's as clearly as the fact
that a plan preserved by Serlio, who attributed it to Raphael (Fig. 25), is very
close to a drawing attributed to Bramante 's circle (Fig. 26) that appears to show
his second design for the church. This design, still in some respects close to
Leonardo, is not nearly so striking as Uffizi I, and the addition of colonnaded
ambulatories around the ends of the arms is the first step in what was to be a
steady process of obscuring the great coherence of the original idea.
When Bramante died in 1514 the construction of Saint Peter's had still not
progressed to the point where a final decision about the plan had to be made, and
disagreement over a centralized as opposed to a longitudinal church continued.
But that was not the only problem. Because Bramante's design was structurally
inadequate, and had to be strengthened by thickening many of its elements, the
proportions of the building began to go awry, and the architects involved with
the church realized that its interior was not going to be very effective. Several of
them struggled bravely to organize the huge building, but there was nobody
gifted enough to accomplish it; some of the ideas that were suggested are the
clearest imaginable evidence of a severe crisis of inspiration, if not of brains.
Bramante was succeeded as chief architect of Saint Peter's by Raphael, but
other architects also submitted designs for the church. Raphael, probably under
pressure, accepted what it seems Bramante never would, and planned a Latincross church. The design that is preserved by Serlio shows that Raphael simply
added a long nave to one arm of Bramante's second design (Fig. 27), to which
he may have contributed. At the same time Giuliano da Sangallo suggested more
radical changes by offering a plan that preserves the Rossellino choir and retains
the transepts from Bramante's design and adding a nave (Fig. 28). Giuliano's
nephew, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, contemplated extending the church
by the addition of a long nave with a line of domes, at the same time retuming
to something closer to Uffizi I for the transept arms and choir (Fig. 29).
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 25) Design for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque Libri
deii'Architettura.
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.
(Fig. 26) Circle of Bramante. Plan for Saint Peter's. Collection of Mr.
& Mrs. Paul Mellon.
�29
LIEBERMAN
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(Fig. 27) Raphael. Plan for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque Libri
deii'Architettura.
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 28) Giuliano da Sangallo. Plan for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
(Fig. 29) Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Plan for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
31
(Fig. 30) Antonio da Sangallo. Plan of Saint Peter's. Engraving.
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(Fig. 31) Antonio da Sangallo. Facade elevation of Saint Peter's.
Engraving.
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
When Raphael died in 1520 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger became chief
architect. After a period of uncertainty, he anived at a longitudinal design that
was for nearly two decades the official one. Of this we know rather a lot, for
plans and elevations of it were engraved and published (Figs. 30 & 31 ), and a
huge and very detailed model of it was constructed (Fig. 32), no doubt in an
attempt to bind future generations unalterably to the design.
Sangallo's plan shows Bramante's original piers much thickened, and ambulatories around the transepts and choir that are a variation on Bramante's second
plan. Sangallo tried to preserve the feeling of a centralized church at the same
time he extended one arm to form a nave, for the mass and scale of the building
is greatest in the area where Bramante's first project would have stood, but the
arrangement is not very compelling. The nave is narrower than-the crossing, and
the nave dome therefore smaller than the crossing dome. Perhaps Sangallo was
thinking of Bramante 's sequence of similar shapes that grow larger toward the
crossing, but this plan is not particularly exciting.
A glance at Sangallo's model makes it clear that the difficulty of treating a
large extelior was not a problem for Bramante only. Sangallo too was unable to
exercise control over large exterior forms, which he tended to trivialize by
(Fig. 32) Model of Antonio da Sangallo's design for Saint Peter's.
Vatican Museum.
�LIEBERMAN
33
coveting them with story upon story of columns. As we were with the Bramante
design, here too we should be grateful that the church was never completed
according to the Sangallo scheme.
Sangallo's assistant at Saint Peter's, Baldassare Peruzzi, seems to have been
unhappy with the official design, and constantly studied the various problems
connected with the building. He probably considered more possibilities than any
other architect involved with the church. Although he seems to have hoped to
re-establish the Greek cross, Peruzzi also considered longitudinal groin-vaulted
plans similar to Roman baths (Fig. 33), or vaulted and lined with colonnades like
some Roman basilicas (Fig. 34), or combinations of vaults and domes (Fig. 35).
There is no clearer indication of the difficult situation in which architects of the
1520s, '30s, and early '40s found themselves than the Pemzzi drawings; the
official Sangallo plan was very unsatisfying, but nobody knew what to do about
it.
In an attempt to establish his design for all time, Sangallo spent a lot of time
and money on the model, but work on the church itself did not progress very far,
and as most of the work since the start of constmction had been done around the
crossing, there was still nothing to constitute an irrevocable commitment to a
longitudinal plan.
At the death of Antonio da Sangallo in 1546, Michelangelo received the
appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter's, and with him the church finally
acquired an architect with a vision monumental enough to cope with it. Neither
Bramante nor those who worked on the church in the thhty years following his
death had a clear idea how to combine huge scale and the classical orders;
Michelangelo did. As a sculptor he was the only person capable of achieving the
gigantic form of David, and as a fresco painter the only one whose visionary
figures could grow to fit the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel. In his dramatic
simplifications of Saint Peter's and the enlargement of its elements to suit its
size, Michelangelo reveals the same ease with heroic proportions he had already
demonstrated in two other media.
When he arrived at Saint Peter's Michelangelo was seventy-one, and without
question the most authmitative artist alive. He did not like the Sangallo design
at all- he dismissed the complex interiors as places in which cut-purses would
lurk and nuns be raped. Furthe1more, he loathed Bramante, and was still nursing
a grudge against him in the early 1550s, nearly forty years after his hated rival's
death, when he told his biographer Ascanio Condivi that it was Bramante who
had thwarted his plan for the tomb of Julius II, and who had gotten the Pope to
force the painting of the Sistine Chapel on him. Confounding the expectation
that he would seek to obliterate every trace of Bramante at Saint Peter's,
Michelangelo insisted that the idea of a central plan had been a noble one, and
managed, by the authority of his views, to get a succession of Popes to agree to
reinstating it. Furthermore, he was granted a privilege extended to none of his
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 33) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
(Fig. 34) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
35
(Fig. 35) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
predecessors: permission to tear down some of what had already been constructed. He had no patience at all with the fussy design into which Sangallo had
weakened Bramante's ideas, and removed the outer walls of the ambulatories
around the ends of three of the mms. With a single stroke of the brush he filled
in the rings of their ineffectual interior piers (Fig. 22), fusing them into exterior
walls and imposing clarity on the arms of the cross.
Michelangelo made his greatest contribution to Saint Peter's on the exterior,
where he supplied the monumentality of vision necessary to make mere size
effective (Fig. 36); Sangallo's tiers of columns were replaced by a single gigantic
order, and the mass of the building revealed by carefully controlled layering of
nearly sculptural forms (Fig. 37).
The history of Saint Peter's before Michelangelo demonstrates that it is one
thing to revive the classical orders and decide to build the world's largest church,
quite another to fuse those two aspirations in a coherent and effective way. It
took more than forty years for the Popes to find an architect who instinctively
knew the appropriate way to use a revived classical language on a colossal
building. Michelangelo's predecessors at the church, even the most gifted of
them, could merely build big; he solved the problem of Saint Peter's because he
could think big.
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 36) Rome. Saint Peter's. Exterior.
Despite his preferences, and the fact that it was he who saved Saint Peter's
from almost certain disaster, not even Michelangelo could establish the central
plan irrevocably; the determination to see all the ground of Constantine's church
covered would eventually prove too strong. Perhaps if Michelangelo had lived
to be 150 he might have seen the church completed beyond the practical
possibility of alteration, but he died too young, in 1564, a few weeks short of
eighty-nine, leaving the attic, the dome, and the facade of the church unfinished.
In the decades that followed, Michelangelo's design for the attic was changed
by Pirro Ligorio (see Fig. 36) and the shape of the dome by Giacomo della Porta.
The commitment to a central plan held for a while, but resistance to it grew
steadily, and because of this very little work was done on Michelangelo's facade:
no sense putting up something that would have to be torn down in the event that
the final decision favored a longitudinal church. After nearly a hundred years,
then, the plan of the church was still being debated.
�37
LIEBERMAN
(Fig. 37) Rome. Saint Peter's. Exterior.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
38
The matter was finally resolved in the second decade of the seventeenth
century when Carlo Mademo extended the east arm into a banel-vaulted nave
with three aisle bays (Fig. 38), but not to the glory of anyone. As it now stands
Saint Peter's is not on the whole a great church, for it shows too clearly the
debates and uncertainty that marked its long building history. But parts of it are
surely great; the two geniuses who presided there- one in person, the other in
spirit -left their marks. Michelangelo's is much easier to find, but buried deep
in the heart of the crossing is still to be discerned a distant echo of Leonardo's
extraordinary visions.
(Fig. 38) Plan of Saint Peter's.
�Of Lice and Men:
Aristotle's Biological Treatises
Linda Wiener
As a student studying to be a biologist and an entomologist, my only contact with
the biological writings of Aristotle were brief and generally disparaging comments made at the beginnings of my textbooks or at the beginnings of lecture
courses by my professors. They presented Aristotle as a rigid thinker who was
generally wrong and who singlehandedly prevented progress in biology for over
a thousand years with the weight of his authority. I was teaching the freshman
laboratory as anew faculty member at St. John's College in Santa Fe when I first
came into contact with some actual writings of Aristotle. I was very impressed
by the few passages from Parts of Animals that we read there. This stimulated
me to embark on a further study of Aristotle's biological treatises. After more
than a year of this study, I find that I am not in agreement with my biology
textbooks and professors, but am more inclined to agree with the following
statement by Charles Darwin. This comes from a letter that Darwin wrote to
William Ogle upon reading Ogle's then new translation of Aristotle's Parts of
Animals. Darwin wrote: "From quotations I had seen, I had a high notion of
Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man
he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different
ways, but they were mere schoolboys to Old Atistotle."
I suggest that these very different opinions of Aristotle's biological writings stem from the fact that Darwin had actually read some of them, and my
Linda Wiener is an entomologist who is now a Tutor at St. John's College, Santa Fe.
This lecture was delivered at the Santa Fe campus in February, 1987.
�40
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
biology teachers were working with received opinions. I find it difficult to
believe that a practicing biologist would be unimpressed with the scope and
quality of Aristotle's achievements as a biologist. What I would like to do in
this paper is give the reader an introduction to the contents of Aristotle's
biological treatises, as well as an appreciation of their significance, both from
a modern perspective and from the perspective of his own time, and comment
on how knowledge of the biological writings can help us understand the rest
of his philosophy.
Why should I believe that the biological wlitings are so significant? Fully one
third of the surviving works of Alistotle are biological. These include three major
treatises: Histmy of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals. In
addition, there are some minor biological treatises: Progression of Animals,
Motion ofAnimals, and a collection of short works called the ParvaNatura. Also,
both De Anima and the Physics contain much biological material. There are
references, by Aristotle himself, and other classical authors, to a number of
additional treatises which have since been lost. These include works on plants,
nutrition, and diseases of animals, and a large illustrated atlas of animal anatomy.
I am going to concentrate on the three major treatises here. The contents of
these works overlap quite a bit, but in general, in Histmy of Animals Aristotle
sets out the facts about animals, their parts, their food, and their ways of life. In
Parts of Animals, which is more conectly called the Causes of the Parts of
Animals, Aristotle attempts to account for why the parts of animals are as we
observe them to be. This is largely a physiological work. Generation of Animals
is just what it sounds like, a work on animal reproduction.
On first reading these treatises, I was struck by the diversity of the material
they contained. These works are filled with an enormous number of facts about
all kinds of animals, some of which are correct and some not. They contain some
extremely impressive analyses of biological problems, such as his masterful
argument for epigenesis in book II of Generation of Animals. They also contain
some sloppy and ill-considered arguments, e.g., he reasons that flies have two
wings because they are smaller than other insects and do not need four wings to
fly (PA 682b I 0). 1 The facts blatantly do not support this assertion. There are also
a large number of passages that are so corrupt that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to recover Aristotle's meaning. In fact, the material in these treatises is so rich
and so varied that it is hard to comprehend and analyze them in any neat way.
People who wish to discredit Aristotle as a biologist can flip through these
treatises and come up with some truly horrendous errors. One of the worst is the
statement, repeated several times, that human males cannot reproduce until the
age of twenty-one. I can't imagine why he would make this claim. However,
there are also facts for which Aristotle was ridiculed for two thousand years
before it was discovered that he was actually correct. An example is his descrip-
tion of a kind of catfish which he calls a glanis. In this species the males incubate
�WEINER
41
and guard the eggs. This animal was thought to be pure fiction until Louis Agassiz
rediscovered the species in 1857 and named it Parasilurus aristotelis.
One cannot really judge a biologist by counting up how many facts he got
right and how many wrong. It is much more useful to look at what Aristotle saw
as his task, what sort of assumptions he made, and what it was that he actually
did.
Perhaps the most important thing he did was to collect an enormous number
of facts about animals. Most of these facts did not come from his own observations; he got them by consulting the experts. The experts in this case were hunters,
fishermen, trappers, bee-keepers, horse trainers, chicken fmmers, and anyone
else whose livelihood depended on an intimate knowledge of the ways of
animals. Aristotle recorded what he was told, sometimes commenting on or
checking the accuracy of the facts himself, but often simply recording them.
Aristotle even includes observations on the friendships and hostilities between
different species of animals from what appears to be a soothsayer's catalogue of
animal behavior in the ninth chapter of History ofAnimals (608b27 ff.). He does
not discount the testimony of persons who have practical experience with
animals, even when the information appears questionable. Better to record such
information and later prove it wrong than fail to obtain it at all. Aristotle is not
completely gullible. In the case of Ctesius, a traveler to the Indies who returned
with many fabulous tales about animals, Aristotle records what he says but notes
that Ctesius is "no very trustworthy authority" (HA 608a8).
A second source of facts comes from Aristotle's own observations. It is not
always possible to be certain which observations are Aristotle's own; however,
one can often be reasonably certain from the context of the remarks. Aristotle's
observations are characterized by being detailed and precise. Some of these
observations are of animals in their natural habitats, but most of his own work
is in the area of dissections. He seems to have dissected at least eighty-five or
ninety different species of animals. Many of them were invertebrates, organisms
that were largely unknown in his time. His dissections are also noteworthy for
their precision and detail. I find his embryological work to be especially remarkable. Consider the following account of ovoviviparous reproduction in the
smooth shark:
The so-called smooth shark has its eggs in between the wombs like the
dog-fish; these eggs shift into each of the two horns of the womb and descend,
and the young develop with the navel-string attached to the womb, so that as
the egg-substance gets used up, the embryo is sustained to all appearance just
as in the case of quadrupeds. The navel-stting is long and adheres to the under
part of the womb (each navel-string being attached as it were by a sucker),
and also to the center of the embryo in the place where the liver is situated. If
the embryo be cut open, even though it has the egg-substance no longer, the
food inside is egg-like in appearance. Each embryo, as in the case of quadru-
�ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
42
peds, is provided with a chorion and separate membranes. When young the
embryo has its head upwards, but downwards when it gets strong and is
completed in fmm. (HA 565b2-13)
The observation that young sharks are born alive is marvelous in itself; the
further observations that these creatures first develop from an egg in the womb,
and then attach to the womb itself, and further develop like the young of
mammals is truly extraordinary. I am often amazed at what he could see without
a microscope, although he frequently complains, especially in the case of insects,
that the parts are just too small to be accurately observed.
Aristotle was far more than just an observer. He had a set of a priori principles
which helped to direct his observations and questions about animals. Perhaps the
one mentioned most frequently is "Nature never does anything without a
purpose." If this is so, it is always correct to ask the question "why" about
anything that is observed. Aristotle's questions range from the seemingly trivial
(what is this part for?) to the most important philosophical questions (how is
animal motion related to the motions of the heavenly bodies?).
A second principle that is frequently mentioned in the treatises is "Nature
does the best she can under the circumstances." Nature has to work with matter,
which can be notoriously intractable. One might theorize that an animal that had
to protect itself from predators should have sharp horns and teeth, large claws,
great strength, speed, and intelligence. However, when we look at animals, this
is not what we see. What we see, and what Aristotle also saw, was that animals
generally have only one major means of defense. Natufe has only a certain
amount of matter to work with in each animal and must distribute it as best she
can. In Aristotle's words, "Nature takes from one thing to give to another." Thus,
he notes, we find that bulls have large horns, but only have teeth in one jaw. The
matter that would ordinarily have gone into making the second set of teeth goes
into the horns instead (PA 664a2).
One might think that each organ should have only one function if it is to
perform that function with maximum efficiency. However, when we look at
animals we see that very often one organ serves two or even more functions. For
example, the human tongue must be used for both tasting and speaking (PA
650al). Again we see Nature making certain compromises.
A third major principle in these treatises is that "one cannot make general
statements without first doing an exhaustive investigation of the facts." It is this
principle that Aristotle uses most to bring his predecessors to task. His predecessors in natural philosophy include Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus and
other atomists, and Plato's writings in the Timaeus.
None of these philosophers did anything like an exhaustive investigation of
the facts, although some did make certain observations. In fact, Aristotle did not
�WEINER
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always follow this principle himself, though he recognized its importance and
achieved much through its use.
Some statements of other philosophers were rather easy to disprove with
simple observations. For instance, Plato says in the Timaeus (70c7) that we take
in food through the esophagus and water through the windpipe. Aristotle points
out that this could not be so because simple inspection of the parts involved shows
that there is no passageway from the lungs to the stomach and that fluid clearly
comes from the stomach in the case of vomiting, and therefore both water and
food are taken in through the esophagus, which does afford a passageway to the
bladder (PA 664b8-19). Plato also states in the Timaeus (7ld) that the gall-bladder
is present for the purpose of sensation and to irritate the area around the liver and
make it congeal. Aristotle points out that this could not be true because deer don't
even have gall-bladders and some mice have them and some don't, and in the
case of sheep it depends upon where you look. Sheep in Euboea don't have
gall-bladders and sheep in Naxos have such large ones that "foreigners who
sacrifice there think it a sign from heaven rather than a natural phenomenon" (PA
676b30 ff.). Aristotle stresses that it is necessary to investigate many individuals
and even many individuals from different populations before one can make
general statements about animals.
Let us look at several examples of Aristotle at work on biological problems.
Near the beginning of History of Animals Aristotle states that "to begin with
we must take into consideration the parts of man." He gives two reasons for this.
The first is practical. "Just as all countries reckon other currencies in relation to
their own, because it is most familiar, so we should judge other animals in relation
to ourselves" (I-IA 49lal9). The second is that "man is most according to nature
of all the animals'' because in him ''upper and lower have the same meaning as
when they are applied to the universe as a whole" (J-IA 494a26). He then gives
an exhaustive inventory of the external anatomy of man. Next he turns to giving
an inventory of the internal anatomy of man. Here he runs into some problems
and we see that he is capable of rather easily glossing over a difficult issue. He
states that the internal parts of man are to a very great extent unknown (because
human dissections were not permissible) and so we must know the internal
anatomy of man by reference to other animals that are like us (I-IA 494b21-24).
Not surprisingly he makes many errors in this section. Some of his statements
are true of dogs but not of humans. Interestingly, a few statements are true of the
human fetus but not of the adult, suggesting that Aristotle must have dissected
an aborted fetus.
Next he sets out to do just what he stated, compare other animals to humans.
This is not a very difficult task when dealing with other mammals, nor is it
especially difficult when dealing with other vertebrates, such as birds and fish.
All these animals have backbones, hearts, livers, mouths, etc. It is relatively easy
to recognize the different parts and name their functions. However, one runs into
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ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
real difficulties when dealing with the invertebrate animals. At first glance, a
head louse, clam, or sponge does not seem at all like a human. It is this difficulty
that led Aristotle to develop one of the most important concepts in biology the distinction between homology and analogy.
Homology is what Aristotle refers to as the "difference of the more and the
less" (PA 644b 15). It is a similarity of structure, but a difference in bodily
qualities. The hair on a dog is homologous with the hair on a zebra; the fingernails
of a human are homologous with the claws of a dog. Analogy is a similarity of
function with no similarity of structure. The skeleton of a human and the shell
of a clam are analogous. The skeleton of a human serves to support the body, to
protect the internal organs, and to provide a place for muscle attachment. The
shell of a clam serves all these functions as well, but does not look anything like
a human skeleton, and is on the outside rather than the inside of the animal.
Aristotle can be rather bold with his analogies. For instance, he says that the
earth is for plants what the stomach is for humans. He explains that the roots of
plants take up nutrients and distribute them to the rest of the plant. The earth
contains nutrients in a form that plants can utilize. Humans must first process
their food into a usable form. The food we eat is first digested in the stomach,
and then our blood vessels, which are like the roots of plants, can take up these
usable nutrients from the stomach and distribute them to the rest of the body (PA
650a20-34).
No biologist today would say that man is the standard to which all other
animals should be compared. However, this belief served Aristotle well, even if
it occasionally also led him astray. In fact, Aristotle's views about man's
relationship with the rest of the animal world enabled him to make certain
observations that were not repeated until this century simply because of the way
modem scientists and philosophers regarded man. Far from denying that other
animals used tools or language, Aristotle noticed, e.g., that nightingales have
something like a language (HA 536bl8) and that woodpeckers sometimes use
tools to split nuts (HA 614bl4). He seemed to take delight in finding these
man-like qualities among the lower creatures.
Aristotle believed that all nature was akin because all living things have souls.
Plants have only nutritive soul, they can grow and reproduce. Animals have
sensitive soul in addition to nutritive soul. They have at least the sense of touch,
and may have one or more of the remaining four senses. Humans are distinguished by also having rational souls. He was convinced that organisms like
scallops and jellyfish had sensation, and therefore were animals. He was led by
this conviction to look for ce1tain features in them. For instance, he was sure that
jellyfish, like humans, must have a way of taking in food and getting rid of
wastes, a reproductive system, and a heart and circulatory system, or something
analogous to these. He looked for and often found these systems in invertebrate
animals even though they appear very different from the analogous systems in
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the human body. Occasionally he "found" things we now know are not actually
present, such as a dorsal nerve chord in insects (they actually have a ventral nerve
chord which he missed).
Aristotle had some favorite animals which he returns to again and again.
These are the cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and paper nautilus), the
cartilaginous fishes (sharks, skates, and rays), and the bees. Why was he
particularly fascinated with these creatures? I believe it is because all these
animals share certain features with humans which they do not share with other,
more typical members of their groups. Octopuses have brains, clams do not.
Sharks bear their young alive, most fish lay eggs. Bees not only build the complex
architectural structures we call hives, they also have a beautifully organized
political system in which there is never any dispute over who rules and who
works. In fact, Aristotle says that the bees have something divine about them
(GA 76la8), a statement he otherwise makes only in the case of man.
A second, and at first glance rather puzzling, example of Aristotle's work on
a biological problem is his conviction that the heart is the seat of sensation and
intelligence. Most of Aristotle's contemporaries, including Plato, held that the
brain had this function. But Aristotle had his reasons.
In his observations of the chick embryo he noticed that the first organ seen
was the heart, already beating on the third day (PA 666a20). The heart could be
seen pumping blood to the rest of the body. In this way the heart certainly seems
primary; the brain does not develop until much later. He further noticed that it is
only the parts of animals that are supplied with blood that have sensation (HA
489a26). Fingernails lack both blood and sensation, and so does the brain (PA
652bl-6). The thought of the blood flowing from all the sense organs into the
"common sense" in the heart, which he speaks of in De Anima (lll, ii), must have
been very strong to him. It was difficult for Aristotle to believe that the bloodless
and sensation-free brain could really be the seat of reason and sensation.
He did not see the brain as a useless organ. In fact, he connected it intimately
with the heart and believed it functioned as a cooling organ for the rest of the
body (PA 652b16 ff.). If something went wrong with the brain, it would affect
the heart and cause a malfunction.
He had other reasons as well. He had dissected many invertebrate animals
and noticed that they generally had something analogous to a heart and blood,
but lacked a brain (PA 652b26). He noted that certain invertebrates, particularly
bees and spiders, certainly had intelligence, but he claimed they did not have
brains. They do have hearts. He noted that when animals were sacrificed they
often had lesions or tumors in the brain and other organs, but not in the heart.
However, when an animal died naturally and was dissected it was often found
to have something wrong with its heart. Thus, any damage to the heart seemed
fatal, thought this was not true of the brain (PA 667a34 f.).
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ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
For all these reasons Aristotle held that the heart was the seat of sensation and
intellect. I do not believe that he convinced his contemporaries, but neither could
they reply to his objections.
The last example is a problem Aristotle struggled long and hard with: the
reproduction of bees. The bees have been a serious problem for biological
themists from Aristotle's time through the present, and they are certainly very
odd animals.
To give some idea of what Aristotle was up against, I will relate some facts
we now know about bees. There are three castes in a bee colony. The queens are
female and do all the reproduction for the hive. The workers are all sterile females
and do all the work; they gather nectar and pollen, build the hive, take care of
the queen and the young, and guard the hive. The third caste are the drones, which
are reproductive males. They are produced only at the end of the season, and
their only function is to mate, after which they die.
New queens are also produced only at the end of the season. The new queens
and drones go on a nuptial flight. Mating takes place high in the air and is not
something that can be observed. Each queen mates only once in her entire
lifetime and can store and use the sperm from that one mating for the rest of her
life, which may last eight or ten years.
In humans, half the chromosomes come from the mother and half from the
father. Among these chromosomes are two that are called sex chromosomes. An
"X" is always received from the mother and either an "X" or a "Y" from the
father. If the newly fertilized egg is "XX," it will develop into a girl, if "XY" it
will develop into a boy. This is how sex is determined in all mammals. It works
differently in bees. When a queen wants to produce a female, she lets some sperm
through when an egg is in the reproductive tract. The fertilized egg will be "XX,"
a female. However, when she wants to produce a male, she doesn't let any sperm
through and lays an unfertilized egg. It is "XNothing" and develops into a male.
Aristotle didn't know all this, but he consulted the beekeepers. Some of them
told him that bees didn't reproduce at all. They said that the reason bees visit
flowers so frequently was that they were collecting their young and taking them
back to the nest (HA 553al9). Aristotle did not believe this. Some of the
beekeepers told him pretty much what I have just related, that the queens and the
workers are female, the drones male, and that the queens did all the reproduction.
Aristotle didn't believe this either (GA 759b5).
Given his views of a woman's virtues and role in society, he was not very
much inclined to conclude that these beautifully organized societies that he
admired so much were ruled by females. Also, in his observations of animals he
noticed that it was the males which had weapons for defense, and if the females
had them at all, they were considerably smaller than the males' (GA 759b6). In
the bees, the queens and the workers have stings and the males are defenseless,
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leading him to believe that the queens, which he calls either kings or leaders,
were male.
Aristotle reasoned further. Nobody had ever seen bees mate. Maybe the
leaders are neither male nor female, but hermaphroditic. He knew of some fish
that were apparently hermaphrodites (GA 759b26-32), so why not bees as well?
This theory presented two problems. If the leaders are hermaphrodite, then what
function did the drones have? If nature never does anything without a purpose,
what was the purpose for the drones? Also, hermaphrodite fish produce other
hermaphrodite fish just like them. Like produces like. This did not seem to be
what happened in the case of the bees. It seemed that the leaders were producing
both new leaders and workers, like producing unlike.
After many pages of struggling with this issue, Aristotle concludes that the
leaders are neither male nor female, that they produce both new leaders and
workers, and that workers produce the drones. This is reasonable, because in the
absence of the queen workers will sometimes lay unfertilized eggs, which
develop into drones (HA 553a30).
After reaching this conclusion, Aristotle makes the following statement:
This then appears to be the state of affairs with regard to the generation of
bees, so far as theory can take us, supplemented by what are thought to be the
facts about their behavior. But the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained;
and if at any future time they are ascertained, then credence must be given to
the direct evidence of the senses more than to theories - and to theories too
provided that the results which they show agree with what is observed. (GA
760b28 ff.)
This is a very strong statement. It epitomizes the Aristotelian spirit of
biological investigation. However, what modem biologists have received of
Aristotle's work is not the pages of struggle which went before his conclusion
nor the strong statements of doubt which often come after, but the conclusion
itself. And, as we all know, Aristotle was wrong about the reproduction of bees.
Hence his undeservedly low reputation amongst today 's biologists.
I don't wish to praise his work to such an extent that I ignore its deficiencies.
Certainly many of his theories have been proven wrong, e.g., spontaneous
generation. Some seem hopelessly naive and deserve the obscurity into which
they have fallen, e.g., his explanation that the heart is on the right because the
right is better than the left. Many of his facts have been corrected, although he
knew this would happen as more observations were made. However, there is still
something to be gained from reading Aristotle's biological works today. Many
of his suggestions and theories are incisively reasoned and have stood the test of
time. Others, having long lain in obscurity, seem very fresh and promising today.
It is here, in the biological writings, that we can really see Aristotle at work.
He does not seem uncomfortable with his lack of knowledge and understanding.
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48
In fact, he seems to delight in the wealth of contradictory information, the many
unknowns, and the loose ends. He sometimes suggests four or five possible
solutions to a difficulty and then leaves the problem for future investigators to
solve. We see him working on a problem from many angles: dissecting and
observing animals, collecting writings from the past, consulting experts, and then
reasoning through the whole question. He is comfortable and confident with this
work.
From a modem perspective, Aristotle seems justified in his confidence.
Almost every major principle of biology which can be discovered using one's
hands, eyes, and mind is found in the biological treatises, sometimes in a very
sophisticated form. These include principles of animal organization, development, evolution, and ecology.
Aristotle was not an evolutionist. Some of his predecessors, particularly
Empedocles, did espouse theories that sound somewhat like modern mechanistic
evolutionary thought. However, Empedocles' theory was based more on a poetic
vision than on biological observation.
Aristotle has often been brought to task for changing others' opinions to fit
his system. Here are some lines from Empedocles often construed as supporting
a theory of organic evolution:
There budded many a head without a neck, and arms were roaming shoulderless and bare, and eyes that wanted foreheads drifted by. (Fragment 57)2
In isolation wandered every limb, hither and thither seeking union meet.
(Fragment 58)
But now as God with God was mingled more, these members fell together
where they met, and many a birth besides was then begot in a long line of ever
varied life. (Fragment 59)
Here is Aristotle's restatement of Empedocles' ideas in a discussion of explana-
tion in the natural sciences:
Hence, why should not even bodily parts like teeth have developed in the
necessary course of nature- sharp front teeth suited for the tearing of food
and flat back teeth suited for the crushing of food? May they not have been
produced, not to some end, but by coincidence? And may it not be so with
all bodily parts supposedly having some inherent end or purpose? Those
organic structures, then, which came into the world as if they had been
produced to some end, survived because they had been automatically
organized in a fitting way; all others, like the rnan~faced offspring of oxen
in the theory ofEmpedocles, have perished and continue to perish. (Phys.
198b28-30)
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This statement sounds more modern and certainly has a more definite
meaning than Empedocles' poetry. Aristotle has rephrased it in such a way that
he can discuss something definite. He goes on to criticize Empedocles on the
grounds that eyes, shoulders, etc., must be part of a whole integrated organism,
and cannot live separately.
However, it is in Aristotle's treatise that we find the observations and
principles necessary to support modern evolutionary theory. These include the
very important distinction between homology and analogy discussed earlier. He
also made some outstanding observations of embryo development in which he
noticed that embryos can first be recognized only as animals, later still as
members of particular species, and lastly as unique individuals of those species
(GA 736a35). These observations are identical with those that support the modern
principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Aristotle was the first to recognize many significant ecological principles. He
wrote about animal territoriality and accounted for why and how various animals
establish and defend tenitories (e.g., HA 613a8 ff.). He made observations about
the distribution and abundance of animals in different environments (e.g., HA
543b24, 605b28), and noted their various reproductive strategies. For instance,
he remarked that some animals, especially fish, lay literally millions of eggs,
which are mostly destroyed or infertile (GA 755a33). This strategy is compared
to that of sharks, in which a few large young are produced after incubation in a
womb (HA 571a). The two reproductive strategies are referred to today as rand
K selection.
He also spoke of the dangers of overpopulation. He mentioned the destructiveness of overfishing and of dredging for shellfish (HA 603a). All these
principles are familiar to ecologists and environmentalists today.
Despite the errors, uncertainties, and unknowns, Aristotle was able to discern
important patterns in the natural world. His achievement as a biologist is
genuinely impressive from a modem perspective. It was no less impressive in
his own time.
He differed fTom his predecessors in several impmtant ways. He was intensely involved with the study of many individual organisms at a time when
sweeping statements about species and biological principles were the rule. He
was interested in the individual animal because it is only in an individual
organism that one can see all of the forces of nature working together. When
final, formal, efficient, and material causes converge just the way they should,
the result is an individual louse, or goldfish, or human. The individual is the only
thing that actually exists. Species and other groups lack material cause, and are
only abstractions (PA 64lal9 ff.).
A second important distinction between Aristotle and the other natural
philosophers was that Aristotle used the knowledge of the common people to
great advantage. It is not an exaggeration to claim that his achievement rests, to
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a very great extent, on the enormous amounts of information that the common
people were able to give him.
He also had a great deal of faith in the common sense of people in general.
For instance, when he speaks of animal classification, he clearly prefers the
groupings that the mass of people use to those devised by theorists (PA 643b 15).
Most people divided animals into the major groups which we refer to today as
mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, etc. The theorists of Aristotle's time devised
dichotomous classification schemes which, for example, first divided animals
into tame and wild, then into land and water, etc.
Aristotle pointed out that such schemes would only obscure real patterns in
nature because some birds are land animals, some are water animals, and some
are both. Also, domestic animals are often found in the wild (PA I,ii). It is true
that the folk classifications made certain enors, classifying bats as birds and
whales as fish, but these errors were easily corrected by Aristotle. The overall
scheme of the common man's classification was sound.
The third feature that distinguishes Aristotle is that he got physically involved
with his subject, performing dissections and field observations. The importance
of this should not be underestimated. Anyone who has ever attempted to dissect
a frog or cat in biology class knows that there is an art to it. One must train one's
hands and eyes. It requires practice and dedication to become proficient, and all
evidence suggests that Aristotle was a master of this craft. He got to know his
subject with an intimacy which his contemporaries and predecessors never
experienced.
How is it that Aristotle was able to approach the study of biology in this new
way? It is known that he came from medical families on both sides and that his
father was court physician at Macedon. Certainly he had some medical training
and his writings show a familiarity with the medical literature and techniques of
his time. A physician must have many of the skills we see Aristotle employing
in his studies of animals. He may have theories about the course of a disease or
causes of illness, but he knows that each patient is unique and must be treated as
an individual. "For the physician does not cure 'man' except in an incidental way,
but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who
happens to be a man" (Met. 981a17). Clever theories alone do not cure patients.
A physician must look, listen, touch, and think when treating a patient.
Add this practical medical background to twenty years at Plato's academy
and we can see how a man with Aristotle's intellectual breadth and depth was
able to address questions of natural philosophy fruitfully and at many different
levels.
At the most basic level he describes parts of animals and asks what they are
used for. He also deals with questions which are a step more abstract, e.g., the
grouping and classification of animals. However, his biological studies also led
him to the highest and most difficult philosophical questions, such as the nature
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51
of the soul and the causes of animal and heavenly motions. Aristotle was able to
make biology into a respectable study in its own right as well as establish it as
an important philosophical discipline.
We can see Aristotle employing the methods that were so successful for him
in biology in other disciplines as well. In the Politics we see him reviewing
various utopian theories (Bk. II), but finally saying that what is needed is to see
how things actually are. He collected 158 constitutions of states as well as the
oral laws and customs of numerous tribes. He used these as the source of facts,
as the actual individual things, which he could study and analyze along with
theories (Bk. Ill).
Again, in the Ethics we see him going to the beliefs of the people as the
starting point of his investigation of proper human behavior (e.g., EN 1098b23).
He quotes common aphorisms and uses these as the basis from which to reason
about ethics. Once again he was able to tap and use to advantage a source of
information and inspiration which was largely ignored by philosophers.
His accustomed empirical approach gets him into trouble when he tries to
account for such physical phenomena as bodies falling through various media
and the movement of objects that have been thrown or shot. If one were to do as
Aristotle suggests in the Physics and throw a rock into the air ten thousand times,
the same thing will happen every time. No new information will be learnt about
the laws of falling objects. The method of investigation that has proven fruitful
for these sorts of phenomena is to throw the rock into the air once or twice, time
it, perhaps take a strobe photograph, and then go inside and write an equation
that describes the rock's movements. These phenomena do not offer the kind of
complexity or abundance of information common in biological problems. They
require a rather different art, that of mathematization, which Galileo and others
discovered many years later.
One can't throw a chicken into the air and then go inside and write an equation
for it. In fact, to this day it is wmthwhile for biologists to watch chickens. In
contrast to the movement of rocks through the air, there is still much to learn by
simply watching the movements of birds. There is almost always something more
to learn from dissecting ten more squid or spending ten more hours watching a
flock of geese. It seems that biological and physical phenomena require rather
different means of investigation.
It is certainly true that Aristotle was interested in answering the most sublime
sort of philosophical questions through his biological studies. However, he spent
the bulk of his time asking the most basic questions about animal anatomy and
behavior. There are not many people who would dissect dozens of squid simply
to answer these sorts of questions. There is a wonderfulness about the animals
themselves that repeatedly brings one back to them. They are worthy of study in
their own right and for their own sakes.
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Aristotle recognized this quality in animals. He wanted to convince his
students of the worthiness of studying the natural world. It is not often that we
see Atistotle waxing eloquent in his treatises. Thus, this passage from Parts of
Animals I,v is particularly remarkable. I will end by letting Aristotle entice all of
you into the study of biology with some of the same words that he used with his
own students some 2300 years ago. He tells a story about some visitors who
wished to meet Heraclitus:
... and when they entered and saw him in the kitchen, warming himself at the
stove, they hesitated; but Heraclitus said "Come in; don't be afraid; there are
gods even here." In like manner, we ought not to hesitate nor to be abashed,
but boldly to enter upon our researches concerning animals of every sort and
kind, knowing that in not one of them is Nature or Beauty lacking.
*****
Notes
1. The following abbreviations are used: PA, Parts of Animals; HA, History of
Animals; GA, Generation of Animals; EN, Nichomachean Ethics; Phys.,
Physics; Met., Metaphysics. Translations from PA and GA are from the Loeb
editions (Harvard University Press); those from HA are from the Oxford
edition (Clarendon Press).
2. Translations from Lombardo, S., 1982. Parmenides and Empedocles: the
Fragments in Verse (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press).
�The God Who Is
and the God Who Speaks
Thomas J. Slakey
0 my soul, seek not immortal life, but exhaust
the realm of the possible.
- Pindar, Third Pythian
For whose sake is it that the proof is sought?
Faith does not need it; aye, it must even
regard the proof as its enemy.
- Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific
Postscript
Introduction
Discussions of the existence of God meet with resistance from, so to speak, both
the left and the right. On the "left" are those from Pindar through Hume and Kant
and beyond, who tell us to confine our reason to those matters within our reach,
namely practical affairs and empirical science. On the "right" are those Christians, and many other devout believers, who tell us that arguments for God's
existence can only undermine proper reverence toward God, that the appropriate
response to God is not argument but worship.
Nevertheless there are within the Bible itself suggestions of a kind of
inference from the physical universe to the existence of God, as in Psahn 19: l,
"The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his
handiwork." 1 St. Paul expands this notion. He says that the Gentiles should have
known better than to worship idols.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown
it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely,
his etemal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have
been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1: 19-20)
Thomas Slakey is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, and former Dean. This
lecture was first delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in January, 1989. In April,
1986, an earlier version was submitted to the Basic Issues Forum at Washington and
Jefferson College, in a call for papers on the Existence of God.
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54
The crucial claim here is that invisible things, ta aorata (translated "his
invisible nature") can be seen in things made, if those things are properly
understood, that is, so to speak, seen with the mind's eye, nooumena kathoratai.
(RSV translates this phrase merely as "clearly perceived.") St. Paul is asserting
that the Gentiles should have been able to infer the existence of an invisible God
from the visible things around them.
On the other hand, the Psalmist and St. Paul, and I would say all other writers
in the Bible, take for granted not only that God exists but also that He is a person
who acts, and who sometimes acts in our world. Nowhere in the Bible is the
existence of God questioned. Even Job, who suffers terribly at the hand of God,
never questions whether God exists. Rather Job questions only whether God is
just:
It is all one; therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he covers the faces of its judges
-if it is not he, who then is it? (Job 9: 22-24)
Even the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14: I), is really
only questioning whether God will punish those who do abominable deeds, as
becomes clear from the context.
Thus even though in the Bible itself there are suggestions of inferences to the
existence of God, those inferences are made by those who do not need convincing
that God exists, unlike the contemporary context of this lecture, where the
existence of God is widely questioned and is usually held to be a matter of
something called "faith." In the Bible "faith" does not mean belief in the
existence of God, but means trust in God's promises. Thus Abraham is the model
of faith because he believed God's promise of a son in his old age, a son who
would be the father of a mighty race (Genesis 15: 5-6). Throughout the centuries
of oppression and exile, "faith" meant trust that eventually God's promises would
be fulfilled.
A similar difficulty besets those Christian writers, such as Thomas Aquinas,
who have constructed philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Though
Thomas is often careful to distinguish matters of faith from matters of reason,
and though he holds that the existence of God can be rationally demonstrated
without reliance on revelation, nevettheless throughout the Summa Theologiae,
on almost every page, he mixes references to both pagan and Christian authors.
Thus when he argues not only that the existence of God can be known through
reason, but also that God is a person, that He is just and merciful, that He created
the universe and provides for it, that He knows each of us as an individual, and
so on, it is extremely difficult to separate the sources of his arguments, and to
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know to what extent he could have reached such conclusions had he not grown
up with a constant experience of the Scriptures and of daily prayers.
We do, however, have some clues. We have the results, in Plato, Aristotle,
and Plotinus, of a long tradition of philosophical speculation which strove to
reach the divine. Although this speculation itself began in the midst of a powerful
tradition of very personal gods, gods with human faces, gods to whom one prayed
and who answered prayers, sometimes by themselves descending from Mount
Olympus to a battlefield where they deflected spears, healed wounds, and even
fought directly, nevertheless Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus largely left behind
such apparently primitive and merely poetic notions. Thus Plato's "Good" is
strictly impersonal (see especially Republic VI, 504-11), and in his account of a
fashioner of the world, that "Craftsman" is described as at best having a certain
likelihood (Timaeus, 29). Aristotle's First Mover is an object of love and
veneration, but itself knows nothing of us and does not act in our world; its only
object of thought is itself (Metaphysics, XII, 9, 1074b 33-34). Plotinus's One has
some relation to our world but only through a series of intermediaries (see, for
example Enneads V, para. 6).
This lecture consists offour parts. I first consider attempts to speak about God
as Transcendent Being, the God who is. I next consider attempts to speak about
God as Himself speaking to us, the God who speaks. Thirdly, I consider to what
extent these two different attempts are compatible. Finally I briefly consider
prayer, the action by which we speak to God.
Part I. God as Transcendent Being
Instead of beginning with any of Thomas Aquinas's well known "five ways"
of demonstrating the existence of God, I want to start out from his discussion of
"The Names of God," that is, from the way in which we human beings speak
about God. 2 Following Aristotle, Thomas holds that all our knowledge, and the
language we use to express it, derives from sensation and therefore from our
experience of physical things in the world around us. How can any language so
derived be applied to God?
Thomas distinguishes words that are applied to God "metaphorically," as in
"God is my rock" or "God is a lion," from words that are applied to God
"properly," such as "good" and "living" (Q.13, a.3). Although our understanding
of"good" derives from, for example, good human beings, and our understanding
of "living" from, for example, plants and animals, Thomas claims that the
perfections signified by these words are not limited to bodily things, whereas
"rock" and "lion" specifically mean something bodily. Therefore when "rock"
and "lion" are applied to God, it can only be in some metaphorical sense. A word
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like "rock" is not only learned from bodily things, but it points precisely to the
bodily aspect of what it names. Hence when it is applied to God the meaning can
only be by a kind of implied comparison, as to suggest that God's protection is
firm and unchanging. "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer"
(Psalm 18:2). On the other hand, a word like "good," even though it is learned
from its application to, for example, good food, good tools, and good men, has
a meaning that can be separated from those bodily things and applied "properly"
to God, that is, as if it belongs to God and is not merely applied to Him by
comparison with some bodily thing.
Thomas goes even further. He makes the bold claim that words like "good"
not only properly apply to God but apply to Him "more properly than to creatures
themselves, and are said of Him primatily" (Q.13, a.3). How can this be? The
best explanation comes from Plato, from the ladder of love in the Symposium
(210-12), even though Thomas did not have this passage available to him and
knew Plato's writings chiefly as they came to him through St. Augustine,
pseudo-Dionysius, and others. Socrates says that we can ascend from the love
of a single beautiful body to the love of beautiful bodies generally, then to the
beauty of souls, then to the beauty of those customs and laws which bind men
together in cities, and then to the beauty found by study and speculation. Finally,
those who ascend the ladder in the right way will be struck with wonder as they
see
... the final object of all those previous toils. First of all it is ever existent and
neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not
beautiful in part and in patt ugly, nor is it such at such a time and other at
another, nor in one respect beautiful and in another ugly, nor so affected by
position as to seem beautiful to some and ugly to others. Nor again will our
initiate find the beautiful presented to him in the guise of a face or of hands
or any other portion of the body, nor as a particular description or piece of
knowledge, nor as existing somewhere in another substance, such as an animal
or the earth or sky or any other things, but existing ever in singularity of form
independent by itself, while all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it
in such wise that, though all of them are coming to be and perishing, it grows
neither greater nor less, and is affected by nothing. (21 0-11) 3
Even though our experience of beauty begins from particular physical things,
and even though the word "beautiful" is leamed from those things -beautiful
flowers, beautiful houses, beautiful women, beautiful days - the word itself
leads us beyond them to a beauty that is in no way deficient and in no way
changes. The word itself suggests that the beautiful things we see "partake" in
such a beauty, that is, that their beauty is not truly their own but something shared
from some higher source, which Socrates calls "beauty itself' (auto to kalon,
211 d) or "the divine beauty" (to the ion kalon, 211 e).
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In the Phaedo (74a-75c) Socrates argues the even stronger thesis that words
like "equal," "just," and "good" not only lead us beyond sensible things around
us, but could not have been derived from those things, and in the Theaetetus
( 185-86) he argues a similar strong thesis with regard to "being." But for Thomas,
and for my present pmpose, the weaker thesis is sufficient, that words like "good"
point beyond our world to something higher and that they are applied more
properly to it than to anything we can perceive with our senses.
This thesis is in turn the root of Thomas's doctrine of "analogy," a doctrine
based on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 2, even to the use of
Aristotle's example of "healthy." A certain diet might be called "healthy" and a
urine sample might be called "healthy," each by relation to "healthy" as applied
to a living animal, the diet as the cause of health and the urine as the sign of
health. Any such "analogous" use of a word always points to some one primary
meaning. Similarly a word like "wise," as applied to creatures, points beyond
creatures toward God, "in whom all the perfections of things preexist excellently" (Q.13, a.S).
The most important such concept will be the concept of being itself. God
exists in the fullest possible sense. He never came into existence, He never
changes, and He will never go out of existence. It is simply His nature or His
"essence" to exist (Q.3, a.4). We, on the other hand, are born, we are constantly
changing physically, emotionally, and mentally, and finally we die. We exist only
in some lesser sense.
Elsewhere in the Summa, Thomas discusses the widespread custom among
religious peoples of making offerings or "sacrifices" to God or gods:
Nat ural reason tells man that he is subject to something higher, because of the
deficiency which he feels in himself, so that he needs to be helped and directed
by something higher. And whatever that is, it is what among all men is called
God 4
Thomas is here describing what I would call the fundamental religious sensibility, the sense most men have had in most times and places that man "is subject
to something higher." It is the sense most profoundly resisted by Nietzsche,
Sartre, and others. On the other hand it finds a new contemporary expression in
the sense of obligation toward preserving other species of animals and plants,
whenever that obligation is understood not merely as serving human purposes,
but as respect or "reverence" for species that have evolved over millions of years.
It found expression among the Romans in the concept of pietas, which extended
from duty to family, through duty to country, to duty toward the gods. The hard
question is whether the religious sensibility is reliable, especially if it points
beyond the physical world toward a Being which transcends that world. The hard
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question is whether one can move from our sense of God and our language about
God to the conclusion that God exists.
Thomas makes this very move in the fourth of his "five ways." Let me quote
the argument in full: 5
The fourth way is taken from the gradations which are found in things. For
there is found in things something more and less good, and true, and noble,
and similarly with other qualities of this sort. But more and less are said of
different things according as they differently approach some maximum, as
more heat more closely approaches maximum heat. There exists therefore
something which is truest, and best, and noblest, and consequently maximum
being, since maximum truths are maximum beings as Book II of the Metaphysics says [Chapter 1, 993b 28-31]. But what is said to be maximum in any
genus is the cause of all things in that genus, as fire, which is maximum heat,
is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book [lac. cit., ll. 24-25]. Therefore
there exists something which for all beings is the cause of being, and of
goodness, and of any perfection whatever. And this we call God. (Q.2, a.3)
This passage is fraught with difficulties. To start with, there is the confusing
example of heat. The point of the example is not to suggest that any kind of
quantitative variation points to a maximum, but to find a case where differences
of degree do point to some outside source of the quality mentioned. Consider
stones in the shade and in the sun. The stone in the sun is hotter than the stone
in the shade. The gradations of heat in the stones suggest that the heat derives
not from the stones themselves, but from something else, such as the sun. The
sun is "maximum heat" in the sense that it is a source of heat, a cause of heat, in
things like stones.
Can this example be applied to the kind of qualities Thomas here has in mind,
namely "the good, the true, the noble," and other qualities of this sm1? To focus
on the example of "good": Is the goodness of things such that it suggests an
outside source, a maximum goodness? Consider first things good as means to an
end, such as good tools. Clearly their goodness derives from the ends they serve.
Consider next things good as ends in themselves, such as good human beings. Is
their goodness their own? Is it partial, temporary, and constantly changing? Does
it point to a "maximum goodness" that could be the source of goodness in other
things, a goodness that is complete, permanent, and unchanging?
We are back in the Symposium and the Phaedo. We start from experience of
things in the world around us and from language and thought that develop in
relation to those things. We experience "goodness" as embodied in physical
things. But the experience itself, and the language and thought that express it,
drive us beyond physical things to something that transcends the kind of realities
we directly experience.
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It is far beyond the scope of this paper to defend such reasoning against
practically the whole of modern philosophy. Kant states the essential point of
difficulty succinctly in the Critique of Pure Reason, with regard to the principle
of causality:
This principle is applicable only in the sensible world; outside that world it
has no meaning whatsoever.... The principle of causality has no meaning and
no criterion for its application save only in the sensible world. 6
We can, however, briefly examine Kant's objection in relation to an argument
combining the first and second of Thomas's five ways, an argument derived from
the extended argument in Aristotle's Physics VIII. Basing himself on the obvious
phenomenon of "motion" or change in the physical world, Thomas asserts that
since nothing simply changes of itself, whenever anything does change, we look
for a source or cause of change. Moreover, there could not be an infinite series
of such causes or the result would never occur. 7 Therefore there must be a first
cause of change. It does not cause itself to change, since this would contradict
the whole thrust of the argument. Rather it is unchanging, an "unmoved mover"
(Q.2, a.3).
Kant does not challenge the principle of causality as applied to the physical
world. He grants that whenever something changes within the physical world,
we do in fact look for a cause of change. The principle of causality is in fact a
principle of investigation within the physical world. Kant's objection is to
extending that principle toward something beyond the physical world. When we
do so, we argue for the existence of something whose nature is totally different
from anything we observe or even "can" observe, something that produces
changes without itself changing. Kant claims that the principle of causality so
extended is not merely unreliable but "has no meaning whatsoever."
But Kant's objection cuts two ways. While restricting the principle of causality to the physical world, and therefore to the strictly "scientific" investigation
that it expresses, Kant leaves a question that physical science cannot answer,
namely the question about the origin of the physical universe as a whole.
Whatever scientific cosmology tells us must start from a certain given state of
matter or energy. Is it unreasonable to suggest, though not in a strictly "scientific"
way, that something must have given rise to that state in this first place, and that
it must be of a nature totally different from the matter and energy that "science"
can measure?
Let me turn also briefly to Thomas's fifth way, which is taken from the
presence of purposeful order in natural things:
For we see that some things which lack cognition, namely natural bodies, act
toward an end; which is apparent from the fact that they always or frequently
act in the same way so that that which is best may follow; whence it is plain
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that they reach their ends not by chance but intentionally. But those things
which lack cognition do not go toward an end unless directed by something
which knows and understands, as the anow is directed by the archer. Therefore
there is some intelligent being by whom all natural things are ordered toward
their ends; and this we call God. (Q.2, a.3)
This argument was widely regarded as conclusive through the eighteenth and
early nineteenth century, and has since been equally widely regarded as refuted
by Darwin. The crucial point in the argument is, however, not simply the
appearance of orderly structures in natural organisms, but the fact that orderly
structures are repeated "always or frequently" in the same way. In his discussion
of chance in Physics II 5-6, Aristotle makes it a defining property of chance that
there is an appearance of order, as when a tripod tumbles down stairs and lands
on its feet in an appropriate place, as if it was placed there on purpose (197b 17).
Hence it is not the appearance of order that argues against chance, but the regular
recurrence of order.
Aristotle himself entertains the Darwinian hypothesis:
... if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing floor, the rain did not fall for the
sake of this - in order that the crop might be spoiled - but that result just
followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that
our teeth should come up of necessity- the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing,
the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food- since they did not
arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all the
other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Whenever then all the
parts came about just what they would have been if they had come to be for
an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way;
whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish ... 8
Aristotle here argues that the Darwinian hypothesis is insufficient because,
for example, the teeth "either invariably or normally come about in a given way"
(198b 35). Aristotle could perhaps accept Darwin's analogy between natural
selection and the controlled breeding of animals, but he would still argue that
some explanation is needed for the nearly uniform succession of characteristics
from generation to generation. This is the fact that Darwin takes for granted both
with respect to natural selection and to controlled breeding.
On the other hand, Thomas's argument is subject to a different objectionone of two that he himself raises against the general conclusion of the whole set
of five ways, the conclusion that God exists- namely that if there is a God, and
if He produces order in things, and if He is also good, how can there be so much
evil? Thomas's reply to this objection is drawn from Augustine: God would not
allow evil "unless He were so omnipotent and good that He can make good even
out of evil" (Q.2, a.3, objection 1 and reply). It seems to me that on this particular
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point the evidence can only be moot. Much that is good and beautiful in the world
might suggest that there is a benevolent deity ordering the universe, but then one
has to confront that conclusion with evil and suffering.
Moreover, Aristotle himself does not argue from order in nature to the
existence of an intelligent being outside of and ordering nature. He assigns the
order in natural things to nature itself (physis), as a principle working within
things (192b 22). And this suggests the second objection that Thomas himself
raises against the conclusion of his five ways:
... What can be completed through fewer principles does not occur through
many. But it seems that everything which appears in the world can be
completed through other principles, supposing that God does not exist .. , (Q.2,
a.3, obj. 2)
Thomas replies only that "everything in nature reduces also to God, as to its first
cause" (Q.3, a.3, reply to obj. 2).
On this general conclusion also, the evidence seems to me to be moot. I
certainly cannot claim to have proved the existence of God. Yet I have argued
that much in our experience drives us toward something beyond physical things.
We like to scoff at medieval man, who was so arrogant as to place himself at the
exact center of a rather small universe. Is it any less arrogant for us to think that
we are the highest form of life in an infinite universe? Or that if there are other
intelligent beings, they have brains and bodies something like our own? Is it
unreasonable to suppose that there might exist a Being utterly different from
ourselves and from any physical thing, eternal and unchanging? Is it unreasonable to think of that Being as the "cause" of the universe we know, however much
we have to strain the word "cause"?
Part II. God as Speaking to Us
In Part I we followed Socrates' progress from seeing beautiful things to a
vision of beauty itself. Moreover it should be noted that the metaphor of the
Platonic eidos, which comes from a verb meaning "to see," is visual, a "form,"
whether seen with the eye of the body or the eye of the mind. Though spoken
oracles play a prominent role in Greek religion, Plato's own progress toward God
is primarily through sight.
Throughout the Bible, on the other hand, God is heard:
Now the Lord said to Abraham, "go from your country and your kindred and
your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you
a great nation ... " (Genesis 12: 1-2)
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Though God's power is often visible, and though visions occasionally reveal
something of God, as in Isaiah 6: 1-3, and Revelation 4: l-11, it is primarily
through a voice that God is known, whether that voice is heard directly, as by
Abraham, or indirectly, through a prophet.
The voice speaks in a human language, but Abraham never questions whether
the voice he hears is the voice of God. Even when the voice commands the
murder of Isaac, the child of the promise, through whom Abraham was to be the
father of the Lord's chosen people, Abraham proceeds without hesitation to the
execution of the divine command, at least so far as the extremely spare account
in Genesis tells us (22: 1-4 ). Most often the later prophets also simply state, "Thus
says the Lord." How Abraham and the prophets know that it is the Lord who
spoke to them, we are not told. They simply know. It is perhaps impossible for
one who does not share such an experience to enter into it. The certainty
possessed by Abraham and by the prophets can only remain mysterious. And
even though it has become almost fashionable for contemporary Christians to
hear the voice of the Lord, their certainty must also remain mysterious.
On the other hand, when Moses hears the voice from the burning bush, he is
given a sign of divine presence, since the bush, though it is burning, is not
consumed (Exodus 3: 2-3). When the Lord orders Moses to speak to the children
of Israel in His name, Moses asks for a sign, and the Lord gives him three: the
rod that can turn into a serpent and then back into a rod, the hand that can tum
leprous and then be healed, and the Nile water turning into blood (Exodus 4:
1-9). And though the Pharaoh's magicians themselves perform such wonders,
greater wonders follow which they cannot match, so that finally even they say,
"This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8: 19).
Similarly, in the time of Elijah, when worship of the Baals was overwhelming
the worship of the true God, God sends a sign of fire (I Kings 18: 20-40). And
in the gospels, Jesus is shown to be the messenger of God by the signs that he
works. When Jesus brings to life the son of the widow of Nain, men exclaim, "A
great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" (Luke
7: 16). When the Pharisees accuse Jesus of blasphemy for presuming to forgive
sins, Jesus says, "But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on
earth to forgive sins"; he then said to the paralytic, "Rise, take up your bed and
go home" (Matthew 9:16). Elsewhere Jesus says, "These very works which I am
doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me" (John 5:36), and finally he
even says, "Even though you do not believe me, believe the works" (John I 0:38).
A long line of rationalist critics has attacked such miracle stories in the Bible,
such stories of "signs" and "works," first by challenging their credibility and
second by challenging their importance to the central religious message of the
Bible. The first challenge is beyond the scope of this paper, but let me speak to
the second. Consider the relevance of miracle stories to the belief in a personal
God. By a "personal" God I mean a God who acts, following the root sense of
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the word persona as deriving from the mask worn by a stage actor. How are we
to conceive of a personal God if not in somewhat human terms?- a God who
speaks, a God who chooses, a God who does things, in short, a God who acts.
Furthermore, why would we say that God is acting if it were not for events called
"miraculous," that is, "wonderful," "remarkable," events so extraordinary that
they seem to exceed the possibilities of"natural" causes and effects? Such events
suggest the direct intervention of a God who chooses in a particular instance to
act in an unusual way. I do not assert that the belief in a personal God could arise
only in the context of such stories, but it is at least clear that such stories have
had a prominent part throughout the world in traditions about personal gods or
God.
On the other hand, even in the story of Elijah, after the episode of the
miraculous fire in I Kings 18, there is the remarkable passage in I Kings 19,
where Elijah seeks God on Mount Horeb. At first there was a mighty wind,
... but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the
Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord
was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (I Kings 19: 11-13)
It is in that still, small voice that the Lord speaks to Elijah. Also when Jesus is
asked for a sign, he refuses to give it, saying, "An evil and adulterous generation
seeks for a sign" (Matthew 12:39).
Finally, it must be said that miraculous signs are relatively rare, even in the
history described in the Bible. From Abraham through the life of Jesus, that
history extends over a period of perhaps 1800 years. Only at very infrequent
intervals are miraculous events repmted. More often God is described as acting
through natural causes, such as disease, and through human instmrnents, especially through foreign rulers and their armies. This is the way in which God first
destroys the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and then restores the exiles. For
example, in Isaiah 41 the reference is to Cyrus, King of Persia, who conquered
Babylon and allowed the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem:
Who stilTed up one from the east whom victory meets at every step? He gives
up nations before him, so that he tramples kings under foot.. .. Who has
performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the
Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he. (Isaiah 41: 2-4)
As Isaiah understands it, God has arranged for Cyrus to conquer Babylon and
thereby set free His own chosen people. Thus for most people most of the time,
not only in our own world but in the world of the Bible, God's hand is not
apparent. Men must believe that God is acting even when He is hidden. However
terrible the sufferings of the chosen people at the hands of Egyptians, Philistines,
Assyrians, and Babylonians, the children oflsrael must believe that God is active,
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perhaps punishing them for their own sins. They must believe that the promises
of special protection and a unique destiny made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
will somehow be fulfilled.
Part III. God as Both Transcendent and Speaking
Isaiah's view of history has further implications, staggering implications, and
Isaiah himself does not hesitate to draw them. The God who hears the prayers of
the children of Israel and who frees them from exile is not simply a local god,
powelful in the region of Jerusalem. He is a God who uses distant nations and
peoples as His instruments. He is in fact the Lord of the whole earth and even of
the heavens, because he brought them into being.
Why do you say, 0 Jacob, and speak, 0 Israel, "My way is hid from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God?" Have you not known? Have you not
heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. (40:
27-28)
For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens ... who fotmed the earth and
made it. .. "I am the Lord, and there is no other." (45:18)
Thus we get that double aspect of the Bible which makes for both its difficulty
and its power. On the one hand, God is, if it is not blasphemous to say so, in some
way like the gods of Homer. He speaks to men in a human voice, He knows
individual men by name, He hears their prayers and acts to help them. On the
other hand, God does not have parents, like Homer's gods. He does not reside
on Mount Olympus. Instead, when Solomon builds the first magnificent temple,
he says in prayer,
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest
heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built. (I
Kings 8:27)
And there are many other passages that emphasize how mysterious God is. His
act of making is simply by a spoken word:
And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1: 13)
His knowledge is beyond our comprehension:
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Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, 0 Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:
4-6)
God is unchanging:
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth
and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. (Psalm 90:2)
Fidelity to the Bible demands fidelity to the God who both speaks to Abraham
and exists from everlasting to everlasting. The conflict is not between the God
of the philosophers and the God of the Bible. Our difficulties in speaking about
God do not arise just from philosophical speculation but arise within the Bible
itself. The God of the Bible is a person who acts, but in a way different from any
action we know. God acts without Himself changing:
Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to
change. (James 1:17)
Finally God exists in a way different from anything we know. When Moses
asks God to reveal His name, God answers in words variously interpreted as "I
am Who I am," "I am what I am," or "I will be what I will be" (Exodus 3:14).
Thomas takes these words as saying that God's nature is to exist. All other things
have a partial and borrowed existence. God alone simply is (see Q.3, a.4: Q.l3,
a.ll). Any other conclusion would imply change in God and would violate the
conclusion of the five ways, that God is the source of all change but is Himself
unchanging. For Thomas the Bible and the philosophers here come together.
We saw in Part I that Thomas argued that words like "good" could be properly
applied to God, and even more properly to God than to things around us. Thomas
acknowledges, however, that the modum significandi, the "way of signifying,"
of such words is different when applied to God (Q.13, articles 3 and 6). Thomas
is referring, I think, to the same point as in his claim that existence belongs to
God by nature. Any qualities we ascribe to God, such as goodness, must also be
His by nature. To be God is to be good. Moreover, it is even misleading to think
of "qualities" ascribed to God. Like existence, goodness is God's nature. God is
utterly one and utterly undivided (Q.3, articles 3, 6, and 7). Our language,
however, is developed from things that are divided, things whose qualities are
not identical with their natures. A human being may or may not be good, and if
he is good, goodness is not identical with his nature. Therefore the "way of
signifying" of "good" is different when applied to human beings and when
applied to God.
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Thus our language is constantly straining. Thomas says that we attempt to
speak about God by using two very different kinds of words: abstract words, to
signify His undivided nature, and concrete words to signify what Thomas calls
"His subsistence" (Q.l3, a.l, reply to obj.2). Thus we use abstract words in
sa)ring that God is Goodness and Wisdom and Truth, and we use concrete words
like the Tetragrammaton, a proper name, and words like "The Lord" and "He,"
to signify that God is, "if it is permissible to speak in this way, an individual"
(Q.l3, a.ll, reply to obj.l) Thomas recognizes strain on both sides, both when
speaking about God as goodness and when speaking about God as an individual.
The strain also shows when Thomas attempts to ascribe intellect and will to
God. The divine intellect never learns anything, or comes to know anything. God
simply knows. Like any qualities we ascribe to God, His act of understanding
must be considered as simply what He is, eternally and unchangeably (Q.l4, a.4).
Similarly God's act of choice must be understood as simply what He is, eternally
and unchangeably (Q.l9, a.l). All the actions of God described in the Bible must
be understood as identical with His nature even though manifested to us in time
as distinct events.
How can an unchanging God hear and answer prayers? In attempting to
answer this question, Thomas refers to God's actions in the natural world. Just
as God's action as primary cause does not remove the whole order of secondary
causes that function as instruments in God's hands, so God can use even our
prayers as contributing to the effects that follow (Q.23, a.8).
How then can our prayers, or indeed any of our actions, be freely perlormed
by ourselves? Here again Thomas relies on the conception of primary and
secondary causes, and on a distinction among secondary causes. God effects
some things through causes that act without thinking, like falling rocks and rain,
and some things through causes that think, deliberate, and decide. God's action
as primary cause does not change the nature of those secondary deliberating and
deciding causes. To say that men deliberate and decide is to say that they are free
(see Q.22, a.4).
But still, even if we are "free" in the sense that we deliberate and decide, are
we "free" in the sense that we could have acted differently than we do? If all our
actions go back ultimately to God as first cause, is it not God who ultimately
decides? And if so, why has not God made me better than I am, and made me
act better than I do? In considering these questions, St. Paul, who stressed at the
beginning of Romans that man can approach God through reason, later in the
same letter stresses the limits of reason. Paul discusses God's choice of Jacob
over Esau, of Jews over Gentiles, and finally of some for the grace of Christian
belief. Paul says that God
... has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever
he wills. (Romans 9:18)
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SLAKEY
The question immediately arises for Paul:
Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? (Romans 9: 19)
Paul's reply is as follows:
But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded says to
its molder, "Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the
clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for
menial use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his
power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for
destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of
mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has
called, not from the Jews only, but from the Gentiles ... (Romans 9: 20-24)
In dealing with man's relation to God Paul is driven to consider man as a lump
of clay in the hands of God, the potter. The metaphor is not Paul's own. It is
suggested by Genesis 2:7, where God makes man from the dust of the earth, and
it is used by both Isaiah and Jeremiah as an image of God's relation to his chosen
people (Isaiah 29:16; 45:9; Jeremiah 18: 1-11). But as Paul goes on, he breaks
off in mid-sentence. He does not even finish stating his question, let alone answer
it. He gets led away into his favorite theme, that God's salvation extends to
Gentiles as well as Jews. The question as to why God chooses some Jews and
not others, or some Gentiles and not others, is not even stated in a grammatically
complete sentence.
Unsatisfactory as Paul's reply is, I believe that no Christian writer has
improved upon it. Dante says that even the blessed in Heaven who see God face
to face will not understand why God has chosen one particular man for a certain
grace and not another (Paradiso, Canto XXI, 52-102). This is the unfathomable
mystery that lies at the heart of man's relation to God. I do not wish to explain
away this mystery. I wish only to say that the mystery arises not from philosophical speculation alone, but from the Bible itself. The God who speaks to Abraham
is also the unchanging creator of all things.
Part IV. Prayer: We speak to God
I have stressed throughout the difficulty we have in speaking about God, and
even the apparent contradictions toward which we are led. If this were mathematics, the contradictions would force us to reject the hypothesis from which the
contradictions arose, but the language of mathematics is more adequate to its
subject matter than the language of theology. Even the language of physics is not
fully adequate to its subject matter, for example, to the phenomena of light. The
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
difficulties of reconciling wave and particle hypotheses of light are well known,
and yet we neither ignore the phenomena nor reject altogether the language of
wave and particle. 9 If in physics, should we not in theology strive to be true to
our experience, and frankly acknowledge the difficulties to which it gives rise,
without expecting that the strains on our language will ever entirely disappear.
Such strains need not be destructive of religious belief, provided they help us
realize the infinite distance between our speech and the reality it attempts to
reach. Isaiah says, "Truly, thou art a God who hides! thyself, 0 God of Israel"
(45: 15), and Thomas prefaces his long discussion of the existence and nature of
God, a discussion that includes the five ways of demonstrating the existence of
God, with the statement that we can not say how or what God is, quomodo sit,
but only how or what He is not, quomodo non sit (Introduction to Q.2).
Kierkegaard stresses two dangers for Christianity, which can perhaps be
considered as dangers for religious belief generally. One is conventional Christianity, being a Christian simply by birth or upbringing because one lives in a
"Christian country" like Denmark, and never making Christianity one's own. 10
The other danger is characterized as "superstition" and "fanaticism." By these
words Kierkegaard means thinking that one can reach "objective truth" about
Christianity, that one can know the truth about Christianity in the way that one
knows simple and obvious facts. 11 Tills implies superstition, because it lowers
God to something within our grasp. And it implies fanaticism, because the fanatic
will think that everyone should believe in precisely the way he does and will be
intolerant of those who do not. The protection against both dangers is the conect
understanding of "faith." If we realize that our belief in God is a "leap" beyond
our ordinary knowledge, we will realize also that the habits of our family and
nation are not enough to sustain our belief, that our belief demands strenuous,
constant, and lifelong effort. Our sense of the mystery of God will also protect
us against making God less than He is, and against hostility or contempt toward
those who cannot make the leap of faith.
I contemplate the order of nature in the hope of finding God, and I see
omnipotence and wisdom; but I also see much else that disturbs my mind and
excites anxiety. The sum of all this is an objective uncertainty.... If I wish to
preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the
objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand
fathoms of water, still preserving my faith. (Postscript, p. 183)
I do not know whether anyone in our time and place can return from Kierkegaard's
conception of faith, where even the existence of God is a matter of faith, to the
Biblical conception of faith, which applied only to God's action, to His fulfillment
of promises, to His response to prayer. But then as now those who pray cannot be
convinced that their sense of speaking to God is merely an illusion. I do not here
refer to prayers offered on public ceremonial occasions, prayers couched as ad-
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SLAKEY
dressed to God but often really exhortations addressed to ourselves. I speak of
prayers that are genuinely spoken to God.
In the European languages that distinguish between familiar and formal
address, God is addressed with the familiar fonn, as in French with tu instead of
vous. That is, Frenchmen address God in prayer with the word used toward close
friends, not with the word used toward superiors. The same was true in English
when "thou" and "you" reflected a similar distinction, and when English religious usage was first established. Unfortunately, by a curious reversal, the use
of "thou" now seems to many English speakers appropriately formal in English
prayers, and the use of "you" excessively familiar, so that the direct and
immediate sense of intimate friendship with God is now less explicit in our
language. But though the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord (Proverbs I :7),
and though much can be said of the majesty of God and the mystery of God, and
of the believer as "out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water,"
one can still pray with the Psalmist:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)
As Augustine expressed it,
Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our hearts are ever restless until
they rest in Thee. (Confessions, I, I)
That rest begins in prayer.
*****
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notes
1. All quotations from the Bible, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised
Standard Version.
2. Summa Theologiae, I, Q.l3, Marietti edition (Rome, 1950). All translations
are my own.
3. The Symposium, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb edition (London, 1953).
4. Summa Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part, Q.85, a.l.
5. For an extended and excellent discussion of the "fourth way," see R.
Garrigou-Lagrange, 0. P., God, His Existence and His Nature (St. Louis and
London, 1934), Vol. I, pp. 302-45.
6. Page B637 in the Norman Kemp Smith translation (London, 1953).
7. It should perhaps be noted that the infinite regress Thomas and Aristotle
"reject" is not an infinite regress in time. Neither Aristotle nor Thomas saw
anything impossible in an infinite series of father and sons extending
backwards in time. Aristotle in fact held that the world had existed through
infinite time and Thomas held that there was nothing impossible in such a
supposition, even though we believe from revelation that the world has
existed only for a limited time. The infinite regress both reject is an infinite
regress of causes where each cause depends on the one before it, as for
example if a stone is moved by a stick, the stick by the hand, the hand by a
muscle in the arm, the muscle from energy from food, etc. If such a series
does not reach a beginning, the final result will never occur. (See Q.46, a.2,
especially reply to objection 7.)
8. Physics II, 8, 198b 22-32, Hardie and Gaye translation in the Oxford edition,
as selected in The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York, 1941). Darwin
himself quotes this passage as having "shadowed forth" the principle of
natural selection (The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man) [Modern
Library, New York, no date, p.3]).
9. See Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York, 1961), pp. 293-305.
10. Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F.
Swenson and completed by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, 1968), p.19, pp.
29-50.
11. See the Postscnpt, pp. 32, 35, 325.
�A Meditation on the
Present Plight of Philosophy
and the Pursuit of Truth
Monica C. Hornyansky
This is what I think should properly be called an occasional paper, because it was
occasioned by two recent experiences - one the invitation to be part of a
symposium of ex-students of a university department of philosophy, and the
other my reading of Richard Rorty's recent book, Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity. As ex-students we had been asked to contribute a meditation on the
future of philosophy at the turn of the millennium: We should consider where
we were, if anywhere, in our own philosophical thinking, and at the same time
consider where philosophy itself might be heading at the turn of the millennium.
And Rorty's book had just forced me, as a teacher in a Great Books program, to
rethink the claim, which such a course implicitly makes, that some books,
including philosophical works, have a lasting validity and authority, for although
Rorty acknowledges the social usefulness of literature, he concedes enough to
the deconstructionist temper of the time to throw doubt on the possibility of valid
public criticism. Both occasions, then, imply some kind of crisis in thinking is philosophy in trouble at the end of this century, and if so, why? And do any
books have the kind of lasting relevance that makes them worth reading for what
they intend to say, rather than as a kind of Rorschach test or trainer of individual
subjectivity?
These questions, I think, require a theoretically founded response, and as a
Sartre scholar I shall couch mine in terms of Sartre's theory of value, the most
recent and perhaps the last consciously comprehensive such theory. So what I
shall do first is give a brief picture of the way in which, some fifty years ago now,
Sartre both understood and responded to these questions, and then I shall consider
whether Rorty's response is an overreaction which risks throwing the baby
Monica C. Hornyansky teaches in the Department of Philosophy and the Great Books
Seminars of the Liberal Studies Program at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(mainly the philosophical, but also the critical, pursuit of truth) out with the
bathwater (metaphysics).
My preliminary response to the first question -Is philosophy in some
kind of crisis?- is that I think perhaps it is, but only because philosophy is
always in trouble, as a special case of what Sartre called "the desire to be
God." In his book Rorty argues that philosophy has been haunted by a Drang
nach Metaphysik, and in particular by a hopeless quest for a founded ethics
which would solve the tension between private autonomy and the requirements of citizenship. I shall come back to Rorty later; what I want to say now
is that if we take what he says at face value, we would have to admit that
while his diagnosis is plausible, his solution- which amounts to substituting
literature and idiosyncratic commentary for philosophical analysis or description - would mean the end of philosophy as it has been classically
understood.
First of all, then, Sartre's use of the phrase "the desire to be God" easily
accommodates philosophy as merely a special case of that desire, which he
thought was a universal human condition, the result of the fact that consciousness
and the world we are conscious of are both run through and through with
contingency. Our reaction to the fact that contingency prevails in eve1y aspect
of our day-to-day experience leads to misgivings about the past, nervousness
about the future, and anxiety in the present, to overstate the case but make it in
short order. The constant questions, What do I think? What shall I do? Wbat
should I think? What should I do?, are the questions that have no necessary
answers for us, leaving us with an ineradicable desire for some sense of a
necessary structure for existence - the forms of culture we arrive at are
manifestations of this primary need to endow our actions with necessity, and our
understanding with certainty.
Sartre summed up this ontological predicament in the phrase "the desire to
be God" because it is our religious imagining of what God is like that expresses
most clearly the values we would like to have ourselves as a nature, or to find
embedded in the world. They are the values that would, if we had them, put our
constant questioning of ourselves to rest, and give us a quiet conscience, because
they would be inarguably necessary. Isn't this what God is like after all? He
creates everything, knows everything, and does what he wills knowing that it is
good. This is our idea of what it would be like to have a self-sufficient and
self-satisfied consciousness, and this, Sartre thought, is the source of all the
conventional, religious, societal, personal, aesthetic, and philosophical values
through which we attempt to symbolize that consciousness.
So now, back to philosophy - we can see that the values the philosophical
enterprise has promulgated in the Westem tradition are par eYcellence manifestations ofthe desire to be God. As an escape from contingency, philosophy has
been drawn from the beginning by the lust for metaphysical necessity, rational
�HORNYANSKY
73
certainty, or final definitions of the good. If you think "lust" too strong a word,
remember the siren song that Odysseus heard - "no life on earth can be hid
from our dreaming" 1; philosophy has always dreamed of precise, necessary, and
complete truth, as the fulfillment of its values.
We have tried to achieve this with endemically inadequate means. Logic,
observation, imagination fail to reach the ideals of rational certainty, consistency,
and wholeness which would satisfy our epistemological longing.
But perhaps, one might think, all those attempts to find foundational truths
and deductive consequences of foundational truths are in the past, and the
twentieth century has been exempt from all that. Thanks to Kant on Reason and
the Ding an sich, Kierkegaard on Hegel, and Nietzsche on any number of things,
the skeptical antithesis has been thoroughly aired.
Of course this is true, but the fact is that it is still aired from the point of view
of philosophers, whose besetting problem is the desire to be God in his epistemological aspect. So Kant still insisted on the a priori, Kierkegaard on the
exigencies of the Eternal, even Nietzsche on the overman and an eternal recurrence of the same. And still in our century desperate measures have been taken.
In spite of what Nietzsche from time to time said about language, there has been
on the one hand the idea that language is a system of logical relations or a body
yielding empirical reliability, and on the other hand, in Heidegger 's thought, the
claim that man, as the shepherd of Being, enfolds Being in speech- in itself a
wonderful metaphor, but is it true?
Well, while the ideal of rational certainty, whether produced by idealist
construction or empirical observation, was still the form in which philosophers'
desire for divine justification was accepted and practiced, there was no crisis.
And while language served as the empirical body or the locus of wisdom, the
evil day for philosophy was staved off. But now at the end of the century we do
seem thoroughly to have absorbed - after all, Rotty includes it in his title what Satire thought of as his great discovery in the 1930s, the pervasive
contingency of everything in our experience. What Sartre feared then- Simone
de Beauvoirdescribes him nervously scanning a book ofL€vinas, rnutteting that
his fhunderon contingency had been stolen- has become belatedly true: Almost
everyone thinks everything is contingent and has forgotten or never noticed
Satire on the subject. Now contingency is all about us, we are in the age of the
paradigm shift and the deconstruction of metaphysical thinking. Read Kuhn, read
Derrida, read, in patticular, Richard Rorty's new book, to which I now retum, as
apparent evidence that philosophy is getting over the desire to be God, epistemologically defined.
Rorty proposes that the word he would like to use for the hitherto foundational
thinkers, i.e., philosophers, is "theorists," because philosophy has given up or
should give up the attempt to think metaphysically, or to anive at what he calls
a "final vocabulary" for the description of basic concepts such as the good and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the self, what I have been describing as the peculiarly philosophical form of the
desire to be God.
Let me quote part of Rorty's discussion of the new kind of philosophizing
that he recommends in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity:
Hegel's criticism of his predecessors was not that their propositions were false
but that their languages were obsolete. By inventing this sort of criticism, the
younger Hegel broke away from the Plato-Kant sequence and began a tradition
of ironist philosophy which is continued in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida.
These are the philosophers who defme their achievement by their relation to their
predecessors rather than by their relation to the truth. 2
Would Hegel have thanked Rorty for this recommendation, I wonder? After all,
he said that philosophy wasn't philosophy if it was content to remain in the
contingent. However, let's concede for the moment that Hegel started this
movement towards the substitution of, as it were, reference to the words of others
for reference to a putative truth. Rorty emphasizes his view of this when he
substitutes for Hegel's notion of "dialectic" his own, as follows:
I have defined "dialectic as the attempt to play off vocabularies against one
another, rather than merely to infer propositions from one another and thus as
the partial substitution of redescription for inference. 3
Furthermore, Rorty does not think of his definition of dialectic as being
particularly foreign to Hegel's practice, for he adds:
... Hegel's so-called dialectical method is not an argumentative procedure or
a way of unifying subject and object, but simply a literary skill - skill at
producing surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions
from one terminology to another.4
It is this manipulation of vocabularies that Rorty now recommends as a prime
philosophical method, especially as he is mostly concerned with the unbridgeable gap as he sees it between the ethics of the person and questions of public
justice. Rorty divides philosophers according to which of these is their major
topic; paradigmatically Nietzsche is interested in the individual, Dewey in the
social. He suggests that the former are in particular the practitioners of an ironist
philosophy on the following understanding of the difference between metaphysical theorizing and ironism:
For the ironist theorist, the history of belief in, and love of, an ahistorical
wisdom is the story of successive attempts to find a final vocabulary which is
no mere idiosyncratic historical product but the last word, the one to which
�HORNYANSKY
75
inquiry and history have converged, the one which renders further inquiry and
history superfluous. 5
On the other hand, he says:
The goal of ironist theory is to understand the metaphysical urge, the urge to
theorize, so well that one becomes entirely free of it .... The generic trait of
ironists is that they do not hope to have their doubts about their final
vocabularies settled by something larger than themselves. 6
But these general requirements ofironist theory seem to have resulted, in Rorty's
account of Derrida, in what he himself calls "private fantasy." He praises the
later Derrida for increasing the bounds of "possibility," for having created a new
kind of philosophical thinking, especially in his book Envois. And this is what
Rorty says about that book:
The later Derrida privatizes his philosophical thinking, and thereby breaks
down the tension between ironism and theorizing .... Falling back on private
fantasy is the only solution to the self-referential problem which such theo-
rizing encounters, the problem of how to distance one's predecessors without
doing exactly what one has repudiated them for doing.?
So perhaps it is the case that late twentieth-century writers are proving Sartre
wrong -for if what Rorty says about Derrida is true, and he approves it, then
he certainly advocates giving up, and has himself given up, the desire for rational
certainty about necessity as an intellectual form of the desire to be God. That is,
the anti-principles, as it were, of paradigm shift and intertextuality are to be
pressed to show that because there is no way in which we can preserve a reference
to reality (for all the usual reasons) we should give up on truth itself as a
regulative ideal.
So now I come to my principal objections to Rorty's position, and will
describe both how Sartre recognized the problem and how he went about solving
it. My objection to Rorty's view of what he calls "ironist" philosophy- that is,
a philosophy fully conscious of its own tentativeness, and the so-called intertextuality that he praises in Derrida- is that although it does not claim to have
abandoned the ideal of truth to reality as the touchstone of philosophy as opposed
to art or to mythos, it is close enough to doing so to intensify the present
difficulties of philosophy to the point of crisis.
It is here, as is rather usual with philosophy, that a quite sensible ape1-,·u is
being elevated into a principle, just because at least one of those desideratacertainty, consistency, completeness - is still exerting its siren call. Ironically
enough, the idea that contingency is the order of reality apparently obliges the
ironist to such diffidence of his ability to say anything true about reality that he
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
must retreat into "private fantasy," an idiosyncratic expose of his relation to the
philosopher against whom he measures himself. Here then we have perhaps
nothing more than another example of the tendency of philosophers to inflate a
partial truth and tly off with it into a larger sublunacy.
Let me oppose to those who are happy in, even advocate, taking refuge in private
worlds, George Steiner, lectming in Cambridge several years ago, on what he called
Real Presences. 8 In the literary context he ctiticizes deconstmctionist method as
illegitimately claiming to be the equivalent of the texts which occasion it. But he
insists that there is a difference- not the shot silk of DeiTida 's dijf<france, but an
ontological difference- between an original work of art and any criticism of it or
any loosely related associative ramble through the critic's or the author's psyche,
however well-stocked. He is pmticularly incensed at a teacher's judgment, which he
quotes, that to read Derrida on Rousseau was more interesting than to read Rousseau
himself. What Steiner insist<> is that the text is substance, and commentary on it
accident; to maintain otherwise is, he says, "a perversion not only of the calling of
the teacher, but of common sense where common sense is a lucid, concentrated
9
expression of moral imagining." So here Steiner is insisting on an ontological
difference - an instance, perhaps, of what Rmty would call "a final term" between a work of literature and a work of criticism.
What I want to consider now is the question, What would be the equivalent
distinction one would make in philosophy, whether we call it theorizing or
whatever we call it? The equivalent distinction would be, I think, that philosophy
aims at saying something true about reality, leaving aside whether it is a truth of
coherence or of correspondence; the distinction would still be between logos as
a rational account and mythos, or the goal that Rorty thinks is satisfactory, that
is, the defining of one's thought not against a putative truth, but against the
thought of one's predecessors. Taking Steiner's cue, one who wished to make
the distinction between philosophy and Ratty's ironism would insist- and here
I return to Smtre- on the difference Sartre notes between God's creation and
our own, that it is there whether we will or no (or as Sartre argues the point at
the beginning of Being and Nothingness, the being of appearances is indeed
being, it is not itself appearance). This implies a strong denial of the pervasiveness of what postmodernists call simulacra - the ubiquity of likenesses,
imitations of imitations, in all cultural manifestation, there being no original
bedrock of"presence"; we are never, according to this vision of the world, in the
presence of being rather than of symbol, sign, or word.
Now I would like to retum to Sartre's descriptions of God, especially those
in his Cahiers pour une Morale, to see whether there is any way of bridging the
gap between philosophizing in the old sense, and theorizing in the Rortyan sense,
since Rorty is undoubtedly right to insist that the old metaphysical longing must
be abandoned - I am not defending it. The question for me is only, must we
then just retreat into p1ivate worlds more like belles lettres than like philosophy
�HORNYANSKY
77
(or literature, which claims, as Thucydides claimed for his History, to be "a
possession for ever")?
Sartre believes that God the creator is just as much of a metaphysical illusion
as God the all-knowing, but that that illusion - one of our most strongly
imagined myths - does have importance for us. Indeed Sartre recommends a
threefold reflection on God's creativity in order that we may discover what it
means for our understanding of ourselves and human existence. Such a reflection
would, he thinks, first, reveal creation "under the activities of appropriation and
identification 1110 - that is, it would show that we ourselves ought to appropriate
and identify with our own creativity; second, it would clarify the distinctions
between the metaphysical myth of the Creation and creativity as an ontological
structure of our own; and third, it would lead us to use the myth as a guiding
thread to interpreting the meaning of that structure: What do we imply about
ourselves in inventing the myth of God the Creator?
What Sartre immediately points out as he pursues this reflection is that the
first thing we have to acknowledge is that we are not the inventors of the
contingent world into which we erupt as consciousnesses, and so ours is always
a dependent creation, accidental upon the substantiality of the natural world into
which we are born. So although our secondary task of creation is not one about
which we have a choice~ the human world exacts our shaping just because of
its inherent contingency~ nevertheless we have to take account of the inalterable aspects of the natural world just because we are not its creators. Isn't there
here, then, in substituting God's creativity for his knowledge, a value for
philosophers? And isn't it something they have been in the process of integrating
into their epistemological theory for a couple of centuries, ever since Kant made
his fruitful use of the imagination as the condition, through the schema, both of
knowledge and of art?
This matter of the adoption of the idea of imagination into the philosophical
armamentarium is worth a detour, as an example of how we might interpret our
own creativity as underlying the myth of Creation. It was one of Sartre 's avowed
methods to take a word that was not particularly precisely defined and use it as
an instrument of thought in the sense that its metaphorical properties could be
exploited to throw imaginative light on something hitherto obscure~ this is how
he used the word "nothingness" to throw light on the consequences of consciousness. So in a way he himself was an exemplum of what Rorty recommends, that
a theorist express his originality in the invention of a vocabulary to say what is
new in his thought. But the common-sense aspect of this is that the less he invents
the better, if the resultant thought is to be understood and incorporated into the
thought of an age, rather than degenerate into a recondite vocabulary that risks
never gaining public cunency. A very few neologisms arrived at methodically
can wrench the mind into a new way of thinking and with a minimum of
disruption of the normal vocabulary. Here lay part of Sartt-e 's genius. And Kant
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
did something like it with the word "imagination" itself, when he expanded its
creative function in a philosophical context in the Critique of Judgment. Rorty
acknowledges this in his book, and points out how Coleridge took off from Kant's
theorizing, thus showing, incidentally, that here philosophy fecundated literature, rather than the other way round.
Taking Sartre as the theorist of contingency, then, I want now to see how
many of Rorty's desiderata for a late twentieth-century practice of ironist
theorizing have already been supplied by Sartre, and very nearly in the spirit of
irony which Rorty recommends but with an important difference. This is a
particularly interesting exercise because Rorty himself calls Sartre a metaphysician, and therefore dismisses him a priori from the roster of ironists. Rorty says:
A metaphysician like Sartre may describe the ironist's pursuit of perfection as
a "futile passion," but an ironist like Proust or Nietzsche will think that this
phrase begs the crucial question. The topic of futility would arise only if one
were trying to surmount time, chance, and self-redescription by discovering
something more powerful than any of these. For Proust and Nietzsche,
however, there is nothing more powerful or important than self-redescription.11
Now my intention in pointing out what I believe are misapprehensions in this
little excerpt is not to accuse Rorty, but to make clear that Sartre was already
there as a theorist of time, chance, and self-redescription, and yet managed to
combine these facets of his philosophy with a desire to come to grips with the
real as the reference point of his thinking. He was not content with truth as- to
use Rorty's intriguing phrase- "a fuzzy but inspirationalfocus imaginarius." 12
First, Sartre described the individual as "a futile passion" for exactly the same
reasons as Rorty ascribes to himself- in Sartre 's terms, because the desire to
be God is a futile aim for an inescapably contingent being. The whole idea of
describing the ontological origin of human values as "the desire to be God, is to
highlight this as the temptation to metaphysics which, if accepted unreflectively,
is an invitation to futility. And he offered an alternative, just as Rorty does, of
self-redesc1iption, which would do full justice, however, to the unique individuality of persons as a reality of experience. It was not that Sartre was hoping to
find something more powerful than self-redescription, nor did he claim to be
doing more than giving the fullest description of human existence that he could.
He managed this specifically philosophical aim- of giving a general description that accounted fully for the unique individuality of persons- by contrasting
the ontological given of human existence, the fact that we are conscious bodies,
with the situational individuality of each person. In Being and Nothingness he
devoted long passages to the description of consciousness as a product of
temporality, chance, and self-redescription, and he described in some detail a
hermeneutic he called comprehension, which amounts to the self-redescription
�HORNYANSKY
79
of a reflective ironist. In particular, the space he devoted to the idea of "the
situation" covers the contingent emergence of consciousness from the contin-
gency of non-conscious being, i.e., the natural world. He pointed out as well that
the concept of God as causa sui was incoherent, since all it showed was that if
God existed he too would be contingent. I don't know what more would fulfill
Rorty's requirements for an ironist theorist.
But this all shows also, I believe, how Sartre differs from the ironist in not
giving up on the main philosophical job - that is, of producing an account of
reality which aims to be true in a philosophical sense, i.e., one that is reasoned,
evidential, and general. But Sartre would not happily have accepted the term
ironist for his advocacy of increasingly conscious self-redescription. Sartre
distrusted irony because it leads to a reductive attitude towards reality that
emerges typically in a withdrawal of commitment, and I believe that this would
apply no less in the philosophical commitment to truth as an ultimate aim of
thought, than it would in any other sphere of what Steiner calls "moral imagining," and specifically, for Sartre, in a morally committed literature. I would say
I sense this withdrawal of commitment in Rorty's description of truth as a "fuzzy
but inspirational focus imaginarius," although his position on the relation between public solidarity and private existence leads him to a liberalism much like
Sartre's. Where Sartre bases his ethics on the idea of the preservation of freedom,
as an ontological condition that applies to all persons, Rorty bases his on the
public fact of pain as the criterion of harm. And Sartre would identify the
metaphysician Rorty wants to leave behind as the man in bad faith because he
believes that his own prejudices are founded either in the past or in heaven, while
the man of good faith is always conscious that he is the origin of his values, and
therefore fully capable of the ironist stance Rorty advocates. But according to
Sartre, the problem is that the ironist tends to be paralyzed by his double vision
and to rest idle rather than commit himself in directions that may turn out to be
mistaken. He risks being a theoretical Hamlet, whose theorizing is without
practical effect either on himself or his world. Sartre as a moralist holds that
action in the world requires of the ironist that he consciously and fearfully unify
his double vision from time to time, that while irony is the inevitable point of
view of the fully reflective individual, it is something that he must be able to put
aside if he is to take his place as co-creator in his contingent world, in whatever
sphere he acts. And what he creates is not a pretext for intertextual commentary,
but his own existence as both individual and citizen, and whether he is a
philosopher or a writer, or whatever he is. So it is here that my reservations as a
result of reading Rorty's book crystallize. Rorty distinguishes between the
skeptically ironist activity of the philosopher as essentially local, even private,
and thinking about questions of public justice, which he thinks are influenced
more readily by literature because it can arouse and widen our sensitivity to the
suffering of others. The implication that sympathy is the basis of moral concern
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and that imagination is the form of consciousness through which it is activated
I do not quarrel with. But that philosophical imagination is to abandon its goal
of general, evidential truth as the ideal challenge to philosophical imagination is
the sticking point of my disagreement. To those for whom the complexities and
difficulties of human existence cry out both for explanation and for action,
pondering the interplay among individuality, creativity, and the world as given
is still as much a task for the evidence-gathering, generalizing, theory-making
mind of the philosopher as for the particularizing, situation-making mind of the
story-teller; and recognizing the end of metaphysics does not entail the decay of
philosophy, any more than of criticism, into relations among texts and private
fantasy rather than relations among beings and to the real, however inadequately
and tentatively defined.
*****
Notes
I. Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1963), p. 215.
2. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, (Cambridge University Press,
1989), pp. 78-79.
3. Ibid., p.78.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 125.
8. George Steiner, Real Presences, The Leslie Stephen Memorial Lecture,
1985 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
9. Steiner, Real Presences, p. 16.
10. J.P. Sartre, Cahiers pour une Morale (Paris: Gallimard, 1983),
pp. 530-31.
11. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 99.
12. Ibid., p. 195.
�I
Toucan Dreams
James Fox
The Zoo at the Sault had a pygmy elephant, Archibald, named in memory of a
local high-school basketball player. Although at only five foot two he was not as
big as a buffalo, Archibald was the brightest resident. He could count to five and
he knew a couple of simple card tricks that he learned when he traveled with a
magic act.
"All right, Archie, what do I have in my hand?" the clown would ask. "Is it
an ace or a deuce?"
The elephant would shake his head and take a card out of the clown's sleeve.
Always it was the ace.
On gloomy Saturday afternoons I spent many moments watching Archibald
eating hay and dusting himself. I loved his rough, hairy sweet smell, but there
was more to him than aroma and card tricks. Archibald took an interest. When I
talked to him about my loneliness and fears, he looked back at me with baleful
eyes and sometimes shook his head. I felt understood.
That's one of the reasons why I loved our local zoo. It's gone now, but I still
think about it. The zoo was converted into a mental institution in 1977, and I
have no desire to ever return: caged people are not nearly as interesting as caged
animals.
It was hardly a zoo at all, I suppose, but our town was proud of our skimpy
herd of mangy buffalo, our curious caribous, our single lame kangaroo. The
buffalo and the caribou no longer graze in front of the scraggly white birch trees
at the front of the zoo, nor are there visitors who pass them by in favor of the
more exotic animals inside.
Pierre, the six-foot alligator, swam in a small moat most of the time. Sometimes he lay on the cedar wood bank dreaming. He must have been dreaming-
otherwise, why would he have been so still for so long with his eyes half open?
James Fox is a free-lance writer and photographer who lives in Northampton,
Massachusetts.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Someone once started the rumor that "Lucky Pierre" was no longer a living
exhibit because he had been stuffed. However, one day Pierre slowly dragged
his tail over the sand bar and ascended a log. I stood amazed. He pointed his
snout at a small moth that floated above his nose. The alligator opened his jaws
and waited for the moth to settle. The insect fluttered just out of snapping range
and then flew up to the glass ceiling. Pierre waited patiently for his prey to return.
When I left the reptile house, PietTe's jaws were still open and they probably
stayed open for hours.
The special exhibit of three exotic birds included Maurice the full-grown
toucan, a scruffy myna bird named Harry, and Mr. Lee, the ostrich. Mr. Lee was
less intimidating than Maurice.
"Hisssss," I hissed at Mr. Lee. "Whissssst! Look out, look out! Your house is
on fire ... Run, run!" And he ran. The next time I saw him, I apologized to Mr.
Lee, and he ran away.
Maurice, the yellow-black-backed toucan greeted visitors at the entrance of
our little zoo with his terrible whistle- "Hello, Ha-a-a-a-a-r-ry!"
It was impossible to have a real conversation with him, but I tried. "Welcome
to the zoo at the Sault!" I said, mimicking his birdie voice. Maurice cocked his
head and looked at me sidewise and shifted a little on his perch.
"Wanna talk dirty?" I asked falsetto. Maurice seemed to nod, but even then I
knew that in cmrupting him I would also be corrupting myself.
In May the wild geese return to the northland to settle for a brief time in their
old nests on the tundra, but the second smallest zoo in the world is no longer at
Sault Ste. Marie. I wish visitors could still encounter my dear friend Archibald
who, although only a pygmy pachyderm, sees us as we truly are. They would
also discover Pierre in his watery den waiting forever for feeding time- a pound
of ground chuck or just a foolish carp, what does it really matter?
They would see only part of Mr. Lee, whose head is buried in a gopher hole.
And if they were lucky they would meet Maurice, still shifting back and forth
on his stick, making those ridiculous steamboat whistles. But who truly understands the secret of a toucan's heart?
I sometimes wondered what happened after all the people went home and the
zoo was closed for the night. Other children dreamed about ax murderers in the
house or imagined the creaking tread of ghosts coming up the stairs or planned
how they would win at cats-eye marbles the next day. But I was not normal. I
spent most of my free time at the zoo.
I used to fall asleep dreaming about night life at the zoo in Sault Ste. Marie:
Somebody had to say good night to the animals. Somebody had to feed all tln·ee
snakes. Somebody had to water the small African elephant and pet him gently
on his trunk. Somebody had to comfort Mr. Lee, the nervous ostrich. Did the
animals really fall quietly to sleep?
�FOX
83
There were old stories to tell, grievances to vent. Only old Pierre the alligator
fell asleep when they turned the lights out, but he was usually dreaming about
his next carp or about the good old days in Belize.
What did the animals think about when they were alone in their cages? I
imagined myself being invisible and staying inside the zoo after they have locked
the doors and gone home. Just me and my friends. I am standing next to Mr. Lee
when suddenly he looks up into the sky and I follow his gaze. Canadian geese
heading south in the long V formation. Honk-honk-honk. I can just make out
their forms against the darkening sky. I have never before watched geese with
an ostrich by my side. Mr. Lee is fascinated. He makes a small gurgling noise in
his throat.
Does he want to fly with them down across the gulf of Mexico and then skirt
the isthmus of Peru and fmally to bear north-north-east all day and night until at
last they arrive in Egypt where Mr. Lee sees for the first time the tombs of the
fallen pharaohs? ... Of course, maybe he was just curious about an unfamiliar
noise in the sky.
Pierre remains stationary in his moat, neither nocturnal nor diurnal. I have
come to believe that he is just an unambitious alligator. But what if! were invited
to read his mind? ... Something terrible is coming out ofa cave, a komodo dragon
breathing fire and green smoke. Pierre holds his position. The dragon comes up
to Pierre and hideous gas pours thmugh his nostrils. There is a hiss and his
forked tongue flickers a challenge at the peaceful reptile. The alligator suddenly
springs forward and the battle begins...
The dream fades and Pierre stirs his tail in the brackish water full of cmp
parts.
What about Maurice the toucan?What are his nights like when the zoo is dark
and the wild life begins? During the day he was a shy clown, tilting his head and
rolling his eyes, and making that loud, almost terrifying whistle. But he is more
of a deep-feeling bird than that brainless myna bird would ever be. Like Pierre
I think he remembers life in the savage, joyous tropical rain forests and never
really made a spiritual connection with the town of Sault Ste. Marie. At night in
the almost empty bird house, I believe his shrill ear-splitting whistle is transformed into a mournful serenade about missed opportunities and painful memories of his young birdhood.
It is my belief that when my soul returns to a new life in a different form, I
will be given a place in the exotic bird house. I will share my space with some
newly acquired hummingbirds. On cloudy nights I will look up through the
skylights and my caged heart will soar with the geese returning south again to
their winter home. I can hear them calling: "Come away - come away with
me."
And I will.
*
��St. John's Crossword Number One
by CASSANDRA
Introduction
This is a British-style cryptic crossword. Examples are published in the U.S.A.
in Atlantic, Harper's, and Games Magazine. Every clue contains two elements
in random order: a literal definition and a cryptic indication based on word-play.
Some typical word-play types are the anagram, component parts, sound-alike,
word within word, hidden word, and word reversal, or a combination of these.
Examples of the cryptic part of the clue:
Tries a lot, gets mixed up (anagram= ARISTOTLE)
Thus, boxes (component parts= SO-CRATES)
Sound of artifical digit (sound-alike =PLATO, i.e. PLAY TOE)
College official swallows bug (word within word= DANTEAN, i.e.
ANT in DEAN)
Lurks within some novice (hidden word= MENO)
Backward (reversal= DRAW)
Thus, full clues based on some of the above might read:
Philosopher tries a lot, gets mixed up (9)
Pull backward (4)
College official swallows bug belonging to poet (7)
NOTE: The answer to 5 down is an unusual proper noun.
Senders of the first three correct solutions opened at random (on a date six weeks after
the mailing of this issue) will receive book tokens worth $35 at the St. John's College
Bookstore. Address solutions (photocopies accepted) to Crossword Number One, St.
John's Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404.
�ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
86
Across
1. Sicilian eccentric reads about
sound of bell (l 0)
6. Put money on a Spartan Number
Two? (4)
9. A measure against intemal progress (7)
10. Push Attila into the street (5)
11. Crest of free gravity and energy
(5)
12. Offshoot of Niobe's first offspring (5)
14. Relationship between small mammal and Gadfly victim (5)
16. Age of empty electron shell (3)
17. One foredoomed to die
wretchedly in Great Book (7)
19. Deduce number of Book of the
Dead (7)
22. Shakespeare's work encountered
setback with vermin (7)
26. Tough problem: leading the
French, or sitting back in the bath?
(7)
27. Hydrogen-like residue (3)
28. I complain about famous motherin-law (5)
29. Second addition to weekly magazine: back issues (5)
32. Note about a 55-gun salute (5)
34. Take Virgil's things and start
again (5)
35. Rave about two forms of egoclothing (7)
36. In ancient house, third son (4)
37. Man embittered by dog-filth
gone astray (l 0)
Down
1. A mother is primal parent (4)
2. Cold Lucretian greetings in
shadow realms (5)
3. Nine bad rhetoricians beginning
to get spiritual (5)
4. Crops up when ancient uncles
take bit of work to heart (7)
5. Belonging to constellation that is
about opposite the zenith, in the as~
cendant (7)
7. Big circle, a torque with a twist
(7)
8. Ptolemy displays anomaly of star
and moon with some hesitation ( 10)
10. Part of letter bums up (5)
13. Fix one's appearance, very soft
around the edge (5)
15. How one might use tin cups in
Hamlet? (10)
18. High points for country digestw
ing opening of Persuasion ... (3)
20. And not some other Austen
novel's start (3)
21. Clean-up time for spout (5)
23. Criminal's usual practice: begin~
ning when nightlight goes out (7)
24. Be headless chauvinist (5)
25. Still life: fee not high, they say
(7)
26. More trouble under the head of
Euclidean demonstration (7)
30. War story: flanks take initial
damage (5)
31. Part of 22 ac. seen, heard (5)
33. Star with tritium core can have
stupefying effect (4)
�CASSANDRA
87
�����I
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Rout, Deirdre
Lieberman, Ralph
Wiener, Linda
Slakey, Thomas J.
Hornyansky, Monica J.
Fox, James
Cassandra
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The St. John's Review
Volume XL, number two ( 1990-91)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subsc1iptions Assistant
Louis Lucchetti
The St.John's Review is published three times a year by the Office ofthe Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis; Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stmies, poems,
and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1991 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
St. John's "For Ever"
Charlotte Fletcher
m
Editor ',s Preface
IV
Author's Preface
I
One: King William's School
and the College of William and Mm-y
15...... Two: An Endowed King William's School
Plans to Become a College
29. . . . . . Three: King William's School
Survives the Revolution
43. . . . . . Four: 1784: The Year
St. Jolm's College was Named
59. . . . . . Five: John McDowell, Federalist:
President of St. John's College
69
Notes
87
Results of St. John's Crossword Number One
89. . . . . . St. John's Crossword Number Two
Trout
��Editor's
Preface
Charlotte Fletcher was the Librarian of St. John's College from 1944 to 1980.
The five essays that appear in this issue are somewhat revised versions of essays
that were first published separately in the Maryland Historical Magazine, as
follows:
"1784: The Year St. John's College was Named."
Vol. 74 (1979), pp. 133-51.
"King William's School and the College of William and Mary."
Vol. 78 (1983), pp. 118-28.
"King William's School Plans to Become a College."
Vol. 80 (1985), pp. 157-66.
"King William's School Survives the Revolution."
Vol. 81 (1986), pp. 210-21.
"John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College."
Vol. 84 (1989), pp. 242-51.
We thank the Mmyland Historical Magazine for permission to reprint them. It
is, we think, useful to have them all within one set of covers.
E.Z.
iii
�I
Author's
Preface
There was a time when those of us who were expected to answer queries about
the early history of St. John's College depended on undocumented histories and
on two articles by Tench Francis Tilghman that appeared in the Maryland
Historical Mal',azine in June 1949 and June 1950. Tilghman's book, The Early
History of St. John's College, was not published until 1984. He refers often to
the Archives of Maryland, the Minutes of the Visitors and Governors, the
Maryland Gazette, the Maryland Senate Journal, and the House Journal. His
research led him to question the connection between King William's School
and St. John's College. He found no answer to the persistent question of why
St. John's was named St. John's; nor was he sure about the details of John
McDowell's early appointment to the faculty and the presidency of the College.
He raised questions that I hoped to answer.
During the tricentennial celebration of Anne Arundel County in 1949, Mr.
and Mrs. Robert G. Henry had allowed the College to exhibit a series of letters
written by John McDowell that were among the Goldsborough papers at "Myrtle
Grove." (There was no McDowell correspondence in the College archives.)
Later, at the time of the constitutional bicentennial in 1976, I was ei1couraged by
Rebecca Wilson, then Director of Public Relations at the College, to wiite an
article on McDowell; and in the summer of 1977 President Richard Weigle
granted me two months' leave from my library duties for research and writing.
I found that the project was more extended than I had anticipated. Before I
could understand the circumstances leading to the appointment of McDowell I
had to know more about the politics of his era. For background I read Douglas
Southall Freeman's biography of George Washington. Cumulatively, through
day-by-day entries, Washington emerges as a man head and shoulders above his
contemporaries. I chose to adopt Freeman's technique of examining day-by-day
accounts. I read the Maryland Gazette and the house and senate journals covering
the days of the November 1984 session of the Maryland Assembly when St.
IV
�PREFACE
v
John's was chartered. These and the letters of Rev. William Smith were major
sources for my first article: "1784; The Year St. John's College was Named."
Again I found that I needed to search more deeply in order to answer the
questions I had about John McDowell. In particular, I had to know more about
King William's School. The results of this research were published in my next
three m1icles: "King William's School and the College of William and Mary";
"King William's School Plans to Become a College"; and "King William's
School Survives the RevolUtion."
By the time I wrote the fifth article, "John McDowell, Federalist: President
of St. John's College," I knew that it was the Rev. William Smith who brought
to fmition fifty years of attempts to found a Maryland college. He wrote the
charters of both Washington College and St. John's College. McDowell had
attended the College of Philadelphia when Smith was its provost, and it was the
Philadelphia connection that was crucial in bringing McDowell to Maryland.
I am grateful to the helpful staff of the following libraries and archives: the
St. John's College Library; the Maryland State Archives; the Historical Society
of. Pennsylvania Archives; the Archives of the Histmical Collection of the
Episcopal Church; the Maryland State Library; the Archives in the Swemm
Library of the College of William and Mary; the Archives of Nimitz Library,
U.S. Naval Academy; the Garrett Library of the Milton Eisenhower Library of
the Johns Hopkins Univer~ity; and the Archives of the Library of Congress.
For their critical comments in the preparation of the essay on the naming of
the College I am grateful to Eva Brann, Mmy Fletcher, Phebe Jacobsen, Mildred
Trivers, Margaret Ross, Harriet Sheehy, Allison Karslake, and Kathryn Kinzer.
For clitical comments while I prepared the other articles I am grateful to Mary
Fletcher, James Tolber1, and Phebe Jacobsen.! thank Nancy Jordan for her skill
and care in typing four of the manuscripts. I especially thank Elliott Zuckennan,
who suggested publishing the five essays together and who carefully edited them
into a consistent whole; and Christina Davidson, whose skills in graphic design
and word processing helped produce this issue of the St. John's Review.
Charlotte Fletcher
Annapalis, May I 991
�p
"•
E
/
I
//_
I
<)
(Fig. 1) Counties of Maryland and the Pennsylvania Border. The three westernmost counties, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett, were not incorporated until
1776, 1789, and 1872 respectively.
�One:
King William's School
and the College of
William and Mary
Long after Maryland was chmtered by Lord Baltimore, its English overlords
continued to treat Maryland as if it were part of Virginia. For example, in the last
decade of the seventeenth century, officers of the Crown and the Church helped
found a college in Virginia named William and Mary and a free school in
Maryland named King William's School. By charter William and Mary College
was given the entire revenue from a one-penny tax on every pound of tobacco
exported from both the Maryland and the Virginia plantations to countries outside England, Wales, and Scotland; no portion of the tax upon what
Mmyland's plantations produced was reserved for a free school in Maryland.
According to Maryland's Governor Francis Nicholson and Rev. Thomas Bray,
the Bishop ofLondon's Conmtissary for Maryland, the college in Virginia should
be of great benefit to Maryland youths who wanted a higher education. At the
time the two institutions were founded, some members of the General Assembly
shared this expectation, an expectation that was never fulfilled. It was many years
before a restored proprietary government in Maryland awarded the Atmapolis
free school a revenue comparable to what the Crown had given William and
Mary College in perpetuity by charter.
In 1632 King Charles the First carved two ribs from Virgirtia north of the
Potomac and gave them to Cecilius Calve1t, second Lord Baltimore, who called
the territory Maryland in honor of Queen Hernietta Maria. It became a home for
families of Calvert's own faith, the Roman Catholic, and of many other sects. As
early as 1671, Calvert proposed that a college be founded within the province of
Maryland, but his proposal foundered in an overwhelmingly Protestant lower
house of the Assembly- the upper house, or Council, appointed by the Proprietor was wholly Catholic- on the question of whether instruction should be
Catholic, Protestant, or both. 1
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Twenty years later, when a royal governor, Francis Nicholson, who was a
strong Church of England man, urged the Assembly to build a free school and
both houses agreed - though they insisted that they wanted not one free school
but many free schools - there was no controversy. An Act of Assembly in 1692
had excluded Catholics from both houses and had also imposed a tax on all free
holders to support the Church of England throughout the newly drawn parishes
of the province. 2
Free school did not mean "free education; it meant a school that made its
students free by giving them a liberal education. 3 The Act that founded King
William's School (1696) described free schools as places where Latin, Greek,
Writing, "and the like" would be studied, for the "Propagation of the Gospel,
and the Education of the Youth oftltis Province in good Letters and Manners,"
with "one Master, one Usher, and one Writing-Master or Scribe." 4 In 1700 Bray
reported that the free school already slatted in Annapolis was also teaching
"arithmetic, navigation, and all useful learning." 5 It was the intention of at least
two officials of the Crown and Church, Nicholson and Bray, that some youths
educated in Maryland's free schools be further educated at William and Mary
College in studies preparing them for ordination as priests in the Church
of England. Indeed, Govemor Nicholson sought moral and financial support for
Maryland's first free school by praising the noble example set by the college in
Virginia "now vigorously carried on," saying "We ... in assembly attempted to
make learning a handmaid to devotion and founded free schools in Maryland to
attend their college." 6 On his visit to Maryland in 1700 after the Annapolis
school had begun, Bray went even further in confirming this, saying its purpose
was chiefly to prepare those youths who wanted to study divinity at William and
Ma1y College. 7 All early American colleges began as free schools, or with a free
school attached, to prepare boys for life and college studies. The grammar school
which was the beginning of William and Mary College was also called a free
school.
Rev. James Blair was founder of William and Mmy College and Commissary
for the Bishop of London in Virginia. Blair lived in Virginia from the time of his
appointment until his death, whereas Rev. Thomas Bray, Commissary for Maryland, spent only one year in his province. But despite his short stay the General
Assembly remembered him gratefully for the magnificent library of eleven
hundred books which he collected and gave them in 1699, and for the good men
he sent to fill the pulpits in Maryland's newly established churches-' As founder
of the first missionary societies in the Church ofEngland9 his influence extended
far beyond Maryland. The Book of Common Prayer adopted by the American
Episcopal Church in 1979 includes his birthday (February 15) with those of saints
of the early church for special celebration.
Yet Bray was visionary in the extreme in 1700 when he wrote the Bishop of
London from Maryland that youths educated in the Annapolis school who later
�FLETCHER
3
studied diviuity at William and Mary College could then be ordaiued by the
Bishop of London's suffragan "residing in the province." 10 Americans would
have no bishop in the Anglican succession, or any other, until after the Revolu-
tion.11 Moreover, Kiug William's School, chmtered in 1696 in Maryland, and
Willimn and Mary College, chartered iu 1693 in Virginia, would not develop
hand iu hand as Nicholson and Bray imagiued; each would develop according
to the style of its native province.
Although there were many differences in both style and substance between
Maryland and Virginia, there were many similarities at the time their first
educational institutions were founded. Both were founding new capital cities-
Williamsburg in Virginia and Annapolis in Maryland. Both had royal governors
-Sir Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson served in tum as governor of each
colony. Both had economies based on the production and sale of tobacco. Both
chose to name their infant schools after the Crown, hoping for a royal blessing
in return. So similar seemed Maryland and Virginia to the Lords of Trade iu
London that they counted them as one plantation growing tobacco to produce
taxable wealth for the Crown. Siuce the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Charles
the Second (1673), Maryland and Vrrginia had been linked together in a levy of
one penny per pound upon tobacco exported to places other then England, Wales,
or the town of Berwick on Twede, an exportation very aptly called the "side
trade.'" 2 If the Lords of Trade linked Maryland and Vrrgiuia together as one
plantation, it is not surprising that the Lords of the Church, specifically the Lord
Bishop of London, viewed them as one field under his care, and, furthermore,
thought one college would do for both.
However, demographic and geographic differences did exist. Maryland had
the most diverse population of all thecolonies 13 while Virginia was settled almost
entirely by members of the Church of England. Until Maryland's political
revolution of government (1688-92), the colony was open to Catholics, Quakers,
Anglicans, and dissenting Protestants, and in 1649 it became a r'efuge for a group
of Puritans from Virginia fleeing a wave of persecution which followed the
execution of Charles the First and the accession of Cromwell. To accommodate
the Puritans Lord Baltimore urged the Mmyland Assembly iu 1649 to adopt the
famous Act of Toleration, and the Assembly complied. In that smne year the
Puritans left Virgiuia and settled iu Maryland at Severn, in an area that would
become Anne Arundel County. In 1650 they were able to elect two members to
Maryland's lower house. Even so they turned violently against the proprietary
government, hastening its overthrow. It is said that St. Anne's Church iu Annapolis grew slowly because of the many dissenting Protestants living in the parish. 14
This meant that St. Anne's for many years had a small congregation and that its
Rector had time to serve also as Master of King William's School. In any case,
King William's School had a succession of Rectors of St. Anne's as Masters.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In the extent and configuration of their lands, Virginia and Maryland were
conspicuously different. Virginia was not only vastly larger- and therefore
wealthier- but her territory except for one small section all lay west of the
Chesapeake Bay. Mmyland 's much smaller area straddled the Bay, and her ten
counties in 1695 were located five on the Eastern and five on the Western Shore.
So whenever legislators voted according to their regional interests, a consensus
vote in favor of collective action was hard to achieve. Governor. Nicholson, an
able career administrator, comPlained "G-, I know better to Govern Virginia &
Maryland than all the Bishops of England, if I had not hampered them in
Mmyland & kept them under I should never have been able to have governed
them." About this remark Rev. James Blair commented in a letter to the Bishop
of London: "I don't pretend to understand Maryland but if I know anything of
Virginia they are a good natured tractable people as any is in the world. " 15
Just as these differences were reflected in the character of the two provincial
governments, so too they influenced the development of the two educational
institutions. They did indeed spring from a common heritage in the same decade;
they did indeed enjoy alternately the leadership of governors Nicholson and
Andros, and they were promoted by the Church of England at the time of their
founding. But from then on they were distant cousins. By charter William and
Mary was named for a reigning couple; King William's School for the King only,
Queen Mary having died in 1694, a year after the Virginia college was chartered.
The sponsors of William and Mary College specified in their charter the revenues
they expected the King to give them as endowments. Rev. James Blair traveled
to England with charter in hand, where friends persuaded him that in addition to
a Master and Usher even the Grammar School would need a President to
discipline Masters and Scholars 16 Whereupon he added paragraph 3 to the
Charter, naming himself President for life. He appealed to a sympathetic and
charitable Queen Mary, who got him an audience with the King. He petitioned
William on bended knee and received almost all he asked for. Petitioners for
King William's School, on the other hand, did not present their charter in person
and requested not specific endowments but ones "conformable" to those given
by charter to the college in VIrginia. The King lent his name and that was all.
Yet even the magnificent royal endowments that William and Mary College
was fortunate enough to receive proved inadequate to create a college. In addition
to the duty on the side trade, they included accrued money from quit-rents, the
"profits" from the surveyor general's office, and twenty thousand acres of land.
Forces in the Virginia Assembly thwarted Blair's efforts; his zeal was taken for
ambition (they thought he wanted to become a bishop), and as head of a college
faction he fought the royal governors as well as the House of Burgesses to gain
the support William and Mary needed to become a college. Until the "college"
acquired six professors in addition to the President, power of administration and
all its property was vested in the nineteen trustees. When its faculty developed
�FLETCHER
5
to this size, then "according to our Royal Intent ... the said Manors, Lands,
Tenements, Rents, Services, Rectories, Annuities, Pensions, and Advowsons of
Churches, [etc.]" should be made over to the President and Faculty. After the
transfer, the President and Faculty could elect one of themselves to the House of
Burgesses,l7 a parliamentary representation like that allowed the colleges at
Oxford and Cambridge Universities. When the school thus attained college
status, Blair's power, as~ consequence, would be further increased, a develop-
ment the Burgesses postPoned as long as they could. In 1727 an Usher was the
sole teacher in the Grammar School. Later there was a Master, an Usher, and a
Writing-Master.
President Blair had special difficulty in collecting the one-penny duty on the
side trade. Partly it was the fault of Queen Anne's War- pirates ravaged the sea
and trade with England's enemies was viltually impossible. The duty originated
in "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and
for better securing the Plantation Trade" passed by Parliament in 1673. It was
reserved for the use of the Crown. Bray had investigated its availability when
looking for funds to support the Church in Maryland, only to find that it had
already been given to the college in Virginia. 18 When King William and Queen
Mary bestowed the duty upon William and Mary College by charter, it was
on condition that the college pay the salary of its collectors out of the
revenue collected. 19 On several occasions President Blair solicited the help of
the Mmyland Council to further the collection.
His first solicitation came in 1695 as a directive from the Commissioners of
the London Customs House. It asked Maryland's Governor and Council to
reduce by fifty percent the fee given to Maryland Collectors (it had already been
reduced in Virginia), and to abolish the Office of Comptroller and Surveyor since
the Govemors of William and Mary intended to audit the accounts themselves
and thus save all profits for the college 20
The Council's response is unknown, but the directive cert<iinly reminded it
that Maryland's planters were being taxed for the benefit of the Virginia college.
Not entirely convinced by Nicholson's glowing account of its vigor, two Councillors asked Governor. Andros how the college was progressing. The first, Col.
Henry Coursey of Talbot County, remarked to Governor. Andros that he hoped
the college would be of great help to Mmyland youth, and Andros had replied,
"Pish, it will come to nolhing." The second, Philip Clarke of St. Mary's County,
reported that Govemor. Andros had said to him, "I suppose this College is to
teach Children their A.B.C." The reason given in Council for Sir Edmund's
barbed remarks was that President Blair had preached a sermon saying that
"those who withdrew back & did not forward their helping hand towards the
Building of the College would be damned," a remark that had offended the
Governor. 21
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
This incident suggests the striking difference in the styles affected by the
founders of King William's School and those of William and Mary College.
Trustees in Maryland, often falteringly, worked through the ordinary channels
of the Assembly, responding to built-in tensions between Council and purse-conscious lower house, Govemor and Assembly, Eastern Shore and Western Shore,
country patty and Am1apolis party, and the still unresolved conflicts among the
various sects in the Province)n contrast, the ever vigilant Rev. James Blair in
Virginia initiated all the action. He led a college faction which fought the House
of Burgesses, the Governor, and even the trustees and clergy, to make his college
a reality; and, when they did not cooperate, he called down the wrath of God
upon them. In his often pious but autocratic way, he fulfilled the dream of his
life and built a splendid college for Virginia. It can be said of the founders of
both institutions that they adhered valiantly to their respective goals of founding
free schools in Maryland and a college in Virginia.
Fresh from the experience of founding William and Mary College, in October
1694 Governor. Nicholson, when first addressing the Mmyland Assembly then
sitting in St. Mary's City, urged them to found an educational institution which
he termed a free school and offered a generous gift towards its support. Members
of the lower house subscribed generously also, saying "Doubt not that every well
minded person within this province will contribute the same. " 22 The Council,
too, contributed. Nicholson read them the charter of William and Mary College,
suggesting that they draw up a supplication "to present tl1eir Sacred Majesties
for the Erecting the said free-school confonnable as near as may be to the said
Chatter. " 23 Both houses insisted, and indeed persuaded Nicholson, that free
schools should be established throughout the counties as well as at ArundellTown on the Severn where the seat of government would move in the following
year.
No text has survived of that portion dealing with establishment of free schools
in "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning & Advancement of the Natives
of the Province" passed in 1694 in response to Governor Nicholson's initiative,
but its contents are known. 24 It called for the founding of a free school on the
Western Shore at Severn (Annapolis had not yet been founded) and on its
successful operation another at Oxford on the Eastern Shore; then, in each of the
counties as means permitted. This basic mandate would be repeated in the Act
which did survive, that of 1696, and would be adhered to by the legislators until
county schools were actually funded in the Act of 1723. But that part called the
"Advancement of Natives of this Province," requiring that all provincial jobs not
appointed by the Crown be filled by natives of at least three years' residence,
was not reenacted until 1704.25 Both Nicholson and the Assembly realized that
local schools were needed to fit native-born men for the offices of church and
state.
�FLETCHER
7
The Act of 1694 was weak in that it did not mention trustees to cany out its
purpose. Recognizing this weakness the Council asked the Assembly what was
to be done with the money already levied for the maintenance of a free school
or schools. 26 Should it not be used to build a small school and maintain a
schoolmaster? Having no trustees it could deploy to engage architects and
builders, or to select a schoolmaster, the lower house prudently replied, "Resolved that the money thereby raised should be kept in Bancke."27 Eager to help,
the Bishop of London had already sent a schoolmaster named Andrew Geddes
to the Province. Unprepared to receive him, the Assembly first assigned him as
a reader in a vacant church, and then dispatched him to William and Mary
College until a schoolhouse could be built in Maryland. No more was heard of
him.Z8
Finally the Council and lower house together wrote and enacted an "Act for
Establishing Free Schools" of July 1696. 29 In its petitionary preamble it thanks
the King "for his royal benediction to our neighboring colony [Virginia] ... in
your gracious Grant and Charter for the propagation of the College" and asks
him to extend "your Royal Grace and Favour to us your Majesty's Subjects of
this Province, represented in this your Majesty's General Assembly thereof." It
is clearly stated throughout that all the enactments are proposed "with the Advice,
Prayer and Consent of this present General Assembly, and the Authority of the
Same." It politely informs the King of the Assembly's intent but nowhere
pretends, as the charter of William and Mary does, that the enactments originated
with the King. The royal "we" appears in every paragraph of the charter for
William and Mary College, usually as "we have granted'' or "we grant." It is a
fiction which the General Assembly in Mmyland did not employ.
Like the charter for William and Mary College, Maryland's "Act for Establishing Free Schools" required that there be eighteen to twenty trustees who
should elect a rector from among themselves each year to serve as chief officer.
In the corporate title of both, the trustees were called VisitorS and Governors.
Unlike the charter for William and Mary, the Act provided that whenever one or
more of the trustees "shall die or remove himself and Family out of this Province
into any other country for good and all," he should be replaced by "one or more
of the Principal and better Sort of the Inhabitants of the said Province." The
charter for William and Mary College, on the other hand, appointed its trustees
"for ever" with "perpetual succession," offeling no process for removal if they
left the Province. First among the group named as trustee was "our trusty and
well-beloved Francis Nicholson, our Lieutenant-Governor in our colonies of
Virginia and Maryland," who remained a trustee for many years after Blair had
ousted him as governor of Virginia because there was no means of lawfully
removing him as trustee of the college. Needless to say, when certain men were
named trustees for ever, Blair had not anticipated that Nicholson would become
his enemy; and when Blair was tenured as President for life, Nicholson had been
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
equally naive. Blair, of course, had thought the "for ever" would last only a few
years, believing that the school would quickly develop into a college when the
Statutes called for in the charter would be written, vesting power and all property
in the President and Faculty. However, that day, when the school was finally
awarded college status through the enacting of the Statutes by the Assembly, did
not arrive for more than thirty years.
In September 1696 the lo,wer house of Mmyland's General Assembly instmcted the Sheliffs throughout the pmvince to collect all subscriptions, and
commanded the trustees with all convenient speed to meet together and treat with
workmen (a bricklayer had just arrived from Philadelphia) to agree upon a
building proportionable to the tobacco and money subscribed. 30
Four years later the schoolhouse was built. 31 On 7 May 1700 ten of the
original nineteen Visitors and Governors named in the Act of 1696 met with the
Bishop of London's Commissmy, Rev. Thomas Bray, during his visitation to
Maryland. After filling county vacancies on the board occasioned by death or
departure of trustees from the province, ''they proceed to know what money is
raised toward building the said Schools [schools in the counties]." 32 Representatives of all eleven counties were present except those from Anne Arundel and
St. Mary's. Two Cantabrigians were among the completed board membership of
1700: Robert Smith was a graduate33 and newly appointed Col. Thomas Greenfield had attended Cambridge University. 34 Six were members of the Governor's
Council, who, acting as Visitors and Governors, agreed upon compensation due
the free school because of occupation of a schoolhouse room by the Council (no
quarters had been provided them in the new state house).
Six years later the Rector and the Visitors and Governors were to demand
payment from the Assembly for past rent, claiming that an agreement to that
effect had been made on 3 May 1700. 35 Undoubtedly in 1700 the Council thought
their occupation a temporary anangement but were nonetheless uncertain of its
·
propriety, for on 13 May 1701 they said to the lower house,
Whereas the free school wee now sit in hath been built in great measure by
the Subscriptions of Severall private psons well affected to that good Designe,
who arc desireous to see the good ef:Tect thereof, It is recommended to your
house to consider how the best use may De made of the sayd house, it being
now finished, And also that you will take care to provide some convenient
fitting place for his Majesty's Council to sitt in in Assembly time for the better
dispatch of business. 36
The lower house made no effort to provide other quarters for the Council. But
four years later a majority of the house, like the Council, believed that the "good
Designe" for free schools was jeopardized by rental of the schoolhouse for
government use. The house felt it necessary to enact a bill on 30 September 1704,
reaffirming its support for free schools, which read, "the petitionary Act to
�FLETCHER
9
establish ... free schools is declared to be in full force to all Intents construccons
and purposes." 37 Its good intentions, however, were defeated by events. On 17
October 1704 the new state house burned, and hence the occupation of the
schoolhouse not only by the Council but also by the Public Library (the Bray
Collection) [Fig. 21 and by the public records was prolonged until another state
house was built in 1711.
(Fig. 2) Three books from the ''Public Library," housed in the King William's
schoolhouse from 1700 until 1786. Many books in the collection are embossed
De Biblioteca Annapolitana on the front cover and Sub Auspiciis Wilhelmi Ill on
the back. The volume of Chrysostom shown in the center was consulted by Bishop
John Carroll and partially translated by John Shaw. Known as both the Annapolitan Library and the Bray Collection. (Courtesy of St. John's College Library,
on deposit at Maryland State Archives.)
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Rev. James Blair was having his own troubles. The
side trade was hampered by Queen Anne's war against France. From what little
trade there was, President Blair wanted more levy money than he was receiving.
He did not hesitate in August 1704 to ask the Governor of Maryland "to quicken
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the Collectors in making up their Accounts of the one Penny ... and to take Bond
from the said Collectors to the College for their Answering." The Council replied
that "they do think the Collectors have already given Bond Sufficient to Answer
the said Duty. " 38
It is possible that the Customs Collectors had little incentive to gather the duty
after President Blair appropriated the fee they ordinarily received for their
trouble; and Maryland had litlle interest in helping collect a levy from which it
derived no benefit. It was difficult enough for the Councillor-trustees to rally
support in the lower house for the free school in Annapolis, which the counhy
party viewed as operating at county expense. In addition to Blair's disappointment over the small amount of revenue coming from the one-penny duty, disaster
struck his college on 29 October 1705. Fire destmyed the college building, which
was sheltering both the House of Burgesses and the college grammar school. The
college then had no building at all- to occupy itself or to rent out- until it
built a new one more than ten years later.
King William's School also waited more than ten years to gain full possession
of its schoolhouse. A kind of stalemate existed between the trustees and the lower
house, which refused to pay fair rent for the schoolhouse. Finally, in 1706, the
trustees took a firm stance, saying they would either receive fair rent or sell. This
brought the lower house around. The deal struck for rental of the whole building
must have been agreeable to both parties,39 trustees and legislators, for they do
not discuss it again until 1709, when the Council complained to the lower house
that an open chest standing in the free school porch "is exposed to the Weather
so that several Certificates of Land ... are damnified and spoiled. " 40 Once more
the lower house was dilatory; two years later the same complaint was lodged.
The completion of the state house in 1711 relieved the situation, for in it a Council
office was provided.41
Presumably there were a master and scholars meeting elsewhere in Annapolis, as the lower house mentions them in connection with their use ·of the Public
Library.42 The first master whose name we know was Rev. Edward Butler, who
began teaching some time before 1710. From that year until his death in 1713
he was both rector of St. Anne's and master of King William's Schoo1. 43 In 1711
the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly reiterated the desire of each
county for a free school of its own:
It is humbly offered by this Committee as an Aggrievance that the Country
receives no Benefit by the Duties paid for the Maintenance of the free School
and they pray the House to consider whether the present Governors and
Visitors of the free School apply the Money arising by Virtue of such Duties
according to the Act for that Purpose made and whether the said Governors
and Visitors have any Right thereto. 44
�FLETCHER
II
In answer the House suggested in November 1713
that forasmuch as most of the trustees in the Act named are dead and departed
the present Rector, Govemor and Visitors be such with the Addition of one
out of those Counties where there are none already. The Money now in the
Treasurers' Hands belonging to the ffree Schools be called in and let out on
good land security.... That the Accounts of the ffree Schools be yearly laid
before the House for their inspection.45
To this Capt. Jones, for the trustees, readily replied that "the Number of
Governors and Visitors is already compleat ... but Cecil, Charles and Somerset," and as for the money in the hands of Col. Smithson, Treasurer of the Eastern
Shore, who by his own admission is "very aged and crazy," they would ask for
land security (which they got by way of a farm in Dorchester County named
"Surveyor's Choice"), and they would "alwaJ's be glad to shew the Gen.
Assembly the Accounts of their Proceedings." 4
When John Hm1 anived from England in 1714 as the first royal governor
since 1709- the President of the Council had acted as governor from 1709 to
1714- he circulated a questionnaire prepared by the Bishop of London to the
clergy asking among other things about the education of Maryland children. It
revealed that "the case of schools is ve1y bad, Good Schoolmasters are very much
wanting." 47 This, of course, was what the country party had been saying for
years. Governor Hart noted the lack of schools in his first address to the Assembly
on 5 October 1714:
Providence in his bounty has blessed the Inhabitants of this Province with
a numerous Issue but It is a deplorable Ret1ection that no better Provision is
made for the Education of your youth, there being but a slender support for
one School on the Western and none on the Eastern Shore of this so wide a
bay.
I do eamestly recommend this Gentlemen to your Consideration being a
Duty incumbent upon you as you will acquit yourselves to God & the Queen
like good Fathers & good subjects. 48
Queen Anne died within the year. Her successor, George the First, restored
full prop1ietary power to Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, age fifteen, who
had Lord Guilford as guardian. Young Charles had been raised in the Church of
England, his father having converted, and was acceptable to the Protestant
government of Maryland.
In a new optimism which followed the restoration of 1715, the rector and the
Visitors and Governors of the Free Schools redefined their purpose, "the Ends
for which we were incorporated," and stated their claim to certain properties long
ago bequeathed them. They also asked to be enabled by law to conduct business
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with a quorum of five trustees present, it being difficult, they said, to assemble
a majority of their members at any one time from the distant counties. 49 Their
well expressed determination was matched by suitable legislation passed in
1715, vesting in them and ..their Successors for ever, a certain lot of Land in the
City of Annapolis, and an House thereon erected, commonly called the Kentish
House; and impowering the said Rector and Visitors more easily to transact the
Business of the said Free-Sch.ools.''50
In addition, at a meeting of the Visitors and Governors in May 1715, Thomas
Bordley, "speedily designed on a voyage to England," was commissioned "to
use his Endeavors to invite & Procure some Discreet & learned person ... as an
Usher at the said schools ... that he may Expect upon Vacancy of Provost Master
thereof to be propos' d in his Place, or otherwise to be Master of another
Freeschool erected on the Eastem Shore." 51 We know that Bordley did their
bidding because Governor Hart wrote Bishop Robinson in 1717 that "Mr. Wamer
who behaves himself with Prudence was on the first meeting of the Visitors of
the Free Schools, admitted as Usher to the School of Annapolis." 52
All these were forward steps in the development of King William's School,
but its means of suppmt were still slim. For twenty-two years the Council had
not officially questioned the fairness of the one-penny-per-pound tax from the
side trade going in its entirety to the college in Virginia. It was the Crown's to
give. But as trade increased after 1714 and Maryland had desperate need for
additional funds to develop schools, members of House and Council naturally
wondered why all the levy should go to Virginia when it came from tobacco
raised partly on Maryland plantations. The question was first raised in the
Council, where the most eminent of the provincial attorneys sat, on 24 March
1715.
On that day Charles Carroll, who had been appointed by Charles, Lord
Baltimore, "our chief Agent, Escheator, Naval Officer, & Receiver General of
all our Rents, Fines, Fmfeitures, Tobaccos or Moneys for Lands, etc.," brought
instructions from the King to Governor Hart. Members of the Carroll family were
held in high esteem by the Calve1ts, who had entrusted their business to them for
several generations. The royal instructions began thus:
First. You shall give directions & take especial Care that John Hart, Esq.
Deputy Governour of our Province of Maryland do the first place inform
himself of the Principal 'Laws relating to the Plantation Trade Viz ...
. . . An Act for the incouragement of the Greene land and Eastland Trades;
and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade. 53
At the reading of the instructions Governor Hart was less concerned about
the King's communication than he was about the fact that Mr. Carroll, a Catholic,
refused to take the oath of abjuration required of all men holding provincial
�FLETCHER
13
offices. Deeply disturbed that the Lords Baltimore and Guilford would employ
someone as Naval Officer in violation of the act that established the Protestant
religion in Maryland, he publicly considered resigning as governor. This was the
year the King of France recognized James the Pretender as true King of England
and some Maryland hotheads shot off a cannon in honor of the Pretender's
birthday.54 Fear that there were Jacobites among Maryland's Catholics caused
Governor Hart's unease apd distraction. Had he studied the Act made in the
twenty-fifth year of the Reign of King Charles the Second as instructed by the
King, he might have more quickly become sensitive to the fact that the ancient
linkage of the Mmyland and Virginia plantations gave the duty entirely to
Virginia. But instead of questioning the levy, Hart quarreled with Charles Carroll
and throughout 1717 continued to exhort the Assembly to find means to provide
better for the education of Mmyland children. It required an aggravation of
another sort to focus his attention on the lack of generosity shown Maryland by
the Crown: the erection of a beautiful college building for William and Mary in
Williamsburg, 55 a visible monument to the extraordinary generosity of the
Crown toward that college.
Conscious of the splendor of the building, in 1719 Hart admitted to the
Assembly "your abilities [your wealth] do not come up to your desire for that
laudable end [to build schools]." 56 By this time fully informed about the law of
the tobacco trade which had enriched William and Mary College, he was
persuaded to ask the Lords Baltimore and Guilford to beg a fair share of the
King's bounty for Maryland schools:
The good People of this province [he wrote them] have paid Large Sums
of money towards the Encouragement of Learning there [William and Mary
College] which the Distance of the Place And the Great Charge of Schooling
Children hath made altogether useless to us; For such psons as are of Ability
to Defray such Charge choose Rather to Educate their Children in Great
Britain.... We are humbly of Opinion ... that we should have Some share
in his Royall Bounty Toward the Support of a Free School already Built at
Annapolis and that the one Penny p pound to be Collected within this Province
... might be applied to the use and Support thereof. 57
The Proprietors received the royal answer in April 1720. It was negative.
Governor Hart was sony to report to the Assembly that they "can have no
Expectation of benefit from the Duty ... having Setled the same for ever on the
College of Virginia."58 But in the October 1720 session of the Assembly the
Lords Baltimore and Guilford suggested that a moiety of the 3" per hogshead of
tobacco the Assembly allowed Governor Hart should be applied to the school at
Annapolis, a proposal the lower house agreed to.
In his speech of 1717 Govemor Hart had said, "The Province is now in the
most happy Condition that ever it was since the first Settlement." 59 Such a
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
change for the better can be detected in the temper of the Assembly Proceedings.
The lower house now acted, whereas it fonnerly had found legalistic reasons for
saying no. In 1720 arrangements were made to finish a room for the Public
Library, 60 and the Committee of Accounts wa<; ordered to pay the Rector and the
Visitors and Governors of the Free School the sum of eighty-six pounds, thirteen
shillings and four pence cunent money for the rent of the schoolhouse, which
they did without demur. Twen,ty-five years after the chartering of King William's
School it.;; schoolhouse was tenanted by the school master and its rooms were
available for classes. Furthermore, the lower house acted favorably on a petition
from Michael Piper,61 Master of the Free School at Annapolis, asking that
"vacant ground lying between the School House and the Stadt House be granted
him for a small Garden." 62 We know also that an usher was at the school. By
1721 King William's School had attained the desired stability described by its
charter- one master, one usher, and an annual income of one hundred and
twenty pounds for their support, and one hundred scholars more or less. By
charter this was the signal to establish schools in all the counties. Enough had
been collected for that purpose from an "Imposition on Sundry Commodities
exported out of, and other imported into, this Province, which has succeeded
with such desired Effect." "An Act for the Encouragement of Leaming, and
erecting Schools in the several Counties within this Province" was passed in
October 1723, naming seven Visitors in each county to receive funds and to build
and organize a school in each. 63
The fund was divided into twelve parts for the twelve existing counties, to
build a school near the center of each. King William's School did not share in
this distribution. Besides the schoolhouse and the Public Library in its charge, it
had enough income to survive from the moiety of the three pence allowed
Governor Hart and from vmious taxes, 64 rental properties, gifts, and legacies.
Now that the counties had the means to develop free schools of their own, the
country party no longer jealously watched how the trustees of King William's
School expended public funds, thus allowing them a free hand to develop the
Annapolis school.
�Two:
An Endowed
King William's School
Plans to Become a College
In 1732 King William's School received an adequate, though not princely,
endowment. This was fortunate because a few years earlier it had lost all support
from provincial taxes. The endowment was a legacy of young Governor Benedict
Leonard Calvert, who willed the school one third of Ills estate. At mid-century,
legislation to develop the Annapolis school into a college, and to establish
another college on the Eastern Shore, was introduced in the General Assembly.
King William's School was chartered by an act of 1696. 1 It was planned that
a school should be founded on the Eastern Shore at Oxford, Talbot County, after
King William's School became self-supporting. And after that, one at a time, free
schools should be established in the other counties of Maryland.
However, no county schools were fmmded under the act of 1696. They were
not established until thirty years later by an act of 1723,2 wltich divided into
twelve equal parts all the monies collected since 1696 for the benefit of public
schools. County school boards were appointed to serve in "perpetual succession"
like the Rector and Visitors and Governors of King William's School. They were
directed to use their portion of this money to purchase one hu:n,dred acres for a
schoolhouse and for support of the masters. King William's School did not share
in this distribution, nor did it receive any portion of the annual taxes eatmarked
thereafter for public schools. Although sometimes called the Annapolis Free
School, it was quite distinct from the county school called Anne Anmdel County
Free School established under the act of 1723.
A majority in the Assembly wanted local schools inrmediately. But a minority
continued to trunk that the one-school-at-a-time procedure outlined in the act of
1696 would build better schools. Those who wanted a college or two for
Maryland favored the earlier act. They thought that to distribute limited public
funds for education among so many schools would give none of them enough
support to develop into the kind of good school the province needed for its youth.
Young Benedict Leonard Calvert, governor of Maryland from 1727 to 1732,
belonged to this group and on 18 March 1728/29, wrote antiquarian Thomas
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Heame at Oxford University that "wee have here settled a fund for a free school
in the several12 counties." But he said there would be a better chance for "Real
Success in Education" if the limited funds had been spent on "our two older
foundations," i.e., the school in Annapolis and the one proposed for Oxford by
the Act of 1696, where there were accommodations for "Boarding Scholars." 3
Soon after his arrival in Maryland in 1727, Calvert "in tender Consideration"
of an application from the lo)'ler house, gave to the county schools half of the
three-pence-per-hogshead t~ reserved for the governor's use. 4 This was the
revenue that Governor Hart gave King William's School in 1720. The act
renewing the revenue in 1723 provided for its expiration in 1726.5 Loss of the
revenue from this tax almost wrecked King William's School.
The funds were sunk, the School had soon decay' d
Unless supported by thy [Govemor Calve1t's] Bounteous Aid,6
rhymed poet and schoolmaster Richard Lewis. For what Calvert ahnost destroyed with his left hand, he saved with his right by seeking private benefactors
to aid the Annapolis school.
Governor Calvert's "Bounteous Aid" came as one third of his worldly goods,
which he, mindful of failing health, bequeathed King William's School in a will
written just before he sailed for England in April 1732. 7 Benedict Leonard
Calvert, great-grandson of Charles I and the Duchess of Cleveland, and younger
brother of the fifth Proprietor, Charles, Lord Baltimore, was only twenty-seven
years old when he became Governor of Mary land. According to two discerning
friends, he was scholarly and generous. Thomas Hearne, older than Calvert, had
corresponded with him ever since Calvert's student days at Christ Church
College, Oxford, in 1717. During his years in Maryland Calvert enjoyed the
company of a contemporary, Richard Lewis, a poet and schoolmaster, who had
entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1718. Hearne often mentions Calvert in his
famous diary, 8 Lewis writes of him in his occasional verse. Both mention the
Annapolis School.
Hearne confessed that he had tried to persuade Calvert to stay in England
rather than go to what Calvert in his previously mentioned letter called an
"unpolished part of the Universe." But while saying this, Calvert sent to Hearne,
as if to show that conditions were changing in Maryland, a copy of Richard
Lewis's translation of Holdsworth's Muscipula: the Mousetrap, 9 recently printed
on Maryland's new printing press. In the preface, Lewis called himself"one who
is engaged in teaching Language"; Calvert described him as "a man realy of
Ingenuity, and to my judgment well versed in Poetry." Though he was best known
as a nature poet, 10 his occasional verses are of interest because they tell of
Calvert's intention to build a college in Maryland. Of the bequest to King
William's School, Lewis writes,
�FLETCHER
17
The Gift he gave was small to what his :Mind
Had to advance good Literature design' d,
His pow'rful Entreaties would have mov'd
His Noble Friends who useful Learning Lov'd,
To build a College, where our Youths might find
Instruction to Adorn each studious Mind;
And for their Use his B~lOks were all Design'd. 11
"His Books" refers to Calvert's well-stocked library, which it is believed Lewis
consulted while preparing annotations to Muscz]JUla. Evidently Calvert had
intended to give his library to the college.
Lewis is commonly thought to have written Proposals for Founding an
Academy at Annapolis. 12 Its author sounds like an experienced language teacher
when he says Greek and Latin are often taught in a way "too dry, laborious &
discouraging to the Capacities of Boys" and proposes that a better method be
adopted for the Academy.
Lewis, if he is the author, proposes a faculty composed of a senior Lecturer,
or Regent, "who shall be Professor of Divinity, Moral Philosophy & the Classics:
a Master and sub-master or Usher who could teach the Classics, a Writing Master
competent in Mathematicks, and an English Master who would also teach
reading and Accounts." The author suggests that the Regent and the Greek master
in the Academy be "clergymen as best qualified for Instructing the Young
Gentlemen designed for Holy Orders," and he clearly means clergymen of the
Church of England. Yet he recommends that "none of the Youth of this or the
neighboring Provinces, of what Opinion soever they may be in Religion, shall
be excluded from the Benefit of receiving their Education here, on Account of
their Dissenting from the Establish'd Church." This liberality toward nonChurch of England youth was later stated in much stronger language in the
non-sectarian charters of Washington College and St. John's College of 1782 and
1784.
In conclusion the author writes,
the Proposer. ... is ready to attend Either of the Honourable Houses when
Call'd upon, with all Integrity and Submission, being Prepar'd, as they shall
Judge proper, to Enlarge or Contract the Design, and Accomodate the Whole
to the Circumstance of the Province; The Genius of Whose Youths He has
Remarked to be nahirally Very Good, and Capable of great Proficiency by a
Suitable Cultivation.
This last remark suggests again that Lewis, a teacher in the Annapolis school and
therefore familiar with the abilities of Maryland youths, was the author of the
Proposals.
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Unfortunately, the Proposals to Found an Academy at Annapolis, was never
introduced in the Assembly. The untimely deaths ofthe two men who would have
been its most likely proponents may explain the failure: Calvert died at sea on I
June 1732 and Lewis died two years later in 1734.
Without the income produced by Calvert's bequest, King William's School,
as Lewis wrote, might indeed have "sunk." Until the Revolution it comprised
seven-eighths of the school's ,entire income, 13 not counting fees received from
students. In his will, Calvert. required that sound investment be made of the
inheritance, that it
be put out at Interest upon good Security ... towards the payment of the Salary
or Support of the Master or Masters Usher or Ushers of the said School. And
to no other purpose whatsoever. ... If it should ever happen a Master of the
said School should be wanting during the space of one whole year, so that
children cannot be taught instructed educated at least as well as usual ... it
be paid to the church wardens & vestry of St. Anne's Parish . .. to apply in
the purchase of a Tract of Land ... for the use and benefit of the Minister of
the time being and his Successors of St. Anne's Parish. 14
The poverty of St. Anne's Parish helped make it possible for King William's
School to operate continuously. St. Anne's Parish had no rectory for its clergy to
occupy. The parish, being small, offered a meager living to its rector from the
tobacco tax of "40 per poll." 15 This was recognized as early as 12 July 1709,
when "the Governor and Council recorded that the Annapolis palish was deliberately made small so as to entail a minimum of parochial work for Commissary
Bray [who had an additional salary], but that this arrangement provided such a
small income that the governor had difficulty in keeping it supplied." 16 Years
later, in 1754, Governor Sharpe described the living as scarcely a decent
subsistence because of the "Dearth of provision, Fireing & Family necessaries,
which the lack of glebe land and a rectory provide." 17 For these reasons, it is
likely that between 1732 and 1759, some, if not all, of the rectors of St. Anne's
also served as masters of King William's School, living in the schoolhouse
quarters and, as masters, receiving some additional income from Calvert's
bequest. If this was the case, it was fortunate for the school, because the clergy
were well-educated and the school therefore never wanted for masters. 18
In 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore suggesting that money be
raised to build a rectory for St. Anne's Palish according to a plan like that
proposed in 1724 by Rev. James Henderson, acting commissary: money should
be accumulated by not appointing a rector for St. Anne's for a number of years. 19
And indeed, between 1754 and 1759, St. Anne's had no rector, but was served
by a vicar only, Rev. John McPherson. The money saved was used in 1759 to
build a rectory at 217 Hanover Street, which was the home of St. Anne's rectors
untill885. 20
�FLETCHER
19
After receiving Calvert's legacy in 1732, King William's School was independent of provincial funds. But the county schools, supported by the tax dollar,
were at the mercy of the Assembly. In 1740 they lost the revenue from half of
the three-pence-per-hogshead tax, 21 and it was never replaced. A bill of 1742 to
restore the revenue failed by a vote in the lower house of twenty-seven to eight. 22
Throughout the 1740s Assembly sessions were bitter confrontations between the
lower house, which claimed an exclusive right to initiate money bills, and the
governor, who demanded money for defense. Finally in 1746 Governor Bladen
pressed too hard for funds to support His Majesty's troops in King George's war
against the French and their Indian allies. In retaliation, the lower house withdrew
all funds for the completion of the governor's house begun in 1733. As a result,
it stood half-finished without a roof, slowly decaying, until renovated and
completed as an academic hall for St. John's College in 1789. 23
A frequent turnover of masters during the 1740s shows that the county schools
suffered from loss of revenue. In 1745, 1746, and 1747, tmstees from Anne
A1undel, Calvert, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, and St. Mary's counties
advettised for many months for qualified candidates. 24
Elsewhere in the colonies during the decades of the thirties and forties, people
were expetiencing a moral and spiritual uplift known as the Great Awakening.
Three colleges claim that they were established as a result of the moral enthusiasm of the period: The College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1746; the Academy,
College and Charitable School of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in
1750; and King's College (Columbia) in 1754. Maryland was stirred in its own
way by what Samuel Mmison describes as "aggressive missionary work by the
Church of England, and a quiet but pervasive growth of liberal Christianity." 25
Social clubs like the famed Tuesday Club and a newly founded Masonic lodge
flourished in Annapolis and were part of the liberal movement. Members of the
Tuesday Club contributed toward the Talbot County Charity and Work School,
founded to educate poor black and white children in useful trades by a fellow
member, Rev. Thomas Bacon. 26 Both he and Rev. John Gordon?' who left St.
Anne's Parish in 1749 for St. Michael's Parish, Talbot County, belonged to the
Tuesday Club. They and Rev. William Brogden, rector of All Hallow's Parish,
Anne Arundel County, preached sermons in St. Anne's Church before the Society
of Free and Accepted Masons of Annapolis at celebrations of the two St. John's
days: Gordon on 25 June 1749 and Bacon on 25 June 1753, the feast day of St.
John the Baptist. Rev. William Brogden preached before them on the feast day
of St. John the Evangelist on 28 December 1749.
But Annapolis's social clubs are more famous for their fun and ftivolity than
for their moral uplift and good works. Thanks to the historian of the Tuesday
Club, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, we have a picture of the King William's schoolroom where the predecessor of the Tuesday Club met weekly. 28 It was called the
Ugly Club.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
According to Hamilton's history
what chiefly gave this Society the name of the Ugly Club was the squalidness
of the Room, where they sat, and held their meetings, it being a large ghastly
apartment, of an old Building made use of for a School Room. The plaister of
the walls and Ceiling was much decayed and cracked, moldy, dirty, and several
places fallen off. Around the walls were many names engraved and done with
Ink, Chalk, and marking Stolle, and some human faces and figures of a strange
wild fancy with monstrous noses, unconscionable mouths, and horrid staring
eyes. The Ceiling was smoked in several places with a candle, and very much
gamished with cobwebs, and the Clay nests of worms and wasps. Many panes
of Glass in the windows were broke and cracked, the window sills and shelves
covered with dust, which had been collecting there for half a century. The
floor was squalid, full of spots and plaistered in many places with daubs of
dirt, collected from chaws of tobacco, and such like plastic substances, which
having been stood upon, adhered, and in a manner grew to the planks. The
furniture of the Room consisted of a parcell of old forms and desks, which
Served the members of the Club to sit and loll upon. There was only one
antiquated elbow chair, which was Set apart for the president of the Club.
Thus was it Solely upon account of the Slovenliness of the members (who
looked when met like a parcel of ragged philosophers), their affectation of
odd gestures, and dirtiness and unseemliness of the Club room that this Society
had tbe name of the Ugly Club, not from any bodily deformity in tbe members
themselves, for, in that respect, some of them were proper enough men, and
tollerably well made.
Among the members was Mr. Pedanticus,
a man of letters, having for some time exercised the office of Schoolmaster
for the City of Annapolis, and exerted himself to admiration, in that conspicuous station. He was remarkable for wearing dirty linnen nightcaps in summer,
and greasy worsted Ditto in winter.... He was an Hybemicum by birth, and
was pretty well stocked in the sort of modest assurance which is reckoned
peculiar to that nation. He had a particular tum to mechanics, and made such
great strides toward the discovery of the perpetuam mobile and the longitude,
that it is thought by many competent Ju~ges, had his means or purse been
sufficient, he would have effected them both. Like others of his profession he
was positive, dogmatic and Imperious, treating all persons, as if they were his
pupils or Schoolboys, much given to dispute, and always sure he was in the
right, and Commonly needed to get the better of the argument, by ~uoting
Greek and Latin authors, which few or none of the Club understood. 2
But contrary to Hamilton's comical descriptions and lampoons, many of tbe
discourses at the weekly meetings of the Tuesday Club were far from nonsense.
Smoothum Sly, Esq., was Rev. John Gordon, whose discourse on 5 April l746
�FLETCHER
21
(Fig. 3) The Ugly Club, predecessor of the Tuesday Club, meeting in the King
William's schoolroom in the early 1740s. Garrett Manuscript no. 1. (Courtesy of
John Work Garrett Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library.)
"was upon Civil Government, and had the approbation of the Club in general,
excepting his honor the president, who alledged he spoke too much in favor of
popular liberty." 30 On 16 August 1748 Gordon was high steward and therefore
entertained the Club in his home, which was the schoolhouse. 31
By 1747 the Assembly had mended its ways somewhat. After two decades of
debate it passed an act for "amending the Staple Tobacco for preventing frauds
in his Majesty's Customs and for limitation of Officers' Fees," 32 imposing
regulations and inspection on the tobacco trade. These were necessary to raise
the quality of Maryland tobacco, to make it competitive with the Virginia leaf,
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which was already under stlict regulation. Hoping to prevent the exportation of
"bad and trash tobacco," the act set up numerous inspection stations at ports on
the Chesapeake and its tributaries. In that same year the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle temporarily ended the conflict between England and France in Europe and
concluded King George's War in America. With the coming of peace, trade was
resumed with the continent, where Maryland's famous Orinoco tobacco was
always in demand.
The Tobacco Law and peace raised hopes such as those expressed in an essay
written in 1747 entitled "On the Means of Improving the Trade." 33 The author
recommended that two ports be established, one on each shore of the Bay, to
draw the grain ttade. He predicted that these two potts would soon become "Seats
of Learning as well as of Commerce." For, he continued, "Athens was the Center
of the Commerce as well as of the Literature of ancient Greece."
Seemingly the author's dream was shared by the trustees of King William's
School, who readied themselves to play a leading role in making Annapolis a
center of colonial learning. They gained permission from the Assembly to sell
"ce1tain lands and houses belonging to the free-school in the city of Annapolis
called King Williana's School," which brought in little rent, and 650 acres in
Dorchester County, which brought in no annual profit and on which they had to
pay quit rent. The Assembly required that any money realized from the sales
must be invested "on good security" and bring in annual interest for suppmt of
the masters. 34 But having gained the necessary permission, the trustees were in
no hurry to sell.
Evidently, they were awaiting the outcome of an action just begun in the May
1750 Assembly, whose purpose was to found two colleges with funds acquired
through confiscating the property of the county schools. It was necessmy first
for the lower house to be polled on the question "Whether the County Schools
will be suppressed, in order that a sufficient Fund may be raised for establishing
a School, or College, on each Shore of this Province." Thirty-five rriembers voted
in the affirmative, seventeen in the negative. 35 Just before adjournment the lower
house appointed a Committee on Ways and Means and ordered that the proposed
bill, when ready, should be published in the Maryland Gazette during the summer
recess.
The bill as published abrogated the Act of 1723 and proposed to replace
county schools with "One good ... school for the Western Shore which should
be King William's School with such succession of Rector, Governors and
Visitors as directed by the Act of 1696," and one "good ... school at ... on the
Eastern Shore."
The firstmasterofKing William's School should have a master's degree from
Oxford University, and the first master of the Eastem Shore school should have
his from Canabridge University, each to be appointed by the vice chancellor of
his university, and the vice chancellors would, for the "Time Being" serve as
�FLETCHER
23
chancellors of the two Maryland colleges. Two Maryland boys, designated
Calvert's Scholars, should be educated gratis and be recommended for holy
orders in England. "Money arising by ... the Sales of the Land and Chattels
belonging to the County Schools shall be ... applied by the said Rector, Governors and Visitors of either School respectively to build suitable and proper
Houses ... all such Buildings shall be of Brick or Stone, with shingled Hip
Roofs, and but one Story High ... Three Rooms to each School ... to be
denominated First, Second and Third Schools." Standards were set for promotion
within the vmious schools. For example, no boy should be admitted into the First
School until he had read Tully and Horace in Latin and gone through the Greek
Grammar, Homer, Theocritus in the Greek likewise. 36
According to this bill, King William's School was to develop into a "good
school" or college, under the same board that had continued in perpetual
succession since appointed by the Act of 1696; and another "good school" or
college was to be established on the Eastern Shore, whose location and governance were not stated in the proposal. This bill, however, was never introduced
in the Assembly.
By 1750 wheat was becoming an important Maryland export. Many Mm·yland planters followed their grain northward to Philadelphia, causing Chestertown, on the way to Philadelphia, to enjoy a prosperity beyond that of Oxford to
the south. One of the attractions of Pennsylvania's capital city was the Academy
of Philadelphia, which opened January 1751 to teach
Latin, Greek, English, French, and GennanLanguage; together with History,
Geography, Chronology, Logic, and Rhetoric; also Writing, Arithmetic, Merchants Accounts, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Gauging, Navigation, Astronomy, Drawing in Perspective, and other mathematical sciences; with
natural and mechanic Philosophy, etc., agreeable to the Constitutions heretofore published, at the Rate of Four Pounds per Annum and twenty Shillings,
Entrance. 37
The exodus of Maryland youths to the Academy, and later to the Academy
and College of Philadelphia, became so great between 1751 and 1754 that it
occmred to one "Philo Marilandicus" that the money Maryland youths spent in
Pennsylvania for their education could build colleges on both the Eastern and
Western Shores of Maryland, or at least one in Annapolis.
He wrote:
On Enquiiy, it has been found that there are (at least) 100 Mmylanders in the
Academy of Philadelphia, and it is experimentally known, that the annual
Charges, for Cloaths, Schooling, Board, etc. etc. etc. amount (at least) to 75£
Maryland Currency, 50£ Sterling, for each Youth educated. Hence it is evident,
that if this Practice continues but 20 years (at the moderate Computation of
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
5000£ Sterling per Annum), there must be remitted from Maryland for the
Benefit of the Pennsylvanians, the round Plumb, or Sum of One Hundred
Pounds Sterling. Besides this 'tis well known, that vast Sums are every Year
transmitted to France, etc. for the Education of our young Gentlemen of the
Popish Persuasion, etc. Tho perhaps superior Politics, Interest and Influence
may render the saving the Money in the latter Case (entirely lost to the
Province), impracticable, yet cettainly our Protestant Patriots might contrive
Ways and Means for keeping within Maryland, Cash advanced (as aforesaid),
for the Use of Pennsylvania, by establishing a College on each Shore, or one
at Annapolis, at which (if duly cheaper, and more conveniently accomodated,
and at the same Time) the Cash expended, would still circulate within the
Province. If you think these Hints deserve public Consideration, by inserting
them in your next, you will oblige,
Yours etc
Philo Marilandicus 38
Philo Marilandicus did not go unanswered. On reading this letter in the
Maryland Gazette, Richard Brooke responded with an argument in favor of one
college only. If youths of both shores were educated under one roof, he wrote,
they would contract friendships which would wipe out some of the ancient
jealousies between the inhabitants of the two shores; if one college only, it would
certainly be at Annapolis, where Gentlemen have frequent opportunities to see
their children while attending the Assembly and Court. To satisfy those who
objected to Annapolis for moral reasons, sirice towns have disorderly elements,
good regulations should be enforced. But if a town was considered too objectionable a situation for a college, it could be placed on the opposite shore of the
Severn.
Brooke, a Protestant heir to "certain lands, which are detained from him by
the Jesuits," suggested that the Jesuits be divested of their land, which could be
sold to produce revenue for a college. "Here then," he wrote, "we· have found a
Fund equal perhaps or very near equal to a genteel Endowment for one College,
but by no Means of two." In making this suggestion, to avoid any insinuating
aspersions on his character, he made "a public Renunciation of any Right to those
Lands." 39
The lower house did indeed write a bill to divest the Jesuits of their lands 40
- not to build a college, but to pay Maryland's contribution to frontier defense
in the French and Indian War. Since the foe was Catholic, some men feared that
Maryland's Catholics might aid the enemy. The upper house, however, rejected
the bill.
But in answer to Philo Marilandicus and others who wanted a Maryland
college, and who expressed their desire in terms advantageous to Maryland's
wealth, Governor Sharpe replied in May 1754. He was aroused to action by the
sight not only of the thriving college in Virginia, but also of the flourishing
�FLETCHER
25
Academy and College of Philadelphia where many Maryland youths were
spending Maryland cash. Speaking before the Maryland General Assembly in
1754 he said,
Shall I also take the Liberty of intimating what a considerable Benefit must
accrue to the Inhabitants, and what Honour must redound to yourselves, from
the Foundation of a more perfect and more public Seminary of Leaming in
this province; a Scheme this long since put in Execution among our Neighbors,
to whom our Youth are still obliged, much to the disadvantage and Discredit
of this Province, to recur for Liberal education.
If the Assembly could not be shamed into founding a college, Governor
Sharpe held out a carrot: "From my knowledge of what vast Pleasure and
Satisfaction his Lordship receives from being able to contribute, and promote,
the Reputation Honour and Prosperity of his Province, I will presume to
encourage you to expect something more than his bare approbation of such a
Proposal." 41
In spite of placing little trust in "more than bare approbation" from the
Proprietor, the Assembly responded to the governor's plea by again introducing
a college bill, this time an .act to establish one college, not two. Just as in 1750,
proponents called for a vote on the question "Whether the Fund now appropriated
for the several County Schools, and the money which may arise in the Sale of
the Land and Houses, which appertains to the several County Schools, be applied
toward the Erection of One public Seminary for Learning within this Province,
or Not?" Again, it was resolved in the affirmative, with thirty-eight ayes and
thirteen nays. It was then ordered "That the Committee of Laws do make an
Enquiry into Ways and Means to raise a Fund, for the Establislunent of One
Public Seminary for Learning in this Province and repmt the same to the
House." 42
Taxes already levied for the benefit of the county schools were the following:
"twenty shillings per Poll on Irish servants being Papists, and on Negroes; the
Duty of six pence per barrel on tar and twelve pence on pitch; and twelve pence
on Port." The Committee recommended two more- one on feny licenses and
another one penny per gall<?n on all rum and wine. They also included the annual
income received by King William's School from the bank stock bought with
Calvett's bequest, ground rents on lots in Annapolis, and what could be realized
from the sale of the Dorchester fmm. They thought that the total amount would
"be sufficient to defray the Annual Expense of a College." In addition, they
calculated what the sale of county school property would bring. But they did not
suggest selling the King William's schoolhouse, which "yonr Committee apprehend ... may be converted to some Public Use." 43
This last remark has caused some speculation. One historian has called it "an
innuendo doubtless full of significance." 44 This may be so. But on the face of it,
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
it sounds more like a redundancy than an innuendo. The schoolhouse, from its
completion in 1701, had known public use- by the Council, the Records
Office, the Provincial Library, the church, the clubs.
In a final vote on 28 May 1754 a majority of one in the lower house voted
not to refer the bill "For the Erection of One Public Seminary for Learning within
this Province" for consideration in the next Assembly. Eighteen members from
the Eastern Shore counties voted for consideration; eighteen men from the
Western Shore counties voted against consideration in the next session. The
deciding vote was cast against by the Speaker, Philip Hammond, from Anne
Arundel County. The two Annapolis delegates present, Walter Dulany and
Alexander Hamilton, voted against, as did three delegates from Anne Arundel
County. Four delegates from Kent County voted for; the Talbot delegation split.45
All this suggests that the bill of 1754 favored an Eastern Shore location -in all
probability Chestertown, not Oxford- rather than Annapolis, where King
William's School would have been developed into the Seminary. 1f this was the
case, the innuendo may have been a recommendation that the King William's
schoolhouse, like the county schools, should be sacrificed for the development
of one seminary. The trustees of the county schools, like those of King William's
School, had been appointed in perpetual succession 46 Undoubtedly, they wanted
equable representation on the governing board of the new seminary, along with
the trustees of King William's School. An acceptable governance of the one
seminary obviously had not been worked out. Furthermore, the bill proposed in
1754 did not carry out the intention of the two earlier acts for the encouragement
of learning, both of which were committed to the establishment of county
schools.
In May 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore that the session just
concluded had not been a propitious time to introduce "the scheme your Lordship
was pleased to intimate for compleating the Governour's House." It had indeed
been another unproductive session, producing no constructive legislation for
defense or education. The lower house had again proposed the unthinkable, that
the tax on ordinaries be diverted from the proprietor's income to the support of
troops.47
Yet, when sympathetic to a cause, the Assembly could find solutions. News
came in July 1754 that young Lt. Col. George Washington (age 22) and his
Virginia militia had surrendered to the French and their Indian allies. Governor
Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore, "Govemour Dinwiddie renewed his solicitation
for our assistance .... By this I was induced to meet our Assembly on the 16th
Instant & prevailed them so far as to send up a bill for supporting the Virginians
with 6000 pounds." 48
The lower house raised a significant portion of this amount by placing a surtax
on ordinaries. Their attempts to attach the base tax on ordinaries, which the
proprietor claimed as his own, had failed in the past. Thus they considered the
�FLETCHER
27
passage of the surtax a signal success, for they had been led to believe that the
proprietor considered not only the base tax on ordinaries, but any tax on
ordinaries as a source of revenue, his peculiar preserve. Their success proved to
be a step in the right direction toward financing a college.
During the visit of a victorious Washington to Annapolis thirty years later,
the lower house chartered St. John's College, having chartered Washington
College in Chestertown two years before. Included in the St. John's charter was
a tax on Western Shore ordinaries to provide revenue for its support.
��Three:
King William's School
Survives the Revolution
King William's School in Annapolis, where many generations of boys quietly
received an education in the eighteenth century, labored under inescapable
administrative, financial, and political problems. It was govemed by trustees
appointed in unbroken succession from its founding in 1696 until 1786, when
they legally changed its name to Annapolis SchooL They appointed masters and
"ushers" (assistants), and directed disciplinmy action until 1789, when Annapolis School became St. John's College. Unfortunately the school's journal of
1
proceedings and book of accounts have not been found. However, the Proceed~
ings of the General Assembly record what legislative action was taken in behalf
of the school, and the published letters of Governor Horatio Sharpe and a few
Gazette notices add commentary. Together, these records document the continuous operation of the school until St. John's College opened.
Nineteenth-century histories of King William's School are not continuous
nmTatives 2 Yet they satisfied those who held the popular view that St. John's
was founded as King William's School in 1696 until several mid-twentieth-cen-
tury historians, 3 troubled by gaps in these early histories, doubted its continuity
and overlooked the role its trustees played in establishing St. John's.
This, the last of three articles on King William's School, covers the years
between 1755 and 1786, when five college bills were introduced in the Assembly
during the brief peaceful interludes between French and Indian frontier wars,
and following the repeal of the Stamp arid Townshend Acts before the American
Revolution. This article relates a history of continuous operation during years
when King William's trustees dreamed of developing their school into a college.
Seven bills to found a college in Maryland were written before the Revolution. The first of these, ordered by the Assembly in 1750, was never introduced
in that body, perhaps because it was grandiose in some of its recommendations.
The next college bill (1754), like that of 1750, proposed that county schools be
confiscated, an unpopular notion. Also it was unclear about whether the one
college (the bill of 1750 had proposed two colleges) was to be located on the
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Eastern or Western Shore, thus pleasing neither shore. It did not pass the lower
house. A third bill (5 May 1761) failed in the lower house; a fourth (6 May 1761)
and a fifth (1763) were killed in the upper house. The sixth and seventh (1771,
1773) were riders on money bills. The upper house killed the sixth but approved
the seventh, which" Govemor Eden sighed into law on 21 December 1773,
affixing the "Great Seal with wax appendant." 4
All bills written to estaplish a Maryland college before the Revolution
provided for the incorporation of King William's School into a new college
entity, a fact lending credence to the sign on the St. John's Annapolis campus
today, "St. John's College, Founded as King William's School in 1696." Each
time a college bill was introduced in the Assembly, King William's board would
strengthen its financial situation in order to employ another usher or hire a more
able master, thereby making the school a firmer foundation for the college. For
example, in 1750, when the first college bill was being discussed, the board
gained permission to sell its unproductive real estate and to reinvest on good
security to bring in annual interest.
When the first college bill was proposed, Rev. Alexander Malcolm,5 a gifted
mathematician and musician, was Rector of St. Anne's (1749-1755). He was a
teacher before he carne to Annapolis and after he left. In all probability he taught
at King William's School and lived in the schoolhouse quarters where some of
the other rectors had lived after 1732 (between 1755 and 1759, while saving
money to build a rectory, St. Anne's had no rector, employing a vicar who was
Jess expensive). If Malcolm was indeed master of King William's School, he was
the last master before the Revolution who was also Rector of St. Anne's. The
college bill of 1750 in fact had intimated that one man should not be both rector
of a parish and a schoolmaster, stating that the head of neither of the proposed
colleges shall "officiate in any church living in the province."
After 1755 King William's had a succession oflayteachers. No longer sharing
a teacher-priest with St. Anne's after Malcolm left, King William's for a few
years may have pooled resources with Anne Arundel County School to support
a master and an usher in the King William's schoolhouse. 6 In 1755 John
Wilmot, former master of Anne Arundel School but now master at King
William's, advettised for students, calling.the school by the long-accepted name
"Free School," and by a name not formerly used, "Public School." 7 Wilmot
taught arithmetic, geometry, gravity, surveying, navigation, and Italian (or
double-entry) bookkeeping.' His assistant, William Clajon, taught the Latin,
Greek, and French languages. 9
In 1757 Ciajon advertised that he was offering to teach a new subject, English
grammar, saying, 10
The Subscriber having by a great Application acquired a reasonable Knowledge of the ENGLISH GRAMMAR, he proposes to Teach the same at the
�31
FLETCHER
FREE SCHOOL of Annapolis. Those Parents who cannot afford their Children spending several years in the learning of Greek and Latin, may by this
Proposal procure to them the only Benefit commonly expected from these
Languages, THE LEARNING OF THEIR OWN. Besides, their Daughters
can as easily enjoy the same Advantage. As he does not take upon himself to
teach English Pronunciation (which will be taught as usual by Mr. Wilmot)
he hopes no judicious Person will make any Objection to his being a Foreigner;
and that, as his Proposal i.s of a self-evident Advantage to Youth, he will meet
with good Encouragement. His terms are very moderate, being only Thirty
Shillings, additional to what is allowed to Mr. Wilmot.
William Clajon
N.B. This will make no Alteration to the Price given me for Teaching French,
Latin and Greek. 11
Even more interesting than that a foreigner would teach English grammar
was his invitation to daughters to study at King William's School. Clajon enjoyed
some success: his role at the Free School expanded while that of Wilmot became
the "subject offalse mmors." 12 By 1759 Wilmot had opened a school at the head
of South River, the same year Isaac Dakein began his nine years ( 1759-1768) as
King William's schoolmaster.
The decade of the sixties in the eighteenth-centmy colonies was turbulent,
like the sixties of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and like them changed
America. Taxes were the issues in the 1760s- independence became the issue
later. Matyland's proprietor refused to allow the large revenue from ordinary
licenses to be appropriated by the lower house to finance the French and Indian
wars or to go toward the establishment of a college. He claimed it as personal
income. Proprietor and king alike exacted taxes on trade, and Marylanders
increasingly realized that such levies prevented the growth of h·ade. Until the
Stamp and Townshend Acts, these taxes exceeded those paid by two neighboring
colonies, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Matyland 's sluggish economy gave the
majority country party in the lower house reason to challenge the prerogatives
claimed by the proprietary. Governor Sharpe's inability to force the lower house
to appropriate revenue for defense prompted the proprietary to write Sharpe that
"Scarce any one End of Government is answered." 13 Sharpe found some solace
in the bond of freemasonry, which he, the proprietor, and his "enemies" in the
lower house respected. 14
A third college bill, introduced on 5 May 1761, unfortunately affronted both
the proprietary and country parties. It offended the proprietary by recommending
that the unfinished governor's mansion be renovated as the college building, and
by appropriating the fees from ordinary licenses to support the college. On the
other hand, it offended the country pmty by again proposing that county school
property be confiscated to pay for the renovation of the mansion as a college
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
building. Many parents in the counties wanted to retain their local schools. In
1763 two new county schools were established in Frederick and Worcester
counties. The counties were also offended by the proposal that the present
trustees of King William's School be the total governing body, thus abolishing
their county school boards. On a final vote the entire bill lost, seventeen votes to
fifteen. 15
True friends of a college, ,however, did not accept defeat. The following day
(6 May 1761), Charles CaiTo II the Banister, a trustee of King William's School,
introduced a fourth college bill. Unlike its predecessor, it did not threaten county
schools. Instead, it recommended a lottery to raise money to renovate the
governor's mansion as a college building; and it further provided that "one
representative of each county ... be named a Visitor with those at present of
King William's School," thus giving the country party a share in the governance
of the college while preserving the board of King William's. Like the preceding
bill, Canoll's recommended that revenue from ordinary licenses support the
college. It received a resounding affirmative vote, twenty to twelve, in the lower
house. 16 Even George Steuart, a pror)rietary man representing Annapolis, voted
for it though it proposed appropriating the revenue from ordinary licenses.
Sharpe defended Steuart's defection, saying that had Steumt not voted as he did
"his Constituents ... should have rejected him at the next election." 17 Although
some members of the upper house also wanted a Maryland college, they knew
that Lord Baltimore would not allow such "a strip of his right" and therefore
killed the fourth bill.'"
Clearly Sharpe was impressed by the size of the vote for founding a college.
Believing that an excellent school was needed in Annapolis, he sought support
from private benefactors. He wrote the executor of Benedict Calvert's estate in
August 1763 that a Mr. Hunt had power of attorney from Visitors of the Free
School in Annapolis "to receive what money you shall be pleased to pay him for
the use of the said School":
Nothing remains for me but in the name of the Visitors to retum you thanks
for what you have done and intend to do for the Advancement of the School,
to which I have for my part engaged to contribute Ten pounds a year during
my Residence here as Governor.... it is i·eally to be lamented that while such
great things are done for the Support of Colleges and Academies in the
neighbouring Colonies there is not in this [province] even one good Grammar
School. I should be glad if either by Donations or some other method the Fund
or annual Income of our School in this City could be augmented so as to enable
us to give such a salary to a Master & Usher as would encourage good and
able men to acl in those capacities. 19
At the same time these efforts were being made to develop King William's,
efforts continued to establish a Maryland college. In 1763 the fifth college bill
�FLETCHER
33
was introduced by a lower house committee headed by James Tilghman and
composed of members of both parties. Despite the bipartisanship, it proved
another unacceptable bill. It, too, recommended that license revenue from
ordinaries be appropriated to college use. Worse, it proposed the use of an even
more contested revenue- three thousand pounds from the balance in the Loan
Office- to renovate the govemor's mansion. The upper house said the balance
should be used to discharge the debt owed to veterans of the French and Indian
wars. Therefore, although it wanted to establish a college, it referred the bill "to
a distant day for mature consideration." 20
Alarmed by the growing sentiment in the Council for a college, Sharpe
warned the proprietary "that there is a majority even in the upper house that think
the Ordynary Lycence Fines could not be applied to a better purpose [than to
build a college]," and urged, "if you see it in a light at all different from what it
has hitherto appeared to you ... send further instructions." 21 Unfortunately the
proprietor had not changed his mind.
As late as February 1765 Frederick, Lord Baltimore, adamantly refused to
give up the "privilege of Granting and Regulating Ordinaries," which he called
the "very essence of my Prerogative." 22 And Sha1pe himself expressed reservations about giving away the unfinished governor's mansion for a college. He
wrote, "it would really be a pity to give it entirely up, especially as I think it very
probable that the Assembly will some time or other refuse to pay a Governor's
Rent for him & alledge that it was for many years the Custom here & is still in
Pennsylvania for the Proprietary to accomodate his Lieutenant-Governor with a
Mansi on." 23
In 1764 an epidemic of smallpox gave Sharpe an excuse for not calling the
unco-operative Assembly to its regular session. But in his wisdom, at its request,
he called a special session to elect delegates to a congress in Boston to protest
the Stamp Act Eight other colonies sent delegates, But the governor of Virginia
refused even to call a meeting of the burgesses to elect delegates, On 30 May
1765 Annapolis was "thunder struck" by the arrival of Captain Joseph Richardson on the ship Pitt bearing news that the king had signed the Stamp Act on the
twenty-second of March. 24
A new generation of leaders emerged in the sixties composed of men who
had enjoyed a liberal education, By far the largest number had either graduated
from, or studied at, the College of Philadelphia- at least thirteen from the
college and many more from its academy. 25 In 1761 St. Anne's inducted its first
native-born priest, Rev. Samuel Keene, a 1759 graduate of the College of
Philadelphia, who served as rector until 1767, A year later Rev, William
Edmiston, another 1759 graduate of the College of Philadelphia, replaced the
scandalous Bennet Allen, a favorite of Lord Baltimore, as St. Anne's rector.
Edmiston stayed until 1770, Vestries in Virginia often called College of Philadelphia graduates before Maryland vestries could persuade Lord Baltimore to
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appoint them. 26 Three of this new generation were elected to the lower house,
where they relentlessly challenged prerogatives claimed by the proprietor:
Thomas Johnson, who studied law in Annapolis with Stephen Bordley, was
elected in 1762: Samuel Chase, educated by his father who was a graduate of St.
John's College, Cambridge University, was elected in 1764; and William Paca,
who graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1759, was elected in 1767.
A fourth, Charles Carroll of C;mollton, who was educated at St. Orner's, France,
and at the Middle Temple, London, was barred from elective office because he
was a Catholic but joined them in their political demonstrations. All four men
belonged to the Sons of Liberty, a group formed in Boston to protest the Stamp
Act.
Lord Baltimore's favorite revenue source became a casualty of the storm
raised by that measure. Paca, Chase, Johnson, and Canoll led "out-of-doors"
protests that upset Daniel Dulany of the Council, a constitutional lawyer. He
thought action through legislative channels more proper. With three other
members of the Council who favored establishment of a college- Francis
Jenckins Henry, Henry Hooper, and Charles Goldsborough- Dulany prepared
and signed a brief addressed to Lord Baltimore that challenged the proprietor's
right to exact fees from keepers of inns and ordinaries. It said that the monarch
who had given him his charter had no such right under common law. Between
the expiration and the renewal of a statute to regulate ordinalies, they had often
operated under common law (1766 was between statutes). Therefore, the propri·
etor could not collect license fees until the Assembly passed the necessary
statute. 27 Convinced by this argument, or more likely by the force of events, Lmd
Baltimore relinquished his claim to revenue from this source. 28 The lower house
was then free to appropriate it to some provincial use.
If those who wanted a college in Maryland were heartened by this victory,
they were soon disappointed. The lower house did not then appropriate the
revenue to establish a college but used it for general purposes instead, leading
some men to think that members of the lower house were more interested in
testing the prerogatives of Lord Baltimore than in founding a college.
At the end of the sixties local school boards throughout the province tried to
improve existing schools. Negotiations led to the merger of some county schools,
a strategy that aimed to produce larger incomes and attract better teachers. In the
seventies three mergers were accomplished: Somerset and Worcester County
Schools into Eden Academy (1770); St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's
County Schools into Charlotte Hall (1774); and Calvert County School into
Lower Marlborough Academy (1778). 29
In 1766 King William's trustees advertised for "An usher capable of teaching
the English language, Writing, Surveying and Arithmetick," 30 while searching
for a person to replace Isaac Dakein, whom they had fired 31 Daniel Dulany (his
brother Walter was a trustee of King William's, and both brothers had sons of
�FLETCHER
35
school age) talked with a Mr. Davidson, hoping he might "be got for the
Free-School of Annapolis," and that "a subscription [might] be obtained that
would give him a reasonable support." He also mentioned a Virginia clergyman,
saying, "I am very much induced to think that all who have sons to educate here
have great interest in his settling in Mmyland." 32 This was Rev. Jonathan
Boucher, who was then operating a school in Virginia and who would later
become Rector of St. An!le's (1771) and conduct a small school in Annapolis.
But neither he nor DavidSon became master of King William's School.
It was clear that the school needed more income to attract a good master. So
after many years the trustees sold a twenty-year lease on Kentish House in
Annapolis. 33 And on 6 May 1769 Horatio Sharpe, Benedict Calvert, Charles
Carroll, Walter Dulany, John Ridout, Thomas Johnson, and Nicholas Maccubbin,
"Rector, Governors, Trustees and Visitors of the Free School of Annapolis called
King William's School," signed a deed of sale conveying their farm called
"Surveyor's Forest" in Dorchester County to Andrew Skinner Ennalls. 34
No record reveals who followed Isaac Dakein as Master of King William's
School. But many Annapolis schoolmasters were advertising for students in the
Gazette. Among them, Thomas Ball held classes at the Free School, where in
September 1769 he lost five textbooks. 35 He may have been master.
Aware of the repeated efforts to found a college, Governor Robert Eden, who
had replaced Governor Sharpe in 1769, told the Assembly that year that he
wanted "a well founded Provision for a more liberal institution of Youths to be
established." 36 Two years later the lower house approved a means to finance
one. Since no new college laws were introduced, one may presume that the
general provisions of Carroll's bill of 6 May 1761 prevailed. They were the
following: one college, reconstruction of the governor's mansion in Annapolis
as a college building, dissolution of King William's School and transfer of its
funds upon the opening of a college, and a college governing board composed
of the "present" King William's School trustees plus one representative from
each county.
The sixth attempt to finance a college (1771) appeared in the last paragraph
of "an Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit." It appropriated $42,666.67 to be
accumulated from interest on bills of credit to be issued, the money to be locked
as received in iron chests. This appropriation was approved in the lower house.
But the upper house, in evident pique because it had not been consulted
beforehand, killed the entire bill. It said that if the upper house was not allowed
any say in the disposal of money got from the issue of bills of credit, the lower
house might also exclude it "from considering what system of Instruction and
Enforcement of Discipline would be most proper." 37 Two years later, however,
it voted affirmatively for the same bill it had rejected in 1771. On 21 December
1773, Govemor Eden affixed his signature and the "Great Seal with wax
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appendant" upon "An Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit." 38 The sanguine
expected a Maryland college to be founded within a few years.
Again the trustees of King William's readied themselves to play a full role
in the governance of the anticipated Annapolis college. Their Register, John
Duckett, advertised for a master, an usher, and a scribe, their appointments to be
effective April 1774. The master was offered "an annual salary of fifty-five
pounds sterling ce1iain and five pounds currency to be paid by each scholar in
the latin school"; the usher "thirty pounds sterling cettain and two pounds
cunency paid by each scholar"; and "a scribe who can teach English, writing
and aritlunetick, six pounds sterling with every advantage alising from the
scholars he instructs and libe1ty to make his own bargain with their parents." In
addition, the master was promised a comfortable apartment in the schoolhouse. 39
A master was soon appointed, but the school still advertised for an usher and
a sc1ibe in April, indirectly reminding applicants that according to Maryland law
only members of the Church of England were "properly qualified." (A Somerset
county advertisement explicitly stated this requirement. 40 ) Since many of the
competent schoolmasters in America were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Maryland.
schools suffered because of this prejudicial law. (After the Revolution, John
McDowell, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and a graduate of the College of Philadelphia, would be appointed the first president of St. John's.)
Throughout 1773 the Assembly kept a jealous eye on the King William's
trustees, even though the school was supported by private contributions and an
endowment. It enacted a curious bill voiding any gift that would enlarge the
school's annual income beyond £200. The "Act of 1696" had allowed £120 for
support of a master, an usher and a scribe; the Assembly in 1773 recognized that
now much more income was needed, but thought there was a limit. Perhaps it
sensed that the trustees were overambitious to govern the hoped-for college and
felt it necessary to curb the trustees' efforts. On the other hand, this act strengthened the role Annapolitan trustees could play in the management of King
William's: it empowered seven of them to act if prior notice of meetings was
given to those who resided in Annapolis and to any others temporarily there at
meeting time. 41
In October 1773 William Eddis wrote a friend in England that the Assembly
had "endowed and founded a college for the education of youth in every liberal
and useful branch of science ... to be conducted under excellent regulations."
The next October he wrote that the brig Peggy Stewart had been burned with all
its cargo of tea in the Annapolis harbor. In September 1775 he was "almmed by
the beating of drums and a proclamation for the inhabitants to assemble at the
Libe1ty Tree" and resolved to compel all Loyalists to quit the city. No such
resolve was promulgated but by the fall of 1776 he and Governor Eden had left
Mmyland.42 Two months earlier the Free School building had become a military
hospital. 43
�FLETCHER
37
After independence, the General Assembly continued to control Maryland
schools. The Constitution of 1776 required all men in positions of public trust,
including school trustees, to take an oath of allegiance to the new state, an oath
many refused to take. As a result the King William's board and many county
boards were decimated. To reconstitute the King William's board, the Assembly
in 1778 declared that "from the absence of some, disqualification and resignation
of others ... it would be )egal for three tmstees [of King William's School] to
meet together, consult, direct and manage the affairs of the said school and
execute the several powers and authority ... as the whole of them together."
These three trustees were instructed to meet before 15 July 1778, to elect the
number of visitors required by charter and to take the oath of fidelity to the state.44
Four of the trustees who had signed the deed of sale for Surveyor's Forest in
1769 had taken the oath: Charles Carroll the Barrister, Thomas Johnson, Nicholas
Maccubbin, and John Ridout. At least three of them in all likelihood appointed
the new members necessary to reconstitute the board as instructed by the
Assembly.
Within two years hopes for a college were again dashed. In 1780 the state
confiscated all money· accumulated in the locked iron chests as directed by "An
Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit" (1773) to pay for "a just war." 45 The
Assembly promised that the $42,666.67 intended for the establishment of a
college would be replaced as soon as possible after the return of peace. In the
same year legislators passed a law to regulate ordinalies, effective for seven
years, empowering the state to collect licen~e fees and impose fines for breach
of law. 46 (A restatement of this law in 1784 would give tllis revenue by charter
to St. John's forever.)
Finally, in 1782, the General Assembly chartered a Maryland college. But it
was on the Eastern Shore. Under the mastership of Rev. William Smith, former
provost of the College of Philadelphia, the Kent County Free School had
attracted over one hundred students. Its board (with Smith as chairman) had
collected subscriptions worth £5,992. On the strength of this success, it had
petitioned the Assembly to charter the school as a college, to be called "Washington College." According to the charter, one trustee was to be elected from
each group of subscribers who together pledged £500; later the St. John's charter
included a like plan, except that groups pledging £I ,000 selected trustees.
The Washington College charter proposed that a Western Shore college
should also be founded to form, with Washington, one state university. 47 Accord-
ingly in 1783 Governor Paca asked the General Assembly to give special
attention as soon as peace was established to the support of "Religion and
Learning." 48 After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in January 1784 the King
William's trustees, and others, anticipated establishment of a Western Shore
college. Undoubtedly they hoped that it would be located in Annapolis. In August
1784 the King William's trustees announced that the new master, Rev. Ralph
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 4)The Reverend William Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia,
first president of Washington College, and president protem. of St. John's at its
opening. Engraved by John Sartain in t880, from the original portrait by Gilbert
Stuart, painted 1800. (Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.)
Higginbotham, "will open a school for the education of young gentlemen in the
Greek and Latin languages, preparatory to their entering college." 49 On 3
December 1784 a group met in Annapolis to promote a Western Shore college
and choose six subscription agents, three clergy and three laymen, to prepare a
bill for founding a college. This bill would be the college charter.
Although many legislators were ready to found a Westem Shore college as
part of a University of Maryland, it was necessary to persuade them to fund it.
The three clerical subscription agents who framed the St. John's charter (Patrick
Allison and John Carroll besides Smith) wrote as a provision that the college
would receive £1,750 annually from the state. They gave secondary importance
to acceptance of the governor's mansion offered by the state, should the college
settle in Annapolis. Since some delegates wanted the college located in their
home districts, the agents may have thought it politic- as well as just- to
postpone the choice of location until the number of trustees required to constitute
a board was elected from the Western Shore county subscription lists. They did
�39
FLETCHER
provide that the choice of a college site should be the first order of business once
a duly constituted board was seated. If the board chose Annapolis, it could then
accept the mansion as a college building. The charter set a deadline of 1 June
1785 for the election of thirteen trustees who were to meet and decide upon a
location of the college by l August of that year.
The charter establishing St. John's College was entitled "An Act for founding
a College on the Western :'Shore of this state, and constituting the same, together
with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name
of the University ofMaryland." It passed the House of Delegates on 30 December
1784. Paragraph 22 amended the act for licensing ordinaries passed in March
1780, stating that "the money hereafter collected from ordinary licenses on the
Western Shore (with the exception of the city of Annapolis and Baltimore), shall
... be subject to the orders of the visitors and governors of St. John's College."
This revenue, with that from several other taxes, would compose the £1,750
yearly income the charter promised.
Despite such care not to offend the counties and Baltimore, opposition
developed as soon as the appropriation for St. John's became known and a similar
but lesser one (£ 1,250) was committed to Washington College in the sarue
session. A "Planter" complained in the Maryland Gazette that the "state is
burthened with two thousand five hundred pounds per year for ever for the
support of two colleges, where gentlemen's children are to be educated at the
public expence." An able rebuttal argued that in 1773 "An Act for the Emission
of Bills of Credit" had appropriated $42,666.67 or £4,000, for the establishment
5°
of a seminary but that "the calamaties of war rendered it necessary to unlock the
chest, but with a solemn pledge ... that the money should be replaced as soon
as possible and applied for a seminary of learning." The writer had carefully
calculated that if that money had been invested, it would by 1785 have yielded
at least £3,000 a year.
Thus it appears ... that the college laws are not any new burden on the
people, but only a wise and easy provision for the payment of interest on an
old debt ... and when every other Debt was to be funded and provision made
for the payment of interest till the capital on it be discharged it would be very
unjust that the Debt for the rising generation, our own children and posterity,
though one of the oldest, and contracted at the commencement of the war,
should alone remain neglected ... and ... the taxes imposed are not any
except on those who choose to pay them. 5 1
It took longer than expected to collect subscription lists totaling £1 ,000 each,
and to elect the thirteen trustees. So the 1 August deadline passed without the
choice of a college site. Contingency plans offered by the charter for selecting a
site were not adopted but a bit of advice was that "In the meantime the said agents
shall with all diligence increase the number of subscriptions."
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In November the agents asked the Assembly to give them until March 1786
to elect the requisite trustees and begged it to allow the following alterations in
the charter provisions for setting up a working board: that seven (instead of
thirteen) trustees elected by I March 1786, plus four agents, be allowed to choose
a college site, if seven of these eleven agreed on a place; and that nine trustees
elected by 1 March 1786 be empowered to conduct college business. The
Assembly approved these altyrations. 52
Like other subsCiibers King William's was allowed one trustee of its choice
for each £1,000 it pledged to St. John's. Unlike other subscribers it did not make
its pledge to the subscription agents, but waited until it could negotiate the terms
of its conveyance with a St. John's board, as one corporation to another. And
before making its pledge, it would ask the St. John's board to grant certain
concessions.
On 28 February 1786, in the presence of five agents, nine men elected by
subscribers were seated as trustees of a St. John's College board. By a cha1ter
amendment, nine were enough to conduct business. But instead of voting as a
first order of business on a college site, they considered a "Proposition laid before
the Visitors and Governors by the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis School [King
William's School] in pursuance of 'An Act of Assembly for Consolidating the
funds of King William's School with the funds of St. John's College."' A
committee representing King William's School requested that the "two trustees
they were entitled to elect by virtue of the two thousand pounds they were
prepared to pledge immediately, be sworn in as visitors on the St. John's board
in time to vote on the location of the college." The committee requested also that
"until the college shall be compleated," the school trustees might withhold the
residue of their funds (more than £1,000) to maintain their school, now called
the Annapolis School. "But they thought that whenever they subscribed it, they
should be entitled to the election of another trustee." TI1e St. John's board granted
the King William's board both these requests, but refused a request that would
allow an Annapolitan donating £1 ,000 to fill any St. John's board vacancy that
might occur in the future. 53 Awaiting decision from King William's on these
terms, the St. John's board adjoumecl until] March.
King William's and St. John's could profit from each other's assets. King
William's had long wanted to grow into a college, and St. John's, like all other
early American colleges, realized that it had to be founded upon a grammar
school. But it was prudent for King William's, obliged as it was to conduct a
school for Annapolis youths, to require some indication that the college would
settle in Annapolis before parting with its prope11y. The college, on the other
hand, had left the question oflocation undecided until the subscribers had elected
a sufficient number of trustees to constitute a board. The state, on its part, had
offered four acres of ground on which the unfinished governor's mansion stood,
if the college settled in Annapolis. There was a least one other town contending
�FLETCHER
41
for the college, Upper Marlborough, situated near the center of the Westem
Shore, a trading market for tobacco where occasional theatricals and fall and
spring races were held. But in 1786 the town had neither church nor county
school. King William's board had £2,000 in cash, which, if subscribed, would
entitle it to elect two trustees to join the nine already seated on the St. John's
board. Two of these, John Claggett and William Beanes from Prince George's
County, might be expect\'d to vote for Upper Marlborough. The other sevenWilliam West, Nicholas Canoll, John H. Stone, Richard Ridgeley, Thomas
Stone, Samuel Chase, and John Thomas- were likely to vote for Annapolis.
The King William's board apparently tested St. John's when it insisted that
its two trustees be seated before the college site was voted upon. Such a
postponement suggests a breach of the charter- unless in fact a merger was
contemplated. King William's had fmfeited its chance to seat its appointees with
the first nine trustees by not making its pledge to the subscription agents, who
would have conducted an election for the two trustees in time to seat them with
the other nine. Five of the nine trustees had to agree to the postponement, or
charter variance, to pass it. If at least five voted aye, then the King William's
board could anticipate that these five plus its two would ensure a decisive vote
for Annapolis. (Later balloting revealed that actually seven of the original nine
trustees favored Annapolis.) The St. John's board acceded to King William's
request that it be seated before voting on a site, and King William's dropped its
request that future vacancies on the St. John's board be filled with Annapolitans.
King William's was mainly concerned that the college settle in Annapolis. It
expressed no reservations about the way the St. John's board was constituted:
both St. John's and King William's boards appointed new members in "perpetual
succession." And the two King William's appointees who joined the original nine
St. John's tmstees could expect to participate in the choice of thirteen other
tmstees to complete a board of twenty-four.
Further protection of King William's interest was included in the "Act of
Consolidation" of 2 March 1786. It proposed a split of the King William's
corporation into two pmts: one part to become St. John's College on 1 March
1786, the other part to operate the Annapolis School until the college opened. If
the terms under which King William's conveyed its funds and property to St.
John's College should be violated, then the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis
School could sue to retrieve the funds and property, and the governor and council
of Maryland were instructed to reconstitute the King William's board, which
would resume its trust "to fulfill the intentions of the founders and benefactors
of the said school, in advancing the interests of piety and leaming." 54
The merger greatly pleased Rev. William Smith, the most energetic of the
subscription agents. Smith had canvassed for subscribers during January and
February, had taken an active part in King William 's-St. John's negotiations, and
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
viewed the cuhnination of his mission as reason for triumph and relief. He wrote
on 5 March:
I have been but two Nights in my own House for these 4 weeks past, & am
just returned from a Journey of at least 300 miles, which became necessary in
the final establishment of our Colleges, & opening the Western Shore one
(called St. John's) which is QOW fixed at Annapolis, & everyThing on my Part
as an agent appointed by Law for founding & opening it, is now happily &
successfully finished, the Subscription being above 12000 pounds beside the
public Endowment of 1750 pounds per annum.55
Of the £12,000 that Smith mentions, King William's would contribute at least
one fourth. Moreover, the college had no life until the two corporations merged;
no business was conducted until the St. John's board had accepted the terms
submitted by the King William's board and those contained in the "Act of
Consolidation." Of the two institutions, King William's was the viable one in
1786, the flourishing preparatory school ready to grow into a college. Furthermore, it was imbued with an almost century-old determination to survive. By
necessity and by design, St. John's College built upon King William's School.
�Four:
1784: The Year St. John's College
Was Named
A Western Shore college was chartered by the Maryland General Assembly in
late December 1784 and given the name St. John's College. Contemporary
records do not reveal how and why the name was chosen.
If the Col1ege was named for a saint there are three strong contenders. First,
there is St. John Chrysostom. In 1807 he was a favorite of two of the College's
early graduates, John Shaw and Francis Scott Key (class of 1796), who were
young poets with literary ambitions. Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed" Bishop
of Constantinople, was like a muse to John Shaw. "By the blessing of St.
Chrysostom," he wrote Francis Scott Key on 24 January 1807, "as I am in great
haste, and in no less need for our Saint's assistance, I hope you have not forgotten
our plans, but will soon be ready in the litany, 0 Sancte Chrysostome! ora pro
nobis. I have examined the college library and find many valuable books in it.
There is an edition of Chrysostom in twelve volumes, three of which are
wanting .... " 1
After 1870 John the Evangelist was generally accepted as the favored saint.
Assuming this in a dedication speech at the opening of Woodward Hall on 18
June 1900, John Wirt Randall commented that the Evangelist's name was
particularly appropriate for an educational institution because his was a name
"suggestive more than that of the other apostles of the relation between a scholar
and a teacher." 2 St. John's College at Cambridge University was indeed named
for the Evangelist. Randall knew this and also that a college historian of the 1870s
had claimed that certain unnamed 1784 incorporators had attended St. John's
College, Cambridge. For this reason, it was believed, the Annapolis college had
been named "St. John's" after the Cambridge college. 3
In 1894 Bernard Steiner introduced another theory about the origin of the
College's name. He wrote: "Other authorities say the name [St. John's] was given
in compliment to the Masonic fraternity then very strong in Annapolis." 4 It is
true that the seal of St. John's College, as well as that of Washington College,
founded in 1782, bears a Masonic symbol. It is also true that the old Masonic
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
lodge of Annapolis, warranted by the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts
in 1750, was a St. John's lodge. It was a "modem," i.e., descended from the Grand
Lodge of England (founded 1717). Other Maryland lodges of the colonial period
were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and were "ancients," or
Ancient York Masons. It was customary to call all local lodges that were
warranted by Grand Lodges by the generic name, St. John's lodges 5
But if the College was nap1ed in compliment to a "masonic fratenrity then
very strong in Annapolis," as Steiner suggested, a third saint, John the Baptist,
could have been the one honored in the naming of the College. The Masons
honored two St. Johns, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.
Steiner's statement is also unclear in its reference to an active Masonic
fraternity because the old Annapolis St. John's Lodge was moribund after 1764. 6
Yet many Masons visited Annapolis in the revolutionary period. They came from
the counties of Maryland and other states of the Confederation to attend the
Continental Congress, the General Assembly, and the General Courts. They
included officers in the Maryland Line7 and other distinguished military figures.
Moreover, throughout the state new "ancient" lodges were being wananted
under the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge; and members of "modern" lodges who
wished to enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry were being "healed."
Two Masons in Kent County were active in promoting Ancient York Masonry
in Maryland during the 1780s: they were Rev. William Smith and Peregrine
Leatherbury, who had been among the incorporators of Washington College in
1782.8 The year before, Smith, the Grand Secretary of the Pennsylvania Grand
Lodge, had digested and abridged an Ahiman Rezon, or book of Masonic
constitutions, for the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge. Published in 1783, it was a
guide to Masons on moral conduct and discretion, and laid out an orderly
procedure to be followed at lodge meetings. Repeatedly, it designated the two
St. Johns' days, that of the Baptist on June 24 and of the Evangelist on December
27, for special business and festive occasions. 9 But it offers no inforination about
the Masonic symbols used in Europe and America on official seals like those of
Washington and St. John's colleges.
Two books on European Masonry of the period, however, do offer examples
of Masonic symbols used as teaching devices. A famous old Russian Mason in
Tolstoy's War and Peace described one to Piene Bezuhov when he instructed
him in the mysteries of Masomy. The old man pictured a mount raised stone by
stone by succeeding generations, on which the temple of wisdom, or Solomon's
temple, was erected. 10 This description was an aid in identifying the device
adopted for the St. John's seal; a count of the layers of stones in the pile numbers
seven, the usual number of steps leading up to Solomon's temple and a number
corresponding to the seven Masonic virtues. On the St. John's seal a man
climbing aloft carries aT-square. 11
�FLETCHER
45
(Fig. 5) Seal of St. John's College adopted in 1793 to imprint the diplomas of the
College's first graduates.
(Fig. 6) Seal of Washington College adopted at its opening in 1782, showing three
stars symbolizing the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry. (Courtesy of
Washington College.)
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Another book about European Masonry of this period, Jacques Chailley 's The
Magic Flute: a Masonic Opera, 12 is replete with illustrations of Masonic devices.
Washington College adopted one that shows a shield hung from a column: three
stars on the shield symbolize the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry,
apprentice, fellow-craft, and master mason. Key-like tools hold garlands of roses
as a drapery above the column to celebrate the enthusiasm that brought about the
founding of the college. A picture in Chailley's book 13 identifies these tools as
miniature trowels used in Masonic rites to "seal" the mouths of initiates, i.e., to
remind them of the first Masonic virtue, discretion, or the keeping of secrets.
The date on the Washington College seal, 1782, commemorated the year
when that college was founded- a time when two well-established Masonic
lodges were flourishing in Kent County. 14 If the St. John's seal had been likewise
dated with the year when it was chartered, its seal might also constitute evidence
of a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis in 1784. But the St. John's seal is dated
1793, the year when the Board of Visitors and Governors ordered that a seal be
designed and executed to imprint diplomas for the College's first graduates. 15
Coincidentally, it also commemorated a significant date for Annapolis Masonry.
In 1793 the Amanda Lodge No. 12, an "ancient," was founded, creating a
brotherhood of Annapolis Masons to help lay the cornerstone of the new capitol
at Washington in November 1793. 16 The Masonic device on the St. John's seal
dated 1793, then, does not refer to a Masonicfratemity in Annapolis in the 1780s
and does not substantiate Steiner's theory.
Yet a Masonic enthusiasm was promoting education throughout Maryland in
the 1780s. In 1784 the imminent creation of a Western Shore college was greeted
with fervor by Freemason William Smith in his introduction to An Account of
Washington College. The preamble of the Charter of 1782 published therein
described an eventual state university comprised of a Western and Eastern Shore
college united under ''one supreme legislative and visitatorial jurisdiction."
Smith's uplifting and inspiring introduction was written in the spirit ofthe times:
... For however flattering it may be to consider the growth of these rising
states as tending to encrease the wealth and commerce of the world; they are
to be considered in another more serious view, as ordained to enlarge the
sphere of HUMANITY. In that view the great interest of civil LIBERTY, the
parent of every other social blessings, will not be forgotten. . . . We must
regard the great concems of religion and another world. We must attend to the
rising generation. The souls of our youth must be nursed up to the love of
LIBERTY and KNOWLEDGE; and their bosoms warmed with a sacred and
enlightened zeal for every thing that can bless or dignify the species .... 17
In the same spirit~ wishing "to attend to the rising generation" and to found
a university~ a group of gentlemen met in Annapolis to promote a Western
Shore college on 3 December 1784. They ordered
�FLETCHER
47
that the reverend John Carroll, W1lliam Smith D.O. and Patrick Allison, D.D.,
together with Richard Sprigg, John Steret and George Digges Esquires, be a
committee to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western
Shore, and to publish the same immediately, with a proper preamble for taking
in subscriptions . ...
Accordingly, by December 16 the text of "A Draught of a Proposed Act,
Submitted to Public Consideration, for Founding a College on the Western Shore
of This State, and for Constituting the Same, together with Washington College
on the Eastem Shore, into One University, by the Name of The UNIVERSITY
OF MARYLAND" was released to the public18
One subscription list was actually filled by December 16. Known as the
Annapolis list, it bore signatures of sixty-two subscribers who pledged a total of
£2703. Those who pledged were planters, legislators, state officials, a banacksman, a silversmith, a carpenter, a clergyman, a tavern-keeper, a barber, a sea
captain, and all the merchants of Annapolis.
The six men ordered "to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college
on the Western Shore" were to be known as "subscription agents." They were a
clergyman and a layman from each of the three major religious denominations
in Maryland, the Roman Catholic, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant Episcopal.
Of these men only William Smith was from an Eastern Shore county.
The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter of
1782 but added a new preamble and plan for electing members to the Board of
Visitors and Governors. Much else was left out because, as they explained, it
would merely repeat similar articles in the Charter of 1782. 19
A letter written by William Smith dated 16 January 1785, told how in early
December he had been called "in Conjunction with two Clergymen of other
Denominations ... to draft the University Law which we happily did with great
Unanimity." 20
While "happily" drafting the "Proposed Act," the subscription agents expanded paragraph 9 of the Charter of 1782- which read "youth of all religious
denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted ... according to their merit
... without requiring or enforcing any religious or civel test"~ by adding
"without urging their attendance upon any particular worship or service, other
than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of
their parents or guardians to attend." Apparently the authors of the text, which
finally became the Charter of 1784, intended that students should enjoy religious
liberty and that the college would nurture students in their own faith, for as John
Canoll said, it was "an intended stipulation that provision be made, from the
College funds, if necessary, to procure all of them opportunities to frequent their
particular forms of worship." 21
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
48
To this paragraph on civil liberty in the Draught, the Charter of 1784 added
an introductory clause for emphasis, saying that the college would be established
"upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles"- and made several
other changes as well. Where the Draught had read "upon the most liberal and
catholic plan," the Charter of 1784 omitted the word "catholic." 22
William Smith explained the necessity for omitting "and catholic." The word
"catholic," he wrote, "altho.ugh intelligible enough to many, yet it is not
approved by many others, on account of the vulgar application to one particular
church." 23 He continued to use it in his own letters, however, in its all-embracing
sense. When the Charter of 1784 was finally enacted, he proudly commented
that "Maryland has been among the last of the States in her Provisions for
Learning; but none of them can boast so noble a Foundation as her University
now is. " 24
In May 1783, eighteen months before the passage of the Charter of 1784,
William Paca and his Council sent a message to the General Assembly recommending that the legislature give special attention to two issues as soon as Peace
was firmly established: "Trade and Commerce" first, and then "Matters of so
high Concernment as Religion and Learning.''
For the latter they recommended "Public support for the Ministers of the
Gospel," which the Maryland Bill of Rights allowed, and, acknowledging the
strong public encouragement given Washington College as shown by the
Zeal of the Eastern Shore for the Advancement of Learning that of Sum of
five thousand pounds which the Act required ... has been nearly doubled in
less than One Year,
they trusted that
the General Assembly will think this College deserving of their further
Attention and favors, and will extend their Views to the establishing and
encouraging other Seminaries of Learning in this State. 25
As a matter of fact, the three clergy agents who were commanded in December 1784 to "complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western
Shore" had been engaged in "Religion and Learning" all their lives. All were
teachers and educators. John Carroll was a graduate of St. Orner's College in
France and of the Jesuit academy at Liege, Belgium; he was a priest and a teacher
at the Jesuit college in Bruges, until the Jesuit order in Belgium was suppressed
by papal bull in 1773. In 1784 he was organizing the American Catholic Church.
Patrick Allison, a graduate of the College of Philadelphia and later a teacher
there, came to Maryland in 1764 to become pastor of the Baltimore Presbyterian
Church for the remainder of his life. And last, there was William Smith, a
graduate of the University of Aberdeen, the young Scotsman whom Benjamin
�FLETCHER
49
Franklin had recruited to develop the Philadelphia Academy into a college; he
had been the teacher of Natural Philosophy and provost of the College of
Philadelphia from the time the College was chartered in 1753 until the revocation
of its charter in 1779. In 1784 he was rector of Chester Parish, Kent County, and
president of Washington College, as well as a leader in the fonnation of the new
Protestant Episcopal Church. 26
All three were polemipists who wrote pamphlets, letters to the newspapers,
and petitions to the Assembly on behalf of their particular churches, sometimes
attacking one another. Though sectarian interests divided them, the rise of
Freemasonry may have created a climate that allowed them to work in concert
for the advancement of learning. John Carroll indeed described a new kind of
religious freedom in America following the Revolution:
in these United States our Religious System has undergone a revolution if
possible, more extraordinary, than our political one. In all of them free
toleration is allowed to Christians of every denomination; and particularly in
the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, a communication of all Civil rights, without distinction or diminution, is extended to those
of our Religion. This is a blessing and advantage, which it is our duty to
preserve & improve with utmost prudence. 27
Either Freemasonry or the Spirit of '76, or both, created such a climate. In
the fall of 1784 John Carroll was replying to a "Letter to the Roman Catholics
of Worcester," which was published in three different issues of the Maryland
Gazette 28 after having been printed as a pamphlet in Philadelphia the previous
winter. The author, Charles Wharton, his cousin and an ex-Jesuit, had recently
joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the "Letter" he explained to his former
congregation in Worcester, England, the doctrinal reasons for his leaving the
Roman Church. All three parts are scholarly, referring often to the church fathers,
and especially to St. John Chrysostom, who he claimed supported his Protestant
view of the Scriptures. Carroll, a convinced Catholic, took the opposite view and
refuted this argument in a pamphlet, "An Address to Roman Catholics on
Wharton." 29 He quoted from the volumes of Chrysostom that he found in the
"public library" in Annapolis. 30 Responses from Catholic readers assured him
that he had succeeded in reaffirming their faith. When Wharton published
another letter, "To the Roman Catholics ofMaryland," 31 Carroll refused to reply:
"I shall forbear reviving a spirit of controversy, least it should add fuel to some
spark of religious animosity." 32 CaiToll was eager that Catholic youths and
teachers seize the opportunity offered them by the Maryland colleges. 33
Patrick Allison, on the contrary, was far more contentious in 1783 and 1784
because he saw a concerted effort to set up a new established church in Maryland.
Along with Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, he continued to smart from having been taxed for the support of the Church of England
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in Maryland before 1776. Immediately after Governor Paca's address in May
1783, he began writing a series of articles in the Maryland Journal against the
tax proposed to "support the ministers of the Gospel." Allison thought the tax
could only benefit the new Protestant Episcopal Church, which had been designated heir to all real property of the old established Church of England. Moreover, because its membership and property already exceeded that of the other
sects, the tax would extend its ,influence out of all proportion to that enjoyed by
the others, and, indeed, lead to a new church establishment. To prevent such a
development he suggested that former Church of England property be divided
among all the sects who had paid a church tax before the Revolution. 34
The first of Allison's aiticles (published 15 July 1783) attacked the clergyman
nominated by the Maryland Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church to
become the first bishop of Maryland, William Smith. Allison used his rapier pen
exuberantly:
Nor is it my wish to disturb the reverend Dr. S. in his retirement from the world
and the things of the world, where he is inhaling copious draughts of sublime
contemplation, purifying himself by a course of mental recollection, contrition, and extraordinary devotion, for the mitred honours to which he is
destined. 35
Smith took no lasting offence at Allison's attack even though it may have
been one of the factors influencing the church to reject him as a candidate for
bishop. Smith was perhaps toughened by years of controversy in Pennsylvania
before corning to Maryland. In 1758 and 1759, while William Paca and Patrick
Allison were attending the College of Philadelphia, Provost Smith was jailed by
the Pennsylvania General Assembly on a charge of libel but with the backing of
the hustees of the college had continued to conduct classes and to function as
provost while in jail. 36 An appeal to the King freed him but did not endear him
to the Assembly: they already felt threatened because of Smith's efforts to
promote the Church of England in Pennsylvania. Finally, in 1779 when they
revoked the charter of the College of Philadelphia, he was ousted as both provost
and teacher. He then migrated to Chestertown and started a school. This school
merged with the Kent County School and Under his direction grew in size and
importance to the point where its trustees petitioned the General Assembly of
Maryland to charter it as Washington College. 37
It seems most unlikely, however, that Smith, the Freemason, would have
suggested the name "St. John" to honor a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis at the
time when the Draught of a Proposed Act was being written: He would have been
afi·aid that such a suggestion might destroy the "great Unanimity" that the
committee was enjoying. Furthermore, though many Catholics, and notably John
Carroll's brother Daniel, belonged to the Masons, Carroll would have had a deep
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51
personal aversion to them, for they had played an active role in the suppression
of the Jesuits in Europe. But while he would not have chosen to honor the
Masons, most likely he would not have objected to naming the College after his
patron saint (who was one of the "Johns"). Allison, however, actually expressed
his personal distaste for Masonry when he ridiculed Smith's participation in
Masonic purification rites. 38 Moreover, the Presbyterians (like the Jews) consider all members of a cpngregation saints, and they scarcely ever name their
institutions after any sairit except St. Andrew and St. Giles. Those two agents,
then, Carroll and Allison, would certainly not have suggested the name "St. John"
to honor the Masons.
On 24 December 1784, ten days after its publication in Annapolis, the
Draught of a Proposed Act appeared in Baltimore's Mmyland Journal. Six days
later a revised version that incorporated hitherto unpublished sections borrowed
from the Charter of 1782 was enacted by the House of Delegates. It included
provisions for collecting revenues through licenses and taxes on the Western
Shore for the support of the College39 and outlined a policy for the governance
of a University of Maryland. Where blanks had been left in the Draught for
insertion of a name, "St. John's College" now appeared. The action was a fait
accompli at the time the bill was introduced, for the Journal ofthe House reported
neither motions nor discussion regarding the College's name.
Neither the Mmyland Gazette and theM my/and Journal, nor the Journals of
the Senate and the House of Delegates for the November 1784 Session of the
General Assembly, explain what happened. Some special influence was at work
in Annapolis during the last week of December 1784.
While Governor Paca spent Christmas at Wye Hall on the Eastern Shore, the
General Assembly convened every day including Christmas and Sunday in
Annapolis. Two major pieces of legislation that he had recommended in the
message of 1783 were slated to come up during his absence. One bill embodied
the interests of "Trade and Commerce"; the other, the interests of "Religion and
Learning." Although promotion of the second, the "University Law" (St. John's
College), began early in the session, action on it was delayed until the report
from a conference of Maryland and Virginia legislators concerned with "Trade
and Commerce" was pushed through the Assembly on December 27.
The Journals of the House and Senate report that General Washington and
General Gates mrived in Annapolis on December 22. On the same day the
following Maryland commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to confer
with the Virginia delegation: Senators Thomas Stone, Samuel Hughes, and
Charles Carroll; and Delegates John Cadwalader, Samuel Chase, John DeButts,
George Digges, Philip Key, Gustavus Scott, and Joseph Dashiell. George Washington- now the sole Virginian, for General Gates had fallen ill on anivalwas chosen to chair the Conference.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Senate and House Journals give the barest facts about the Conference,
and the newspapers less. A letter from George Washington, in Annapolis, to the
Marquis de Lafayette in Paris on December 23, is more descriptive:
You would scarcely expect to receive a letter from me at this place. A few
hours before I set out for it, I as little expected to cross the Potomac again this
winter, or even to be fifteen f11iles from home before the last of April, as I did
to make a visit in an air-balloon in France. I am here, however, with General
Gates, at the request of the Assembly of Virginia to fix matters with the
Assembly of this State respecting the extension of the inland navigation of
the Potomac, and the communication between it and the western waters; and
I hope a plan which will be agreed upon, to the mutual satisfaction of both
States and to the advantage of the union at large .... 40
On December 22 five days of unremitting labor began for all the conferees.
If there were any parties, balls, or dinners given in honor of Washington between
December 22 and 29, 1784, in Annapolis, the Maryland Gazette failed to report
them. Near midnight on the 28th Washington wrote James Madison at the
Legislature in Richmond: "It is now near 12 at Night, and I am writing with an
Aching Head, having been constantly employed in this business since the 22nd
without assistance from my Colleagues, Genl. Gates having been sick the whole
time, and Colo. Blackburn not attending .... " 41
The Journals of the House and Senate, however, do reveal one strange hiatus
in these five days of intense legislative effort. On December 27 the commissioners who were preparing a Potomac bill introduced their report in the House of
Delegates and received a first and second reading early in the rooming session
(only nine dissenting votes were cast). From the House the bill was taken to the
Senate, where it was read and ordered "to lie on the table" until the Senate
reconvened at five o'clock for a "post meridiem" meeting. The House followed
suit and also adjourned for a "post meridiem" meeting, to begin a half hour later
than the Senate's.
When the Senate reconvened at five o'clock the Potomac bill entitled "An
Act for Establishing a Company for Opening and Extending the Navigation on
the River Patowmack" had a second reading; the Senate then concurred with the
action taken by the House and adjourned, probably no later than six o'clock. The
House had reconvened at half past five, and since they had no busine.'>s to transact
-their meeting had apparently been called so that they would be on hand if
needed by the Senate -had adjourned forthwith.
The Potomac bill thus passed both Houses on 27 December 1784, the Festival
Day of St. John the Evangelist, the anniversmy celebrated by all Freemasons.
On the following day, December 28, the Senate resolved "that an attested copy
of the act ... be transmitted to Gen. Washington and Gen. Gates ... signing by
the governor will be complied with when he returns to town."
�FLETCHER
53
On December 29, the House proceeded to take action on the second major
bill of the session, the "University Law," which was submitted by gentlemen
whose names were on a list of Annapolis subscribers dated 16 December 1784,
begging that the General Assembly enact legislation to establish a Western Shore
college 42
Like the Draught of a Proposed Act which headed all the subscription lists,
the Charter of 1784 allowed one vote toward election of a Visitor and Governor
to each subscriber of nine pounds or more on any list totaling one thousand
pounds. Other provisos in the Chmter for electing members to the Board of
Visitors and Governors differed in some significant respects from those in the
Draught. Where the Draught specified "person or persons" as sources from
whom the agents might solicit conttibutions, and who might form a class of
subscribers who could elect one board member, the Charter of 1784 adds "bodies
politic and corporate"; 43 and where the Draught said the last seven members
elected to the Board to complete an aggregate of twenty-four "may be chosen
from this or any part of the adjacent states," the Charternarrows the geographical
field to "any part of this state." The first seventeen members in both documents
are required to be residents of the Western Shore.44
These are among the "considerable alterations" to which William Smith
refen·ed in a letter to Rev, William White in late December 1784:
Considerable alterations were made in the plan first settled by Mr. Carroll, Dr.
Allison and myself, respecting the nice provisos amongst different denominations in proportion to their subscriptions. The paper was printed off before
I came over. But I was told by Carroll of Carrollton, Mr. Sprigg, etc., that the
alterations were made in concert with Dr. Allison. I am satisfied, as I hope all
our society will be, with the plan as it now is, and as I would have agreed it
should originally have been, as I know that a few grains of mutual confidence
and benevolence among different denominations of Christians. will be better
than splitting and torturing a design ofthis kind with all the provisos possible .
. . . CaiToll of CatTollton, Mr. Digges, etc. have subscribed liberally, as it is
expected the rest of that society will do. 45
During his less than peaceable sojo1,1rn among the Quakers in Pennsylvania,
William Smith had very likely Iemned to call all denominations "societies," a
term used by some denominations but very seldom used by the Episcopalians
and Catholics to whom he referred in this letter. For example, the rapidly growing
denomination of Methodists called themselves "members in society" and their
congregations "societies" as late as 1857. 46 During Chtistmas 1784 they were
organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church at a conference in Baltimore, declaring themselves independent of the British Conference in the choice of their
bishops and superintendents; they were also laying plans to found a college of
their own to educate their youth.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In response to the request of the Annapolis subscribers the House of Delegates
on 29 December 1784 proceeded to order a committee of seven men- Samuel
Chase, George Digges, Allen Quynn, Nicholas Can·oll, John Cadwalader, David
McMechen, and Gustavus Scott- to prepare and bring in a bill for "Founding
a college on the Western Shore of this State." Chase, Digges, Cadwalader, and
Scott had been on the committee to confer with Washington on the Potomac bill;
all but Scott and Cadwalader were signers of the Annapolis subscription list dated
December 16. The very next day they were ready with the bill.
The Journals reveal no additions or conections to the bill as introduced on
December 30. The name "St. John's College" as well as any other changes made
in the Draught must have been agreed on beforehand. The only recorded
discussion or motions on the House floor while the Act was under consideration
came from jealous Baltimore town delegates. They proposed that some of the
proceeds collected in Baltimore from the taxes and licenses designated for the
support of the college be returned to Baltimore. When the question on the total
bill finally carne- no changes had been made in the text introduced by the
committee- there were 33 yeas and 18 nays.
The nays came from the counties farthest removed from AnnapolisHarford, Cecil, and Washington Counties; the Eastern Shore (they already had
a college) and southern Maryland delegates were almost to a man in favor. The
one Baltimore delegate who voted yea was David McMechen, a Freemason.47
One year before (23 December 1783), when Washington had resigned as
commander-in-chief before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, the Mary-
land House of Delegates had sent him the following message:
having by your conduct in the field gloriously terminated the war, you have
taught us, by your last circular letter, how to value, how to preserve and to
improve that liberty for which we have been contending. We are convinced
that public liberty cannot be long preserved, but by wisdom, integ.rity, and a
strict adherence to public justice and public engagements. The justice and
these engagements, as far as the influence and example of one state can extend,
we are determined to promote and fulfill; and if the powers given to congress
by the confederation should be found to be incompetent to the purposes
of the union, we doubt not our constituents will readily consent to enlarge
them ... 48
Proud to have enlarged the powers of the Confederation by the expeditious
passage of Washington's Potomac bill, the Maryland legislators named the
Westem Shore college for the day when his bill was enacted, the Feast Day of
the Evangelist. (If the Eastern Shore had not already preempted the name for
their college, "Washington" might have been a natural choice for the Western
Shore college.) Not only was it a day that they had enjoyed in the company of
�FLETCHER
55
their former commander-in-chief, but it was a day that would have had special
significance for Washington the Freemason.
George Washington, private citizen in 1784, would have observed the Feast
Day of the Evangelist. Young George had been initiated as a Mason in the Lodge
at Fredericksburg on 4 November 1752. He attended various Masonic functions
while commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, notably the celebration of
the anniversary of the Evangelist in Christ Church, Philadelphia, on 28 December
1778, when William Smith preached the sermon. On 23 December 1783 the
brethren in the Alexandria Lodge had sent greetings to him on his return home,
which he had acknowledged on 28 December as "Yr. Affect. Bro' & obed' Serv'."
These were not Christmas greetings that were being exchanged: they were the
customary exchange of greetings between Masons on the anniversary of the
Evangelist-December 27. On 24 June 1784, the anniversary of St. John the
Baptist, another festival day observed by the Masons, Washington was invited
to dine with Lodge No. 39 in Alexandria. He had replied, "I will have the honor
of doing it." Minutes of Lodge No. 39 for that day record
The Worshipful Master Read to the Lodge a most instructive lecture on the
rise, progress & advantages of Masonry & concluded with a prayer suitable
to the occasion. The Master & Brethren then proceed'd to Jn° Wise's Tavern,
where they Dined & after spending the afternoon in Masonick Festivity,
returned again to the Lodge room. The Worshipful Master with the unanimous
consent of the Brethren, was pleased to admit his Excellency, Gen1Washington
as an Honorary Member of Lodge No. 39. 49
Two months after his visit to Annapolis in December 1784, on 28 February 1785,
Washington walked in a procession of Freemasons at the funeral of his friend
William Ramsay.
Moreover, Maryland Masons were particularly in the habit of observing the
St. Johns' days with festivities. According to Edward T. Schultz, "it will be
observed how scrupulously our Brethren of Maryland in the early times observed
the Saint Johns' days and the custom was continued as we shall see by the Lodges
in the jurisdictions for many years.''50
It is possible that the Maryland General Assembly returned for a "post
meridiem" meeting on 27 December 1784, which adjourned in favor of an
evening dinner to celebrate the festival of the Evangelist with Freemason George
Washington. The Journals of the House and Senate show that they did adjourn
and reconvene in the evening, probably for a joint affair. The House had
completed its business for the day; there was no reason for them to reconvene at
half past five, one half hour later than the Senate had scheduled their evening
meeting, unless it was to participate in some sort of event with members of the
Senate, after the Senate had concurred with the House's action on the Potomac
bill. The Senate reconvened at five o'clock. An hour would have given them
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ample time to read the Act and concur- no debate or voting was required for
this. Their business could have been finished easily by six o'clock- in time for
a St. John's dinner. The "post meridiem" meeting scheduled by both Houses on
27 December 1784- a rare event in the recorded history of the two Houses indicates some special circumstance.
Another possibility is that a festive dinner was held during the afternoon
recess even though a majority of the legislators were not Masons. Ce1tainly a
number of them were Masons. Yet even those who were not accepted Masonic
rituals. Masonry provided an accepted ceremonial in the young republic; Washington, for example, as well as many other prominent men, was buried with
Masonic rites.
Nonetheless, in spite of much interest in Freemasonry in Annapolis during
the 1780s there was no active Annapolis lodge in 1784. But gentlemen of the
town enjoyed several social and literary clubs, notably the Hominy and Tuesday
Evening Clubs, where subjects of literary and philosophical interest- and
Freemasonry perhaps- were discussed by "enlightened men." The counties of
the state and Baltimore, on the other hand, had only their Masonic lodges for
fraternal occasions and for intelligent conversation.
Also, Washington, the Freemason, was aware that a Western Shore college
was being founded as part of a University of Maryland; he knew that an Act for
establishing it would be introduced after he left Annapolis. Just a week later, on
5 January 1785, he wrote Samuel Chase, a member of both the committee to
confer on the Potomac bill and the committee to present the Charter of 1784 to
the House of Delegates, that
the attention which your assembly is giving to the establishment of public
schools, for the encouragement of literature, does them great honor: to
accomplish this, ought to be one of our first endeavours; I know of no object
more interesting. We want something to expand the mind, and make us think
with more liberality, and act with sounder policy, than most of the States do.
We should consider that we are not now in leading strings. It behooves us
therefore to look well to our ways. 5 1
Washington was clearly interested in~ the grander scheme of which the
Western Shore college was a part- the University for "the encouragement of
literature"- and his letter showed that he must have talked about the bold
scheme with Samuel Chase and perhaps others.
When eleven members were finally elected to the Board of Visitors and
Governors in early 1786 from the various classes of subscribers, the Board was
duly constituted. Under the date of21 March 1786 they published the following
notice: "the subscribers of St. John's College, by order of the visitors and
govemors, are hereby requested to make their first payment to the subscriber,
treasurer to the college, on or before the first day of June next. [signed]
�FLETCHER
57
BENJAMIN HARWOOD."52 Previous to this, all notices published by the
subscription agents had been addressed to "subscribers of St. John's or the
Western Shore College." ln the notice dated 21 March 1786 "Western Shore
College" was omitted, and "St. John's College" appeared in roman type, alone,
for the first time.
"St. John's College" became the corporate name when enacted in the Chatter
of 1784. The tradition promulgated in 1870, which said that the college was
named by its incorporators after an English institution, had little basis. If
honoring a noted English college had been the reason for calling the Annapolis
college "St. John's," few of the Maryland populace would have been pleased so
soon after the conclusion of a bloody war with Britain.
In 1971 the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, Annapolis
and Santa Fe, were persuaded that prospective students and donors were repe11ed
by the name "St. John's College," and they considered adopting a secular name
instead. 53 At this time, President Richard D. Weigle searched the student rolls at
St. John's College, Cambridge- and also those at St. John's College, Oxford
-'-to discover which men associated with the 1784 incorporation had actually
registered there. Evidently the generally accepted theory that the Annapolis
college had been named after St. John's College, Cambridge (or Oxford), which
went unquestioned for many years , reflected the anglophilia of the 1870s rather
than the sentiment of 1784, which was anglophobia. For no names of men
directly tied with the founding of the Maryland college were found.
Then, as a preliminary step in effecting a change in name, a committee ofthe
Board sent a questionnaire to all alumni, students, and faculty to gather their
reactions. Response from the group was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing
to operate as "St. John's College," a name now rich with associations gathered
over the years, including the 1937 adoption of a curriculum nationally known as
the St. John's Program. 54 The Board proceeded no further.
In 1786 the name already had strong associations, and the first Board of
Visitors and Governors continued to use it. They did not revert to "Western Shore
College," or any other name, although through process of law they could have
done so. Indeed "St. John's College" proved so acceptable that it prevailed
through the first stormy half-century of the college's history, and long after
participants in the naming had died. But no one had bothered to record the
circumstances from living memory. Records show, however, that a remarkable
legislative performance did take place on the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist, 27 December 1784, when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington,
Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the
various states in the Confederation following the definitive "Treaty of Peace."
They were naturally proud of a name which reminded them of that day, and they
adopted it for the new college several days later.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thus, even though there are no contemporary records stating why the college
was called St. John's, one could infer that it was in honor of the Evangelist.
Coincidentally, it was in compliment to the Masonic fraternity of Annapolis in
1784. Perhaps some few were reminded of the Cambridge college as well,
although no contemporary record suggests this.
It is hard to understand why a cloud of mystery has ever since enveloped the
circumstances of the naming;' But if Masons were responsible, one could expect
secrecy about their role. Discretion, the keeping of secrets, is the first of the
Masonic virtues.
�Five:
John McDowell, Federalist:
President of St. John's College
In the spring of 1790 Professor John McDowell was the dark horse among
possible candidates for president of St. John's College. The college trustees had
advertised that they prefen-ed "a Stranger or some Gentleman of Great Character
from Europe." On 5 May Rev. William Smith wrote Rev. William West, chairman
of the trustees, that if such a candidate offered himself, he might not "suit the
American Genius." (Smith, now provost of the University of Pennsylvania, had
presided as president pro tern. at the opening of St. John's the previous November.) "I have the interest of that Seminary [St. John's] and its future success much
at Heart . ... were I not too advanced in years, I am not certain whether I might
not have offered my Services once more as head of one of the Maryland
Seminaries [he had been Washington College's first president] .... but my
Family is attach'd to Pennsylvania." Taking himself out of the race- and
disparaging the notion that a "Stranger" or'' Great Character from Europe" was
preferable to a qualified native- Smith opened the field to McDowell of the
St. John's faculty." It would have been well," Smith continued," if the Assembly
had restored the Funds previous to an Election [of legislators]." 1 How each
election would affect their funding wonied the trustees too.
Although it was a common practice among trustees of their era to appoint a
distinguished clergyman of their own denomination (a majority of the St. John's
trustees were Episcopalians) to head their colleges, they acted othetwise. Being
politically enlightened, they demonstrated in 1790 that the college was open to
students and faculty of all denominatons as their charter stated. They passed over
Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, rector of St. Anne's Church, also on the faculty,
although his profile nearly matched their ad. He was an Anglican clergyman from
Waterford, Ireland, educated in Europe. There is no indication that he wanted to
be president. They appointed a Presbyterian, John McDowell, president of the
College, and a Catholic, Bishop John Carroll, chairman of their board.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The trustees were honored to have Carroll join their ranks. He was America's
foremost Catholic educator as well as America's first Roman Catholic bishop.
He represented a prominent Maryland family who had promoted the College.
McDowell, on the other hand, had no prominent family connections in Maryland.
His Maryland fliends consisted of alumni of the College of Philadelphia, where
he taught without professorial rank after his graduation, and colleagues from
Cambridge, where during the preceding seven years while teaching school he
had prepared for admission to the Dorchester County bar. For five years he had
practiced law in Dorchester County. Presented with these modest credentials, the
St. John's trustees relied on a judgment fanned during his year on the faculty,
that McDowell "suited the American genius" and could head the college. "The
vote being unanimous was not a little flattering," wrote Charles Goldsborough
in congratulation. "I always was sure that the delay ... would, by extending your
acquaintance among the Trustees, ensure it [the presidency] to you." 2
The tmstees and McDowell shared an enthusiasm for the federal Constitution
just adopted but they did not share a common background. The trustees had
grown up in well-established tidewater communities on the Chesapeake near
pmts where English vessels routinely docked. John McDowell had grown up in
a landlocked valley where the Scotch-Irish settlers often took the law into their
own hands. He was born in 1751, the second son of John and Mary Maxwell
McDowell's twelve children, on a fann near Marks in Peters Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. It lay in the Great Cove under Pamell Knob of
the Tuscarora range. From age five to age twelve he lived intermittently within
a stockade around the West Conococheague Prebyterian Church called White
Church. The stockade protected families from Indians on the rampage during
outbreaks of the French and Indian wars. Fires set by Indians twice burnt his log
home to the grmmd. 3
During such turmoil he learned to read, write, and figure, all the while being
taught the tenets of his Presbyterian faith. TI1e New England Primer and P;ke's
Arithmetic would have been his texts. According to a grand-nephew, "he was
early taught the Bible, the 'Shorter and Larger Catechism,' and the 'Confession
of Faith' ... these of themselves being good training for the young mind." 4 For
three years he attended John King's L-atin school, until King's sister was
massacred and her horne, which served as the schoolhouse, was bumt (1763).
King then left Conococheague for the east 5
Reading, and lessons learned in the church, the field, and at the crossroads
rounded out McDowell's education. According to a Presbyterian historian, at age
ten, during a Presbyterian prayer session when the frontier was under siege, John
experienced a conversion. 6 He also leamed from working in the fields, for
surveying was a school in mathematics for many colonial youths. After the
Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary dispute was settled, his father employed surveyors to prepare a valid deed for the Pennsylvania Land Office to replace the
�FLETCHER
61
warrants under which his grandfather had settled in the 1730s 7 John may have
learned his geometry and trigonometry by participating in the survey. He learned
principles of economics, such as what is a fair price, at the crossroads in Marks,
where pony trains carrying goods from the east filed through on their way west.
Here frumers, millers, and hunters bartered their grain, flour, and skins for
manufactured goods. They lived in a subsistence economy without money. They
were landlocked between ~he east and west branches of the Conococheague
Creek, whose beautiful swift rapids powered their mills but were not navigable.
Early experience in barter trade left him with an appreciation for money- not
just for what it could buy, but for its convenience. In later years he often acted
as broker for his planter clients in Maryland who needed to borrow between
crops. He was shrewd in the investment of his own money.
When McDowell was seventeen his former teacher, John King, visited West
Conococheague on the eve of his ordination to the Presbyterian ministry. He had
just won a degree in theology from the College of Philadelphia. The elders of
the White Church - John McDowell's father was one of them - persuaded him
to become their pastor8 They had had none since 1757. Not only did John King's
example encourage McDowell to enter the College of Philadelphia, but King
served as an intermediary between him and the college authmities to assure them
of the youth's competence. Since McDowell's parents had no money to pay his
college tuition, anangements were made for him to tutor less advanced students
in exchange for his tuition and board. John King's classmate, John Montgomery,
a member of the college faculty, sponsored McDowell, guaranteeing that his
tuition would be paid quarterly."
McDowell entered the College of Philadelphia in the fall of 1768, the first
youth raised on the frontier to be admitted. Throughout the year Provost William
Smith and Professors Ewing and Williamson on the college faculty joined other
mathematicians and astronomers in America and Europe in prep~rations for the
observation of the Transit of Venus to take place on the third of June. The first
number of the American Philosophical Society's Transactions published their
remarkably accurate calculations preliminaty to and during the Transit. Three
years later at commencement John McDowell gave the English oration entitled
"On the Advantages of studying History." Soon after graduation in Smith's
absence McDowell conducted the provost's class in natural philosophy, assisted
with the apparatus by David Rittenhouse. Three members of the Class of 1771
joined the faculties of three colleges founded after the Revolution: Samuel
Armor, vice president of Washington College; Robert Davidson, acting President
of Dickinson College; and John McDowell, president of St. John's College. Like
his classmates McDowell fought in the Revolution. Unlike them he served as a
private (until he became ill), not an officer. One classmate, Samuel Hanson of
Maryland, served as a surgeon on Washington's staff. 10
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
After the Revolution, by 1782, four of McDowell's classmates but not
McDowell had completed graduate studies to qualify for professorial appoint·
ments, graduate studies at this time being the three professions of medicine, law,
and theology. Because of a weak voice McDowell felt himself unfit for the
ministry. When Judge Robert Goldsborough, whose nephew Charles was
McDowell's student at the University of the State of Pennsylvania (successor to
the College of Philadelphia.), invited McDowell to read law in his Cambridge,
Mary land office, McDoweil seized the opportunity. To support himself while
preparing for the bar, McDowell conducted a school in Cambridge. In 1783 he
was admitted to the Dorchester County bar and in 1784 to the Franklin County
bar in Pennsylvania (Franklin had been carved from Cumberland County and
included Peters Township). But he chose to stay in Dorchester, where he soon
had a lucrative law practice and many congenial friends. 11
Meanwhile in Annapolis King William's School and the newly chartered St.
John's College had merged. In March 1786 one of the King William's School
trustees, Alexander Contee Hanson (brother of McDowell's deceased classmate,
Samuel Hanson), joined the college board. He was promptly appointed to a
committee authorized to "contract for the repair of and addition of two wings to
Bladen's Folly, with sanguine expectations that in less than twelve months ... a
grammar school will flourish within these walls." 12 For three years efforts to
open the college stalled while Hanson contributed a series of articles to the
Mmyland Gazette against the emission of paper money and, under the pseud-
onym "Alistides," rallied support in Maryland for the ratification of the U.S.
Constitution. Hit by the depression, subsclibers to the College were unable to
pay their pledges. After ratification of the Constitution, which prevented state
governments from printing paper money, the economy improved.
In the spling of 1789 the trustees of St. Johu's had resources enough to appoint
two professors and to open the College. They offered the professorship of
mathematics to John McDowell and the professorship of languages to Rev.
Ralph Higginbotham, and ordered that two rooms in Bladen's Folly be made
ready for classes. 13 (They never added the wings proposed earlier.) Following a
visit to his parents McDowell appeared before the trustees in August to accept
his appointment. Several weeks later he: wrote his father from Cambridge, "I
have determined to remove to Annapolis. At present I expect it will be about the
middle of November.... I shall ... have the satisfaction of being near my
friends and hearing more frequently from them." 14
The friends he referred to comprised a group of 1ising young Federalists. All
had been members of the lower house or senate. Three had been delegates to the
Convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. Four would be elected to Congress, two received high federal appointments and two became governor of
Mary1and. 15 They conversed and conesponded with each other, commenting on
the Declaration of Independence and its endowing all men with the right to life,
�FLETCHER
63
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; they noted that black slaves among them
had been awakened politically and would inevitably demand their freedom. 16 In
the November 1789 Session of the Maryland Legislature, Nicholas Hammond
introduced "An Act to Promote the Gradual Abo1iton of Slavery," only to arouse
such an uproar in the Assembly that it tabled the bill. A determination to preserve
the federal union silenced even those bold enough to speak about the certain kind
of property that genuinely embarrassed them, and they foresaw the struggle for
its abolition ahead. Of these friends William Tilghman and William Hindman
manumitted their slaves by their wills. 17
Almost as soon as McDowell arrived in Annapolis his friends one by one
moved away. In 1790 John Henry left Annapolis for the U.S. Senate. By 1800
both William Vans Murray and William Tilghman were gone, Murray to the
Hague and Tilghman to a federal judgeship in Peunsylvania.
For a decade the College flourished. Until1800 the College attracted students
from all over Ma1yland and many from out of state. Eighteen students enrolled
from McDowell's old home, Dorchester County. 18 One August day he accompanied sixteen-year-old Robert H. Goldsborough, then in his junior year at St.
John's, to his home "Myrtle Grove" in Talbot County, arriving "well, tho' a little
fatigued as the Sun became very watm. " 19 Spring of 1791 was a season for a
great celebration when President George Washington visited the campus. In May
1793 the College publicly examined the highest classes in the mathematical and
philsophical schools, giving "convincing proof of the great exertions of the
faculty on behalf of those committed to their care." 20 Nonetheless, in 1793 the
House of Delegates voted to withdraw all appropriations from Maryland's two
colleges, which, they said, educated the sons of rich men at the expense of those
less well-to-do who would really benefit from the establishment of local schools.
In defense of the colleges (St. John's and Washington College), Nicholas
Canol!, chairman of the St. John's board, questioned the worth of the county
schools that had been established by an act of the Assembly in 1723. "No great
benefits ... were delived from the free-schools formerly established," he main-
tained.Z1 While it was true that many of the county schools established by the
Act of 1723 did not survive the Revolution, Maryland's determination to have
local schools had begun in 1694 and the first academy, King William's School,
was chartered in 1696.
Federalists in the senate were conciliatory in their defense of the colleges,
advising delegates that "We shall be at all times willing to concur in any well
digested plan for establishing schools, in order to place education within the
reach of every citizen of this state and render it more diffusive through all classes
of society."22 ConcuiTence between the two houses eluded them, however, as a
core of moderate Federalists in the senate was replaced by more rigid party
members, and a growing representation from Republican Baltimore Town and
the western counties gained strength in the lower house. Rancor between the two
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 7) John McDowell (1751-1820), painted by Robert Field. Collection at Mrs.
Clyde Gritten. (Courtesy at Mrs. Griffen and the Frick Art Reference Library, New
York, #4421.)
parties was further exacerbated by differences of opinion over who was the
enemy, England or France. In 1801 McDowell, missing his friends and weary of
the turmoil, offered his resignation. The trustees persuaded him to stay on as
necessary to the college's survival, though he knew that it was only a matter of
a few years before the college's entire funds would be withdrawn:
In 1806 St. John's lost its yearly income. It also lost McDowell. Two trustees
at the University of Pennsylvania who had been one class below him at the
College of Philadelphia, Judges William Tilghman and Nathan Levy, persuaded
him to become professor of Natural Philosophy and then third Provost of the
University. Impressed by his success at St. John's, they hoped that he could infuse
the spirit of the old College of Philadelphia into the University.
Before leaving Annapolis McDowell wrote Judge Tilghman that he wanted
to take Joseph Williams, a black boy, with him to Pennsylvania, where by law
no slaves could be imported. He wanted to take him, McDowell explained, "both
on his' account, and on my own." He would manumit him but could he have him
bound for seven years. 23 Joseph went with him to Philadelphia, and later, when
Joseph had been left "to his own discretion," McDowell wrote that he would "be
glad to hear he has made good use of the libe1ty he has." 24 Once in Philadelphia
�FLETCHER
65
McDowell was guardian for Charles Goldsborough's two daughters while they
attended Mrs. Garland's School. Their father wrote them not to become "too fond
of pleasure and amusement for country Ladies." He also counseled them as how
best to write their school reports, saying that "when you begin to write, the Book
should be put by, and the composition should be produced from the reflection,
and reasoning of your mind." 25
At the commencement in 1807 the University of Pennsylvania confened an
honorary doctor of laws degree on McDowell. After three years as provost, he
resigned because of ill health. He spent 1811 and the years of the War of 1812
in Franklin County among relatives. He practiced law again, but he missed
the company of friends he had enjoyed in Cambridge, Annapolis, and Philadelphia. He remained a confirmed Federalist in Republican Pennsylvania,
agreeing with Maryland's three congressional representatives (his friend,
Charles Goldsborough, was one of them) that the United States should not
have declared war against Britain, calling it "this wicked and impolitic war
[that will] ... end in the ruin of our unhappy country which begins to feel the
heavy curse of bad rulers." 26
(Fig 8) William Tilghman (1756-1827), painted by Charles Willson Peale. (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The trustees of St. John's never forgot him. Encouraged because the legislature appropriated $1,000 per annum to St. John's and $25,000 per annum for the
support of public schools, and by the election of a federalist governor, they
invited McDowell to return as president. He did not retum on their first invitation
(1812), but when they asked him again in 1815 he accepted. Rev. Alexander
Conlee Magruder, chairman of the board, gave Bishop Kemp the good news that
"Dr. McDowell has agreed to take charge of the college." 27
Settled once more in Annapolis, he soon regretted his retmn. "I always
considered the revival of St. John's from its miserable ruins, as an expetiment,
the success of which was very doubtful," he wrote. "However, as I promised to
give what assistance I could towards it this winter, I consider myself bound to
make every exertion I can in so laudable an undertaking, for it is generally felt
and confessed that a good Seminary is much wanted in this state. Yet from the
Legislature such is the state of parties, we can have no expectation of assistance,
though each may confess it ought to be afforded .... But there is no contending
against time, and the undertaking is now, I fear, too arduous for me." Even more
discouraged by February 1816 he wrote, "TI1is place is as different from what it
formerly was, such are the deteriorating effects of democracy, that I feel my
attachment to it much diminished." And in December he concluded that "St.
John's seems hopeless".
The following fall the Federalists elected a governor by a majority of one, a
majority managed by bringing a Federalist legislator to the Assembly on a
stretcher. "Such is the spirit of party that prevails," wrote McDowell of their
antics, "and which I was sorry to find [also] in our board of Visitors and
Governors which ought to be free of its baneful influence." Not only had the
Assembly done nothing for the College but "the citizens and trustees, who are
so immediately and deeply interested in the success of the College, have been
very deficient in their exertions to promote it." 28
As early as July 1816, Magruder realised that McDowell's "advanced age and
ill health will prevent him from continuing long in the College." 29 Other trustees,
too, were disheartened by the lack of support from the Legislature and in 1817
the board in despair tentatively closed it. Thanks to a rallying of alumni support
the College was able to reopen in 1818. In December of that year the Federalists
elected their last governor, McDowell's friend, Charles Goldsborough, who in
his inaugural address spoke of the huge state deficit resulting from the late war.
He then spoke of "the great advantages once experienced from the Seminary
long ago established at the seat of government ... as particularly deserving of
regard." But, he continued, "at this time ... the funds of the state do not admit
of an extension of pecuniary aid to purposes of education, beyond the existing
appropriations. ''30
Meanwhile McDowell spent some portions of Goldsborough's term at the
governor's home "Shoal Creek" outside Cambridge. From there he wrote Judge
�FLETCHER
67
Tilghman in March 1819, "When I left Philadelphia I had no intention of
spending the winter here. But I have spent it, not unpleasantly, nor altogether
unprofitably. I have read a good deal ... and amused myself by teaching and
grounding Mr. Goldsborough's son in the rudiments of the Latin language." In
April 1820 he wrote, "My time has been fully occupied in teaching and reading,
particularly Greek of which I have become fonder than of any other study." 31 In
late fall he was at his si~ter' s home in Mercersburg, where he died on 22
December 1820.32
·
McDowell's reappointment had accomplished little toward reorganizing
the College. His return and subsequent departure, however, aroused alumni
to come to the aid of their College. Francis Scott Key and Senator Robert H.
Goldsborough gave orations that echoed passages from McDowell's commencement address to their class in 1796. With others they organized an effective
Alumni Society by the end of the 1820s. 33
In his commencement address to the Class of 1796 McDowell had said:
The end of education is to direct the powers of the mind in unfolding
themselves, & to assist them in gaining throughout bent & force, to teach it
rather how to think .. , than what to think. ...
To gain a complete knowledge of science, or indeed of any one branch of
it dming the short time, which is spent at a college, is not to be expected. An
acquaintance with its general principles & such an improvement of the mental
faculties, as will facilitate a further progress in them ... is all that ought
reasonably to be expected.
I shall ... indulge the pleasing hope, that you will continue to cultivate a
general acquaintance with letters, and devote a part of your time to the
generous purpose of improving and enlarging your intellectual powers for
their own sake .... For the liberal student should enrich his understanding by
collecting ideas on all subjects, & these acquisitions, which he makes in other
pursuits, will often fumish him with useful helps, for the further prosecution
of his own particular one ....
I hope you will always treat [the Christian religion] with due reverence &
attention, that you will make it the subject of fair & candid discussion but
never of ridicule & contempt. ... One branch of moral science is by peculiar
necessity entitled to your attention. As_ we live in a country, where the law
ought to govem, & where every citizen is directly or indirectly a legislator,
the principles of law & government ought to be well understood. Impressed
with a proper idea of the difficulty & importance of legislation, I hope, you
will labour to build on the foundation already laid, a super structure of political
knowledge, which will render you eminently useful to your country & enable
you on all occasions to promote its real interest & happiness. 34
McDowell, an advocate for a stronger federal government, regretted that the
Federalists resorted to such antics in order to stay in power. He was also impatient
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with the stalemates that blocked action in a two-party legislature. As a more
democratic Maryland evolved, thanks to a two-party system that forced the
sharing of power, he saw old honored ways and institutions like the colleges
suffer. But students who had been taught by him that they lived "in a country
where the law ought to govern, where every citizen is ... a legislator" were
equipped to survive in the new order. Some alumni always sat on the college
board of trustees. When the cpllege again received state aid, the trustees decided
to devote all that aid to scholarships for worthy candidates selected by Maryland
senators, a practice long continued. In the mid-twentieth century the college
admitted blacks and then women. In his day McDowell, the Federalist, was a
pundit to many and a scholar of national stature. He was a student of the liberal
arts and of public affairs until his death.
�NOTES
Notes to One
1. Basil Sollers, "Education in Colonial Maryland," in B. C. Steiner, History
of Education in Maryland (Washington, D.C., 1894), p.l5. Contributions to
American Educational History no. 19.
2. "An Act to Establish the Protestant Religion," variously amended until
finally signed by the Crown in 1701 under the title "An Act for the
Establishment of Religious Worship in the Province According to the
Church of England."
3. Sollers, p. 20 n.
4. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696]. In Archives of Maryland
19:420-30 (hereafter referred to as Archives).
5. Sollers, p. 22.
6. Thomas Fell, Some historical accounts of the Founding of King William's
School, and its subsequent establishment as St. John's College (Annapolis,
1894), p. 8. See also Sollers, pp. 19, 20.
7. Sollers, p. 22.
8. Archives 19:252. Known as the Annapolitan Library, it was the most extensive of the libraries sent by Dr. Bray to the colonies. Called by him a
"Provincial Library" to distinguish it from the parish libraries, it was
collected to cover universal knowledge. Along with the Fathers of the
Church, Boyle, Descartes, Hobbes, and classical authors are included.
Accepted by the Assembly for the free use of the people, it was called the
"Publick Library." From the possession of King William's School, in whose
schoolhouse it was placed on arrival in 1700, it has descended to St. John's
College, Annapolis.
·
9. The Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge and the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
10. Sollers, p. 22 n.
11. Colonies where the Church of England was established were no more
anxious to have resident bishops than the Congregationalist northern colonies. A bishop had direct communication with the Crown and was both
politically powerful and expensive to support. After the Revolution when
state constitutions had separated church and state, churches that were
episcopally organized, like the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Methodist,
elected bishops.
12. William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American
Colonial Churches (Printed for the Subscribers, 1878), 4:59.
13. Lois Green Carr and David William Jordan, Maryland's Revolution of
Government 1689-1692 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. I.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
14. Ethan Allen, Historical Notices of St. Anne's Parish in Anne Arundell
County, Maryland: Extending from 1659 to 1857, a period of 208 years
(Baltimore: P. des Forges, 1857). In MHS Archives.
15. J. E. Morpurgo, Their Majesties' Royall Colledge: William and Mary in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centw·ies (The Endowment Association of the
College of William and Mary, Inc., 1976), p. 50.
16. Commissary James Blair to Gov. Francis Nicholson, 3 December 1691, in
William and Mary College Papers, Folder 7 (College Archives, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary).
17. The History of the College of William and Mary (Including the General
Catalogue)from its Foundation, 1660 to 1874 (Richmond: J. Randolph &
English, 1874), pp. 37-47. For text of the charter see "Charter granted by
King WilHam and Queen Mary for the founding of William and Mary
College in Virginia," in Henry Hartwell, James Blair, and Edward Chilton,
The Present State of Virginia, and the College (Charlottesville: Dominion
Books, 1694 ), pp. 72-94. "To the end that the Church of Virginia may be
furnished with a Seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, and that the Youth
may be piously educated in Good Letters and Manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the Glory of
Almighty God, to make, found and establish a certain Place of universal
Study, or perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other
good Arts and Sciences, consisting of one President, six Masters or Professors, and an hundred scholars more or less, according to the Ability of the
said College, and the Statutes of the same to be made, encreased or changed
by certain Trustees nominated and elected by the General Assembly." The
Statutes could not be written until six professors were in place, which was
not until 1727.
18. Perry, 4:59.
19. "Charter ... for William and Mary College."
20. Archives 20:341, 342.
21. Archives 20:235, 237.
22. Archives 19:36, 49.
23. Archives 19:51.
24. "An Act for the Incouragement of Learning and the Advancement of the
Natives of this Province," in Archives 19:49, 100, 101.
25. See Sollers, pp. 21, 22.
26. Archives 19:276, "Imposition upon Ffllrrs and Skins to be Imployed for the
maintenance of a ffree school or schools," passed October 1695.
27. Archives 19:252.
28. Archives 19:447,463,492,493. See also Sollers, p. 21.
29. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696].
30. Archives 29:287.
31. M. L. Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland in Annapolis, Publication
of Hall of Records Commission, 1954.
32. "Annapolis, May the 7, 1700. At a Meeting of the Governors and Visitors
of the Free Schools." Bray ms. in Sion College Library, London. Copy in
Library of Congress. Trustees present: Col. Charles Hutchins (Dorchester),
�FLETCHER
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
71
Robert Smith (Talbot), Thomas Tasker (Prince George's), Col. John Addison
(Somerset), Maj. Edward Dorsey (Baltimore), Maj. William Dent (Charles),
Col. John Thompson (Cecil), Lt. Col. Thomas Ennalls (Dorchester), Lt. Col.
Thomas Smith (Kent).
Carr and Jordan, p. 278.
E. C. Papenfuse, A. F. Day, D. W. Jordan, and Gregory Stiverson, A
Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1889 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins( University Press, 1979), 1:374.
Archives 26:602.
Archives 24:179.
Archives 26:361. "An Act declaring the Peticionary Act relating to the
ffree-holders[!] to be in force."
Archives 25:179.
Archives 26:616.
Archives 27:428.
Archives 29:66.
Archives 29:297.
Ethan Allen, p. 41.
Archives 29:159.
Archives 29:287.
Archives 29:299.
Perry, 4:76.
Archives 29:452.
Archives 30:41,42.
Archives 36:498-500.
"At a meeting of the Rector, Governors and Visitors of the Free Schools
held in the city of Annapolis on Tuesday the 6th of September anno Domino
1715." Fulham Papers, reel!, vol. 2, nos. 221-22, in Library of Congress.
Present: Rev. Joseph Colbatch, Rector, the Governor, Hon. Samuel Young,
Hon. Philemon Lloyd, Rev. Henry Hall, Rev. William Hinderforch, Mr.
William Bladen.
52. Gov. John Hart to Bishop Robinson, 20 June 1717. Fulham Papers, reel 1,
vol. 2, nos. 227-28, in Library of Congress.
53. Archives 39:386, 387. See also Great Britain, Statutes ~f the Realm, 1819,
vol. 5 (25 Carolus II, chap. 7, p. 793.)
54. Archives 30:373.
55. Archives 33:354; Morpurgo, pp. S8c64.
56. Archives 33:370.
57. Archives 33:629. See History of William and Mary, pp. 83-84, for list of
students before 1720.
58. Archives 34:11.
59. Archives 33:59.
60. Archives 34:95.
61. Also Clerk or Registrar of St. Anne's Vestry. See St. Anne's Parish, Vestry
Minutes, 1713-67 (in Hall of Records), p. 117. Mention of the scholars at
King William's are so few that the following paragraph has interest: "It is
the desire of the Minister, Vestry and Church wardens now mett together
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that the School Master of Annapolis and the Charity Boys upon the Foundation of the Schoole of Annapolis be permitted during the vacancy of the
Assembly consent to Sitt in the Front seat joining the back door, till such
time as further provision can be made for them." 5 Dec. 1721, p. 123.
62. Archives 34:302.
63. Archives 34:740-46.
64. For summary of taxes levied for benefit of free schools see Oswald Tilghman, History of Talbot County, Md. 1661-1861 (Baltimore: Williams &
Wilkins, 1925), pp. 462-65.
Notes to Two
1. Thomas Bacon, Laws of Maryland (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1765), chap.
vii. Chaps. 12 and 13 of the Act of 1696 established an Oxford and county
schools but were superseded by the Act of 1723.
2. Archives 34:740-46 (Act of 1723).
3. Benedict Leonard Calvert to Thomas Hearne, 18 March 1728/29, in
"Calvert Memorabilia," Maryland Historical Magazine, 11:282 (hereafter referred to as MHM). "Wee have here settled a fund for a free school
in the several 12 Counties, which have mostly masters, but I think the
Province too young for such a separated Scituation of Studies; I would rather
the funds appropriated for these 12 schools were settled on our two older
foundations, viz., one a free school at Annapolis and at Oxford, a convenient
Town over our Bay. I should then hope for some real success of Education
amongst us; two schools well provided of Masters were better than 12
indifferently suited with one each, and inconvenient for Scholars, there
being no Towns or accomodation for Boarding Scholars, where those 12
schools are fixed."
4. Archives 36:357.
5. Archives 24:70; 36:551; Bacon, chap. xv.
6. Richard Lewis, "Verses To The Memory of His Excellency Benedict Leonard Calvert." Ms. in Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.
7. Bernard C. Steiner, "Benedict Leonard Calvert, Esq.," in MHM 3:192-200,
339-41.
8. Thomas Hearne, Remarks And Collections, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1885-1921). Passages relevant to Calvert are in "Calvert Memorabilia," MHM 11:282-85, 339-41. In 1703 the Bishop of London tried to
persuade Hearne to emigrate to Maryland to oversee the libraries given by
Dr. Bray. Hearne refused. Later he twice refused offers to become librarian
of the Bodleian.
9. Edward Holdsworth, Muscipula: The Mousetrap, or The Battle of The
Camhrians And The Mice, translated into English by R. Lewis (Annapolis:
William Parks, 1728). Reprinted in MHS Fund Publication no. 36, "Early
Maryland Poetry," pp. 57-102.
�73
FLETCHER
10. J. A. Leo Lemay, Men of Letters in Maryland (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1972), p. 150. For life and works of Lewis see pp. 126-84.
11. Richard Lewis, "Verses ... ".
12. Archives 38:456-61
13. Archives 50:491. The Committee of Laws reported to lower house 21 May
1754 that interest on Calvert's Donation was £37 ten shiilings sterling;
ground rents on houses in Annapolis 4.0 pounds sterling. The five hundred
acres in Dorchester br,ought in no rent and cost ground rent; it was not sold
until 1769.
14. Wills, Anne Arundel, 1732, 20:496, 498, in Maryland State Archives. For
accounting of American estate, see Executor Edmund Jennings Testamentary Bond, etc. Anne Arundel, 1732-34, box 37, folder 41; Additional
Account 4 September 1753. In 1763 Gov. Sharpe wrote Calvert's brother,
Caecelius, the English executor, to send the residue of what was owing King
William's School still held in the estate of Jennings, who had died in
England in 1756.
15. Archives 6:54, 55. Every freeholder was taxed 40 pounds of tobacco for
support of the Anglican clergyman of his parish. This was commonly
expressed as "40p per poll."
16. Nelson Richtmyer, Mmy/and's Established Church (Baltimore: The Church
Historical Society for the Diocese of Maryland, 1956), p. 42.
17. Prior to Calvert's gift, St. Anne's Vestry Minutes record several attempts to
provide decent housing for the rector, Samuel Skippon. The church wardens
neither repaired two old parsonage houses nor built a new parsonage (MHM
7: 167). After Skippon 's death in 1724, Rev. James Henderson, commissary
of the Anglican Church on the Western Shore, proposed to the vestry that
he and the neighboring clergy "serve the Parish for the present year in the
best manner they can on condition that his Excellency the Governor and the
rest of the Vestry do agree that the 40p poll for the present year be apply'd
toward purchasing glebe land and improving the glebe for the use of the
present Incumbent and his successors" (MHM 7: 178).
18. But in the next meeting of the vestry, 11 February 1724/25 candidate who
had received the "bounty as a schoolmaster in Philadelphia" (Richtmyer,
p. 193) was presented to them. His qualifications and their need must have
coincided. Their reply was "Forasmuch as the Reverend John Humphreys
is willing to reside among us, we readily accept his offer, and desire that his
Excellency the Governor will induct him into this Parish" (MHM 7:269).
The money saved through using the services of neighboring clergy after
Skippon 's death was given him to defray "his Charges in Removing his
Family to this City," and was not used to build a rectory. It is clear that they
did not provide a place for him to live, because two years later in September
1726, Humphrey "acquainted this Vestry that he stands indebted for House
rent twenty-four pounds currency" (MHM 7:279). He asked the church
wardens to beg help "from the several parishioners toward Discharge of the
Rent." On 4 August 1730 he was granted permission "to remove the house
he built on the glebe lot," presumably at his own expense (MHM 8:157).
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�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
74
It is very likely that Rev. John Humphreys was both rector of St. Anne's
and master of King William's School after Michael Piper died, and that he
occupied the schoolhouse living quarters after 1730. By education and
experience he was well able to hold both offices. The next rector, Rev. James
Stirling, a poet and playwright, stayed only from 1739 to 1740, in which
time Charles Peale was a master of King William's School. There are several
hints that Rev. John Gordon, who became rector in 1745, lived in the
schoolhouse quarters. Three times during his incumbency- 1 July and 18
August 1746 (MHM 9:50, 51) and 10 November 1747 (St. Anne's Vestry
Minutes, p. 302)- the St. Anne's Vestry met in the schoolhouse. More
significantly, he was host of the Tuesday Club in the schoolhouse. He, too,
was well prepared by education to teach as well as to preach. See note 31.
19. Archives 6:54, 55. See note 17 for Henderson's proposal.
20. William F. Paynter, St. Anne's, Annapolis, History and Times (Annapolis:
St. Anne's Parish, 1980), pp. 21, 22.
Archives 40:271
Archives 42:344, 354-55
Radoff, pp. 77-80.
Maryland Gazette 7 Nov. 1745; 21 Aprill747; 27 Sept. 1747; 2 June 1745.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 150.
26. For the life of Bacon see Lemay, 303-42, and Tilghman, 1:272-300; 2:47795.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
27. For the life of Gordon see Mary M. Starin, "The Reverend Doctor John
Gordon, 1717-1790," in MHM 75:167-91.
28. Alexander Hamilton, "History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday
Club," opp. 118, ms. no. 2, John Work Garrett Collection, Milton S.
Eisenhower Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
Ibid., pp. 119-23.
Ibid., p. 249.
Ibid., p. 368.
Archives 44:595-638.
Gazette,9, 16,23,30Dec.1747.
Archives 46:485, 486.
Archives 46:384, 385.
Gazette 1, 8 Aug. 1750.
Gazette 27 Feb. 1751.
Gazette 21 March 1754.
Gazette 16 May 1754.
Archives 50:514-19.
Archives 50:472, 473.
Archives 50:482, 483.
Archives 50:490-92.
44. Archives 50:xxii.
45. Archives 50:506. Alexander Hamilton was Grand Master of the Annapolis
A. F&M Lodge as well as president of the Tuesday Club.
�FLETCHER
75
46. Archives 34:388.
47. Archives 6:56.
48. Archives 6:79, 80.
Notes to Three
1. "A Journal of the PrOceedings of the School" and "Book of Accounts" of
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
King William's School are referred to in a suit brought by St. John's College
to recover back rent and interest from the King William's School lease of
Kentish House in 1769. See Chancery Records, March 1830, pp.l41 ff.,
215-54, in Maryland State Archives.
See Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, An Appeal to the People
a/Maryland, Annapolis, August 1868 (Annapolis: Robert F. Bonsall, 1868):
Sollers in Steiner; Thomas Fell, Some Historical Accounts of the Founding
of King William's School and its Subsequent Establishment as St. John's
College (Annapolis, 1894); and "Establishment of a College," Archives
56:lxvi-lxviii; 58:lv-lviii; "Schools," 58:liv-lv.
George H. Callcott, A History of the University of Maryland (Baltimore:
Maryland Historical Society, 1966), chap. 1; Morris Radoff, "King
William's School," in Buildings, pp. 43-46; Tench Tilghman, "The Founding of St. John's College," MHM 44:85·92.
Archives 64:242-53.
Malcolm may have helped write the college bill of 1750 (Gazette 8 August
1750); later the trustees of Queen Anne's County school dismissed him as
master for writing a too elaborate curriculum. He was calledPhilo-Dogmaticus in the Tuesday Club (an earlier master of King William's School was
called Mr. Pedanticus in the Ugly Club). He was Sharpe's appointee to the
Commission on Boundaries to supervise the laying of the Mason-and-Dixon
Line between Maryland and Pennsylvania because he was the ablest mathematician in Maryland (Archives 9:471,466, 224, 233; 14:556). He was the
author of A Treatise of Musick, Speculative, Practical and Historical (Edinburgh, 1721); A New System of Arithmetick, Theoretical and Practical
(London, 1730); A Treatise of Bookkeeping . .. in the Italian method of
Debtor and Creditor (London, 1731). For the most complete account of
Malcolm see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London:
Macmillan, 1980) 1:568. See also Lemay.
Gazette 1 and 8 August 1750.
Gazette 20 Nov. 1755.
Gazette 10 May 1759.
Gazette 20 Nov. 1755.
Clajon was undoubtedly aware of the curriculum taught at the Academy of
Philadelphia, where the English "tongue" was taught grammatically and
as "a language." Benjamin Franklin, "Proposals Relating to the Education
of Youth in Pensilvania," Philadelphia, 1749, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1959- ), 3:395-421.
�76
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Franklin quotes copiously from John Locke's Treatise of Education, and
William Fordyce's Dialogues. See also William Smith, A general Idea of
the College ofMironia (New York: J. Parker and Weyman, 1753).
Gazette 28 Aprill757.
Gazette 10 May 1759.
Archives 9:375 (Calvert to Sharpe 17 March 1760).
Archives 9:402,277,438-39. Realizing that Sharpe was very much hurt by
the scolding proprietary letter (seen. 13), Lord Baltimore sent an appeasing
gift, a snuff-box bearing a Masonic device on its lid, a representation of
Solomon's Temple. Sharpe hoped the gift "would convince at least one of
my Enemies here who will see it and know from whom it come that all
Attempts to prejudice me in his Lordship's Opinion have been very unsuccessful." Undoubtedly there were freernasons in the lower house who were
pressing for the two great interests of the lodge, the promotion of commerce
and the education of the rising generation. Perhaps some of his enemies
attended the Annapolis St. John's lodge, which was active throughout the
middle sixties, years when the brigantine Free Mason lay between voyages
in the Annapolis dock.
Archives 56:488-94.
Archives 56:496, 497.
Archives 9:523.
Archives 9:545. Lord Baltimore emphatically said he would not allow such
a "strip of his right."
Archives 14:114 (Sharpe to Calvert, 21 August 1763).
Archives 58:309,310, 393; 4:402-4.
Archives 14:152.
Archives 14:194.
Archives 14:152, 153.
Gazette 30 May 1765.
Thomas Harrison Montgomery, "List of Scholars Entered at the Academy
and College up to and Including the Year 1769," in A History of the
University of Pennsylvania from its Foundation to A.D. 1770 (Philadelphia:
George W. Jacobs Co., 1900) pp. 530-54; see also University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue of' the Matriculates of the College, 1749-1893
(Philadelphia, 1894 ).
Rev. Jonathan Boucher scorned the education received in American colleges. Of the College of Philadelphia and Princeton he wrote, "they were
the chief nurseries of all that frivolous and mischievous kind of knowledge
which passed for learning in America .... They pretend to teach everything,
without being really competent to the teaching of anything .... Their chief
and peculiar merit was thought to be in Rhetoric and the belles lettres ...
Hence in no country were there so many orators, and so many smatterers."
Virginia, according to him, was more guilty of appointing them as their
rectors than Maryland, for "in Virginia the clergy were elected by the
vestries ... in Maryland, they were in the prerogative of Lord Baltimore.
But even in Maryland, congregations had influence on governors." Jonathan
�FLETCHER
77
Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist (New York: Kennikat
Press, 1967), p.!Ol.
27. Archives 32:145, 146. Daniel Dulany was from Annapolis. The other three
were from the Eastern Shore: Henry (Somerset County), Goldsborough
(Dorchester), Hooper (Dorchester, member of county school board, bequeathed ten pounds to King William School); see Papenfuse, et al., vol. 1.
See also Archives 14:126 ("No Right without a Remedy").
28. Archives 14:327, 328,,
29. Steiner, p. 42.
30. Gazette 22 May to 9 Oct. 1766.
31. See Gazette 7 Nov. 1768 for account of firing ofDakein. He and Rev. Bennet
Allen learned that the Dulanys intended to replace them both with Rev.
Jonathan Boucher, who could serve as both rector of St. Anne's and master
of King William's. In defending Allen, Dakein thought he was defending
Lord Baltimore's prerogative to appoint the clergy. The Gazette refused to
publish Allen's unsigned letters delivered by Dakein. So the story of their
troubles first appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Dakein lost his job,
and Allen, who was thoroughly disreputable but had Lord Baltimore's
backing, was awarded Maryland's most lucrative parish, in Frederick.
32. Daniel Dulany to Walter Dulany, 11 Oct. 1767 (Dulany Papers, MHS 1264).
33. Gazette 20 April 1769. An Act of 1750 gave them permission to sell.
34. Land Records of Dorchester County, Old no. 23, 1768-1770, pp. 228-92. An
earlier attempt to sellS May 1764 failed; see Chancery Record 14:215 ff.
35. Gazette 6, 14 Sept. 1769. Books lost: Ferguson's Lectures on Astronomy
and Philosophy; A Volume of Projectiles; Mather's Young Man's Companion; The Seaman's Calendar; Seaman's Daily Assistant.
36. Archives 62:4.
37. Archives 63:34, 35.
38. Archives 64:242-53.
39. Gazette 18 Nov. 1773.
40. Gazette 7 Apri11774, 26 May 1768.
41. Archives 64:379, 380 ("An Act for King William's School' in Annapolis").
42. William Eddis, Letters from America (Cambridge :Harvard University
Press, 1969).
43. Gazette 31 July 1776.
44. William Kilty, Laws of Mmyland (Annapolis: Frederick Green, 1799), 1
(June 1778), chap. 5, "Supplementary Act to the Act Entitled 'An Act for
King William's School in Annapolis 1696."'
45. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 5, "An Act for calling out of circulation the quota of
this state of bills of credit issued by congress, and the bills of credit emitted
by act of Assembly."
46. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 24, "An act for licensing and regulating ordinaries."
47. William Smith, An Account of Washington College in the State of Maryland
(Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1784).
48. Archives 48:408, 409.
49. Gazette 26 August 1784.
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
50. Kilty, 1 (Nov. 1784), chap. 37, "An Act for founding a college on the
Western Shore and constituting the same, together with Washington College
on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name of the University of
Maryland."
51. Gazette 21 April 1785; see also "An Act to provide a permanent fund for
the further encouragement and establishment of Washington College," in
Kilty (1784), chap. 7.
52. Kilty (1785), chap. 2, "A supplement to the act entitled An 'Act for founding
a college on the Western Shore, etc."'
53. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, 28 Feb.,
I March 1786 (in St. John's Archives).
54. "An Act for Consolidating the Funds belonging to King William's School
in the city of Annapolis with the Funds of Saint John's College: in Laws of
Maryland made and passed at a session of Assembly 1785 (Annapolis:
Frederick Green), chap. 39.
55. William Smith to Hon. Thomas Willing, Esq., President of the Bank of
America, 5 March 1786, William Smith mss., vol.l, no.lOl, Archives,
Historical Collection of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas.
Notes to Four
1. Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw, to which is prefixed a Biographical
Sketch of the Author (Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1810), pp. 92-93. A short
essay on the "Eloquence of St. Chrysostom: with a translation of a homily
on patience" was published by Shaw in Port Folio, n.s. 3, no. 2 (1807), pp.
17-19.
2. Memorial Volume: Dedication Ceremonies in Connection with the Formal
Opening of the Henry Williams Woodward Hall at St. John's College,
Annapolis, Md. (Annapolis, 1900), pp. 30, 31.
3. Steiner, p. 103 n.
4. Ibid.
5. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Freemasonry"; Coil's Masonic
Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John As a Generic Term and As a Lodge Name";
Edward T. Schultz, Histm·y of Freemasonry in Maryland, 4 vols. (Baltimore:
Mediary, 1884), 1:389-90.
6. One Hundredth Anniversary, 1848-1948, Annapolis Lodge No. 89, A.F. and
A.M. (Annapolis, n.d.), pp. 12, 13.
7. Generals Otto Holland Williams, John Swan, Mordecai Gist, Major
Archibald Anderson, Capt. Stephen Decatur, Commodore James Nicholson,
Col. Nathaniel Ramsey; see Schultz, 1:97-106. General Lafayette also
visited Annapolis many times.
8. Schultz, 1:382,393,396,397.
�FLETCHER
79
9. William Smith, Ahiman Rezon, Abridged and Digested, As a Help to All
That Are, or Would Be Free and Accepted Masons (Philadelphia, 1783), pp.
62,65,66,67,80,82,83.
10. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York: Modern Library, 1931), pp. 323-36.
11. Motto encircling the St. John's seal: "Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti" (No way
impassable to courage). There are seven Masonic virtues: (1) discretion, the
keeping of secrets; (2) obedience to the higher authorities of the order; (3)
morality; (4) love for· mankind; (5) courage; (6) liberality; and (7) love of
Death. See Tolstoy, p. 331.
12. Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, a Masonic Opera: an lntopretation of
the Libretto and the Music (New York: Knopf, 1971), pl. 35, p. 130.
13. Coil's s.v. "St. John."
14. Lodge No.6 in Georgetown on the Sassafras and Lodge No. 17 at Chestertown were founded in 1766.
15. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 2 July,
1793: "Resolved: that Bishop Carroll, Bishop Claggett, Mr. Nicholas Carroll, Dr. Scott, Mr. John Thomas, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Hanson, or any three,
be a committee to attend at any time, when requested by the principal for
the purpose of superintending a private examination of such students as shall
be candidates for the first degree to be conferred, at a commencement to
take place in November next." "Resolved: that the said committee be
authorized to procure for the board one common public seal and likewise
one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper;
the particular uses of the said seals to be hereafter ascertained, fixed and
regulated by this board."
16. One Hundredth Anniversary, pp. 13, 14.
17. Smith, An Account of Washington College, p.2. Compare with Pierre
Bezuhov's speech to the Petersburg lodge in 1809 (Tolstoy, p. 405).
18. Gazette 16 Dec. 1784.
19. For text of the Washington College charter of 1782 see Smith, Account pp.
5-14. Hereafter Washington College's charter will be cited as Charter of
1782; "Draught of a Proposed Act ... "will be cited as Draught or Proposed
Act (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784); the Act bearing the same name as the Draught
will be cited as the Charter of 1784, or the University Law (Laws of
Maryland, Made and Passed at a Session of Assembly Begun and Held at
the City of Annapolis, on Monday the first of November, in the Year of Our
Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four [Annapolis, 1785],
chap. 36).
20. William Smith to William White, 26 Jan. 1785. The Right Reverend William
White Papers, val. I, no. 56, Archives Historical Collection of the Episcopal
Church, Austin, Texas.
21. The John Carroll Papers, ed. Thomas O'Brien Hanley, 3 vols. (Notre Dame,
1976), 1:158.
22. Charter of 1782, paragraph 9:" ... and youth of all religious denominations
and persuasions, shall be freely and liberally admitted to equal privileges
and advantages of education, and to all the literary honors of the college,
according to their merit, and the standing rules of the seminary, without
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
requmng or enforcing any religious or civel test whatsoever upon any
student, scholar or member of the said college, other than such oath of
fidelity to the state as the laws thereof may require of the Visitors, Governors, Masters, Professors and Teachers in Schools and seminaries of learning in general" (Smith, Account, p. I 0).
Draught: "First, That the said intended college shall be founded and
maintained for ever upon the most liberal and catholic plan for the benefit
of the youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted
to the equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
honours of the college according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test or urging their attendance upon any particular
religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in,
or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend:
nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a principal, vice-principal,
or any professor or master in the said college on a religious score; but merely
on account of his literary and other necessary qualifications to fill the place,
for which he is chosen," (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784).
Charter of 1784:"II. Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland
That a college or general seminary of learning, by the name of Saint John's,
be established on the said western shore, upon the following fundamental
and inviolable principles, namely; first the said college shall be founded and
maintained for ever, upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of
every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and ,o all the literary honours of the
college, according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious
worship or service, other than what they have been educated in or have the
consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend" (Laws of
Maryland. 1785, chap. 36).
Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785. Speaking of opposition to the Religious Bill
in the General Assembly of 1785, Smith wrote "some men who call themselves Christians,- but I need not tell you, seem never to be Pleased with
any Thing however Christian, or however Catholic, where their Numbers
will not enable them to be the sole or chief Directors .... "In passing it is
interesting to note that the word "Christian" never appears in either the 1782
or 1784 charter.
Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785.
Archives 27:408-9.
For Carroll see John Carroll Papers, 1:xlv-li; for Allison see John H.
Gardner, Jr., First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore ... (Baltimore, 1966)
and William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York:
Carter, 1857-69), 3:257-63; for Smith see Horace W. Smith, Life and
Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1879),
I :22-28; 2:18-23, 34, 35, 2 vols. in I (reprint New York: Arno, 1972).
John Carroll Papers 1:80,81.
Gazette 30 Sept., 7 Oct., 21 Oct. 1784.
John Carroll Papers 1:82-143.
�FLETCHER
81
30. John Carroll Papers 1:112: "I procured a friend to examine the edition of
Chrysostom's work belonging to the public library in Annapolis." The
"public library"- known today as the Annapolitan Library or the Thomas
Bray Collection- is in the possession of the St. John's College Library and
is on deposit at the Maryland Hall of Records on the college campus. These
are the volumes referred to in John Shaw's letter 24 Jan. 1807 (see note 16).
31. "To the Roman Catholics of the State of Maryland: Especially Those of St.
Mary's County," Gazette 25 Nov. 1784.
32. John Carroll Papers 1:191.
33. John Carroll Papers 1:185, 186. Carroll wrote to Father Eden at the
Academy of Liege, April 1785: "Do you know any young men of improved
abilities and good conduct, capable of teaching the different branches of
science with credit and reputation? It is now in contemplation to establish
two Colleges in this state, open to Professors and Scholars of all denominations, and handsome appointments are to be annexed to the professorships.
To me it appears, that it may be of much service not only to Learning, but
to true Religion, to have some of these Professorships filled by R. C. men
of letters and virtue; and if one or two of them were in orders, it would be
so much the better.... "
34. MarylandJoumall5 July 1783, "To the Public"; 28 Oct. 1783, "To the Han.
the General Assembly"; 26 Nov., 7 and 14 Dec. 1784, "To the People of
Maryland"; 28 Dec. 1784, "A Design to Raise One Sect of Christians above
Another." A restatement of these articles may be found in Allison, Candid
Animadversions, cited in note 35.
35. Patrick Allison, Candid Animadversions on a Petition Presented to the
General Assembly of Maryland by the Rev. William Smith and the Rev.
Thomas Gates, First Published in 1783 ... by Vindex (Baltimore, 1793), pp.
iii-v, 1-16.
36. University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy, and Charitable School (Wilmington, 1974), p. 91: "The Assembly of
the Province having taken Mr. Smith into Custody, the Tru$tees considered
how the inconvenience from thence arising to the College might be best
remedied, and Mr. Smith having expressed a Desire to continue his Lectures
to the Classes, which had formerly attended them, the Students also inclining rather to proceed on their Studies under his Care. They ordered that the
said Classes should attend him for that Purpose at the usual Hour in the
Place of his present Confinement.,.
37. H. W. Smith, 2:34, 35.
38. Schultz, 1:382-93: "When Bro. Smith removed to Maryland, he was the
Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and as all Lodges of
Ancient York Masons in Maryland were under the jurisdiction of the Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania, he was active in his official and other Masonic
duties. The Lodges which had existed in Maryland prior to the introduction
of the Lodges by the Ancients, were held under the authority of the Moderns,
or other branch of the Masonic fraternity, and as these had now no ruling
head in America, many of their members sought admission into the Ancient
York Lodges. Brother Smith, and Brother John Coats, a Past Deputy Grand
�82
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, who also resided at the time in
Maryland, were deputed by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on the 2nd of
September, 1782, to take to their assistance such true brothers as they might
see proper, and enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry any
respectable Modern Masons in Maryland who might desire to be so healed
... "See also Allison, p.3.
The sources of revenue are similar to those enacted for Washington College
in "An Act to Provide'' a Permanent Fund for the Encouragement and
Establishment of Washington College," Votes and Proceedings of the House
of Delegates for the State of Maryland (Annapolis, 1783-85), pp. 15-18.
Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931-44), 22:17,18.
Ibid., 22:20.
Walter Bowie, James Brice, John Bullen, John Callahan, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, James Carroll, Nicholas Carroll, John Chalmers, J. Chase, Samuel Chase, Abraham Claude, John Davidson, George Digges, Joseph Dowson, Joseph Eastman, Joshua Frazier, Thomas Gates, Alexander Golder,
John Graham, T. Green, William Hammond, Alexander Hanson, Benjamin
Harwood, Thomas Harwood, Wi11iam Harwood, Samuel Hughes, Daniel of
St. Thomas Jenifer, Thomas Jennings, John Johnson, Rinaldo Johnson,
Philip Key, James Mackubin, Nicholas Mancubbin, George Mann, David
McMechen, John Muir, James Murray, Ben Oake, Aquila Paca, William
Paca, George Plater, Edward Plowden, Allen Quynn, James Reid, Christopher Richmond, Abasalom Ridgley, JohL Roger, Richard Sprigg, Charles
Steuart, James Steuart, John Steuart, William Steuart, J.D. Stone, Thomas
Stone, Michael Taney, Alexander Travers, James Tro(?), Charles Wallace,
James Williams, Nathaniel Yates. Annapolis Subscription List, 16 Dec.
1784, in St. John's College Archives.
Draught: "Thirdly ... agents ... are hereby authorised and made capable to
solicit and receive contributions and subscriptions ... of any person or
persons, bodies politic and corporate, who may be willing t.o promote so
good a design."
Charter of 1784: "III.... and they are hereby authorised to solicit and
receive, subscriptions and contributions . , . of any person or persons, who
may be willing to promote so good a design."
Draught and Charter of 1784: "Secondly, there shall be a subscription
carried on in the different counties of the western shore, upon the plan on
which it hath been opened, for founding the said college; and the several
subscribers shall class themselves, according to their respective inclinations, and for every thousand pounds current money which may be subscribed and paid, or secured to be paid, into the hands of the treasurer of the
western shore, by any particular class of subscribers, they shall be entitled
to the choice of one person as a visitor and governor of said college .... "
The addition of "bodies politic and corporate" allowed the King William's
School to give £2000 and to qualify as two classes of subscribers, each of
which could elect a member to the Board of Visitors and Governors of St.
John's College.
�FLETCHER
83
44. "Draught of a Proposed Act," Gazette !6 Dec. 1784: " ... and provided
further, that is in three years from the first day of June 1785, there shall not
be twenty-four visitors and governors chosen as aforesaid by classes of
subscribers of one thousand pounds, each class; the other visitors and
governors being not less then eleven duly assembled at any quarterly
visitation, shall proceed by election to fill up the number of twenty-four
visitors and governors, as they shaH think most expedient and convenient:
provided nevertheless/that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shaH
always be residents on the western shore of this state, but that the additional
visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twentyfour) may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states, if they are
such persons as can reasonably undertake to attend the quarterly visitations,
and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character,
to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary.... "
Charter of 1784: "IV.... Provided always, that seventeen of the said
visitors and governors shall be resident on the western shore of this state,
but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate
the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from any part of this state, if
they are such persons as can reasonably undertake the quarterly visitations,
and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character,
to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary."
45. H. W. Smith, 2:249.
46. The History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:222.
47. Schultz, 1:105.
48. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland,
1783-85 (Annapolis, 1785), p. 73.
49. William Morley Brown, George Washington, Freemason (Richmond: Garrett and Massi!, 1952), p. 332.
50. Schultz, I :76-78; and Gazette 29 Dec. 1763: "Tuesday last, being St. John's
was observed by the Brethren of the Ancient and Honarable Fraternity of
Free and Accepted Masons with great order and decency."
51. Writings of G. W. 22:25-27.
·
52. Gazette 30 March 1786. For earlier notices to subscribers see Gazette 9 June
1785 (no name at all, only reference to the Act); I Dec. 1785; 12 Jan. 1786.
First eleven members of the Board of Visitors and Governors who were
elected March 1786: Thomas Claggett, D.D., and William West, D.D.
(Episcopal clergymen, who would later be elected bishops); subscribers on
the Annapolis list of 16 Dec. 1784: Nicholas Carroll, John H. Stone, William
Beans, Thomas Stone, Samuel Chase, Thomas Jennings, A. C. Hanson, John
Thomas (a Quaker), and Richard Ridgeley.
53. Robert Reinhold, "For Relevance, the Students at St. John's College Turn
to Galileo," New Yark Times, 18 Oct. 1971, p. 39.
54. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 12 and
13 May 1972. A branch college, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
was founded in 1963.
�84
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notes to Five
1. Rev. William Smith to Rev. William West, 5 May 1790, Maryland Diocesan
Archives on deposit at the Maryland Historical Society (hereafter MDA).
2. Charles Goldsborough to John McDowell, Shoal Creek, 22 November 1790
(St. John's College LibraJY ).
3. Biographical Annals of Franklin County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1905), pp. 82, 83.
4. John M. McDowell, "John McDowell, LI.D., First President of St. John's
College, Annapolis, Maryland; Third Provost of University of Pennsylvania," in Old Mercersburg, by the Woman's Club of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania (New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Co.,l912), pp. 69-71; and
Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life,
1640-1840 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,
1950), pp. 496-97.
5. Alfred Nevin, Churches of the Valley, and Historical Sketch of the Old
Presbyterian Congregations of Cumberland and Franklin Counties in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: James H. Wilson, 1852), p.l09.
6. Sprague, Vol. 3, p. 188.
7. Bureau of Land Affairs, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Warrant 81 (survey of
23 acres, 27 May 1767; survey of 158 acres, 17 March 1767).
8. Nevin,pp.lll, 112.
9. University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue, p.13, and Montgomery, p. 544. Between 1771 and 1774 Montgomery was rector of St. Anne's
Church in Annapolis.
10. See University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College,
Academy and Charitable Schools, 1749-1851, p.33; University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue, pp.l7-18; and Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth
Series, 8 vols. (Harrisburg, 1906), 6:271, 281, 316.
11. See McDowell, passim.
12. Gazette 10 May 1786.
13. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 17861825, 19 November 1790, St. John's College Archives.
14. John McDowell to William McDowell, 4 September 1789. In Gratz Collection, case 71, box 14, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP).
15. Charles Goldsborough (congressman and governor); John Henry (U.S.
senator); William Vans Murray (congressman and ambassador to the
Hague); and William Tilghman (chief judge, third judicial circuit).
16. See, for example, Gov. John Henry, Letters and Papers (Baltimore: George
W. King, 1904), pp. 26-27.
17. Papenfuse, et al., 1:396-97, 445; 2:834.
18. They were Thomas Hayward, Thomas Shaw, Henry Steels, Hall Harris,
Christopher Harrison, Joseph Richardson, Howes Goldsborough, William
Lockerman, William Shaw, William Sanders, John Sanders, Henry Maynadier, John G. Harrison, Robert Goldsborough, William Goldsborough,
�FLETCHER
85
J. Campbell Henry, and John Shaw. See St. John's College, Matriculation
Book, 1789-1860.
19. Judge Robert Goldsborough to Charles Goldsborough, 27 August 1795,
MDA.
20. Gazette 23 May 1793.
21. Votes and Proceedings of the Senate ... November Session 1793, p.42.
Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates ... November 1793
(hereafter JHD), p.l20.
22. JHD 1794, p.84.
23. Manumission of Joseph Williams, Gratz Collection, ABC, HSP. McDowell
to Tilghman, 8, 16, 22 December 1806 and 9 March 1807.
24. McDowell to Rev. William Rogers, 20 December 1810, no. 671, University
of Pennsylvania Guide; McDowell to Rogers, 30 January 1811, Gratz
Collection, case 7, box 14, HSP.
25. Charles Goldsborough to Elizabeth and Anna Maria Goldsborough, I April
and 14 May 1809, John Lweeds Bozman Papers, Library of Congress.
26. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilghman Papers, box 22, HSP. McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27
December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove.
27. Alexander Contee Magruder to Bishop James Kemp, 29 June 1815, MDA.
Kemp was offered the presidency of St. John's in 1807 but he refused,
choosing instead to head an academy in Cambridge. See Kemp to John
Trippe, 13 March 1807, MDA.
28. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilghman Papers, box 22, HSP; McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27
December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove.
29. Magruder to[?], II July 1816, MDA.
30. Gov. Charles Goldsborough, Executive Letter Book, 1819-34, pp. 47-48,
MSA.
31. McDowell to Tilghman, 23 March 1819 and 6 April 1820, Tilghman Papers,
box 24, HSP. See also Robert H. Goldsborough to William Hemsley, 8
January 1810, Goldsborough papers, Myrtle Grove: "My sOns are now with
Dr. McDowell and have been at Shoal Creek for a week."
32. McDowell left an estate worth $40,000 to brothers, sisters, nephews, and
nieces, and his scholarly books to the University of Pennsylvania where one
volume survives in the rare book room: Hemy Pemberton, A View of Sir
Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728).
33. See Francis Scott Key, A Discourse on Education Delivered in St. Anne's
Church, Annapolis, After the Commencement of St. John's College, February 22d, 1827 (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1827), pp. 33, 34; and Robert Henry
Goldsborough, Address Delivered Before the Alumni of St. John's College
at the Annual commencement on the 22 February, 1836 (Annapolis: Jonas
Green, 1836).
34. St. John's College Archives.
��•
Results of
St. John's Crossword Number One
For Crossword Number One the three winners of $35 book tokens, redeemable
at the St. John's College Bookstore, are:
Tracy Cobbs, Martselle, AL
Steven Epstein, Saratoga Springs, NY
Elsie Roberts, Rhodesdale, MD
The winners were selected at random on July 8, from among thirteen entries.
The editor wishes to inform the readers of the Review that he is not Cassandra.
Nor is he Trout.
Solution to Crossword Number One
��St. John's Crossword Number Two
"Canonic Eponyms"
By TROUT
In this puzzle there are nine answers for which no clues are given. (That there are
nine of them provides an allusion for those who were students at the College
before 1972.) They are all of a type, and must be deduced from the cross-checked
letters and from the hint in the title. There is also a connection with the fourth
essay in this issue. AU clued answers, except one proper but common noun, are
in Webster's Ninth Collegiate DictionaJ)'·
For explanations of how to solve cryptic clues, new solvers are referred to the
preface to Crossword Number One, in the previous issue. Once again, there will
be three prizes of$35 book tokens redeemable at the St. John's College Bookstore,
the winners to be chosen at random from among the entries.
�90
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Down
Across
6. Taxmen following letter lead to
native rulers (5)
L Cherry swallowing it was
cheating (6)
10. Capital has fifty less after new
moon makes limited mental illness
3. Radioactive old boats are places
to socialize (7, two words)
(9)
.
12. Answer back with a bit of
temper and sound hoarse (7)
14. General assembly from ample
numbers (6)
15. Causes theories (4)
17. Inside tour in Albania is the
place to go (6)
19. The Spanish last month has no
time for the Hebrew last month (4)
20. A nasty thing in man's attire
never at first seems to be a woman
(7)
4. Trunk of middleman with gold
and thanks (5)
5. Adults mad about point are
honored (7)
7. Very small, to say the least (7)
8. Arab enters church for language
group (7)
9. Multiple choice of colors (3)
13. Woman of letters (5)
16. Unite wrongly and divide (5)
18. Two of our dead return without
right (3)
23. Experienced one's voice (in
principal) (5)
22. Cunning boy! (3)
24. Steadily reflects openings (5)
27. Plant pouch in God's acre (3)
26. Solid mistakes? Or fallacies? (5)
30. Rodent found in 'Toad Row,'
misplaced (7, two words)
29. Tricky wicket not kosher, again
(5)
33. Pitcher's stat points nullify an
effect (5)
25. Transfer down and strung up (5)
31. Ingredients of Bacardi act near
the heart (7)
35. The French, only part demon,
are yellow (5)
38. Cuniculum is for weight (7)
32. Hard going after top brass is a
certainty (5)
33. That is retumed around virtue
for superannuated tutors (7)
40. A worm turns. Hallelujah! (4)
34. Second person is star, we hear
42. One leaves a debt, Father, for a
sheep (6)
37. Organ was melancholy (6)
43. Result of thesis-writing shows
in immorality (4)
41. Cooperative in Russia, later
disjointed (5)
44. Undergarment's a little black (3)
45. To spoil liquor is the limit (6)
46. This time the Frence stand by
for the Scotch sign (7)
47. Mineral yields prophet in the
time of end (9)
48. Penetrating accent (5)
(3)
�TROUT
1
91
2
4
3
5
12
14
15
16
20
19
23
24
25
29
30
27
26
31
32
34
33
36
35
38
37
39
42
40
41
43
45
46
47
48
17
22
28
8
11
13
21
7
10
9
18
6
49
44
��
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLI, number one (1991-92)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Jack Hunt
'
The St.John's Review is published three times a year by the Office ofthe Dean, StJohn's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann, Dean. For those
not on the distribution list, subscripti9ns are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stories,
poems, and reasoned letters are welCome. Address correspondence to the Review, St.
John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available,
at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1992 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
1 . . . . . The Body Electric
Howard Fisher
39. . . . . . The Education of Te1emachos
Amy l}pfel Kass
61. . . . . . The Least Deceptive Mirror of the Mind:
Truth and Reality in the Homeric Poems
Carl A. Rubino
75 ...... What is a Book?
Eva T. H. Brann
89 ...... Poems
J.H. Beall
Sandra Hoben
Kemmer Anderson
97
Re-Reading:
A Note on Ibsen and Wagner
Elliott Zuckerman
101 ..... Solution:
St. John's Crossword Number Two
Trout
103. . . . . . St. John's Crossword Number Four ·
Captain Easy
:
��I
The Body Electric
Howard Fisher
I. Does the electric eel shock itself?
In the dialogue Me no, that otherwise unmemorable character establishes his own
lasting memorial by creating one of the most memorable similes in all the
dialogues of Plato: Socrates, he says, is like the torpedofish (Figure 1) whose
shock plunges his prey into a stupid paralysis.' Meno calls the simile his "little
jest"; and while Socrates does agree to accept the supposedly playful image, he
makes one qualification:
If the totpedo tOtpifies itself while making others totpid, then I may be
compared with it; otherwise not?
FIGURE 1: Torpedo-fish (alter Grundfest)
Howard Fisher is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was given at
the College in October, 1991, to mark the bicentennial ofFaraday's birth, on September
22, 1791. Figures 1-4 are by John Langley Howard. They are reprinted with permission
from the article "Electric Fishes," by Harry Grundfest, in Scientific American, October,
1960, p.122.
�2
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Torpidity in the fish's victim represents the perplexity and ineptitude displayed by one who, like Meno, has been forced under Socmtic questioning to
acknowledge his own ignomnce. Thus the turn Socrates gives to Meno's simile
means, first of all, that Socrates paralyzes his respondents not through mastery
but through deficiency: through the same mortal ignorance that Meno has been
brought painfully to face in himself.
But scarcely concealed beneath Meno's by now brittle jocularity lies another
element, and a disturbing one. Meno's image of Socrates is 1ife with allusions to
the magical and supernatural. He declares that Socrates is "bewitching" him with
"spells and incantations," and that in any other city Socrates would be condemned as a "wizard." This more sinister theme casts Socrates as other-worldly,
with an inhuman and perhaps unnatural power over men, as the weird powers of
the torpedo-fish set it apart from more conventional carnivores. Socrates' correction of the simile thus has a second meaning also: If the torpedo-fish is subject
to the same power that it itself exercises, then the fish is part of the natural order;
and its power is likewise a natuml, not a magical one. 3 Similarly, the Socratic
power that derives from knowing that one does not know-a power to neutralize
conventional opinions and break their merely habitual hold over us-will be a
human, not a diabolical, power. So much so, for Socrates, that to love wisdom
rather than dogma, to be philos sophoi, is to exercise the very paradigm of human
powers.
But does the torpedo-fish torpify itself? Is the creature an exemplar of
diabolical power, as in Meno's simile, or of activity according to nature, as in
Socrates'? And we might frame a similar question about any of the other animal
species with well-developed electric organs who hunt their prey seemingly
Zeus-like, hurling down potent electric blasts upon their doomed victims-the
Raia or electric skate (Figure 2), the Malapterurus or electric catfish (Figure 3),
and the Gymnotus or so-called "electric eel" (Figure 4 ).4 Does the electric eel
shock itself? That is the question we shall regard as having been suggested by
Meno's simile and Socrates' reply. But it reflects a larger question: What is the
relation in nature between an agent and its own power?
In November of 1838 Michael Faraday, the great experimentalist and natural
philosopher, reported to the Royal Society on "the character and direction of the
electric force of the Gymnotus.''5 Faraday had long been trying to obtain an
electric eel [1752]; 6 and in August of 1838 a certain intrepid Mr. Porter succeeded
in bringing one to London from South America, where it had been captured five
months before. Porter sold the creature to an establishment in Adelaide Street
whose proprietors generously made it available to Faraday for such scientific
researches as should be consistent with "a regard for its life and health" [1754].
This was not Faraday's first encounter with animal electricity. He had in 1833,
some five years before, established the probable identicality of all forms of
�FISHER
3
FIGURE 2: Raia (after Grundfest)
FIGURE 3: Ma/apterurus (after Grundfest)
FIGURE 4: Faraday's Gymnotus,
the modern Electrophorus (after Grundfest)
�4
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
electricity, including animal electricity;7 and in 1814-15 he had assisted Humphrey Davy in tests, at that time inconclusive, to see whether the shock of the
"electric fish" could decompose water. 8
Faradity's reports to the Society from November 1831 on, along with other
writings, were republished by him in a collection called Experimental Researches in Electricity, a project that was to grow to three sizable volumes by
1855. The Experimental Researches is a remarkably dialectical book in which
topics persistently appear and reappear, developing often in new and surprising
forms that both draw from and contribute to other, at first seemingly disparate,
investigations. The researches are chronologically organized into twenty-nine
numbered "Series"; and while each Series has an identifiable area of inqniry,
multiple strands of tributary or even tangential investigations are continually
encountered and freely admitted to the narrative. In fact, rather than call these
narrative units merely "series," I prefer to think of them as comparable to the
sallies of Don Quixote. They are exploratory journeys, sometimes into new,
sometimes repeatedly into the same territory; and in them the protagonist appears
to exert only a moderate effort to shape or regulate the adventures that ensue.9
Also available to us is Faraday's laboratory Diary, a no less remarkable
production, in which his laboratory work is recorded sequentially and in complete detail for a span, seldom interrupted, of forty-two years. Not everything in
the Diary could possibly be suitable for publication, of course, but it is amazing
how much of the Diary did find its way into papers and letters and thence into
the Experimental Researches. I will occasionally refer to the Diary for some
items Faraday did not publish.
Faraday's 1838 Gymnotus report makes up the Fifteenth Series of Experimental Researches, and I am delighted to be able to say that in it Faraday actually
touches on our question-whether the electric eel shocks itself. True, he mentions it only in passing, and his answer-that "the animal does not apparently
feel the electric sensation which he causes in those around him" [1772]-is only
a guess. 10 But it is rather charming that Faraday should raise the question at all.
Indeed the entire Gymnotus report is charming, with its description of the fish
and its history, its inclusion of part of a letter from Humboldt on proper care and
feeding ("cooked meat, not salted"), and even the delightful sketch, which we
shall return to later, of the Gymnotus in his tubu (Figure 5).
Repeatedly in Faraday's report we find signs of a wondering and appreciative
eye for the striking and exotic in nature. Faraday calls the Gymnotus "this
wonderfnl animal" [1769]; and the word "wonderful" actually begins the paper.
But what is the source of Faraday's wonder, in which presumably we too are to
share? Is it exclusively the animal's strangeness and mystery-that, as Meno
intimates, it goes somehow beyond the bounds of ordinary nature? Or is Faraday
capable, and are we, of bestowing wonder on other than the spectacular and the
�5
FISHER
16
17
15
14
19
11
10
FIGURE 5: (from ERE)
arcane? 12 Faraday characterizes the wonder he has in mind at the outset of his
paper:
Wonderful as are the laws and phenomena of electricity whim made evident
to us in inorganic or dead matter, their interest can bear scarcely any comparison with that which attaches to the same force when connected with the
nervous system and With life ... [1749]
Clearly the interest raised by animal electricity is not that it goes beyond
nature. Rather what is compelling here is precisely the conformity between
Gymnotns's living power and the more prosaic electrical phenomena associated
with inorganic bodies. 13 Electrical powers formerly thought to be confined to
"inert" matter are here seen to be exercised by living beings also. Such a
communion of powers holds promise for the expansion of our existing
knowledge-a promise Faraday is all the more keen to acknowledge because its
importance has not been widely appreciated:
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
[T]hough the obscurity which for the present surrounds the subject may for a
time also veil its importance, every advance in our knowledge of this mighty
power in relation to inert things, helps to dissipate that obscurity, and to set
forth more prominently the surpassing interest of this very high branch of
Physical Philosophy. [1749]
This is a statement about the order of discovery in nature. Faraday here notes
that advances in our understanding of ifwrganic powers will shed light in turn
upon living processes. Later in the paragraph, Faraday voices his belief that we
are "upon the threshold of what ... man is permitted to know of this matter." I
take seriously the qualification: permitted to know. The promise of animal
electricity has nothing to do with forbidden knowledge, wizardry, or things
unnatural. Faraday seems to affmn that, just as inorganic forces lie well within
the domain of standard science, so an understanding of living forces stands as a
merely more distant, but assured, prize.
Yet Faraday's mention of the "surpassing interest" of animal electricity
presents animal processes as more than mere extensions of inorganic ones.
"Surpassing" interest suggests almost a reverse order of discovery: that exercise
of a power by a living being may prove to be visible and intelligible in ways that
power exercised by inert matter alone is not. I see two areas in particular where
animal electricity might prove to be especially illuminating.
First, in animal electricity we have an instance of one identical power
exercised both by living and nonliving agents. The baffling relation between an
agent and the power it exercises may be more accessible when it is viewed in the
comparison between a living and a nonliving system; and if so, knowledge of
the animal may contribute as much to our knowledge of the inorganic system as
the other way around.
Second, a living creature's ability to respond to and alter its environment by
intention or habit adds a new interpretive dimension to the animal's electrical
relations with its surroundings. The general relation between an agent and its
surrounding medium may therefore stand forth more pointedly when exemplified by a Jiving agent. In fact I will argue that the electric fish does become for
Faraday an explanatory image for inorganic agents, and particularly for the
magnet.
If the new knowledge intimated by animal electricity is, as I said, not an
uncovering of things hidden and forbidden, it must be a knowledge of things
which are already there to be seen, but which we have not yet learned to see. 14
Knowledge of this sort will therefore in large measure consist not in the content
but in the mode of vision-or one might say, in rightness of vision. 15 In the case
of Gymnotus, gaining such orthoscopy begins with the quest for an adequate
image of the fish himself. Much of Faraday's activity in the Fifteenth Series is
concerned with bringing this image to light. Faraday's experiments with
�FISHER
7
Gymnotus are as much concerned with eliciting images of the animal as with
establishing factual information about him.
Besides Faraday's own experiments, conventional anatomy plays a role in
originating the elements of the Gymnotus images. For example, Faraday is aware
that the electric organ tissues are of muscular derivation; he cites Geoffroy St.
Hilaire, who classifies them not with the organs of higher life functions but
among "the common teguments" 16 [1789]. What this means is that the fish's
elecbic apparatus is comparable in its office to any of the ordinary muscular
organs, for example to the locomotory structures, the fins.
Gymnotus's anal fin, which runs some 4/5 of the length of the body, is that
animal's principallocomotmy organ (see again Figure 4). The fish propels itself
forward or backward by sending a sinusoidal wave in the appropriate direction
along the fin. But obviously the fin achieves nothing except when the fish is
surrounded by its watery medium. Likewise for land animals; hands and feet
achieve nothing in the way of locomotion except in reaction to a resisting
medium or surface. 17 Bearing that in mind, I hope you will not think it too fanciful
of me to suggest that, from a locomotory point of view, the medium ought to be
counted as part ofthe body. Faraday, I hasten to say, makes no such interpretation
of the mechanics of animal locomotion. But elecbically, at least, his researches
with Gymnotus will conbibute to a new image of body, extended continuously
throughout the medium and contiguous with all other bodies through its own
activity. The Body Electric will possess a distinctive shape and will call for new
principles of anatomy.
II. The Expetiments of 1838
Faraday's experimental exercises with Gymnotus fall into two classes. The
first of these may be called "identity" experiments. In them, Faraday confirms
through his own work the conclusion he had reached in 1833 when surveying
the investigations of others: the animal's elecbicity is identical to all other
elecbicities in its panoply of effects-physiological, magnetic, thermal, chemical, and so on. Some of his methods are new, 18 but the experimental aims of the
"identity" exercises in 1838 are unchanged from those he had reviewed in 1833.
The second exercises are wholly new. Faraday characterizes them as "experiments relating to the quantity and disposition of the elecbicity in and about this
wonderful animal" [1769]; I will call them simply the "disposition" experiments.
The two classes of experiment are different not ouly in their objectives but in
the rhetoric they bring to the animal's elecbical powers. The bringing forth of a
phenomenon in the distinctive forms given by experimental apparatus is a
rhetoric, just as certainly as Meno's verbal portrayal of Socrates in the form of
the torpedo-fish was rhetoric. We can see something of the rhetorical difference
�TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
8
between the "identity" and the "disposition" exercises by examining their
respective apparatus. Faraday describes three kinds of what he calls "collectors,"
with which to sample the fish's electric action:
(1) The hands. Here the experimenters 19 subject themselves to shock through
their unprotected hands, either grasping the fish directly or immersing the hands
at various locations in the water. Employing their own bodies as experimental
apparatus, the investigators stand in the most intimate possible relation to the
object of their study.
(2) The "disk" collectors. Here the investigators make their hands only the
indirect recipients of the shock by grasping the handles of a pair of disk-shaped
copper conductors (Figure 6) and disposing the disk ends variously about the
fish's watery element and on his body. These instruments give increased precision of placement, but to some extent their inte!JlOsition mediates between the
investigator and the shock received [1760].
(3) The "saddle" collectors. Here the hands are replaced altogether by a pair
of copper straps, which Faraday sometimes insulates [1759] with rubber jackets
(Figure 6). Instead of being hand-held, the saddle collectors sit astride the fish
and are wired directly to other indicating devices [1761-66]; and thus the
investigator is placed at still greater removal from the direct electrical effect.
f
.
-~
1
....
"!
·3~
Zj.-
FIGURE 6: Disk and saddle collectors (from Diary)
�FISHER
9
In this short catalog we find an order of increasing sophistication of apparatus
(from bare hands to specialized clamps), together with a corresponding regression of the observer from the locus of action. Most of the "identity" experiments
make use of the saddle collectors; thus the investigator in the identity experiments makes only minimal ingression to the scene of action. He does not
generally place himself in direct relation with the fish's power, but rather with
apparatus that displays concomitants of that power.
The "identity" experiments propound a rhetoric of mobility. In them tile power
is conveyed away from' the fish and its habitat. It is separable and has a nature
of its own that is studied independently of the fish and in comparison to other
"electricities," similarly abstracted from their respective sources. Gymnotus's
power can be transferred through conductors to other venues, where it proceeds
to display the same phenomena of magnetic action, chemical action, shock,
spark, and so on, as do conventional electricities. Not only is this power
qualitatively identical in its effects but quantitatively too: the ratio between its
magnetic and chemical efficacies is consistent with the ratio Faraday had
established in 1833 for Voltaic electricity [1770].
It is fair, I think, to say that the "identity" experiments are more concerned
with the electricity than with the fish. Insofar as these exercises portray the fish
at all, they represent him as just another electrical source; and hence two images
sttaightaway emerge in close succession, both of which focus on the source
aspect of the animal: Gymnotus as Leyden Jar, and, alternatively, Gymnotus as
Voltaic Battery. Both these images are explored in a sequence of experiments
that establish the quantity and intensity of the animal's electrical shock.
FIGURE 7: Faraday's discharge arrangement (from Diary)
�10
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Faraday's procedure for establishing quantity amounts to a sort of practical
pun on the Leyden jar image (Figure 7). He substitutes for the fish in water two
brass balls bearing insulated wires, which latter can be connected at will to a
Leyden battery of well-documented dimensions [1770, 291]. He also includes a
length of wetted string in the circuit to lower the intensity of discharge below the
sparking point-for he has already found that Gymnotus's electrical intensity is
too low for a spark to appear, except under the most favorable conditions
[1766-67]. The Leyden battery is then given its maximum charge. When it is
subsequently discharged through the brass balls into the water a shock is felt,
"much resembling that from the fish." Faraday continues:
I think we may conclude that a single medium discharge from the fish is at
least equal to the electricity of a Leyden battery of fifteen jars, containing 3500
square inches of glass coated on both sides, charged to its highest degree.
[1770]
Judged by the quantities of electricity typically employed in electrostatic
experiments, this would be a considerable dose,20 but one also well within the
capabilities of a few moments' action by a large Voltaic battery. Quantitatively,
then, both the Leyden jar and the Voltaic battery serve equall ywell as preliminary
images for the fish qua electrical source. But it is important to appreciate that
they are images; Faraday certainly does not expect to find either capacitative or
Voltaic structures anatomically present within the animal, and there is no
question of his taking either of them as a literal explanation. For one thing, neither
image can be easily fitted to the animal's ability to deliver a series of shocks in
rapid succession [1771]. Basically, the problem is that neither image allows for
an "on-off' switch.2 1
Such a failure to articulate the animal's ability to control its action would be
fatal to a hypothesis, if that were Faraday's aim. But Faraday is pursuing an
image, not a hypothesis; and therefore in his subsequent exercises with Gymnotus he will continue to call upon laboratory devices like the Leyden jar as
metaphors.22
Earlier investigators had sought to solve the mystery of auimal electricity by
a more literal appeal to some sort of internal battery in the fish. 23 In 1775 Henry
Cavendish had constructed a model torpedo-fish out of shoe-leather. He
equipped the model with a pair of metal plates which, suitably situated, and
energized by a Leyden battery, served as the "electric organs" of his imitation
Leviathan.24 But as his drawings show (Figure 8), Cavendish strove for a measure
of verisimilitude in shape as well as material that Faraday evidently regarded as
wholly beside the point.25 Now there is no doubt that to be able to interpret the
electric fish as containing a source analogous to a Voltaic cell or Leyden jar would
be of much explanatory va1ue;26 and it might even seem to advance a more
unified view of nature by reducing two apparently different electrical sources to
�FISHER
11
~
c
F
D
G
...
N
,,
E
~~---··
B
FIGURE 8: Cavendish's "torpedo"
oneP But Faraday's conception of the unity of natural forces is more sophisticated than any merely reductive program. His view is relational, rather than
reductive: he will strive to explicate a nature whose unity lies in the interconvertibility of forces, rather than in anything so literal-minded as trying to find a
Voltaic cell, or any other laboratory device, hidden within every electric source.
The problem with images of source as such is that they focus on the agent to the
detriment of the activity; they tend to represent an "active" source in isolation
from a "passive" object. Images capable of integrating the agent and its own
power must be sought through a different kind of experiment.
We may therefore tum to the second class of Faraday's Gymnotus exercises.
The disposition experiments are carried out almost entirely either with the
unaided hands or with the hand-held disk collectors. These are mapping experiments; they employ a rhetoric of residence. In contrast to the identity experiments, the fish's power is not here conveyed to a remote observer; rather the
observers make full ingression to the scene of action and quite literally immerse
themselves in the place of habitation of the power. 28
�12
Tiffi ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
A rhetorical contrast between the identity and the disposition exercises is
thus evident: the identity of the power is established by removing it from its
place; the disposition of the power is studied by ascribing it to its place. The
contrast is not absolute, of course. On the whole, though, the experiments of the
Fifteenth Series exhibit two different aims, two different rhetorical dimensions,
and eventuate in two different kinds of image-the image of electrical source,
which we have just discussed, and the image of system, to which we now turn.29
By "system" I think Faraday means to identify not only an interdependence
of relations, but also an allied' condition of activity: something like Aristotle's
"housebuilder building," 30 which is an agent at work and in an essential relation
of doing with the surroundings. 31 This is an image which, if it does not actually
unify the doer with the deed, at least minimizes their mutual alienation.
Faraday departs in several ways from what had been customary in work with
electric fishes. He consistently treats the animal and its surroundings as essentially related, not isolated aspects of the survey. As one sign of this, not one of
his experiments calls for removal of the fish from the water [1758]. This is in
marked contrast to the traditional torpedo-fish researches, which frequently
emphasized the strength and quality of shocks delivered to a handler by a fish
held in the air?2 Certainly Faraday's refusal to do likewise was in part a reflection
of concern for the welfare of the animal [1754]; but it may also indicate that his
view of the fish-and of "agents" in general-was already one which strove for
unity in the treatment of agent and medium.33 If so, it would follow that a study
of the animal in its accustomed medium would better reveal the nature of its
characteristic action. While this principle is not exactly the same as that of the
animal ethologist, nevertheless we shall find that the fish's habitual behavior will
provide rich guidance to Faraday in the interpretation of its electrical activity.
A survey with the hands gives the most comprehensive picture of the state of
Gymnotus's body at the time of shock. A single hand placed anywhere on the
fish's body feels only a feeble disturbance during a shock, and then only in the
partofthehand that is actually in the water [1774]. Twohandsplacedatthesame
spot, or even laterally opposite each other, give the same weak result [1773].
But two hands placed axially, along the the body of the fish, transmit
considerable shock, often "extending up the arms, and even to the breast of the
experimenter." Within limits, the greater the longitudinal distance between the
hands, the greater the shock [1776]. Maximum shock is received when the fish
is grasped with one hand just behind the head and the other about six inches from
the end of the tail [1760].34
Manual survey of the water reveals a similar continuously electrified condition in the surrounding medium. One hand placed in the water, or two hands
placed together, delivers at most a sensation of tingling-Faraday calls it "the
pricking shock" [1781]-and only in the part immersed. But two hands placed
�FISHER
13
apart transmit strong shocks up the arms if their line of separation is parallel to
the fish, as 10-11 or 14-15 (see again Fignre 5); if perpendicular, however, as
12-13, then only weak sensations in the immersed portions of the hands.
When several colleagues take part together, the shock is felt simultaneously
at all locations, though with diminishing severity at increasing distances from
the center of the fish. Thus at 10-11 the shock is strong, at 14-15 less strong, at
16-17 very feeble, as also at 18-19 [1777-81]. The occnrrence of simultaneous
shocks throughout the water shows, what is probably no surprise to us, that
discharge occnrs throughout all the snrrounding medium. Amazingly, this was
still a live question for Faraday in the Diary! On October 16, 1838 Faraday had
written:
Now endeavd to ascertain whether three or four persons, each fanning a
separate circuit, could be shocked at once and without touching the fish; i.e.•
whether the discharge is in every direction through all the surrounding water
or other conducting matter. (Diary, 5017)
If, as is not the case, shock did occnr in only one part of the medium or along
only one path at a time, we should probably be led to seek in the medium some
process comparable to a spark, for it is characteristic of the spark that it tends to
establish only one path at a time between the same points [1407ff.]. What would
this amount to but invoking an image of Gymnotns as Zeus the Thunderer, who
can throw his fiery bolts to one place, and spare a neighboring place, as he sees
fit? I had myself, if you recall, casually voiced that simile at the beginning of
this talk. But the differentially electrified state of the water, clearly revealed by
the occnrrence of simultaneous shocks, completely overthrows any thunderbolt
image. It is now abundantly clear that Gymnotus does not "throw" a bolt of power
to a particular place, independently of neighboring places. Whatever the fish
does, it must energize the water as a whole.35 My Zeus-simile, therefore, was at
least as rash as Meno's Torpedo-image. But I thought it would make a sufficiently
harmless beginning provided I abandoned it at an appropriate time, which I now
do. Possibly Meno thought the same.
But if Zeus the thunderer is banished from the scene, another, even more
potent image for the fish emerges. Gymnotus is presented as an agent that
occupies space through its peculiar action:
[A]ll the water and all the conducting matter around the fish through which a
discharge circuit can in any way be completed, is filled at the moment with
circulating electric power. [1784]
The fish is here seen as the bearer of an action that fills space. Or, since
Faraday's images generally tend towards the concrete,36 this one too develops
specificity. It will become an image of Gymnotus as Magnet.
�14
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
III. The Fish as Magnet
Results from the manual survey are rough, fragmentary, and highly dependent
on the ability of individual investigators to correlate their respective impressions
of the animal's shock. Faraday emphasizes that a general pattern becomes
evident only after many repetitions of such observations [1782]. But something
more than repetition is needed to integrate those experimental "soundings" of
the fish's neighborhood into a coherent, readable pattern. Faraday relies heavily
upon the pattern of magnetic lihes offorce surrounding a bar magnet to provide
the schema for such an integration. With the aid of the magnetic pattern-the
one he will in later years name the "sphondyloid" [3271]-Faraday has no
difficulty integrating the coarse survey results into a shape that closely resembles
that distinctive figure. He gives a small sketch in the Diary (Figure 9).37
FIGURE 9: (from Diary)
�15
FISHER
In the Experimental Researches Faraday verbally notes this resemblance to
the magnet [1784] and virtually invites the reader to make a similar diagram for
himself; yet Faraday does not publish any such drawing-neither the sketch from
the Diary nor any other. I think his reluctance to present this most important
image visually in a published paper may arise just because the manual survey is
so coarse [1782]. Any sketch could only be, as the sketch in the Diary is, an
"artist's rendition"-a vehicle for the imagination, perhaps, but not a depiction
offacts. There are in fact no lines visible about the fish; Faraday is appealing to
the magnet, in which tlie lines are visible,38 in order to make visual sense of the
fish. Gymnotus is represented both in thought and in experimental practice by
the metaphorical image of Fish as Magnet. Not that Faraday thinks Gymnotus
exercises the same kind of force as the magnet does, but it imposes a comparable
geometry of action upon its surrounding neighborhood. Faraday takes as an
image for the fish, then, not a picture, but rather the magnet itself.
Though he is a powerful proponent of the imagination, I sense in Faraday a
persistent reluctance to picture its contents. 39 Pictures, it almost seems, are for
him Sacred to Fact; when imaginative constructs are to be conveyed, Faraday
employs his incomparable gift for verbal narrative instead. It is that language
that now takes on the burden of presenting a further imaginative integration of
additional aspects of the fish. The narrative vehicle Faraday chooses here is a
particularly striking one. In one brief but dramatic incident the fish begins to
develop interpretive independence from its new-found image "as Magnet."
Gymnotus had performed a maneuver which, by Faraday's account, is so
transparent and readable, the fish might almost be said to have presented its own
interpretive image.
The Coiling Incident
We have been considering the electric eel as maintaining a fixed, straight,
bodily posture. But as the fish will sometimes bend itself .from side to side,
Faraday describes the effects that such inflections of the body would be expected
to have upon the external distribution of the shock. "[1]he lines of force ... ,"
he says, "vary ... in a manner that can be anticipated theoretically" [1783]. First,
he explains, a handler who grasped both head and tail of the bent fish would feel
a reduced shock, because the shorter water path created by the mutual approach
of head and tail permits a greater portion of the force to pass through the water;
less, therefore, up the arms. But for that very reason, he continues (Figure 5),
... with respect to the parts immersed, or to animals, as fish in the water
between 1 and 7, they would be more powerfully, instead of less powerfully,
shocked. [1783-Faraday's italics]
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
16
As we soon discover, a bending, or rather coiling, maneuver by the fish was not
hypothetical but had actually taken place. I hardly know whether the following
incident attracts more interest from an electrical, or from an ethological, point
of view. Here it is; Faraday is the narrator:
This Gymnotus can stun and kill fish which are in very various positions
to its own body; but on one day when I saw it eat, its action seemed to me
peculiar. Alive fish about five inches in length, caught not half aminute before,
was dropped into the tub. The Gymnotus instantly turned round in such
manner as to form a coil inclosing the fish, the latter representing a diameter
across it; a shock passed, and there in an instant was the fish struck motionless,
as if by lightuing, in the midst of the waters, its side floating to the light The
Gymnotus made a tum or two to look for its prey, which having found he
bolted, and then went searching about for more. A second smaller fish was
given him, which being hurt in the conveyance, showed but little signs oflife,
and this he swallowed at once, apparently without shocking it The coiling of
the Gymnotus round its prey had, in this case, every appearance of being
intentional on its part, to increase the force of the shock, and the action is
evidently exceedingly well suited for that purpose, being in full accoodance
with the well-known laws of the discharge of currents in masses of conducting
matter; and though the fish may not always put this artifice in practice, it is
very probable he is aware of its advantage, and may resort to it in cases of.
need. [1785]
For this incident, too, Faraday had made a sketch for himself in the Diary that
does not appear in the published paper. I give it here in two forms. Fignre lOb is
Faraday's original sketch. In Fignre lOc I have filled in the path of concentration
of force, at least as implied by its deadly effect on the prey.40 There is probably
no particular efficacy in delivering the shock through lines of force that run, as
they do here, transversely to the length of the prey; but it is true that, in this
position, the prey is intersected by the rnaximmn nmnber of lines.41
~
©~
(b)
(c)
(pj
(jJ
?"
?" =---
(a)
FIGURE 10: The coiling incident (from Diary). (a) hunting; (b) coiling;
(c) showing implied pattern of the lines of force (see text)
�FISHER
17
An important stylistic feature of Faraday's account of the coiling incident is
his effort to convey what is evidently for him the preeminent readability of the
fish's behavior.42 The theme of concentration of the ambient power is evidenced
by the unusually sudden and intense convulsion delivered to the prey-emphatically conveyed in Faraday's phraseology: "in an instant ... struck motionless,
as if by lightning ... ."Electrical readability in this episode derives also from
the volitional readability of the coiling gesture. Since Gymnotus's shock is
generally for the sake of killing his prey, a gesture that enhances his habitnal
hunting behavior implies also an enhancement of lethal power-hence a concentration of force onto the prey. That the animal must bend its own body in order
to effect an apparent focusing of its external power suggests, if it does not actually
imply, a definite though flexible structure in the external action,43 itself a kind
of body or extension of body; a body, moreover, whose substance is not matter
but force. Once again we have occasion to reject the image of Zeus and his
thunderbolt: Gymnotus's shock is to be viewed not as a separable armament, but
as a functional extension of the body. It is not a weapon wielded, but a limb
employed.
The twin anatomical principles of this new body are contiguity and coherence.
In contrast to the specialized organs, ligaments, and conduits of a physiological
body, in this new Body Electric action is everywhere. It is voluminous and fills
space, yet is not contained either by a membrane or a vessel. It is shaped, but not
by a container-rather by its own relations of equilibrium. It is, in 1838, an
admittedly enthusiastic and somewhat fantastic metaphor; yet by 1852 Faraday
will be speaking essentially the same language-honed, disciplined, and enriched by a series of brilliant magnetic researches-about the lines of magnetic
force, that most profound, pervasive, and fertile of all his images.
The element of animal readability appears also in another fish story that we
find only in the Diary. Faraday does not rehearse that anecdote in so striking a
fashion, but the episode is visually almost as suggestive as the coiling incident:
A live gudgeon was put into the water [with Gymnotus]. Perhaps he was
shocked now and then, but he was not killed and eaten. Indeed he must have
had shocks frequently while we were at work.
At last he took up his position, very frequently, with his nose close to and
opposite the nose of the Gymnotus and remained there. Now this is a place of
no discharge, and probably the fish found that out; but at the sarue time, it is
the place of feeding for the Gymnotus if he had been hungry, and it would
appear that this may be a natural provision to drive his prey towards his head
and mouth. (Diary 5052-53)
Although the coiling episode is by far the more dramatic, I would say that
both vignettes point in the direction of a developing "self-interpretive" animal
character. Purposiveness was paramount in the interpretation of the coiling
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
episode. In the Diary incident, too, an element of voluntarism plays an interpretive role. The small gudgeon appears by its choice of swimming position to
indicate an electrical null point in the region about Gymnotus. This is not new
information, even supposing that Faraday has rightly interpreted the smaller
fish's action; for he has already gathered (through the manual survey) that the
region of the mouth is "a place of no discharge." Nevertheless the smaller fish
provides confirmation of that condition spontaneously, almost "at a glance,"
while the survey pattern had \O be pieced together from individual observers'
reports. Thus the incident spells another advance in representational integration.
IV. The Magnet as Fish
The course of development of Faraday's interpretive images is always a
dialectical one, laced with tension and reversals. In the case of Gymnotos he
began with tentative representations first as Voltaic cell, then as Bar-magnet.
These images were, it seems, necessary first stages in the attempt to visualize
Gymnotus's peculiar activity. Yet they were no sooner invoked than revised, and
fmally surpassed.
The increasing interpretive independence of animal electrical action, gained
largely through the interpretive role of such volitional actions as Gynmotus's
"coiling," comes to a brief but instructive culmination some fourteen years later
in which the fish not only frees itself from the magnet-metaphor but actually
inverts it. In June 1852, Faraday will bring forth his most profound and comprehensive interpretation of magnetic power in the great essay, "On the Physical
Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force.'>14 There he will argue that the lines
of magnetic force are not merely representative symbols but real structures
physically present in all the materials through which they mn, structores present
even in so-called "empty space." But when Faraday expounds the magnet under
this view he uses, besides the Voltaic battery, also the electric fish as one of his
explanatory images, thereby placing the fish prior in explanatory order to the
magnet!:
The magnet, with its surrounding sphondyloid of power, may be considered
as analogous in its condition to a Voltaic battery immersed in water or any
other electrolyte; or to a gynmotus or torpedo, at the moment when these
creatures, at their own will, fill the surrounding fluid with lines of electric
force. [3276]
In 1838 the image was Fish as Magnet; in 1852 the image is Magnet as Fish.
How did the electric fish, which formerly had been interpreted by the magnet,
come to be the interpreter of the magnet?
�FISHER
19
When Faraday introduces this reversal of images in the 1852 essay, his
immediate topic is the external geomelfY of the magnet's power. But beyond that,
Faraday is concerned to convey his sense that the exterior action of the magnet
represents an integrally shaped, and quantitatively defmite, physical structure.
It is in this service that the electric fish is called to the scene. 1iue, Faraday had
revealed the definite quantity of magnetic action during the previous year
through the phenomena of the Moving Wire [3109]; but it was the early studies
of the Voltaic cell, and e;;pecially the Gymnotus mapping exercises of 1838, that
had given the first intimations of a power that fills up its medium, and whose
exterior action bears an essential relation to the interior condition of the agent.
In order to convey his vision of the magnetic lines of force in 1852, Faraday
describes typical methods for making visible the lines of electric force45 about
an immersed voltaic battery [3276]. These procedures are virtual recapitulations
of the 1838 Gymnotus exercises! For example, he describes how the Iiues of
electric force may be probed with the galvanometer; for if its leads are dipped
into the conducting fluid the instrument will show deflection when the line
joining its collector ends is parallel or oblique to the lines of electric force, but
shows no deflection when at right angles to those Iiues. This exercise rehearses
the earlier Gymnotus mapping, both with hands and with the disk collectors
[1775-81]. He describes also an electrochemical direction-indicator for lines of
force, which recalls the role of electro-decomposition in establishing the direction of Gymnotus's discharge46 [1763]. Each of these exercises draws on earlier
imagery from the Gymnotus mapping experiments to articulate the physical
occupation, by means of external action, of the medium surrounding an agent.
Another element in the 1852 reversal of images is Faraday's appreciation of
shape and proportion in magnetic systems. Variations in form of the magnet, it
is clear, correspond to the coiling configurations of Gymnotus. Faraday will
devote five full pages"7 of the 1852 essay to a lovingly detailed exposition of the
changes in external disposition of magnetic power that result when a bar magnet
is bent, stretched, or squeezed out of its original proportions. All the diflerently
shaped "atmospheres" of magnetic lines of force shown here (Figure 11 )48 are
in that essay revealed as derivatives and variants of the standard "sphondyloid"
shape.
Recognition of the generic topology of magnets depends heavily on the study
and interpretation of magnets fabricated in a variety of shapes, and upon the study
of changing conditions in the surrounding medium (such as the approach and
attachment of"keepers" or other susceptible bodies).49 From the mutual relations
thus revealed between the magnet's shape and the external disposition ofits force
arises Faraday's magnificent vision of the essential equality and necessary
connection between the "inner" and "outer" action of a magnet:
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 11: (from ERE) Magnets of various shapes.
�FISHER
21
The physical lines of force, in passing out of the magnet into space, present a
great variety of conditions as to fonn ... [T]he form of the magnet as the
source of the lines has much to do with the result; but I think the surrounding
medium has an essential and evident influence ... [3275]
But the Gymnotus had bent and "distorted" itself in the course of its habitual
movements fourteen years earlier, and in its natural predatory activity it presented itself in multifarious electrical relations to other animals in the surrounding medium. Gymnotu~'s habitual behavior thus had occasioned the direct
display of much the same topology for the animal that artifice and more
ingressive experimentation later make evident for the magnet. The animal's
habitual action was at the same time a heuristic, self-interpretive action. In the
1852 essay Faraday reflects:
When, therefore, a magnet, in place of being a bar, is made into a horseshoe
form, we see at once that the lines of force and the sphondyloids are greatly
distorted or removed from their former regularity; that a line of maximwn
force from pole to pole grows up as the horseshoe form is more completely
given; that the power gathers in, or accumulates about this line, just because
the badly conducting medium, i.e. the space or air between the poles, is
shortened A bent voltaic battery in its surrounding medium, or a gynmotus
curved at the moment of its peculiar action, present exactly the like results.
[3282]
The efficacious relation between shape of external action and shape of the
body proper can be read more surely in the magnet, thanks to Gymnotus's having
already called that vision forth for itself fourteen years before.
In another area too the electric fish achieves a degree of interpretive
self-evidence that will render it, for a time, prior in explanatory order to the
magnet. In his 1838 report Faraday is much impressed by the relation offitness
that he finds between Gymnotus's electrical characteristics and the conductivity
of its freshwater medium [1786-87]. As we saw when considering the identity
experiments, when compared to electrostatic laboratory devices designed for use
in air the quantity of the Gymnotus discharge is relatively high and the intensity
low. Such animal electric apparatus is well suited to electrify fresh water, a
moderately good conducting medium. The organs are useless in air, since they
cannot develop sufficient intensity to throw air into a conductive state. If the
animal is nonetheless induced to discharge in air, as Faraday will have gathered
from Cavendish's researches50 as well as from electrical theory, the electricity
passes either to a restraining handler, or over the animal's own body surface. It
is not clear whether Faraday knew, or suspected, that the Torpedo, whose
saltwater medium is an even better conductor than fresh water, has lower
intensity and higher quantity of shock than Gymnotus.51 But he certainly seems
to have grasped a consistent relation between the medium and the inherent
�22
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
character of the electric power. I can best express that relation by constructing
the following table:
Plate Machine
Gymnotus
Torpedo
(single tum)
Quantity of discharge
low
high
very high5 2
Intensity of discharge
high
low
very low
Conductivity of medium
poor
(air)
good 53
very good
(saltwater)
(freshwater)
Comparing Plate Machine, Gymnotus, and Torpedo
To Faraday, for whom such fitting relations between creatures and their
habitats signify God's wisdom [1786], a connection between the physiology that
generates animal electricity and the conducting ability of the medium through
which it is discharged cannot be accidental; an image of the electric animal as
agent must then be integral with the image of the animal's exterior powers.
Faraday could not hope to achieve a fully integrated vision of Gymnotos's
internal and external action in 1838,54 but the animal did at least define no less
than such a view as the goal. Thus the criterion of an integrated vision of agent
and act, even though not yet realized, is already available and familiar when, in
1852 and earlier, Faraday finds himself reflecting on the significance of the
closed lines of magnetic force and on other circumstances that incline him to
consider"this outer medium as essential to the magnet" [3277; Faraday's italics],
and that "the space or medium external to the magnet is as important to its
existence as the body of the magnet itself'' [3284].
The 1852 reversal of explanatory order thus stands as a confirmation, albeit
a retrospective one, of some of the intimations of intelligibility and readability
in animal powers that Faraday is responding to in his 1838 Gymnotus report. The
promise held out by animal powers cannot claim finality, for the earlier image
of Gymnotus falls far short of the later vision of the magnet in comprehensiveness and depth. The magnet especially benefits from a view of its interior
that is made possible through the action of the Moving Wire, while no comparable interior view can be secured for the electric fish. Nevertheless Gymnotus
may be credited with presenting a more accessible starting point for the ultimate
vision than the magnet itself could provide. Its "promise" might best be described, therefore, as inviting or even instructional. Gymnotus's contribution to
the elucidation of the magnet does not consist of data, perhaps not even of
concepts. It provides rather a concrete object which both invites and serves as
the practice ground for a kind of thinking that will ultimately be demanded by
the magnet. The Gymnotus in his tub becomes a school for interpretation. Or if
not a school in its own right, Gymnotus surely qualifies through its naturally
heuristic activities as a constituent tutorial within-to use Faraday's own phrase
�23
FISHER
of 185!-5Z-"nature's schoo1."55 The brief image reversal in 1852looks back
over a long period of schooling for the image of the magnet.
V. "The very flrst that I would make"
I said earlier that in 1838 the Electric Eel appeared to Faraday to exhibit the
agent-power relation in a way that held promise for solving the riddle of the
"on-Dff' mechanism, tlie activation and cessation of power. That question is no
less than the problem of will in animals, and the problem of fore;• in agents
generally. And though I do not think Faraday can claim very much progress on
the question, he does have one thing to say about it, a rather strange and
fascinating thing. Whatever it means to exercise a power, Faraday will conclude,
such exercise must represent a conversion offorce.
Faraday was always reluctant to accept mere correlation as the content of any
law of nature; rather, a causal content was to be sought.57 For example, the
relation between the current induced in a moving wire, and the number of lines
of force cut by the wire, was for him not just a law of constant ratio but an instance
of conversion offorces; in 1852 he would characterize that current as "the full
equivalent" of the force that is exerted in the place through which the wire had
moved [3270]. And in 1857 he would criticize the gravitational inverse-square
law, not for inaccuracy of the ratio but for the incoherence, as he thought, of a
law that merely correlates change in force with change in distance--it ought
rather to couple the change in gravitational force with some equivalent and
opposite alteration. The "changing" gravitational action would then be seen as
either a transfori1Ultion of force or a displacement of force from one arena to
another.
These examples are from the 1850s; but even prior to the Gymnotus
researches Faraday had opposed theories in several areas at least partly on the
grounds of a similar incoherence. Since 1834 he had repeatedly objected to the
theory of the so-called "contact force" in the Voltaic cell-and he would in
January 1840 deliver almost the fatal blow to it.58 The contact force theory held
that whenever dissimilar materials came into contact their junction became the
seat of an electromotive force; this in torn gave rise to an electric current, which
would continue so long as the contact was maintained. The problem with contact
theory was that it took the fact of juxtaposition for the cause of the power.59 As
Faraday would later characterize it,
It is assumed by the theory that where two dissimilar metals (or rather bodies)
touch, the dissimilar particles act on each other, and induce opposite states. I
do not deny this ... But the contact theory assumes that these particles, which
have thus by their mutual action acquired opposite electrical states, can
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
discharge these states to one another, and yet remain in the state they were
frrst in, being in every point unchanged by what has previously taken place. 60
One can almost hear Faraday's indignation as he recounts this crucial and
offending credo of the contact theory-that an agent can exercise a power, yet
be itself unaltered by that exercise! In expressing the objection Faraday does not
anticipate a principle of conservation of energy. 61 To be sure, the contact force
theory does violate conservation of energy; and the recognition, both of that fact
and of the conservation principle itself, would eventually put an end to the
contact force as a viable theory. But Faraday's principle here is nota quantitative
but a formal one: an entity that undergoes no change itself is incompetent to have
an action ascribed to it Such an entity may be, as Faraday says, a partial but not
a full cause.62 A truly causal theory disdains mere correlation of entities; instead,
it shows that cause and effect are equivalent; 63 and it is obvious that an absence.
of change cannot be equivalent to a deed.
A model for the kind of theory Faraday does recognize as causally competent-in contrast to deficient theories like that of the "contactforce"-is seen in
his own treatment of the Voltaic cell, which he had advanced in the Eighth Series
(April1834). Here was a comprehensive chemical theory, built on the principle
that each quantity of electric action of the Voltaic cell represents the displacement
and transformation of an equivalent chemical action within the cell [919].
What Faraday's theory dictated for the Voltaic cell will become his paradigm
for all action. To "exercise a power" will come to mean, primarily, to convert or
transform a power.64 And if to exercise a power means the conversion or
transformation of something actual, rather than the actualization of something
potential, then the power so exercised is not specifically the agent's but nature's;
and the agent is only, as it were, the locus of the conversion. 65 Such Aristotelian
language is of course not Faraday's, and at the time of the Gymnotus researches
such a view is as yet by no means a paradigm with him. But the vision does at
least allow him to appreciate that the agent-power relation probably involves a
condition of equivalence; and that in turn shonld help explain why Faraday finds
the volitional activity of animals so promising: the "on-off" cycles of animal
electrical action provide an opportunity for studying conversion that inorganic
forces, which are always "on," do not permit. Admittedly, that opportunity is in
1838 quite an abstract one; but it is based on a very influential principle. In the
realm of nature, at least, we are all inclined to think that conting-to-be from
something is more knowable than always-having-been.66
Approaching volitional electrical action as a phenomenon of conversion at
least points us beyond the "on-off switch" image, which as we saw earlier is just
not conformable to animal physiology. Instead of a switch that "blocks the way,"
like a door or a drawbridge, Faraday will seek a process when he looks for an
on-off device.67 And, as ever with Faraday, he conceives the search as a matter
�FISHER
25
for experiment At the very end of the Gymnotus report he proposes a series of
experiments whose immediate aim will be to study the conversion relations·
between "nervous force" and electric force, but whose overall purpose is to make
a further step towards illuminating the agent-power relation.
The electric organs' anatomy, their susceptibility to fatigue, and especially
the constant direction68 of the current they produce-all, Faraday says,
... induce me to beJieve, that it is not impossible but that, on passing
electricity per force through the organ, a reaction back upon the nervous
system belonging to it might take place, and that a restoration, to a greater or
a smaller degree, of that which the animal expends in the act of exciting a
current, might perhaps be effected. [1790]
Faraday has in mind no less an attempt than to recharge the fish! He readily
admits that such a proposal may seem a very wild idea [1791]. It is wild, to be
sure; but perhaps not wildly wild. As Faraday noted earlier, the electric organs
are not vilal organs like brain and heart; they are rather like fin and foot Their
office is not essential to the very being of the animal. The experiments Faraday
proposes might be delicate and difficult-but in attempting them he would not,
at least, be mucking about with life. That force, it seems, Faraday does regard as
surpassing our experimenlal art He says:
that exertion [ofnervous power] which is conveyed along nerves to the various
organs which they excite into action, is not the direct principle of life; and
therefore I see no natural reason why we shouldnot be allowed in certain cases
to determine as well as to observe its course. [1791; Faraday's italics]
I note that in the Diary Faraday is uncertain whether there may be an opposite
current within the fish, to correspond with the current externally (Diary, 4956).
In the published report, however, he insists that there must be some internal
process, equivalent and opposite ("from the tail to the head") to the external
current [1772].69 Faraday's allusion to an opposite internal process seems to have
fostered a myth which continues to be propagated by commentators since
Maxwell. There is a widespread impression that Faraday's idea is to send a
reverse current through the electric organ and restore the nervous energy of a
fatigued animal in the same way as we recharge our automobile batteries.70 True,
a storage battery is recharged by passing through it a current in the reverse
direction to that which the active battery provides. It is what used to be called a
secondary device, since to be activated at all a cbarging current had originally
to be supplied to it from some primary source, as a well pump supplies a water
tank. Hence the name, "storage" battery; and for us the popular, automotivelyderived metaphors of "recharging one's batteries" and "reftlling one's tank"
convey just about the same image of ftlling up an empty container.71
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But there were no storage batteries in 1838. Faraday's Voltaic batteries were
primary devices. "Recharging" them meant dumping out the used electrolyte and
replacing it with fresh. Faraday would have been familiar with varieties of a
rudimentary secondary cell, principally Ritter's.72 But that cell had so little
storage capacity it is hard to believe it could have served as a leading metaphor
in the kind of restorative experiment Faraday is contemplating.73 In any case,
Faraday's own words just do not seem to describe a reverse current; or they are
at least ambiguous enough to fllake the question of direction debatable.
In the Gymnotus paper there are three passages touching on the direction of
Faraday's proposed fish-recharging current; there are none in the Diary. I have
already cited the first passage, at [1790]:
... on passing electricity per force through the organ, a reaction back upon
the nervous system belonging to it might take place ....
Must "per force" necessarily mean "backwards?" I see no reason to think so. The
remaining two passages are at [1792-93]:
If a Gymnotus or Torpedo has been fatigued by frequent exertion of the electric
organs, would the sending of currents of similar force to those he emits, ... ,
in the same direction as those he sends forth, restore him his powers and
strength more rapidly than if he were left to his natural repose?
Would sending currents through in the contrary direction exhaust the animal
rapidly?
I do not see how this wording can be taken otherwise than to suggest that Faraday
expects a current in the usual direction through the organ ("in the same direction
as those he sends forth"), not a reverse current, to have a restorative effect on the
animal.
If then, as I think, Faraday clearly proposes aforward current for rejuvenation,
he cannot be viewing either Gymnotus or the restorative process under the image
of a Voltaic battery. Forward current through a Voltaic cell would not only fail
to recharge it but would exhaust the cell even more quickly. But an application
of force in the "forward" direction is exactly how we do restore a degraded
bar-magnet! A weakened magnet can be returned to strength by placing it
"
FIGURE 12: "Charging" a magnet
�FISHER
27
between the poles of a strong magnet in its normal direction-that is, the
direction in which the magnetic lines it sends forth shall consist with the lines of
force imposed by the strong magnet (Figure 12).
As I described earlier, the image of Fish-as-Voltaic-cell was explored in the
identity experiments, while the image of Fish-as-Magnet had emerged tbrough
the disposition experiments on Gymnotus. Now Faraday seems to be following
the magnet-image, abandoning the metaphorical Voltaic cell, as he contemplates
the proposed restorative experiments. Yet if so, what reason is there to favor the
one over the other? Externally, after all, they are identical; both the magnet and
the Voltaic cell imply the same geometry of lines of force in the surrounding
medium. And if, as we admitted, it is difficult to conceive how the Voltaic cell
could be "turned on and off," there is no less of the same difficulty with the
magnet.
But as sources ofpower the two images show a radical difference- The Voltaic
cell must eventually become exhausted and fail. Even a rechargeable secondary
cell acts by gradually consuming a fixed quantity of chemical action. Is that not
the lesson of Faraday's celebrated law of electro-chemical proportion?74 The
chemical battery is 1/Wrtal. A magnet, by contrast, does not languish in any
comparable sense. Magnets can be damaged, destroyed-as Aristotle would say,
tbrough bia, violence. But how different this is from the Voltaic cell, whose
activity and 11Wrtality are realized together! In the magnet we find no reservoir
to be exhausted, no life's course to be run.75
Might Faraday have seen in the magnet a disposition of power more nearly
approaching to an image of life? Might the proposed direction-protocol in the
restoration experiments reflect a conviction, or even a suspicion, that living.
power cannot be imaged according to a logic of finitude and rationing? Still, if
Faraday ever did entertain such leanings, there are ample indications that he also
resisted them, especially as a younger man.'6 Nor was the magnet's mode of
exerting its power a problem Faraday would ever sufficiently clarify to his own
satisfaction.77 The whole picture of Faraday's view of living pliwers remains far
from clear; so I must be content to offer the suggestion as my own "wild idea"
in homage to Faraday's earlier one [1791). Yet there is another indication that
disposes me to take it seriously. Faraday's closing words in the Fifteenth Series
characterize his proposed restorative experiments this way:
Such are some of the experiments which the confonnation and relation of the
electric organs of these fishes suggest, as being rational in their performance.
and promising in anticipatioiL Others may not think of them as I do; but I can
only say for myself, that were the means in my power, they are the very first
that I would make. [1795)
The very first experiments that he would make-this from one of the most
celebrated experimentalists of the day! That is extraordinarily urgent language,
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
28
it seems to me. The urgency may, for all I know, arise for Faraday from strictly
mundane considerations and may not reflect a particularly intense interest in
living powers at all. Nevertheless, a topic more deserving of Faraday's pressing
attention than mortality in nature. I cannot imagine.
***
APPENDIX: QUANTITY OF GYMNOTUS'S DISCHARGE
The Leyden battery to which Faraday compares the fish's discharge comprises 15 jars, 3500 square inches of glass, coated on both sides, "charged to the
highest degree" [1700, 291]. Forty turns of Faraday's large plate electrical
machine will "fufly charge" 8 of the jars [363]. Therefore it should take about
75 turns to charge the 15 jars fully.
As indicated by a ballistic galvanometer deflection of 5.5 divisions (22\ a
voltaic arrangement of Zn-Pt wires held in acid for 8 beats of his watch (a little
over 3 seconds) produces the same quantity of electricity as 30 turns of the
electrical machine [363, 364, 370].
But he finds it would take some 800,000 times this quantity to decompose 1
grain of water [861]. Since, in modern units, 96,500 coulombs will decompose
9 grams of water, therefore 695 coulombs will decompose .0648 gram (= 1 grain)
of water. So 30 turns of the plate machine produce 695/800,000 or .00086
coulomb. Hence the 75 turns that fully charge Faraday's Leyden battery represent
about .00218 coulomb.
WORKS CITED
Agassi,Joseph(197!):FaradayasaNaturalPhilosopher, Chicago and London.
Bence Jones, H. (1870): The Life and Letters of Faraday, 2 vols., London and
Philadelphia. Cited as L&L.
Cantor, Geoffrey N. (1985): "Reading theBookofNatore," in Gooding and James
(1985), 69-81.
Cavendish, Han. Henry (1776): "An Account of some Attempts to Imitate the
Effects of the Torpedo by Electricity," Phil. Trans., 66 (1776), 196-225, and
Maxwell (1879), 194-215. Reference is made to the Maxwell edition.
Davy, Sir Humphrey (1828): "An account of some experiments on the Torpedo,"
Phil. Trans., (1829), 15-18.
Davy, John (1832): "An Account of some Experiments and Observations on the
Torpedo," Phil. Trans., (1832), pp.259-78.
_ _ (1834): "Observations on the Torpedo, with an account of some additional
Experiments on its Electricity," Phil. Trans., (1834), pp. 531-50.
�FISHER
Faraday, Michael (1839-55): Experimental Researches in Electricity, 3 vols.,
London. Cited as ERE followed by paragraph number (in square brackets) or
volume and page number.
(1852a): "On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force,"
Phil. Mag., June, 1852, and ERE ill, 407-37.
- - : - - (1852b): "On the Physical Lines of Magnetic Force," Proc. Roy. Inst.,
June 11, 1852 and ERE III, 438-43.
--~ (1854): "On Mental Education," lecture given at the Royal Institution
on 6 May 1854; in Lectures on Education, Parker and Son, 1855 and ERCP,
463-91. Reference is made to the ERCPreprint.
---=-=(1857): "On the Conservation of Force," Proc. Roy.lnst., February 27,
1857, 352 and ERCP, 443-63. Reference is made to the ERCP reprint.
--:;-~ (1858): "On Wheatstone's Electric Telegraph's relation to Science
(being an argument in favour of the full recogrtition of Science as a branch of
Education)," Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 2 (1854-58): 555.
--::;-,---; (1859): Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, London.
Cited as ERCP followed by page number.
--:;-__.,.(1932-36): Faraday's Diary, being the various philosophical notes... ,
7 volumes and index, London. Cited as Diary followed by paragraph number.
Fisher, Howard(1979): "The Great Electrical Philosopher," The College, 31 (July
1979), 1-16.
Gill, T. H. (1864): "Second Contribution to the Selachology of California,"
Proceedings. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1864 (May),
147-51.
Gooding, David (1980): ''Metaphysics vs. Measurement: the Conversion arid
Conservation of Force in Faraday's Physics," Annals of Science, 37 (1980),
1-29.
--=-(1982): "Empiricism in Practice: Teleology, Economy, and Observation
in Faraday's Physics," Isis, 73 (1982), 266,46-67.
-::---::-_(1985): "In Nature's School," in Gooding and James (1985), 105-35.
Gooding, David and James, Frank A.J.L., eds., (1985): Faraday Rediscovered,
Macmillan, 1985 and American Institute of Physics, 1989.
Gray, Sir James (1968): Animal Locomotion, Norton.
Grundfest, Harry (1960): "Electric Fishes," Scientific American 203 (October
1960), 115-24.
Grzimek, B., ed. (1974): Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, New York, Van
Nostrand.
Heilbron, J. L. (1982): Elements of Early Modem Physics, Berkeley.
Levere, T. H. (1971): Affinity and Matter: Elements of Chemical Philosophy
!800-1865, Oxford.
Maxwell, James Clerk, ed. (1879): The Electrical Researches of the Honourable
Henry Cavendish, Cambridge, 1879 and London, 1967.
Simpson, Thomas K. (1970): ''Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism," The
College, 22 (July 1970), 6-16.
Williams, L. Pearce (1965): Michael Faraday, A Biography, London.
--=-=-
29
�30
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notes:
1. Meno 80a.
2. Meno SOc. The play on he narke and narkan corresponds to "torpedo" and
"torpid," which are similarly related. Compare Faraday's literal use of the
verb "astonish" in connection with the electric eel's shock in ERE [1788]:
"he [the electric eel] has quickly shown his power and his willingness to
astonish the experimenter."
3. Self-susceptibility is a mark of natural activity in Aristotle's comparable
image for nature in Physib II.8 (199b30): "a doctor doctoring himself."
4. Gymnotus, from gymno- + notos: "naked back"-it has no dorsal or ventral
fins. The term "electric eel" is a misnomer, as the animal is not, taxonomically, an eel (Anguilla). What is more, the animal formerly called Gymnotus
has since been renamed Electrophorus in accordance with a proposal by
T. H. Gill (1864). Although G. electricus was still being promulgated in the
1904 edition of The Cambridge Natural History, vol. 7 (copyright 1895),
the term Gymnotus no longer refers to Faraday's animal, but refers to a
weakly-electric member of the gymnotoidae (Grzimek 1974). I will follow
Faraday's taxonomy. (My thanks to Dr. Stanley H. Weitzman of the
Smithsonian Institution for the reference to Gill.)
5. Phil. Trans., November 1838; ERE, Fifteenth Series. Here, as elsewhere,
Faraday uses the word "force" in a sense much broader than the strictly
mechanical one. In an 1858 addendum to his "On the Conservation of
Force," he will explain: "What I mean by the word 'force,' is the cause of
a physical action; the source or sources of all possible changes amongst the
particles or materials of the universe" (ERCP, p. 460; Faraday's italics). I
shall follow that same usage in this talk.
6. All references in square brackets are to paragraph numbers in Faraday
(1839-55), cited as ERE.
7. ERE, Third Series, January, 1833. But Faraday's connection with animal
electricity in this project was limited to reviewing the researches of others.
The Diary also records exercises with frogs and fish in 1831 and 1832; but
in these the animal is the detector, not the source, of electric action.
8. Davy (1828). An account is given in Williams (1965), p. 37.
9. A comparison with Don Quixote is not idle. Not only do the two books make
comparable demands on the reader, but Faraday and the Quixote character
can be compared in interesting ways. If one views Don Quixote as having
a quest-say, to right the world's wrongs-Faraday also has an aim: to bring
to light the powers of nature (Simpson 1970). But I think it would be truer
to say that Quixote has chosen a life rather than a quest; and Faraday, too,
I think of as a man who has chosen a certain life's activity because it is a
worthy life, and not primarily for the sake of solving a certain problem or
achieving a set goal.
10. In a Diary note of December 19, 1833, Faraday notes that the Torpedo is
insensitive to its own electricity, though susceptible to current from a Voltaic
�FISHER
11.
12.
13.
14.
31
battery. But he thinks he could devise an arrangement by which the
Torpedo's shock would be directed back to itself! (Diary, 1200).
The fish is 40 inches long, the tub is 46 inches in diameter and is filled with
water to a depth of 3.5 inches-the minimum depth that will permit the
Gymnotus to keep itself entirely submerged [1755, 1773].
For a character who can take delight only in things exotic, consider the vapid
triumphalism of Hamlet as he exults in the things undreamt of in Horatio's
philosophy. Man delights not him, nor woman neither; and the natural world
is but a depressing, unweeded garden. Yet how high-spirited and full of
banter he is in the presence of the Ghost! (l.v, II.ii, I.ii)
Compare Faraday (1858): "The beauty of electricity, or of any other force,
is not that the power is mysterious and unexpected, ... but that it is under
law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. The human
mind is placed above, not beneath it ..." Cited in Williams (1965), p. 341.
Seeing is something that has to be learned. Compare Faraday (1854): "the
mind has to be instructed with regard to the senses and their intimations
through every step of life" (p. 466); and: "we frequently have to ask what
is the fact?-often fail in distinguishing it,-often fail in the very statement
of it,-and mostly overpass or come short of its true recognition" (p. 469).
15. Faraday's emphasis on the visual as the paradigm for understanding is well
known. But an unusually explicit identification of experiment as corrective
to vision is revealed in his prescription that "all cases [of the subject under
investigation] should pass in review, and be touched, if needful, by the
lthuriel spear of experiment." Faraday (1854). It is in Milton's Paradise
Lost (IV.810-19) that the disguised Satan is revealed in his true shape by a
touch of the angel Ithuriel's spear.
16. "Tegument" = integument: covering, sheath, hide, husk. Even Dr. John
Davy, who emphasized histological dissimilarities between electric organs
and muscular organs, thought it likely that the electric organs were functionally integrated with contiguous muscle sheathes, generating electricity
when compressed by the latter. Davy (1832), esp. pp. 269 and 276.
17. We seldom think to take this perspective, though it expresses the soundest
physics. Gray (1968) does so explicitly in his engaging statement of
Newton's Laws of Motion in biological terms. For example, the First Law:
"If an animal is to move its body by its own unaided efforts, it must elicit
a force from its external environment ..."
18. For example, the ingenious method used to obtain the spark [1766]-a
forerunner of the automotive "viQrator" spark coil. (Subsequently Faraday
obtained the spark directly.)
19. Faraday's need to make siroultaneous multiple observations dictated his
recruitment of additional participants. The Diary's lists of colleagues present on various days include such names as Cowper, Daniell, Gassiot,
Wheatstone, and Young.
20. It is the charge delivered by 75 turns of Faraday's large plate electric
machine, or about 2 millicoulombs (see Appendix). Less than half this
amount-that is, the charge of only 30 turns-is the quantity Faraday refers
to in the Seventh Series as "sufficient if passed at once through the head of
�32
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a rat or cat to have killed it" [860]; and again, more "than any man would
willingly allow to pass through his body at once" [873].
21. In the Diary (4968) Faraday emphasizes the "important fact" presented by
this series pattern. The Leyden jar image has an additional difficulty, for
the discharge time of a Leyden jar into a good conductor is extremely short;
having discharged once it could not reasonably be expected to discharge
again without some restorative process. Whatever that process might be, it
is utterly unexplained by !he metaphor of the Leyden jar itself. The Voltaic
battery is capable of delivering great quantities of charge over long periods,
but for it, too, there is sfill no obvious "on-off switch." Fifty years later
Maxwell, who delighted in taking such metaphors literally (never forgetting, however, that they were metaphors), would suggest "a Voltaic battery,
the metals of which are lifted out of the cells containing the electrolyte, but
are ready to be dipped into !hem." Maxwell (1879), p. 436. Note the element
of bodily motion ("ready to be dipped") in Maxwell's image.
22. Compare Agassi (1971), p. 307: "There is little doubt ..• !hat in some sense
Faraday used laboratory tools such as condensers and magnets as symbols
in his thinking.''
23. In a letter to Benjamin Franklin, also communicated to !he Royal Society
on July 1, 1773, John Walsh had apostrophized !he Torpedo as an animate
Leyden jar ("animate phial"). Another comparison, this one non-electrical,
was to a rack of musketry! Quoted in Maxwell (1879), p. xxxv.
24. Cavendish (1776). To call Cavendish's procedure "literal" is not to deprecate it. For him such literal mimicry had the wholly appropriate purpose of
advancing as a hypothesis that the Torpedo's power was electrical-an idea
then widely viewed as impossible. See Heilbron (1982), p. 233 and Maxwell
(1879), p. xxxvii. Maxwell also implies !hat the fastidious style of lhese
demonstrations reflected more the limitations of some among the audience
!han !he quality of Cavendish's own lhought.
25. In order for Cavendish to argue from same effect (quality and magnitude of
shock) to same cause (electricity), he had to insure that all other factors,
including the form and material of the replicated body, were as invariant as
possible. But Faraday, having already established !he identity of animal
electricity and Voltaic electricity, could regard most of Cavendish's imitative details as inessential.
26. Faraday himself had been quick to notice indications of a Voltaic analogy
in 1833; in the Third Series he had suggested !hat !he repeated discharges
of Torpedo ~~resemble" those of a Voltaic arrangement rather than a Leyden
apparatus. But this was no attempt to decide between competing hypotheses;
he insisted that "in reality, there is no philosophical difference" between the
two cases [359].
27. Note that this would be a "reduction" not of electricities-animal and
Voltaic electricity had already been shown to be identical in 1833-but
rather of the animal and Voltaic sources.
28. David Gooding (1985), pp. 122-23, points out !hat "Faraday's method of
active exploration made variations of a property with position all important
... Like an explorer of geographical territory, Faraday occupied !he very
�FISHER
33
space filled by the forces he was investigating." Gooding cites the famous
Cage of 1836 as the culminating instance of Faraday's occupying that space
"with his person as well as his instruments!' The Gymnotus survey is a
somewhat less spectacular, but equally clear, instance.
29. Although the term "system" may now strike us as a bit anachronistic,
Faraday seemed to like it and would eventually give it star billing in the
interpretation of the magnet, as in the opening sentence of Faraday (1852b):
"That beautiful system of power ... "
30. Physics Il.3, Metaphysics IX.3.
31. Cf. Aristotle: "Cau~es which are actually at work and particular exist and
cease to exist simultaneously with their effect, e.g . ... that housebuilding
man with that being-built house" (Physics 195b18, tr. Hardie and Gaye).
32. See, for example, Johu Walsh to Benjamin Franklin, July 1, 1773, excerpted
in Maxwell (1879), p. xxxv; Cavendish (1776); Johu Davy (1832), p. 262
and (1834), pp. 545-46.
33. Compare Gooding (1980), p. 9, who holds that by 1836 Faraday's assumption of an essential relation between force and a reacting environment had
attained "the status of a principle." Admittedly, another factor might also
have helped to shape Faraday's experimental policy with Gymnotus: while
the Torpedo produces only about 35 volts, a large Gymnotus develops up to
650 volts at 1 ampere. To an animal handler out of water, such capability
would present questions of personal safety!
34. Cf. Diary 4939.
35. A trace of the Diary's doubt on this point perhaps survives in ERE where
Faraday considers the possibility that the animal might "direct" its power
by activating its electric organs separately [1782]. But such selective activation of organs, like the "coiling" behavior to be discussed below, could
at most only introduce a change in the pattern of the whole, not an electrification of one region independently of neighboring regions.
36. Gooding (1985), p. 133, n. 4.
37. Diary 5041 (October 22, 1838).
38. The magnet's lines are "visible" eithe~ through the use of iron filings [114n.]
or by tracing the course of a small magnetic needle. They are not, of course,
visible in the sense of being "luminous" (see Faraday's footnote to the title
of the Nineteenth Series), nor as in the Kerr effect, which Faraday had
repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought to achieve.
39. The curved lines of force in electrostatic induction are not depicted (see
Plate VII in the Eleventh Series), because they can only be inferred-though
the inference is certain. For a similar reason Faraday will not draw lines of
;
force within the body of a magnet, even though the Moving Wire detects
both their existence and their quantity there (see the figures to [3093-3118]
in the Twenty-eighth Series). In connection with one topic only, that of
magnetic conduction, does Faraday relax this self-restraint. The figures to
[2807-21, 2831, 2875] explicitly depict the expanded or compressed course
of lines within dia- and paramagnetic bodies. Perhaps Faraday means to
offer some justification for taking this liberty when he cites the motions of
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
34
the bodies themselves as "proof' of the concentration or dispersal of the
lines [2844].
40. The visualization also relies on Faraday's having identified the neck and the
region six inches from the tail as the places of concentration of force at the
body (seep. 12, above). While the superficial appearance of the body is a
closed ring, from the point of view of its action the fish's shape is none other
than that of a horseshoe-magnet!
41. Maxwell notes a report which would suggest that, if anything, the transverse
position is least deadly to the victim: "Du Bois Reymond . .. found that
Malapterurus was very ~lightly affected by induction currents passing
through the water of his tub, though they were strong enough to stun and
even kill other fishes. When the induction currents were made very strong,
the fish swam about till he had placed his body transverse to the lines of
discharge, but did not appear to be much annoyed by them., Maxwell
(1879), p. 437.
42. We may take note of some other evocative elements in Faraday's language.
The fish is highly characterized, mainly through Faraday's vocabulary of
gestures: "instantly turned round . .. ," "made a turn or two to look for its
prey ... ," "went searching about for more." There is no stalking, no catand-mouse game. Gymnotus is efficient, insouciant. There is a strong
Biblical flavor to the language at several points, particularly the phrase, "in
the midst of the waters. "The pace of narrative halts suddenly to contemplate
the struck fish, "its side floating to the light"-a respite which Gymnotus
does not participate in!
43. Earlier in the same year (1838), Faraday had discussed a comparable
instance of constancy in structure coupled with variability ofform (Gooding
1985) in the disposition of the "striations" that made up the electrical hrush
[1449].
44. Phil. Mag., June 1852; ERE ITI, pp. 407-37 [3243-99]; or Faraday (1852a).
45. We would say "current flow"; but Faraday employs a terminology that does
not carry the, to him, dubious electric-fluid connotations of "flow."
46. But the 1852 decomposition method is far more elegant, being manifest on
a small plate or ball that is introduced into the medium itself; It is thus a
true "disposition" exercise, in the sense of the Gymnotus experiments. Note:
Faraday does not give his usual paragraph citation When discussing these
exercises; are they recorded in the Diary?
47. [3282-90]; from the middle of ERE III, p. 428 to the middle of p. 433!
48. ERE, Vol. ITI, Plate III.
49. More fundamentally, of course, it depends on the quantitative measurements
made possible by the Moving Wire; see Fisher (1979).
50. Cavendish (1776), p. 205.
51. A suspicion at least as to intensity could have been suggested by his having
obtained the spark, though with great difficulty, from the Gymnotus's
discharge; whereas there were no confirmed reports of spark from the
Torpedo; cf. J. Davy (1832), pp. 261-62 and (1834), pp. 54546.
52. If, indeed, Faraday suspected Torpedo's ranking with respect to quantity.
�FISHER
35
53. Though today we seldom think of fresh water as a "good,. conductor, that
was Faraday's epithet [1786].
54. But see ahead, on the proposed "restorative" experiments.
55. Gooding (1985) gives the origin of Faraday's phrase as well as a beautiful
analysis that respectfully but effectively penetrates that naive metaphor.
Nevertheless, I think there is much to be gained from applying the image,
in its own terms, to Faraday's work; the present study attempts to carry out
that approach.
56. See above, note 5.
57. Cantor (1985), p. 74, n. 27; p. 77.
58. Rejection of the "contact force," at least as a sufficient theory of the Voltaic
cell, is expressed in ERE Seventh Series [872] and throughout the Eighth
Series. His 1840 criticism in ERE Sixteenth and Seventeenth Series was
"almost" fatal, since probably no argument against the contact force hypothesis could be fatal without a theorem of conservation of energy.
59. As though we were to identify the electric lamp's switch as the cause of the
light-ignoring the electromotive source of power!
60. ERE Seventeenth Series, January 1840 [2066-67]. Faraday's italics.
61. Faraday (1857). Williams's discussion of this unconventional paper makes
it clear that Faraday's principle is not that of conservation of energy, and is
not intended to be; Williams (1965), p. 457.
62. That is, roughly, it may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Faraday
(1857), ERCP p. 445.
63. Faraday (1857), ERCP pp. 445, 447, and related passages on pp. 449-50,
452.
64. See the opening paragraphs of Faraday (1857).
65. In 1852 Faraday will bring the magnet under this view; the iron material
will become not the seat of a specifically magnetic force but only, as we
will discuss later, "the habitation of lines of force" [3295]. See note 77,
below.
66. As an indication of how thoroughly Faraday shared that inclination, note
that as late as 1857 he will even invoke a fictive coming-to-be of the
gravitational force, because such a fiction makes Newtonian gravity theory
thinkable-and its causal inadequacies evident! Faraday (1857); ERCP,
p. 448. His argument is a reductio: If the gravitating power of a body
changes with distance, then it also changes with the creation or annihilation
of another body; nor can the latter "change" be distinguished from the
former. But the latter change is creation de novo, which (excepting divine
creation) is absurd. The objection, as Faraday continually stresses, is not to
the descriptive accuracy of the gravitational inverse-square law, but to its
pitiful lack of causal content.
67. Maxwell will one day show that even a "switch" is to be understood as a
process; his displacement current permits equation of the decaying current
as the switch opens to the electric field buildup across its terminals. Yet
Faraday has already in the Twelfth Series broached a related conception
(January, 1838-a few months prior to the Gymnotus report): "The water is
�36
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
... a bad conductor and a bad insulator; but what it does insulate is by virtue
of inductive action ... " [1345; my italics].
68. In the Diary by far the single most-repeated exercise on Gymnotus is that
of establishing the direction of its current, which is externally from (posi-
tive) head to (negative) tail (Diary 4949-61, 4969-76, 5013-16, 5031,
5035-36).
69. Interestingly, he appears to allow an "equivalent" process that is not necessarily simultaneous with the discharge. But if the equivalent process is not
simultaneous, some medi~ting state of tension would have to intervene-a
"zoOtonic state"?
·
70. See, for example, Maxwell (1879), p. 436; Williams (1965), p. 364. It seems
that these expositors have been influenced by an image of battery recharging, and have supposed Faraday to have been thinking in the same image.
71. Note that these metaphors also pertain to the emotions, or"nervous energy."
72. See ERE First Series [77], in which Faraday refers to articles by Mariani
and others in Annates de Chimie, XXXVffi. Faraday's own investigation
into the peculiar behavior of "interposed plates" in electrochemical troughs
disclosed them to be a kind of secondary cell. See ERE Sixth Series [660]
and Eighth Series [1003-33], and especially [1035, 1040-41].
73. Neither is the Leyden jar a suitable image, since in being charged it literally
stores electricity, which is not to be supposed for a fish. The "storage cell"
converts electricity to chemica/force during recharge, which is at least more
conformable to an animal image.
74. ERE Seventh Series.
75. Pearce Williams thinks this is a problem for Faraday's magnetic theory:
Faraday would eventually abandon a proffered analogy between magnet and
Voltaic pile for lack of any identifiable magnetic energy source to corre-
spond to the chemical power expended in a Voltaic cell; Williams (1965),
pp. 452-53. But as touching the proposed experiments on Gymnotus's
nervous force I can see the contrast between Voltaic cell and magnet as a
source of as much inspiration as frustration.
76. In an early lecture (to the City Philosophical Society?), the young Faraday
had characterized life as merely a prolonged chemical reaction:. However,
contrast" the far more sympathetic passage in On Some Points of Magnetic
Philosophy (1854): "(A]ll natural forces tend to produce a state of rest,
except in cases where vital or organic powers are concerned; ... as in life
the actions are for ever progressive, and have respect to a future rather than
a present state ... so all inorganic exertions of force tend to bring about a
stable and permanent condition, having as the result a state of rest, i.e., a
static condition of the powers" [3318].
77. The relation between an agent and its power assumes, for the magnet, the
form of this question: What is the relation between the magnet and its own
lines of force? But the nature of that connection will remain a continuing
mystery to Faraday. He does coin a remarkable metaphor for it; in 1852 he
describes magnets as "the habitations of bundles of lines of force" [3295],
but this colorful language does not take us very far. It particularly fails to
distinguish the relation that lines of force bear to their "habitation" from the
�FISHER
37
relation they may have with any chance conductor. Why is it that, when the
"habitation" moves, its lines of force move with it, following the iron or
other material to its new location; but when materials, not magnetized in
themselves, are waved about in the vicinity of a magnet, the lines of force
suffer only temporary deflections while the invading material passes among
them and spring back to their former positions when it departs? In fact
Faraday introduces the "habitation" metaphor not intending to elucidate the
agent-power relation, but simply to bring home that we can, from the mutual
motions of magnet~, frequently infer the motions of their corresponding
lines. He had himself drawn such inferences in his interpretation of attraction and repulsion between para- and diamagnetic materials in a common
magnetic field [2844]; see note 39, above.
�38
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
The Education of Telemachos
Amy Apfel Kass
What is it that moves u~ in a great book? According to Samuel Butler
it is not the outward and visible signs of what we read, see, or hear, in any
work, that bring us to its feet in prostration of gratitude and affection; what
really stirs us is the communion with the still living mind of the man or woman
to whom we owe it, and the conviction that that mind is as we would have our
own to be. All else is mere clothes and grammar. 1
Butler was reflecting on Homer's Odyssey and for this book his remarks seem
especially apt. True, the Odyssey invites us to participate in a world alien to our
sensibilities, a world in which heroic he-men perform seemingly impossible
feats, a world populated by strange gods and goddesses, demons and enchantresses, who come and go as they please, victimizing or protecting people
for no apparent reason. But all this is ouly "clothes and grammar." The Odyssey
is essentially a story about Odysseus, the much-turned, much-traveled, man of
many ways, and about his effort to achieve home. Thus, it speaks to pressing and
persistent human concerns about the meaning of home and what it takes to make
a home a home. Through Odysseus's many struggles and his own bittersweet
homecoming, Homer shines his light on what each of us must necessarily and
continually undergo as we try to gain a home for ourselves in an inhospitable
world. Indeed, upon reading and re-reading Homer, one comes to feel like the
rebellious child who in his infmite wisdom and confidence strikes out on his own
only to discover just how smart his parents have become.
This brings me to the aspect of Homer's broad subject that I want to take up
with you this evening. The question is this: What does it take for children to
accept their parents? More specifically, How does Homer show us what it took
for Telemachos to accept Odysseus? While these questions may seem, at first
glance, peripheral to Homer's main concern in the Odyssey, I offer this preliminary reflection as a defense: If Telemachos-Odysseus's only son and only
heir-{!oes not fully and knowingly accept his father, could we say that
Amy Kass is Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. This
lecture was delivered at St. John's College, Annapolis, in November, 1991, on Parents'
Weekend.
�40
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Odysseus's homecoming is complete? My thesis can he simply put: Facing
Telemachos and gaining his acceptance is Odysseus's most decisive and important battle; how this battle is won is the story-behind-the-story of the homecoming
of Odysseus. To support this thesis, we shall take a close look at selected
thoughts, deeds, and utterances in the Odyssey, first, at its start-in Ogygia, on
Olympus, and in Ithaka-then, later, during the various stages ofThlemachos's
own odyssey, Telemachos's education. My argument will be long, for which I
apologize in advance, but in order to understand and appreciate the education of
Telemachos and his ultimate reconciliation with his father, one must first look
at the beginning to establish Telemachos's initial disposition and attitude.
I. Obstacles to Homecoming: Setting tbe Plan
The wish so close to the heart of every hero in the Iliad-to be forever ageless
and immortal-is the opportunity offered to Odysseus as the Odyssey hegins.
The narrative proper opens as follows:
Then all the others, as many as fled sheer deslruction,
were at home now, having escaped the sea and the fighting.
This one alone, longing for his wife and his homecoming,
was detained by the queenly nymph Ka!ypso, bright among goddesses,
... desiring that he should be her husband. (L 11-15)
[E]ver with soft and flattering words she works to
chann him to forget Ithaka; and yet Odysseus,
straining to get sight of the very smoke uprising
from his own country, longs to die... (!.56-59)2
What an odd situation. A generation has passed since Odysseus last touched
Ithaka, ten years since the sack of Troy, seven years since he arrived on Kalypso's
island. "[A]ll the others, as many as fled sheer destruction," were home at last,
but, as we know, there weren't very many who came safely back. Odysseus, too,
knows this well-he alone of all his company had survived. Odysseus also knows
that the dangers he faced from the Cyclopes, from the Laistrygonians, and from
Scylla and Charybdis, to recall but a few, were mere appetizers to the feast of
troubles he could expect from the suitors back home in Ithaka. Further, he knows
that even were he to slaughter the suitors, his triumph would be fleeting, for
afterwards another long journey awaits him. Teiresias had spared him no details
when they spoke together in Hades.
Few of us, looking out over such a past or into such a future, would long to
leave the luxuriant island of Kalypso, that perfectly ordered paradise of beauty
and comfort. Few of us would long for rocky lthaka, or for growing sons, or for
aging wives, or for ailing fathers, or for crushed kingdoms, if an ageless and
�KASS
41
beautiful goddess beckoned. Few of us would give up immortality for a few more
months of worldly power. Few of us would ever long to die. Not so Odysseus.
Why not? What does he want? What is the vision that animates him?
A legend, though not recounted in either the Odyssey or the Iliad, proves
helpful:
When. .. the Greeks began to organize themselves for their Trojan expedition,
they drafted all the chieftains to join them with their men, ships, and supplies.
But Odysseus, ruler of Ithaka, in the prime of young adulthood, with a young
wife and a baby son, was anything but enthusiastic about going to war. When
the delegates of the Greek states arrived to assess the situation and to compel
Odysseus's compliance, he malingered, faking insanity. The emissaries-
Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Palamedes-fonnd him ploughing with an ox
and an ass yoked together, and flinging salt over his shoulders into the furrows;
on his head was a silly, conically shaped hat, as usually worn by Orientals. He
pretended not to know his visitors and gave every sign that he had taken leave
of his senses. ButPalamedes suspected him of trickery. He seized Telemachus,
Odysseus's infant son, and flung him in front of Odysseus's advancing plough.
Odysseus inunediately made a semi-circle with his plough to avoid injuring
his son-a move that demonstrated his mental health and made him confess
that he had only feigned madness in order to escape going to Troy. 3
Odysseus, here depicted as the first draft evader, seems to have cared deeply for
his son. He went off to war, but not willingly. At Troy, as we see in the Iliad, he
was indispensable to the Achaians and, as we hear in the Odyssey, "he sacked
Troy's sacred citadel." He was counted among the heroes, but he shared neither
their virtne nor their vision. Ever mindful of where he was, and of who he was,
Odysseus never lost his head. And he never forgot his home, not even on the
battlefield. To his warrior colleagues, he was known as the son of the hero
Laertes, but to himself, he was always the "father ofTelemachos," the young son
whose name can mean "far away from battle," whom he had left behind. The
vision that animated him long ago, and seems still to animate him as he sits on
Kalypso 's island, was less the solo fight in war that would win for himself and
his father great glory and immortality, and more the shoulder-to-shoulder fight,
the Laertes-Odysseus-Telemachos figh~ we witness at the very end of the
Odyssey, the fight which secures his home, now and for the future, against outside
disturbers.
Odysseus, like the heroes, is ever mindful of mortality, but unlike them, is
willing to affirm it. Odysseus's legendary plough is a fitting symbol of his
awareness and acceptance of the "unrolling destiny" of human beings which sees
"the next generation as an extension of one's self."4 It is this awareness that
makes possible, but also problematic, his homecoming. Even though the gods
are willing to work out his homecoming, it will be no easy task, not mainly
because of Poseidon, but for another, more delicate reason.
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Having informed us that the year has come round for the homecoming of
Odysseus, and that his enemy Poseidon is temporarily "out of sight" and "out of
hearing," our narrator moves abruptly io the council of the gods on Olympus
where Zeus is holding forth. We anticipate reflections about Odysseus. Instead,
Zeus, we are told, was "thinking in his heart" not of Odysseus, but of "blameless
Aigisthos." And, remembering him, he speaks forth as follows:
"Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame upon us
gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather,
who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given,
as now lately, ... Aigisthos married
the wife of Atreus' son, and murdered him on his homecoming,
though he knew it was sheer deslruction, for we ourselves had told him, ...
not to kill the man, nor court his lady for maniage;
for vengeance would come on him from Orestes, son of Atreides,
whenever he came of age and longed for his own country.
. . . And now he has paid for everything." (!.3243)
Zeus speaks about homecoming, but not about Odysseus's. Rather, he dwells on
Agamemnon's aborted homecoming and its terrible consequences: The lover
Aigisthos, despite the warnings of the gods, wooed Agarnenmon's wife, then
murdered Agamemnon, and was finally killed himself when Agamemnon's son,
Orestes, carne of age. Zeus's speech introduces the Oresteia story which serves
later as a prod for Telemachos (Orestes is held up as model for him by Athene,
Nestor, and Menelaos), as a vindication of Penelope (whom we are meant to
compare with Klytaimestra), and as au invitation to compare Odysseus and
Agamemnon, as well as Aigisthos and the suitors. Seen in this light, Zeus's
speech is, as several critics have argued, generally programmatic for the epic,
taken as a whole.5 But it also has a more specific function in its particular context.
Though he speaks about Agamemnon's disastrous homecoming, for which
Aigisthos bears responsibility, Zeus is "thinking in his heart of blameless
Aigisthos." Zeus implies, through this epithet, that Aigisthos might have killed
Agarnenmon because of the crimes of Agarnenmon's father, Atreus, against
Aigisthos's own father, Thyestes. Aigisthos was, like Orestes, animated by the
desire to avenge crimes against his father and, as such, was blameless. While his
fate vividly shows the results of ambition, it also underscores the brutalizing
effects of smouldering resenbuent and its imperviousness to reason or persuasion. Taming the son's ambition and overcoming his resenbuent seem indispensable if the father is to gain his home. It is especially this thought, I would suggest,
that truly sets the program for the epic. The plan set out immediately after Zeus
speaks draws on this insight, though we must travel far to make it apparent.
Mter Zens, Athene is the first to speak. Like us, she had eagerly awaited a
speech about Odysseus and is somewhat annoyed by the digression. She says:
�KASS
43
"... Aigisthos indeed has been sll'llck down in a death weII merited.
Let any other man who does thus perish as he did.
But the heart in me is tom for the sake of wise Odysseus,
... But you, Olympian,
the heart in you is heedless of him. Did not Odysseus
do you grace by the ships of the Argives, making sacrifice
in wide Troy? Why, Zeus, are you so harsh with him?" (1.46-48, 59-62)
Athene readily agrees tjlat Aigisthos got what he deserved, but that is beside the
point. Odysseus is blameless; he is not getting what he deserves. Why does Zeus
continue to trouble him? Zeus, in responding, denies the allegation. He asks, "My
child,... How could I forget Odysseus the godlike, he who is beyond all other
men in mind, and who beyond others has given sacrifice to the gods, who hold
wide heaven?" (1.64-67). Zeus shifts the blame to Poseidon, but nevertheless
agrees to help. Stiii, he conspicuously postpones any decision about how he will
help. In the meantime, Athene says she wiii go directly to Ithaka to "stir up" the
son of Odysseus, Telemachos: she will have him summon the Achaians to an
assembly, and then travel to sandy Pylos and to Sparta "to ask after his ...
father's homecoming, if he can hear something, and so that among people he
may win a good reputation" (I.94-95); she will prompt Telemachos to become
both a hearer and a subject of speeches and stories. Zeus, remaining silent, neither
dissents nor consents. Athene's pnrpose is not yet his own. It will take yet another
assembly of the gods to win his full participation. Why? If the point is to bring
Odysseus home, why proceed in this roundabout way? Why does Athene urge
this plan? We must look in on Ithaka and, especially, on Telemachos and the
suitors, to find out.
II. Telemachos Among the Suitors
Athene promptly enacts her plan. "[S]he bound upon her feet the fair sandals,
golden and immortal, ... caught up a powerful spear, edged with sharp bronze,"
and disguising herself as a friend, Mentes, she "descended in a flash of speed
from the peaks of Olympos, and lighted in the land of Ithaka, at the doors of
Odysseus, at the threshold of the court" (1.96-97, 99-100, 102-5). Leaping over
the dunghill, she enters the gates. Here, in the middle of the afternoon, she finds
108 grown men mindlessly amusing themselves with games while their hardworking heralds and henchmen are preparing massive quantities of food and
dtink. No one notices her arrival. Telemachos is first to note her presence:
Now far the first to see Athene was godlike Telemachos,
as he sat among the suitors, his heart deep grieving within him,
imagining in his mind his great father, how he might come back
�44
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and all throughout the house might cause the suitors to scatter, nd hold his
rightful place and be lord of his own possessions.
With such thoughts, sitting among the suitors, he saw Athene
... the heart within him scandalized
that a guest should still be standing at the doors. (1.113-24, emphasis added)
Homer's description of the scene and, especially, of Telemachos invites the
popular conclusion that, despite his twenty years or more, Telemachos is still a
mere babe-passive, young, and immature. He sits among the suitors, but he is
not of them; though physically present, he remains psychically absent. Brooding
and forlorn, he dreams of his "great," his wonderful and godlike, father, who will
come one day and set things right, his father, the heroic superman, who will
suddenly fly in from afar to save what is rightfully his, Telemachos included.
Telemachos is impotent and weak, will-less and powerless, and all too ready to
yield and submit, all too eager to project his childhood still farther into the future.
But this common impression of Telemachos cannot be the whole story. First,
though he is seemingly a merely passive daydreamer, Telemachos is certainly
not witless. The most common name-epithet for Telemachos is Telemachos
pepnumenos: to be pepnumenos is to be of sound understanding, shrewd, and
sagacious. True, this epithet, prominent from the start of the Odyssey, may
describe Thlemachos's potential rather than his state when the poem begins. Still,
if such potential exists, can we so readily believe that Telemachos is simply the
egoless and unreflective boy his outward passivity might suggest? He may draw
faulty inferences or conclusions, but no doubt his mind is alive, wondering, and
perhaps even calculating.
Second, Telemachos has lived in the city, close to his mother, for almost
twenty years; for most of that time there has been no other parental presence, not
even a grandparent: Odysseus's absence drove away also his parents-Antikleia,
Odysseus's mother, perished long ago, out of grief and sorrow for Odysseus
(XI.202-3); Laertes, Odysseus's father, abandoned the city long ago, likewise
out of grief and sorrow, and now roams his estate, like one of the slaves, sleeping
in the dirt next to the fire, or alone on "fallen leaves in piles along the rising
ground" (XI.l90-95). Would not a child, even a dull child, resent the man whose
absence caused such misery?
Third, weknowthatever since the suitors arrived, even Telemachos's mother,
Penelope, has become more distant, more self-absorbed. Telemachos surely
notices her odd behavior: her courting and uncourting of the suitors--Jlhe sends
them messages and makes promises by day but weeps by uight; her weaving and
unweaving of the shroud-sbe weaves by day and then unweaves by night; her
concern and unconcern for Telemachos himself--Jlhe is shocked and horrified
to learn that Telemachos has gone abroad but is unaware of his departure until
someone tells her, more than a week after the fact (IV.703). Telemachos must
feel himself ignored and abandoned.
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But, one might argue, there were always, at hand, the trusty Eurykleia,
nursemaid to both Odysseus and Telemachos, and the ever faithful swineherd,
Eumaios, to prevent resentment or hard feelings and to soothe the child, even
when he became a young man. Surely they could and no doubt did tell
Telemachos stories about how his exemplary father, the sceptered king, the king
of kings in Ithaka, was a man of ready heart, and, as ruler, both kind and gentle,
his very thought schooled in justice, stories about how Odysseus inspired loyalty
and trust in others. No doubt such lovely images and stories, one could argue,
might have comforted and assuaged any hard feelings.
Given what we know of the state of things in Ithaka, however, snch a
suggestion is unconvincing. If the ways of Odysseus were indeed exemplary,
inspiring gratitude and faithfulness, why do the nobles gather daily in the palace,
holding Penelope, the servants, and even Telemachos himself hostage? Why do
their fathers and grandfathers, the other kings in Ithaka who kuew Odysseus
firsthand, support such behavior? Such questions would very likely present
themselves to pepnumenos Telemachos.
Finally, and most important, we observe Telemachos's own disparagement
of songs or stories. In conversing with Athene (disguised as Mentes),
Telemachos's criticism of the suitors betrays his own sentiments. He says, "Dear
stranger, would you be scandalized at what I say to you? This is all they think
of, the lyre and the singing" (!.158-59). Yet, when Penelope asks Phemius, the
bard, to cease from singing the song of the sad return of the Danaans, Telemachos
adopts the suitor's attitude: "There is nothing wrong in his singing the sad return .
. . People, surely, always give more applause to that song which is the latest to
circulate among the listeners. So let your heart and let your spirit be hardened to
listen" (!.350-53). Although he denounces the suitors, and even claims to be
scandalized by them, with respect to songs, at least, Telemachos seems to share
their outlook-songs or stories are not bonds to the past but mere objects of
consumption.
We are now inclined to suspect that Telemachos's identification with the
suitors might be very great indeed. Telemachos is twenty years old. The suitors,
probably not very much older than he, have been in his house for more than three
years, ever since his own manly powers began to burgeon. As Homer remarks
several times, Telemachos "sits among the suitors." Everywhere else in Homer,
critics have noted, "orientation in space"- where one places oneself, how one
moves, the gestures one makes-is an expression of psychological condition;
space is "invested with spiritual quality."' Might not the same be true here?
If so, Thlemachos's apparent grief and passivity reflect more than a longing
to be saved by his heroic, godlike father. One needn't be a Freudian to think that,
after twenty years absence, Telemachos might well regard his father as a rival,
especially with respect to the affections of his mother. It seems hard to avoid the
inference that Telemachos must, in no small part, identify inwardly with the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
suitors. But what this might mean requires us to look more closely at the suitors
themselves. Who are they? What do they want?
III. The Soul of !he Suitors
The presence of the suitors in Odysseus's palace is, at least from one point of
view, quasi-legitimate. Much depends on the status of Odysseus. If Odysseus is
dead, their presence is, if not 1ltogether justifiable, at least excusable? But even
this concession to the suitors assumes that they are indeed suitors, that is, men
who have come to court Penelope, seriously to press their suit for her hand in
marriage. This assumption proves doubtful on closer inspection.8
When they speak before others, in public, the suitors insist that they want to
marry Penelope. In the public assembly, in Book Two, for example, Antinoos
vigorously insists that neither he nor the rest of the suitors will go back to their
own estates "until [Penelope] marries whichever Achaian man she fancies"
(ll.l26-27). Enrymachos echoes the same sentiment: It is Penelope, he argues,
who "makes the Achaians put off marriage with her, while we, awaiting this, all
our days quarrel for the sake of her excellence, nor ever go after others, whom
any one of us might properly marry" (II.204-7). But though their public speech
throughout points in this direction, their private speech points in another.
In Book Sixteen, when they return after their futile attempt to ambush
Telemachos, the suitors, we are told, "went in a throng to the assembly, nor did
they suffer any of the young men or any of the elders to sit with them"
(XVI361-62). Antinoos leads them on:
"... [L]et us surprise [Telemachos] and kill him, ...
. . . and ourselves seize his goods and possessions,
dividing them among ourselves fairly, but give his palace
to his mother to keep and to the man who marries her. Or else,
if what I say is not pleasing to you, but you are determined
to have him go on living and keep his father's inheritance,
then we must not go on gathering here and abundantly eating
away his fme substance, but,from his own palace each mao
must strive to win her with gifts of courtship; she will then marry
the man she is fated to have, and who brings her the greatest presents."
(XVI.383-92, emphasis added)
Here, in closed session, the suitors reveal, as they bear witness against themselves, their own unambiguous criminal intentions. Their presence in the house
has only secondarily to do with their wooing of Penelope. If the only, or even
the main, concern of the suitors were to win Penelope, they would do so, as
Antinoos here suggests, from their own homes. Their feasting in the house of
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Odysseus is directed, ultimately, against Odysseus himself, his possessions and
his power, and hence, immediately, against Telemachos, his would-be heir.9
Once we see clearly their criminal intentions, many of their other remarks
take on more sinister meaning. In Book One, for example, Antinoos, taken aback
by Telemachos's first daring speech, says: "I hope the son ofKronos never makes
you our king in seagirtlthaka. Though to be sure that is your right by inheritance"
(!.386-87). In the Ithakan assembly in Book 1\vo, Leokritos says that even if
Odysseus returned "his ,wife would have no joy of his coming... but rather he
would meet an unworthy destiny" (II.249-50). And, later, in Book Twenty-one,
when the suitors, one after the other fail to string the bow of Odysseus,
Eurymachos speaks for them all when he says:
''Oh, my sorrow. Here is a grief beyond all others;
it is not so much the marriage I grieve for, for all my chagrin.
There are many Achaian women besides, ...
but it is the thought, if this is true, that we come so far short
of godlike Odysseus in strength, so that we cannot even
string his bow...." (XXI.249-55)
The suitors clearly want to defame and destroy Odysseus; they want to take
his place. They do not envy Odysseus his kingliness-his "thoughts schooled in
justice," his gentleness, his ability to rule fairly, or even the faithfulness of his
beautiful and prudent wife. Rather, they envy him his power and his strength,
which they lry, metaphorically, to gather to themselves by eating up his substance, and by trying to kill his son Telemachos. The suitors are "civilized"
cannibals who, like their soul-mates, the Cyclopes, would assert brute force in
place of kingship. They look to nothing beyond themselves, respect nothing that
carne before themselves, honor nothing above themselves. Forever whiling away
their hours playing games, stuffing their faces, drinking and whoring, they are
neglectful of time, past and future. They consult ouly their own most pressing
and immediate needs and desires.
In relrospect, Telemachos's initial remark to Athene, a propos the suitors'
consumer-like attitude toward song, tells the whole story: asPhemios, "who sang
for the suitors, because they made him," played his lyre and struck up a song,
Telemachos, we recall, remarks, "Dear stranger, would you be scandalized at
what I say to you? This is all they think of, the lyre and the singing" (!.154-59).
If human beings are by nature rational beings, that is, beings with logos, clearly,
for Homer, the highest and most proper use of speech is the telling of stories.
Further, it is in their attitndes toward stories that the souls of human beings are
most clearly revealed. To put it succinctly, if somewhat formulaically, no stories,
no memory; no memory, no sense of time; no sense of time, no respect or aidos;
no respect, no kingship; no kingship, no city. Not accidently, in Homer, to have
the mind of a king is tantamount to being a host of strangers. The suitors'
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
perverted attitude toward songs or stories points directly to their shamelessness
with respect to slrangers, and, finally, to their criminal desire to dethrone
Odysseus and to overturn the city. But, as we have already seen, Telemachos,
despite his apparent shame and alleged hatred of the suitors, fundamentally
shares their attitude toward songs. We can now give a fuller account of
Telemachos's inner state, and the difficulties it might pose for the homecoming
of Odysseus.
IV. Telemachos, the Suitors, and the Council of the Gods
It goes without saying that Telemachos is neither fully conscious of the
ambivalence he might feel toward Odysseus, nor fully aware of the extent to
which he may share the suitors' outlook. But given what we have observed about
Telemachos, we cannot overlook his, at least partial, identification with the
suitors and, hence, his own possibly criminal intentions. Recall the initial
description: ''Telemachos... sat among the suitors, his heart... grieving within
him, imagining ... his great father, how he might come back, and... cause the
suitors to scatter, and hold his rightful place and be lord of his own possessions"
(1.113-17, emphasis added). Might not anotherreading, very different from the
one offered earlier, equally fit this description? Telemachos, like the suitors,
longs to replace Odysseus, but knowing that such a place is surely not his
"rightful place," and that Odysseus's "possessions" are not his for the taking, his
heart "grieves within him." He bitterly dreams about his "great," that is, his
powerful and mighty, father who abandoned him long ago, and about how he
will return and reclaim what is rightfully his, scattering all the suitors, himself
included.
On the earlier reading of Telemachos's state, feelings ouly of personal
impotence and weakness were present, with Odysseus cast in the role of god or
heroic savior. On this reading, dreams of personal potency and vitality are also
present, and Odysseus appears as a rival king. Where we earlier saw
Telemachos's desire to prolong his childhood, we now see a somewhat guarded
and guilty awareness of patticidal desires. While the first portrait suggested
will-lessness, ego-lessness, and readiness to depend on others, to submit and
yield in order to avoid trouble, the second suggests will-fulness, concern with
identity, readiness to stand independently, to assert himself, even to court trouble.
Though the sentiments point in opposite directions-the one to cowardice, the
other to pride-though the longings they reflect are logically incompatible, does
it not seem likely that both may co-exist within Telemachos 's troubled soul and
inform his self-understanding?
If so, Telemachos faces a frightful dilemma. For if Telemachos is himself a
suitor, albeit one with a conscience, can he ever wholeheartedly welcome back
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his father? Conversely, if he looks only to his father for his own salvation, can
he ever realize his wish to stand on his own two feet? Longing for his father
makes it impossible for him to act at all; resenting his father and longing to
replace him make it impossible for him not to act. Telemachos's habitual grief,
his immobility, and his inertia manifest this dilemma and the division within his
soul. Indeed, his frank and obviously bitter admission to Athene, that he does not
know whether he really is the son of Odysseus-"My mother says indeed I am
his. I for my part do not know" (1.215-16)-demonslrates emphatically his
ambivalence. 10 Telemachos, it seems, like those other sons, Aigisthos and
Orestes, has -at least in part- a resentful, vengeful soul.
We are now in a better position to make sense of the odd sequence of Zeus's
reflections and Athene's plan narrated at the beginning of the Odyssey. Since
homecoming is neither an heroic deed that one can freely choose and perform
by oneself, nor a trial that one must endure and suffer through alone, it stands to
reason that if Odysseus is to have his homecoming, others must play their vital
roles. Just as one must recognize in oneself one's own vulnerabilities and
dependencies in order to seek home, so one must depend on others to achieve it.
Odysseus must depend on the acceptance of the Ithakans to resume his kingship,
on Penelope to resume his place as husband, on Laertes to resume his relation as
son, and on Telemachos to resume his relation as father. Perhaps this is what
Odysseus is contemplating as he sits, impotent and forlorn, on Kalypso's island,
looking out over the waters, shedding tears, "longing to die."
Of the relations Odysseus must resume to gain his homecoming, his relation
with Telemachos, it would seem, must surely be primary. For Odysseus's
kingship cannot be secured if he has no heir, nor, we imagine, can he live again
easily with his wife, if their ouly child has psychically, if not literally, unsonned
himself, or, even worse, if he must lose or even kill his son in order to regain his
home. Neither, we imagine, can he face his father, Laertes, his still living past,
if he knows there will be no future. But, for the many reasons we have suggested,
the impediments to Odysseus's reunion with Telemachos are great. Telemachos,
unlike Aigisthos, for example, the subject of Zeus's reflections, cannot be relied
upon to act, uneqnivocally, for the sake of his father: Odysseus is to Telemachos
as both Thyestes and Agamemnon combined were to Aigisthos. Is it any wonder,
then, that it takes more than one council of the Gods to arrange the homecoming
of Odysseus? Doesn't the failure of the gods to assuage the heart of Aigisthos
provide fair warning of the difficulty of the task at hand? Is it any wonder that
Athene proposes and enacts, with Zeus's tacit consent, the plan that she does, a
plan that begins with, and ultimately depends on, Telemachos? Is this not why
the Odyssey begins with the Telemachy?
In Telemachos, then, as another meaning of his name-"final battle"-suggests, Odysseus faces his most decisive battle. Ready to sail home at the outset
of the narrative, Odysseus must first await and then assist in the radical reorien-
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tation of Telemachos: Telemachos must learn to beat down his own worst fears
and resentments and to moderate his own ambition; he must learn to see the home
of Odysseus as his own, not to conquer but to inherit, and not to inherit passively,
but actively to preserve and perpetuate; he must learn to see Odysseus neither as
a god or heroic savior, nor as rival, but as a man and as his father. The radical
reorientation, or education, of Thlemachos bears the burden of much of the
narrative that ensues. It proceeds in two stages: In stage one, Telemachos is
brought into consciousness o~ himself as the son of Odysseus, largely through
speeches and stories (Books I to N and Book XVI); in stage two, he comes to
accept the responsibilities incumbent upon him as the son of Odysseus, primarily
through deeds (Books XVI to XXIII).
Stage one culminates in the moment that Telemachos allows Odysseus to
come into his embrace; stage two cuhninates when Telemachos voluntarily goes
forward in his father's footsteps and under his guidance, when father and son
fight shoulder-to-shoulder, first against the suitors, and later, with Laertes,
against their kin. Together, both stages fulfill Athene's announced plan. Though
we cannot here review every step in the education of Telemachos, I shall try in
the last section to make vivid some of its major moments.
V. The Education of Telemachos
Like his father's travels which they seem so closely to imitate, Telemachos's
travels take him far from home, exposing him to things he had never experienced
before. But, at the same time, they also bring him, psychically, closer to home.
Visiting the cities of men and learning their minds-.seeing the world withoutenables Thlemachos to see also himself within. As one student of the Odyssey
put it, Athene exposes Telemachos to things she knows "will bring out certain
traits and responses in him which he will recognize as having come from his
father Odysseus.'' 11 Telemachos's travels, then, hold up a mirror to his own
Odyssean soul. Books I to IV abound with examples. Let us look at a few.
His "travels" begin even before Telemachos steps out of his own home in
Ithaka. Knowing full well that cultivating the capacity to be a host of strangers
is tantamount to cultivating the capacity for kingship, Athene descends on Ithaka
in a foolproof disguise. Her sudden arrival immediately initiates Telemachos's
physical and psychic journey away from the suitors, and soon from his mother
as well. Abandoning his habitual lethargy and his place among the suitors,
Telemachos gets up and goes to meet Athene, offers her food and drink, and then
speaks to her privately, "apart from the others" (I.132). Even before he asks after
his guest's identity, he draws attention to the scandalous behavior of the suitors
(1.158-62) and articulates his own helplessness and hopelessness (1.163-68).
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Athene's very presence engenders the initial journey toward self-recognition.
Her subsequent technique takes him still further.
As Norman Austin has observed, Athene proceeds dialectically, posing tactful
but pointed questions out of "feigned ignorance." She enacts the part of "the
skillful psychotherapist who forces her patient to verbalize, and thereby creates
in him the psychological readiness for action." 12 She compels Telemachos to
bear witness against himself and, hence, further to confront his own situation.
But the main point of hyr method is made clear only as she departs:
After maintaining her disguise throughout the scene, Athena metamorphoses
into a bird and flies away. .. We are told that Telemachos at once recognized
that his visitor had been a deity... Telemachos has [thus] been given his first
lesson in discernment. .. His powers of observation [are made] to penetrate
disguises, to distinguish the genuine from the spurious. 13
As we all know, it is precisely this power of discernment, often manifest as
circumspection, sometimes as irony, that especially characterizes the family and
friends of Odysseus, but above all, Odysseus himself. Athene, then, brings
Telemachos into closer relation to Odysseus, frrst, by "sharpen[ing] his inner
vision," and then, through her act of self-revelation, by turning his "discerning
eye on the external phenomena around him." 14
Telemachos is a quick Ieamer. He absorbs and immediately applies the lesson,
making manifest, by doing so, his close resemblance to his family: In reply to
the suitor's inquiry about the identity and mission of his guest, he devises a
plausible, yet deceitful response; indeed, he lies three times in succession.
Further, he immediately assumes an authoritative postnre: He summarily dismisses his mother when she tearfully complains of the singer's song, and he tells
the suitors of his intention to put an end to their rapacity. Both his mother and
the suitors, we are told, stand back in amazement and, we must imagine,
Telemachos probably does also. But more important than. these immediate
effects, the powers tapped by Athene give Telemachos the courage to heed her
instructions-to go abroad in search of news of his father and to assume a more
active and assertive role at home. In carrying out these instructions, he further
perfects his own Odyssean powers, and, in this way, is brought more vividly to
recognize his kinship to Odysseus.
The travels abroad bring Telemachos face to face with the world of his father.
From Odysseus's friends and admirers-Nestor, Menelaos, and HelenTelemachos acquires close knowledge of a world he never knew. In Pylos and
Sparta, where these heroes of old still live and re-live their stories, he sees people
weep as they tell of their beloved companion, Odysseus the king, Odysseus the
warrior, and most especially Odysseus the able and cunning strategist.
In each place, Telemachos first listens attentively and later speaks, first
hesitantly, then with growing confidence. In each place, he is immediately
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
recognized as the son of Odysseus, by the likeness of his feet, of his hands, of
his glancing eyes, his head and his hair, and, most significantly, by the likeness
of his words. In each place Telemachos weeps, first for his owu impotence, then
for his father. In each place he becomes progressively stronger, more selfpossessed, more clever, more independent, and, in Sparta, very confident that
Odysseus is still alive and, very likely, already at home. 15
Recall, for example, the very tactful, utterly plausible, but completely false,
excuse he gives Menelaos fo~ leaving Sparta: Telemachos, the young man who
thinks about little besides his home and family, says, "I could well be satisfied
to sit here beside you for a year's time, without any longing for home or parents
... but by now my companions in sacred Pylos are growing restless" (XV.SS91 ). Recall the wish he expresses to Menelaos, that aniving in lthaka he might
find Odysseus, which wish, in turn, prompts the bird omen, which Helen
interprets to mean that Odysseus was already at home (XV.l55-60, 171-78).
Recall his decision to risk incurring the wrath of Nestor by going directly
home-he neither stopped to give Nestor greetings from Menelaos, as he had
promised, or to bid him farewell in person. Athene 's instructions, it seems, have
forced Telemachos to develop Odysseus's own greatest virtues-resourcefulness, prudence, tact, self-control, and a keen sense of timing.
No longer hopeless and helpless, well aware of his own identity as kin to
Odysseus, confident in his growing powers, Telemachos sails home again to
Ithaka. Thougb we, the readers, deligbt in Telemachos's achievements and
appreciate the signs of his increasing self-recognition and empowerment, we
must wonder, now more than ever, whether Athene's careful ministrations won't
backfire. As this first stage of Telemachos's education nears its completion, we
wonder whether the ground that has been so successfully laid for the recognition
and reunion of this son and his father won't collapse nnder its own weight. Is
there any reason to believe that the changes wrought in Telemachos haven't
further fueled his resentment, and, even more, armed his ambition? The culminaling scene of this first stage of Telemachos's education, the reunion of
Telemachos and Odysseus, warrants our close attention and, unfortunately,
supports our fears.
It is early in the morning. Odysseus, newly returned to Ithaka but disgnised
as a beggar, and Eumaios, the swineherd, are preparing their breakfast inside
Eumaios's hut. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, Telemachos appears. Amazed,
Eumaios runs out to greet him, and embraces and kisses him "as if he had escaped
dying." In a burst of weeping, Eumaios speaks: "You have come, Telemachos,
sweet light; I thought I would never see you again" (XVI.21-24). Telemachos,
away, we presume, for little longer than a week, is welcomed by Eumaios, "as a
father, with heart full of love, welcomes his only and grown son ... when he
comes back in the tenth year from a distant country" (XVI.l?-19). We imagine
Odysseus, inside the hut, is listening attentively. The two, Eumaios and
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Telemachos, now go into the hut, and for the first time in twenty years Odysseus
beholds Telemachos, and Telemachos, Odysseus. The two sit close together, in
silence, and they eat. The silence must be deafening. ForifTelemachos has really
absorbed Athene's lessons, and we have eve1y reason to believe he has, surely
clever, perspicacious Thlemachos must immediately penetrate the disguise of the
man before him. The conversation that ensues must be excruciatingly difficult
for both son and father.
Telemachos addresse,s Eumaios and seems pmposely not to ask who the
stranger is, but rather where he carne from, how the sailors brought him to Ithaka,
who the sailors were. Ewnaios responds with a story about the stranger's origins
and wanderings, but, most emphatically, with a command: '"I put him into your
hands now. Do with him as you will. He names himself your suppliant" (XVI.6667, emphasis added). The tone of Telemachos's answer no doubt smprises
Eumaios, as much as it reveals to us the depth of his own ambivalence.
"Ewnaios," he says, "this word you spoke hurt my heart deeply. For how shall I
take and entertain a stranger guest in my house? I myself am young," he says,
retreating at least in speech, to his own impotent past, "and have no faith in my
hands' strength to defend a man, if anyone picks a quarrel with him." He blames
his own impotence, in part, on his mother: She "ponders two ways, whether to
remain here with me, and look after the household, keep faith with her husband's
bed,... or go away at last with the best man of the Achaians who pays her court
in her palace." Though he offers to outfit the stranger with clothing and weapons,
he says he wants to do so in order to send him on his way. Concluding, he again
draws attention to his own incapacity: "I will not Jet him go down there and be
where the suitors are, for their outrageousness is too strong and I fear they may
insult him, and that will be a hard sorrow upon me and a difficult one for even a
strong man to deal with" (XVI.69-89).
Odysseus, sure! y recognizing that Telemachos knows who he is, responds, as
we might expect most any father would, first with grief, then disbelief, then with
some instruction. He tries, as Athene had earlier, by asking questions, tactfully
and hopefully to appeal to Telemachos's own better nature:
"Dear friend, . ..
you eat away the dear heart in me, as I listen
to what you tell of the suitOrs and their reckless contrivings
inside your palace, against your will, when you are such a one
as you are.Tell me, are you willingly oppressed by them? Do the people
hate you throughout this place, ...
. . . Do you find your brothers wanting? ...
I wish that I were truly as young as I am in spirit,
or a son of stately Odysseus were here, or he himself might
come in from his wandering. ... If such
things could be, another could strike my head from my shoulders
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
if I did not come as an evil thing to all those people
as I entered the palace of Odysseus, the son of Laertes.
And if I, fighting alone, were subdued by all their number,
then I would rather die, cut down in my own palace,
than have to go on watching forever these shameful activities, ...
(XVI.91-107)
Odysseus's speech does not promptly have the desired results. In responding,
Telemachos does affirm, as he hadn't before, that he is the son and heir of
Odysseus--"[11he son of Kr6nos," he says, "made ours a single line. Arkeisios
had only a single son, Laertes, andLaertes had only one son, Odysseus; Odysseus
in tum left only one son, myself' (XVI.ll8-20). He acknowledges that he has
friends among the people. But he insists, again, on his own helplessness:
"Odysseus... left only one son, myself, in the halls, and got no profit of me, and
my enemies are here in my house, beyond numbering ... [and] my mother...
does not. .. make an end of the matter" (XVI.ll9-29). And moreover, now, in
addition, Telemachos blames the gods. It seems that for Telemachos to accept
his kinship, he must forfeit his manhood; he cannot accept his father as father,
but only as a conquering hero, a hindrance and rival to his own empowerment.
In what follows, however, Telemachos acts with confidence, and shows that
his speech of impotence was largely a pose. He commands Eumaios to go to the
city to tell Penelope of his safe return. As if taking her cues from Telemachos,
Athene transforms Odysseus into the resplendent hero Telemachos had envisioned, and she summons Odysseus to reveal himself to his son. Telemachos is
caught off guard. Astonished by the transformation, he first averts his eyes and
then, taking Odysseus to be some god, begs him to be merciful. Odysseus now
speaks with great restraint and, we imagine, with great pain: "No god. Why take
me for a god? No, no. I am that father whom your boyhood lacked and suffered
pain for lack of. I am he" (XVI.l87-89). Then, holding back no longer, the tears
ran down his cheeks and he kissed his son.
Telemachos's disbelief persists. Odysseus, painfully, repeats himself:
"Telemachos... No other Odysseus than I will ever come back to you... [H) ere
you see the work of Athene... who turns me into whatever she pleases"
(XVI.202-4, 207-8). Recognizing Telemachos's own pain, Odysseus neither
dissembles nor forces himself on Telemachos. He makes no demands. He speaks,
then he sits down and waits. Finally, Telemachos
folded his great father in his arms and lamented,
shedding tears, and desire for mourning rose in both of them;
and they cried shrill in a pulsing voice, even more than the outcry
of birds, ospreys or vultures with hooked claws, whose children
were stolen away by men of the fields, before their wings grew
strong; such was their pitiful cry and the tears their eyes wept.
(XVL214-19)
�KASS
55
This very moving moment does not, however, complete our quest For though
Telemachos now openly acknowledges that Odysseus is Odysseus, and though
he has allowed Odysseus in1D his embrace, in the conversation that follows he
makes even more vivid his deep ambivalence and irresolution about his own
sonship. When Odysseus eagerly proposes plotting revenge on the suitors,
Telemachos responds with doubt and cunning: "What you have spoken of is too
big; I am awed" (XVI.243-44). Even though he is more aware than ever before
of Athene's guardianship, and of his father's own powers, and of his own great
abilities, Telemachos is 'strangely not ready to join. His pose of impotence is a
mask for his ambivalence, not about the likelihood of success but about its
desirability.
Odysseus now faces his most difficult and delicate trial: He must encourage
his son to assume his manhood, knowing full well that it may rob him of his own.
And so begins stage two of the education of Telemachos. This time Odysseus,
not Athene. is "Mentor."
Like Athene's educational strategy, Odysseus's trusts largely to the psychological impact of exposure to difficult and trying circumstances. Thlemachos, as
before, will be made to assert his authority as host, but this time he will do so,
purposefully and consciously, on behalf of his father. He will be made 1D exercise
his own great Odyssean capacities for cunning and self-contrul, just as Odysseus
would exercise them: Telemachos must pretend that he doesn't know the
stranger; he must stand still and hold back as others taunt and ridicule and throw
things at his father. And he must do all this precisely for the sake of Odysseus.
If the success of a teacher is in the performance of his students, then Odysseus
cansurelybeproud.ForfromthemomentOdysseus,disguisedasabeggar,enters
his palace, Telemachos acts coolly, efficiently, and competently. But, as we all
know, following the directives of others, however proficiently, seldom reveals
the heart. Though the trials he is made to endure may have been necessary, they
were not yet sufficient. Telemachos's true willingness to accept himself as son
and heir becomes manifest only when he departs from his father's directives and
takes initiative himself. Nowhere is this more evident, or more threatening to
Odysseus, than in the contest of the bow. Here, Odysseus's fate comes to rest
entirely in Telemachos's hands.
It was Penelope who had proposed the contest of the bow to the suitors,
promising to marry the man most able 1D string Odysseus's bow with the greatest
ease, and to send an arrow through twelve axes. Both the bow and the contest
had been Odysseus's trademarks in Ithaka, as the suirors well knew. It was,
therefore, the perfect test, and, for a young man, the fitting rite of passage.
Penelope had conceived the plan the evening before, during her long conversation with the "stranger" Odysseus; Odysseus, self-confident, had given it his full
approval. But when Penelope, after much weeping and hesitation, produces the
bow, and invites the suitors to enter the contest, and Eumaios, following
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Penelope's command, places the bow and the gray iron before the suitors,
Telemachos-quite on his own and without foreknowledge of the plan-steps
forward to take command. Disrupting the timing, and, seemingly calling
Penelope's bluff, he propels the situation toward its crisis.
While the suitors stand round, each gazing hopefully at the bow, Telemachos,
witlessly laughing, bursts forth: "Come, you suitors," he yells, "since here is a
prize set out before you, a woman; there is none like her in all the Achaian
country, neither in sacred PyJos nor Argos nor in Mykene, nor here in lthaka
itself, nor on the dark mainland .... Come, no longer drag things out with delays,
nor turn back still from the stringing of the bow... "(XXI.l06-12). Telemachos
abruptly announces that he too is willing to enter the contest, and claims that
should he win, he too will be entitled to the prize: "If I can put the string on it
and shoot through the iron, my queenly mother would not go off with another,
and leave me sorrowing here in the house; since I would still be found here as
one now able to take up his father's glorious prizes" (XXI.116-17). Telemachos's
own words seem to hurl him further onward, for immediately after speaking he
"sprang upright," set the axes, dug the trench, drew the chalkline, and stamped
down the earth, all, we are told, properly and orderly, and very mnch to the
amazement of those present, for he had never seen it done before. Then, standing
on the threshold, he went and tried the bow.
Telemachos's witless levity may be his most artful disguise, as Norman
Austin has suggested: "No more appropriate irony (acting the child, harboring
the thoughts of the adult) could be found." 16 But, I think, much more likely, it is
the spontaneous and effusive response of a man, suddenly abundantly aware that
everything he ever wanted is now within reach. Now he can claim all that is
"rightfully" his. Now he can show both himself and the world his own strength
and power. Now he can take his revenge--{)n the suitors, on his mother, on his
father. No doubt Penelope waits and watches apprehensively-and so do we. But
no one could be as apprehensive or as helpless at this moment, or as magnificently self-controlled, as Odysseus.
"Three times [Telemachos] made [the bow] vibrate, straining to bend it, and
three times he gave over the effort, yet," the poet pointedly tells us, "in his heart
[he] was hopeful of hooking the string to the bow and sending a shaft through
the iron." Finally, "pulling the bow for thefourth time," we are told, "he would
have strung it, but Odysseus stopped him, though he was eager, making a signal
with his hem!' ( XXI.125-30, emphasis added). Though Telemachos desists on
a paternal glance, he submits not from weakness but from strength. Now knowing
that he could string the bow, he no longer feels compelled to do so. Having finally
realized his own manhood and felt his own power to equal his father, Telemachos
can now freely and generously acknowledge and accept his father's lead and
authority-perhaps because he recognizes that it was his father's self-control
�KASS
57
which had enabled him to gain his moment of triumph, and even more, because
the triumph is clearly acknowledged in his father's signal.
Immediately, without resentment, as if on cue, Telemachos joins the plot with
his now characteristic Odyssean cunning and dissembliog: "Shame on me," he
says, " 'I must be a coward and weakling, or else I am still young, and my hands
have yet no confidence to defend myself against a man who has started a quarrel.
Come then, you who in your strength are greater than I am, make your attempts
on the bow, and let us finish the contest'" (XXI.130-35).
Telemachos's silent assent to Odysseus's silent signal is his true embrace of
Odysseus. All the events that ensue make abundantly clear his respect, his loyalty,
and his proud affection. One moment especially stands out. After each of the
suitors, in turn, tries, unsuccessfully, to string the bow, blaming their incompetence on Apollo, they try to postpone the contest. But at this moment the stranger,
Odysseus, begs for a chance, and Penelope comes forward in his defense. When
the suitors strenuously object, Telemachos again takes command. He reiterates
his claim that he has "the power in the household," and, as he had done once
before, sharply urges Penelope to attend to her own work. But this time, though
he challenges his mother's authority, Telemachos, quite vigorously, takes up her
cause:
"My mother, no Achaian man has more authority
over this bow than I, to give or withhold, at my pleasure;
not one of those who are lords here in rocky Ithaka,
not one of those in the islands off horse-pasturing Elis;
no one can force me against my will; if I want, I can give it
to the stranger as an outright gift, to take away with him... "(XXL344-49)
Now Penelope, Odysseus, and Telemachos are, in Homer's word
homophrosyne; they all think alike in their thoughts. Moments later, Telemachos,
over the objections of the suitors, has the bow delivered to Odysseus. Assured
of the futnre, Odysseus can now reunite past and present. Odysseus, now truly
home, proceeds to string the bow and reclaim his house. And Telemachos,
knowing, at last, that he is able to fill his father's shoes, with his father's
blessings, gladly takes his rightful place as next in line.
�TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
58
Coda
The Odyssey ends, we recall, as grandfather Laertes, father Odysseus, and
son Telemachos go forth to face the grandfathers and fathers who would avenge
the terrible death of their sons. No doubt the wrath felt by these avenging fathers
was fueled by their own deeply felt guilt. Was it not their own indifference to the
outrageous exploits of their growing sons that won them these sorrows? No doubt
a terrible blood bath would have ensued had Athene not intervened. But she did,
and we rest content thinking' that with the pledges sworn to by both sides, and
Odysseus's reunions completed, Odysseus's home is secure now and for the
future.
So ends the poem. But as we all know this end does not mark the absolute
end of Odysseus's travels. Teiresias had foretold and Odysseus had repeated to
Penelope the tale of the journey that still remained. It is to be, recall, a solo
journey to a far-away, landlocked place, where there are people living who know
nothing of the sea, not its food, its ships, not the "well shaped oars which act for
ships as wings do" (Xl.l25). Odysseus is to carry his own oar to this land, which
he will recognize when another wayfarer, meeting him on the road, mistakenly
calls his oar a winnowing fan. Once there he is to plant his oar and render
ceremonious sacrifice to Poseidon.
We may speculate, fruitfully, I think, about where this land is, how long such
a journey may take, what the planted oar might mean to these landlocked folks,
and so on. But given our concern this evening, it occurred to me that encoded in
this last, rather obscure adventure, may indeed lie Homer's deepest reflection on
fathers and sons, or more generally, on parents and children. I asked myself this
question: Given all that has happened, would it not have made more sense for
Homer to have had Odysseus give his well-shaped oar, that artful reminder of
his own manhood and wanderings, to his own son Telemachos? Apparently not.
Why not?
If the telos of Homer's poem is the completed home, that is, the home that is
secure now and in the future, Homer seems to be suggesting that for a home to
endure, parents must be ever vigilant. They must watch their children, of course,
but they must especially watch themselves. They must desist, as we have seen
Odysseus do, from asking their children tQ accept them, but, more iroporlantly,
they must desist from foisting on their children their own hopes and dreams and
ambitions. Parents may continue to live in their children, but they cannot live
through their children. They must inspirit and gnide their children, school them
in their ways and traditions, give them encouragement and time-Homer never
excuses Odysseus's absence-but they carmot put their own well-shaped oars
into the hands of their sons or daughters. The life they have given can replace,
but it cannot repeat their own. Having prepared the way, we parents must allow
the next generation to carve their own oars, to navigate their own waters, even
�KASS
59
as we hope that their journeys will resemble our own. A very hard lesson, indeed.
Even Odysseus must be coaxed.
If this speculation is true, then it would seem that the real education of
Telemachos has only just begun.
***
Notes:
1. Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey (New York: AMS Press, I 968),
p.279.
2. Homer, Odyssey, translated by Richmond Lattimore, (New York:Harper and
Row, 1977). All Odyssey citations are from this translation, except where
otherwise indicated.
3. Cited in Heinz Kohut, "Introspection, Empathy, and the Semi Circle of
Mental Health," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 63 (1982) 404.
(There is one allusion to the embassy in the Odyssey at XXIV.l!S-19.)
4. Ibid.
5. Cf. Edward F. D' Arms and Karl K. Hulley, "The Oresteia-Story in the
Odyssey," Tra:nsactions and Proceedings, American Philological Association, 77 (1946) 207-13
6. Norman Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1975), p.I02. Austin continues his argument as follows:
"Man's movement, his gesture even, is a declaration of that harmony
between inner and outer. Gesture is space invoked, space imitated. Going
eastward or westward, upward or downward, left or right, is a physical act,
but an act significant of a person's character or emotion. It is because space
has quality that we are entitled to find significance in Achilleus' gesture
when he hurls the royal scepter to the ground and sitS down himself
(ll.l.245-46) or to assert that when Agamemnon sits down to deliver his
apology to Achilleus his posture is as important as his utterance (ll. 19.77)."
Austin cites Odysseus's father, Laertes-his ragged clothes, his abandonment of the city, his preference for ashes and leaves, or for decay and
dissolution-as the "clearest example" of this phenomenon.
7. This is the view set out by, among others, Norman Austin in "Telemachos
Polymechanos," California Studies in Classical Antiquity, Vol.2, 1969, p.47.
8. See Agathe Thornton, People and Themes in Homer's Odyssey (Dunedin:
University of Toronto Press, 1970), especially, Chapter VII. "The Suitors,"
pp.63-67. Though the inferences I draw are my own, the discussion of the
suitors that immediately follows draws heavily on Thornton's observations.
9. Cf. Thornton, op.cit., p.64
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
10. It is, in general, the case that in the world according to Homer, to be in the
dark about who your father is is to be in the dark simply-disoriented and
without hope. See, especially, Homer's simile at V.394-99.
11. Mary Hannah Jones, "A First Reading of the Odyssey," in Prize Papers, St.
Joho's College, 1977-78, p. 62.
12. Austin, "Telemachos Polymechanos," op.cit., p.53
13. Ibid., p.53
14. Ibid.
15. In an effort to emphasi~e the apparent changes in Telemachos and the
moment of his meeting With his father, I have shortchanged the "schools"
that were Sparta and Pylas. It is surely no accident that Athene sent
Telemachos to these places in particular. For no doubt pepnumenos
Telemachos is made far more aware of his geographical and paternal origins
by the very fact that each place and its presiding figure(s) is so different
from the other, and so different from lthak:a. Let me collect here just a few
of the more salient differences.
Sandy Pylos, where 4,500 residents congregate, at day break, near the
shore to offer a ceremonious sacrifice of 81 bulls to Poseidon, stands in stark
contrast to the rich, inland plains of horse-pasturing Sparta, and both stand
in stark contrast to rocky Ithaka. In Pylos, where men live piously and
simply and, seemingly, mostly outdoors, old Nestor presides. In Sparta,
where one's attention is drawn to the lavish interiors, to the abundant wealth
and beauty of the palace-Telemachos mistakes the palace for the home of
Zeus himself-Menelaos and Helen preside. In Pylos, where every visitor
provides a fresh occasion to show one's gratitude to the gods, men celebrate
the past and look forward to the future: Nestor is always flanked by his six
sons and companions. In Sparta, where every visitor provides a fresh
reminder of the miserable origins of Trojan War, men look only to past pain
and seemingly have no future: though Helen and Menelaos are celebrating
a marriage-their only child, Hermione, born before the war, is about to
marry Neoptolemos, Achilles' son-the departure of Hermione further
highlights the emptiness, indeed, the sterility, of their home. Though he
hears tales of Odysseus' heroic virtues, he also hears tales about the difference between Odysseus and his heroic counterparts, tales which, no doubt,
spark Telemachos' special interest. In Pylos, for example, Nestor's tale
about the strategy he urged_ at the end of the war invites Telemachos to think
about the difference between Nestor and Odysseus as counsellors.
Menelaos's and Helen's tales of Odysseus' enormous capacity for selfcontrol make evident, by contrast, their own deficiencies. See, especially,
Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon and George E. Dimock, The Unity
of the Odyssey (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989) for
a more extensiVe discussion of the "schools" of Pylos and Sparta.
16. Austin, "Telemachos· Polymechanos," op.cit.
�The Least Deceptive Mirror
of the Mind:
Truth and Reality
in the Homeric Poems
Carl A. Rubino
I
At the climax of hls encounter with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, the
strange and annoying Nazarene called Jesus introduces the matter of truth: "I
was born and I carne into the world to bear witness to the truth, and everyone
who sides with the truth hears my voice" (John 18.37). Pilate's well-known
response belies his frustration; "What is truth?" he asks, and quickly turns to
leave the room. Pilate seems well aware that a discussion of truth between him
and Jesus would involve the sort of "cultural confrontation" that any Roman
administrator who wished to succeed could ill afford.
Had Jesus and Pilate been Westerners of a more recent stamp, they might have
engaged in a discussion of the notions of transparency and fullness. That most
exemplary Westerner, Erasmus, who falsely claimed to hail from Rotterdam,
makes his heroine Folly pay heed to-and at the same time undercut-the ideal
of transparency. "Folly speaks," and she informs us that "speech is the least
deceptive mirror of the mind."1 We also expect what is true to be complete; we
demand fullness; when we swear in court, we promise "to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth." Consider the hearings on the Watergate scandal
or the more recent Iran-Contra affair. Both were replete with demands for and
promises of "full disclosure."
Some have come to associate the demand for transparency with what they
call the "correspondence theory of truth," where it is a matter of accurate
representation. If! say "It's raining outside" when it is actually sunny, I have not
represented reality but masked it; my words do not correspond to what is really
Carl Rubino is Professor of Classics at Hamilton College. He was a tutor at St. John's
College, Annapolis, in the academic year 1988-89, and at the Graduate Institute in the
summer of 1990.
�62
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
happening out there. In its extreme fonn, the correspondence theory takes ideas
as copies of objects and words as copies of ideas. Fullness, on the other hand, is
associated with the "coherence tl1eory of truth." Here it is a matter of getting
everything to hang together, and there is no truth shmt of the whole truth.' Thus
the slick lawyer of television and films or the tough detective-novel cop will try
to knock holes in a suspect's story; find the places where the story does not hang
together, and the whole false tangle will unravel just like Penelope's web, that
delaying fiction ultimately unmasked by the truth-hungry suitors (Od. 2.85-110).
Here we must note an important corollary: Even though someone might be telling
the truth, even though what he or she says is "what really happened," if that
person is unable to tell it coherently, in the proper style, it can and often will be
taken as falsehood, as all those bumbling victims of fast-talking lawyers can
testify.
The notion of uuth as coherence is the one we often invoke in attempting to
explain how works of art-fictions all---<:an somehow be true. When we gaze
with wonder upon the awesome splendor of Michelangelo's David, for example,
we do not expect the statue merely to correspond to what a human male body
actually looks like. If we want to see "real bodies," all we have to do is look at
one another; there is no need to contemplate great works of art. What we really
expect from Michelangelo, or from any other artist, whether painter, sculptor,
writer, or composer, is that the work cohere in a way that pleases, moves, and
inspires us. Works of art, even so-called realistic works, do not merely correspond
to reality; on the contrary, they transfonn reality, investing it with a marvelous
luminosity, and the mode of transfonnation is their superior degree of coherence.
Speaking from another point of view, we might associate transparence with
candor and fullness with spontaneity. Although such associations serve to
demonstrate that it is ultimately impossible to maintain our distinctions absolutely, since the meanings of candor and spontaneity often overlap, we can still
perceive the distinction if we remember that a candid person is someone whose
words clearly reflect his thoughts, while it remains true that at least one phrase
associated with spontaneity is "He simply blurted it all out."
II
In any case, everyone would probably agree that both candor and spontaneity
are obvious characteristics of"the best of the Achaeans," Achilles. At the opening
of the l/iad he enjoins a fearful Calchas to "tell it like it is" (1.74-91), and he
insists upon "speaking his mind" to a resentful and angry Agamemnon who is
yet quite willing to compromise (examine 1.116-20 and 140-47, lines too little
noted by commentators). It is difficult to imagine a hero like Achilles not saying
what he means; and it is this attitude as much as Agamemnon's arrogance that
�RUBINO
63
brings on the crisis ofthelliad. To reach the accommodation advocated by Nestor
(1.254-84), compromise is necessary; as Nestor says, it is better to listen to reason
and take advice. For Nestor it is a question of compromise between manly
prowess on the one hand and political authority on the other. Unfortunately, all
such compromises require a certain softening or blurring of what one sees clearly
as hard truth; and Achilles simply will not modify his position or mollify his
words. Agamemnon is well aware of this; he notes that even though the gods
have made Achilles a great warrior, they have not given him the right to hurl
insults (1.290-91).
'
Achilles himself makes his attitude quite clear during the embassy's visit in
Book Nine. Immediately after Odysseus has conveyed to him the generous terms
of Agamemnon's peace offer, he responds with these frank words:
I owe you a straight answer, as to how
I see this thing, and how it is to end
No need to sit with me like mourning doves
making your gentle noise by turns. I hate
as I hate Hell's own gate that man who hides
one thought within him while he speaks another.
What I shall say is what I see and thiok.
(9.309-14) 3
The fault that Achilles hates, saying one thing while thinking another, is of course
the very opposite of candor and spontaneity; the liar does not display what is in
his mind but rather disguises it. For the liar, speech is not Folly's bright mirror
but the means par excellence to keep one's thoughts in the dark. Yet we should
note that in this case at least Odysseus's intentions are not only honorable but
also transparent. Like his companions on the embassy, he wishes to effect a
reconciliation between Agamemnon and Achilles, and he makes no secret of that.
It is because he wishes so ardently for that reconciliation that he omits from his
report of Agamemnon's offer, which is otherwise repeated in all its detail
(9.122-57 and 9.264-99, mutatis mutandis), the part that Achilles would have
found unpalatable:
Let him be subdued!
Lord Death indeed is deaf to appeal, implacable;
of all gods therefore he is most abhorrent
to mortal men. So let Akhilleus bow to me,
considering that I hold higher rank
and claim the precedence of age.
(9.158-61)
�64
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
For those tough words, Odysseus substitures the following pitch:
Even if you abhor
the son of Atreus all the more bitterly,
with all his gifts, take pity on the rest,
all the old army, worn to rags in battle.
These will honor you as gods are honored!
And ah, for these, what glory you may win!
Think: Hek(or is your man this time: being crazed
with ruinoUs pride, believing there's no fighter
equal to him among those that our ships
brought here by sea, he 'II put himself in range.
(9.300-306)
As always, Odysseus is very shrewd. Insread of offering Achilles an exhortation
to obedience, he appeals to his feelings for his fellow warriors, to his obsessive
desire for honor and glory, and to his competitive inslincts, his insistence upon
being Number One.
Unfortunarely, the tactic does not work, perhaps because it is so very transparent. Achilles is not obtuse, and he knows that something is wrong with
Odysseus's report. He guesses wrong about what Odysseus has done, accusing
him of not being lransparent when Odysseus is in fact not being forthcoming, is
simply withholding an important part of Agamemnon's message and replacing
it with something he thinks Achilles would rather hear. Of course, Achilles' error
is minor and is perhaps best defined as misplaced emphasis, not only because
withholding can be described as lack of candor, but also because everyone knows
that the Odyssean personality is willing and able to violare the canon of
lransparency when that seems necessary. Ullimarely, therefore, Achilles is perfectly correct: Achilles is the opposite of the man who glories in the nighttime
sneak-attack on the Trojan camp (Book Ten, the Do/oneia) and who stoops to
use the poisoned arrows mentioned by Athena, his equally non-lransparent
alter-ego, in this instance disguised as Mentes (Od. 1.260-64). No, Achilles is
once and for all the ideal slraight shooter and slraight talker. The kind of hero
exalted in the Iliad purports to be a man of action, not a man of words (listen to
Hector at II. 20.366-68, 20.430-37, and 22.279-82; there is also Aeneas at II.
20.244-58), but when he does use words, lie remains absolutely faithful to the
canons of lransparency and fullness. He makes every effort to say what he means.
It is worth taking a leap across the centuries to the hero whose k/eos aphiton
is celebrared not by Homer but by Plato. Socrates, well-known for his obstinate
insistence on speaking the truth, recognized his kinship with the great hero of
thelliad.ln answer to those who would reproach him for putting his life in danger
by such behavior, Socrates speaks as follows:
�RUBINO
65
On your view the heroes who died at Troy would be poor creatures, especially
the son of Thetis. ... he made light of his death and danger, being much more
afraid of ao ignoble life aod of failing to avenge his friends .... The truth of
the matter is this, gentlemen. Where a man has once taken his stand, either
because it seems best to him or in obedience to his orders, there I believe he
is bound to remain and face the danger, taking no account of death or anything
else before dishonor.4
There it is: death before dishonor, standing up for what you believe, maintaining
one's position at all costs, that stubborn, almost pigheaded insistence on never
letting up, never softening your position, never giving any quarter to your
unfortunate opponents. The best of the Achaeans and the best of the Athenians
are two of a kind!
III
The Odyssey, on the other hand, is at one with its protagonist in consistently
sliding off course, consistently denying the value of candor and spontaneity,
emphasizing in their place the non-transparent face of language and the uses of
withholding the truth. 5 The much-discussed Cyclops episode will have to do its
duty once again, since it offers a splendid example of my point. That episode, as
we all know, is replete with deception. Consider, for example, Odysseus's
passing out of the cave hidden under the ram's belly. It is marked throughout by
insincerity. Odysseus ignores the urgings of his men, who wish to steal some
cheeses and run, then to come back later to drive out the lambs and kids; he insists
that they wait and try to talk the Cyclops, whom he imagines he can cast for the
role of sucker, out of some gifts, relying on good old xenie, one of the greatest
ruses of the confidence-man (Od. 9.224-30).6 When the Cyclops fmally returns
to his cave, Odysseus confronts him with a failed masterpiece of the swindler's
art:
We are from Troy, Akhaians, blown off course
by shifting gales on the Great South Sea;
homeward bound, but taking routes and ways
uncommon; so the will of Zeus would have it.
We served under Agamemno~ son of Atreus-
the whole world knows what city
he laid waste, what armies he destroyed.
It was our luck to come here; here we stand,
beholden for your help, or aoy gifts
you give-as custom is to honor strangers.
We would entreat you, great Sir, have a care
for the gods' courtesy: Zeus will avenge
the unoffending guest.
(9.259-71)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
That seems a fairly windy speech for Odysseus. His initial tactic is to impress
Polyphemus with some pretentious name-dropping, the kind of thing that the
gullible always go for. Thus we get mention of Troy, of Agamemnon and the
great fame he and his comrades won there, and of Zeus himself, who is supposed
to have arranged our hero's visit to the Cyclops's island. Roughly midway
through this valiant effort, however, we can see Odysseus changing course as he
sees from the expression on the Cyclops's face that the intended victim is not
buying his line. Thus at line 266 Odysseus makes a sudden detour into religious
discourse, turning himself and his men from big-time conquering heroes to abject
suppliants whose safety now depends upon the protection of Zeus: "Zeus-you
know the one I mean, Zeus xeinios, the one who takes care of strangers and
suppliants" (270-71). For all his fear, however, Odysseus is still after those gifts,
and it is to the Cyclops's credit that at least he does not fall for this.
The episode is also marked by the withholding of truth. In that splendid pun
on outis Odysseus both withholds his real name and gives the Cyclops a name
that is not transparent, that is at odds with reality, that does not correspond with
his real name. In the end, as the reaction of his fellow Cyclopes forces Polyphemus to see, outis is no name at all. This brilliant piece of linguistic chicanery,
worked out at the expense of the unfortunate and ignorant Cyclops, who insists
upon taking people at their word, is a perfect encapsulation of the Odyssean
attitude toward language, truth, and reality. But we should not be too eager to
condemn our wily hero as a villain and a cad. Even though we must constantly
recall that it is Odysseus who is telling this story and thus manipulating us as
well as the Cyclops,? we must also remember that in situations such as the one
Odysseus describes here, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, remaining faithful to our beloved ideals of candor and spontaneity, would
lead to unmitigated disaster. Indeed, the Cyclops episode contains an extremely
telling point against spontaneity. After the Cyclops has made his first meal of
Odysseus's companions, washing down their flesh and bone with plenty of good
fresh milk, he falls asleep right in front of the terrified survivors. Odysseus tells
us what happened next:
My heart beat higb now at the chance of action,
and drawing the sharp sword from my hip I went
along his flank to stab him where the midriff
holds the liver. I had touched the spot
when sudden fear stayed me: if I killed him
we perished there as well, for we could never
move his ponderous doorway slab aside.
So we were left to groan and wait for morning.
(9.298-306)
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RUBINO
The sudden fear that prevents the mmder of the Cyclops is prompted by a truly
inspired "second thought" and by typically Odyssean presence of mind. Where
most people, Achilles included, would have killed the sleeping giant in a bmst
of unrestrained spontaneity, Odysseus hangs on grimly, waiting for the main
chance, as always. Where we would have perished, gasping for our last breath·
and lamenting our lack of forethought (much as Achilles bemoans his inability
to foresee the arranged death ofPatroclus), Odysseus remains alive to pursue his
homeward journey.
Returning to the question of candor, to the matter of Odysseus revealing his
name when he is asked for it, we should remember thatin the end he does indeed
give that name to Polyphemus, using the full-dress version.
Kyklops,
if ever mortal man inquire
how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him
Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye:
Laertes' son, whose home's on Ithaka!
(9.502-5)
That extremely rare example of Odyssean "full disclosme," uttered at an equally
rare moment when our calculating hero gives way to passion, proves catastrophic
for Odysseus and his men, for it allows the wounded Cyclops to identify his
tormentor to Poseidon, who consequently undertakes the hounding of Odysseus.
We must conclude, then, that in the Odyssey candor and spontaneity are not
highly valued as tools for survival.
Language as a disguising medium is vitally important to Odysseus throughout
his travels, but it is no less important after he returns to Ithaca, a place now
dominated by the dangerous suitors and their allies. Here, once again, telling the
unvarnished truth would have been foolhardy and suicidal. The suitor Leokritos
puts the matter quite well in Book Two, as Telemachus is preparing to go in search
of news about his father. The loyal Mentor has attempted to arouse the Ithacans
against the suitors, and Leokritos replies on their behalf:
Suppose Odysseus himself indeed
came in and fouud the suitors at his table:
he ruight be hot to drive them out. What then?
Never would he enjoy his wife againthe wife who loves him well; he'd only bring down
abject death upon himself against those odds.
(2.246-51)
Odysseus simply cannot confront the suitors directly. Where Penelope once
wove her web to deceive and delay the suitors, Odysseus must now weave his
own web of falsehood and lies. Where Penelope's clever strategem ultimately
�THE ST. JOHN•s REVIEW
68
failed. Odysseus must develop a wimring strategy, for he is playing for iufinitely
higher stakes-his life. Like the contest Odysseus the bowman announces at the
opening of Book Twenty-Two, and unlike the aristocratic contests of the
Phaeacians in Book Eight or the decadent dalliance of the suitors with the bow
in Book 1Wenty-One, Odysseus's game upon his return to Ithaca is from start to
finish an aethlos replete with afe, one in which the losers will really and truly
be blown away. 8 If Odysseus loses this one, he will die. It is therefore no accident
that Books 13-21 display the art of deception raised to its highest level, and
Aristotle has good reason to shy that "Homer more than any other has taught the
rest of us the art of framing lies in the right way.''9
IV
It is not difficult to see that Odysseus must lie if he is to survive. Yet there is
much more to it than that. Odysseus is frequently described as an "outsider," and
this notion proves crucial for understanding the relation of language, truth, and
reality in the Odyssey. The plain fact is that it is far easier for insiders to tell the
truth and to be believed than it is for outsiders to do so.
When it is a matter of simple statements of fact, such as my earlier example
"It's raining outside," verification presents no difficulties. Whether or not the
person who makes such a statement is known or unknown to us, all we have to
do is look outdoors to determine whether he is telling the truth. But reflect on
the fact that if we know and trust the person who makes such a statement, if he
is an insider, we do not take the trouble to check; we take him at his word. This
becomes especially significant in matters where verification is not so easy, where
we are compelled to take people at their word.
In such cases we take a much closer look at that word, and the criterion for
judging truth or falsehood is almost exclusively coherence. We tend not to
believe people who rave or babble. The form of presentation becomes crucial. If
something sounds true, we tend to take it as true. This may seem quite simple
and obvious, but it is not, for the canons of coherence and thus of verisimilitude
are not universal but culture-bound. What seems raving or babbling in one culture
may make perfect sense in another; what ma)<:es sense, what hangs together, what
seems true can vary from culture to culture.10 It follows that outsiders will have
difficulty getting believed in such situations, for they will have difficulty producing the required sort of coherence. This explains why the slick lawyer can
victimize the innocent, truthful, but uneducated witness. Such a witness cannot
meet the required standard of coherence. It also lies behind Pilate's refusal to
discuss the truth with Jesus. The jaded Roman is very well aware that the canons
of truth for himself and the strange foreigner standing before him are so different
�69
RUBINO
that such a discussion would either be impossible or too dangerous to risk, since
it would gravely threaten the accepted cultural norms and divisions.
Not only do the words uttered by outsiders fail to cohere in the proper way;
often those outsiders are not permitted to cohere, since they are not part of the
group whose norms they must satisfy. Thus outsiders often have great difficulty
being taken seriously, getting others to examine the !ruth-value of their words.
Take, for example, Thersites (fl. 2.211-77), the quintessential outsider despised
by both the aristocrats and the troops. What he says to Agamemnon in the
presence of the Achaeans is not very different from what Achilles says in Book
One and is considerably less insulting; furthermore, his statements can be
defended as being quite lrue. Yet he is beaten and ridiculed. He is an outsider;
he is not part of the leadership. Thus he has no right to speak the !ruth, and his
words will not be heeded. The opposite is true for Achilles, the very incarnation
of the hero, the indispensible warrior, the ideal Achaean. He can say anything he
pleases, since his place is at the very center of the group, whose embodiment he
is. Insiders like Achilles and Agamemnon can trade the most vicious insults and
accusations while still remaining accepted members of the group; in Book
Nineteen, justa few days after their acrimonious quarrel, they are reconciled and
all seems forgotten. The insider can say almost anything, the outsider almost
nothing.
Odysseus is always aware of this restriction; thus he always plans his
utterances with extreme care, knowing that his ouly chance lies in producing a
coherence so superior that it compels others to give him a hearing. His carefully
contrived, intricate webs, those marvelous Odyssean texts-remember that our
word text comes from the Latin word for weaving-ensnare Nausicaa, inducing
her to provide him with the all-important entree to the people who count in
Phaeacia; they buy him the time he needs to size up the situation at Ithaca; they
give him the opportunity to set the unfortunate snitors up for the kill; and, most
important for my purposes here, they create and maintain among the Phaeacians
that feeling of kinship with Odysseus that guarantees their promise to deliver
him safely home to Ithaca. Enthralled by Odysseus's tales and obviously hoping
for more, Alcinous reiterates his promise to arrange our hero's conveyance.
Our friend
longs to put out for home, but let him be
content to rest here one more day, until
I see all gifts bestowed. And every man
will take thought for his launching and his voyage,
I most of all, for I am master here.
(11.350-53) 11
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
v
Lucian, who claims for himself the ability to relate intricate and well-embroidered lies in a plausible manner, informs us that our "guide and instroctor" in
this sort of thing is Horner's Odysseus, who bamboozled the simple-minded and
gullible Phaeacians with those tall tales ofhis. 12 But perhaps Lucian has not given
sufficient credit to Alcinous and his court. Arete's interruption of Odysseus's
narrative (11.336-41) makes it clear to her fellow countrymen that they ought to
judge their guest favorably oil the basis of his narrative. Speaking to Odysseus
a few lines later, Alcinous himself expands upon this notion:
As to that, one word, Odysseus:
from all we see, we take you for no swindlerthough the dark earth be patient of so many,
scattered everywhere, baiting their traps with lies
of old times and of places no one knows.
You speak with art, but your intent is honest.
The Argive troubles, and your own troubles,
you told as a poet would, a man who knows the world.
(11.363-69)
Alcinous emphasizes the coherence, the verisimilitude, of Odysseus's narrative,
not its correspondence to reality. He and his fellow countrymen "believe"
Odysseus because his narrative displays morphe, the kind of coherence that
demonstrates that he-like them-is a man of good sense, phrenes esthlai
(11.367), the phrase Fitzgerald renders as "honest intent." The compelling
quality of Odysseus's narrative, which does after all deal with events that most
sophisticated audiences would take as "fictional," binds him closely to the
Phaeacians and at the same time serves to distinguish him and his gracious hosts
from that large, amorphous, and anonymous mass of outsiders. It is they, not us,
who tell lies; it is they who are not to be trosted. The compelling coherence of
Odysseus's narrative, its IIWrphe, accomplishes the essential metamorphosis,
transforming him from outsider to insider, moving him right to the center of the
group.
Alcinous's comparison of Odysseus to an epic poet reveals even greater
insight into the matter. Odysseus is believable and trostworthy because his
narrative coheres in a way that satisfies its audience's expectations and canons
of coherence, i.e., because it is art, superior fiction, successful poii!sis. The
Phaeacians come to accept Odysseus because they recognize him as a great artist,
a world-class storyteller. It is his marvelous artistic ability as a spinner of words
that enables him to survive his journey horne from Troy and the harrowing time
with the arrogant suitors, to overcome the dangers posed by alien cultures and
by decadence within his own culture. In this sense, paradoxically, Odysseus
�RUBINO
71
stands as a powerful proof that great art transcends cultural boundaries and is in
some sense universal.
One final paradox. In the end, Odysseus's narrative, for all its marvelous
coherence, artifice, and art, turns out to be gorgeously transparent as well. With
an important qualification: it displays not so much the truth of what is related
but the character of its immensely skillful narrator. Thus Aristotle is right once
again. TheOdysseyisindeedastory aboutcharacter(Poelics 1459bl2-16). Upon
reflection, then, Odysseus's words do indeed become the least deceptive mirror
of his mind, an extremely accurate reflection of what he is. But what is he? Wbat
do we mean by character, mind, or the self? For Aristotle character is something
we create for ourselves by the choices we make throughout our lives. Contemporary thinkers have also given much attention to the question of character and
the self. In the opening pages of his Mythologiques, Levi-Strauss states that
"unlike philosophical reflection, which claims to go back to its own source, the
reflections we are dealing with here concern rays whose only source is hypothetical," that emanate from a virtual focal point (unfoyer virtue[)P After observing
that the structural method employed by Uvi-Strauss "aims at preventing this
virtual focus from being made into a real source oflight, " 14 Paul de Man extends
Levi-Strauss's analogy lD literature and its "source":
The "virtual focus" is, strictly speaking, a nothing, but its nothingness concerns us very little, since a mere act of reason suffices to give it a mode of
being that leaves the rational order unchallenged. The same is not true of the
imaginary source of fiction. Here the human self has experienced the void
within itself and the invented fiction, far from filling the void, asserts itself as
pure nothingness, our nothingness stated and restated by a subject that is the
agent of its own instability. 15
We need not go quite so far in the direction of nihilism to agree that what we call
the self or our character is truly something we create for ourselves. It is an
invention, a fiction, a poiesis. Despite the many constraints placed upon us by
nature and human society, we are very much our own creations, and what we
make of ourselves as human beings is up lD us. Indeed, nature, of which we are
a part and whose processes are part of us, challenges us to become fully ourselves.
If the Odyssey is a poem that satisfies our hunger for both coherence and
transparency, a poem that is rich in truth, that truth remains the truth of fiction.
And although fiction too has its constraints, its truth remains the truth that saved
Odysseus and the only truth that can set us free.
�Tiffi ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
72
Notes:
1. Praise of Folly, trans. B. Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971),
I and 5, pp. 63 and 67.
I am grateful to audiences at Brown University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Southern California, and the University
of California, San Diego, for their helpful remarks on earlier versions of
this paper.
2. I am indebted here to SO!l)e unpublished remarks of Richard Rorty, made in
response to a paper of mlne delivered at Princeton University on April 10,
1976.
3. Translations of Homer are by Robert Fitzgerald: Iliad (Garden City: Anchor/Doubleday, 1974); Odyssey (Garden City: Anchor/Doubleday, 1961).
Readers are, of course, strongly urged to examine Homer's Greek.
4. Apology 28b9-d9, trans. H. Tredennick (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1969). To those who would argue that II. 1.188-222, where Athena intervenes to prevent Achilles from drawing his sword against Agamemnon,
suggest that Achilles may not be quite so spontaneous as I have maintained
here, it may be replied that the need for Athena to intervene serves to
demonstrate my point. Without her intervention, Achilles' inability to curb
his "natural impulses" would have led to disaster.
5. See Ann L. T. Bergren, "Odyssean Temporality: Many (Re)Tums," in Carl
A. Rubino and Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, eds., Approaches to Homer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), pp. 38-73. There are, of course, many
other parts of the Odyssey that could have served my analysis here. Book
Fourteen, for example, shows Odysseus constructing an elaborate skein of
falsehoods to get the desired results from Eumaeus, who, unlike Polyphemus, turns out to be no fool. Especially interesting here are lines 156-57,
where Odysseus, about to tell his false story, echoes the very words of
Achilles at II. 9.312-13: "I hate as I hate Hell's own gate," he says, "that
weakness that makes a poor man into a flatterer."
6. See Norman Austin, "Odysseus and the Cyclops: Who is Who," in Rubino
and Shelmerdine (above, note 5), pp. 3-37.
7. Ibid.
8. See E. D. Francis, "Virtue, Folly, and Greek Etymology," in Rubino and
Shehnerdine (above, note 5), pp. 74-121. See also William F. Wyatt, Jr.,
"Homeric "ATH," AJP !03 (1982), 247-76.
9. Poetics 1460al9-20, trans. I. Bywater (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).
10. See John Peradotto, "Odyssey 8.564-571: Verisimilitude, Narrative Analysis, and Bricolage," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15 (1974),
803-32. See also his Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the
Odyssey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
II. See Od. 7.308-28 and 8.536-86. See also Peradotto (above, note 10),
Bergren (above, note 5), and James M. Redfield, "The Economic Man," in
Rubino and Shelmerdine (above, note 5), pp. 218-47.
�RUBINO
73
12. True Story 1.2-3. See 1(. 2.484-92 and Hesiod, Theogony 26-28. See also
Pietro Pucci, I-/esiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1979) and "The Language of the Muses," in
Wendell M. Aycock and Theodore M. Klein, eds., Classical Mythology in
Twentieth Century Thought and Literature =Proceedings of the Comparative Literature Symposium, XI (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1980), pp.
163-86.
13. The Raw and the Cooked, which is vol. II of Introduction to a Science of
Mythology, l, trans .. J. and D. Weightman (New York: Harper and Row,
'
1975), p. 5.
14. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971; reprinted, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 11.
15. Ibid., p. 19. In a book that points us towards Derrida and "post-structuralism," the Sartrean echoes of such statements come as a surprise.
�74
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
What is a Book?
Eva T. H. Brann
It is our tradition that the first lecture of the year should be dedicated to our
freshmen. They have newly joined a community whose program of learning
centers on the scheduled reading of a pre-set list of books and on the twiceweekly discussion that takes place in the seminar. They have come to us chiefly
because that is what we do here. I have read each of their applications, and I can
vouch for the fact.
Then what sort of impression will I be making on them if I ask an absurd
question like "What is a book?"-and ask it in public? Don't we, known to the
world as a Great Books College, know what a book is, even what a great book
is?
I was friends once with a little boy (we are still friends, but he is a big strapping
lawyer now, a public defender, no less) who told me he was making a rocket to
send into space. Because proper adults like to annoy little children I asked him
"What do you mean, space?" He looked at me in big-eyed amazement (he was
used to grown-ups having more answers than he had questions) and said
incredulously: "Don't you even know what space is-you know, outer space?"
So don't I even know what a book is, a great book?
Well, I do and I don't. I don't say that to create confusion. Contrary to what
some of your upper-class colleagues may try to tell you, confusion is not our
business, but rather clarification, partly because clear-headedness is one condition of open-mindedness. Aslowly developing, limited clarity of mind does seem
to me to be our business.
Nor, for that matter, is reading books our primruy activity, or even thinking
about them. Our primruy purpose is, in my opinion (I say "in my opinion"
because not everyone agrees) to reflect, which means literally "to bend (our
thought) back"-on itself and on ourselves. When you leave us in four years you
may well have chosen a career. The word "career" is related to "car" and connotes
This lecture, delivered in September, 1991, was the Dean's opening lecture of the
academic year.
�76
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
taking off on a track, straight, speedy-and upward, we hope. The years immediately before you are, on the contrary, years ofleisure, of slow progress in a
rising circle (such as is called a spiral), of reviewing your points of origin-one
of which is yourself-from different vantage points. It is significant that we never
ask you to "take a comse" but always to "be in a tutorial." We invite you not to
course along a set track of organized knowledge, but to be active in a community
protective of learning wherever it goes, even when it goes in circles. That,
incidentally, is why your tea9hers are not called professors but tutors. These are
both Latiu words. A professor is "one who speaks out assertively in public," but
a tutor is "one who safeguards and watches" over things. A tutorial, then, is a
safe haven for learning with fifteen or so members, one of whom is the special
guardian of learning.
It is often said that there is yet another presence in the tutorial or the seminar,
the one that brings us together, the true guide and teacher, namely the great book
being studied. We often say that, and I think it is true. Not for nothing does our
college seal display seven books.
Let me take out a minute here for an interjection. You may be surprised by
my vehemence, but I want to warn you of what seems to me a very bad blight.
Countries, congregations, colleges-all have their verities, truths they keep
telliug about themselves. When a truth has been told and heard very often, it
loses, by a very natural process, its sap and its savor. Then there is a type of
person who concludes that because the truth has lost its savor for them, it is
unsavory, and they affect ennui and disdain toward it. They think the truth is flat
and falsified when it is their souls that have gone flaccid. I am not speaking of
those who vigorously oppose the truthfulness of the truth; they are the tonic that
keeps truths healthy. lam speaking of people-ourselves in certain moods-,-who
let the soul slip from the words they speak and then blame the words. The cure
for this condition seems to be to cultivate the habit of reverence. By reverence I
here mean the disposition to grant at least provisional significance to words and
sayings from which the meaning seems for the moment to have withdrawn and
to have become remote. The next step is then the effort to recover that meaning.
In that spirit I say that great books are om teachers, and this lecture is one
attempt to recall the meaning of this truism.
�BRANN
77
There is a man-you will spend much of your year arguing with him-who
intimates that it is foolish to talk about the quality and purpose of a thing before
asking what it is. In the manner of this man Socrates let me then put my title
question, to which we all know some obvious answers that turn increasingly
unobvious under reflection: What is a book?
Books as Bodies
A book appears to be, to begin with, a bodily thing. In an old college film,
which I hope you get to see sometime, there is a dorm sequence of a student
shouting upstairs to her friend: ''11rrow me down my Iliad." Down comes the
Iliad. Or it might have been her Paradise Lost, I've forgotten. Is the Iliad then a
thing subject to gravity, gaining distance as the square of the time? Is it her Iliad
or Homer's Iliad or Achilles' Iliad? Where is the place of this Iliad? In a book,
in the rhapsode's literal line-by-line memory, in the student's impressionistic
memory, nowhere, in Troy, in Hades? I say Hades, because as you will soon read
in the Odyssey, it is to the blood-drained invisible underworld that you must go
to learn the great tales on which poetry works. Again, when is a book's time of
being? When the story called the Iliad happened, in the twelfth century B.C.?
When it was told, in the eighth century B.C.? When an Athenian commission
first produced an official written version, in the sixth century B.C.? Or whenever
Johnnies read their seminar in the twentieth century, or, for that matter, in 1808
when the freshmen of this college (then called the "noviate class") first read
Homer-in Greek? (T. F. Tilghman, The Early History of St. John's College in
Annapolis, p. 36.) Or whenever Homer's poem is at work influencing lives, as
the vision of Achilles once, in the fourth century B.C., drove Alexander the Great
to the deeds that made him so?
Or is it whenever the Iliad stands on a shelf waiting to be opened? In that
most thought-provoking of children's books, Michael Ende'sNeverending Story,
the boy Sebastian, about to open the magical book he has stolen, says to himself:
I would like to lmow what actually goes on in a book as long as it's closed.
. . . One has to read it to experience it, that's clear. But it's already there
beforehand. I would like to know, how?
These are tricky perplexities that push themselves forward when you approach this book-thing with questions such as Whose possession? In what place?
At what time? Let me nonetheless stick for a while with the crudest set of
solutions, those that take a book as a physical object.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Paul Scott, the author of the Raj Quartet, the work I think of as the most
considerable novel of the time between the Second World War and our present,
was much impressed by the following prosaic account of what it is to be a book:
A small hard rectangular object, whose pages are bound along one edge into
fixed covers and numbered consecutively.
(On Writing and the Novel, p. 211, quoting Bergonzi)
As I flesh out this bare-bones definition of a bound paper book, do, please,
compare what it means to read such a book with the unrolling of a papyrus scroll
on the one hand, and the scrolling of a computer display on the other.
Books, says the passage, are small and hard, which means they are safely
carried hither and thither and can even be thrown down the stairwell. As
sophomores you will read Augustine's autobiography, in which he confesses first
his life of sin and finally his conversion to faith. He tells how his landlord let
him use the garden of the house Augustine was renting, and there he and his
friend one day carried a book, or codex, as Augustine calls it, which means a set
of wooden tablets, a sort of proto-book. It was not just any book, but a codex
apostoli. It was a pari of the The Book, to bib/ion, in English, the Bible. (Let me
take out a minute to say that the Greek word bib/ion means a thing made of biblos,
which is the word for papyrus, while papyrus itself comes into English as paper.)
Augustine was, at that time, in great agony over his sins and his doubts.
Suddenly, in the garden, he heard a child's voice saying over and over in a
sing-song tone: "Tolle lege, to/le lege," ''Take it and read it, take it and read it."
So he took the book and read what he found, and at that moment it was, as he
says in his beautiful Latin:
Quasi luce securitas infusa cordi mea, omnes dubitationes tenebrae
diffugeruut. (Corifessions VIII, 12)
"As if a light of assurance had poured into my hear!, all the shadows of doubt
fled away." If the book had not been in the garden there might have been no
voice, or if there had been a voice, Augustine would not have heeded it, or if he
had heeded it, he would have had nothing to take up and read. And he would
have missed the moment that made him, his conversion. It is because books are
portable that the ready reader can sometimes come on the word fitly spoken
To descend from the solemn to the ordinary: the bound paper book can be
carried about more conveniently than most other containers of valuables except
wallets-in a pocket, handgrip, or knapsack, to bed, bathroom, beach, or waiting
room. How many of you spent months in high school carrying around a book
until the time was ripe, and you took it and read it?
�79
BRANN
Besides being small and hard, the book of the definition is normally rectangular. Its rectangularity betokens the self-effacement of the visible layout of the
text. Let me explain.
There is something called pattern poetry. An example is the Mouse's sad Tale
in Alice in Wonderland, which looks like what it sounds like, a tail. You see here
only the tail end of the tale:
'Snch a
trial
dear sir,
With no
. jury or
JUdge,
would be
wasting
our breath.'
'I'll be
judge,
I'll be
jury,'
Said
cunning
old Fury:
'I'll try
the whole
cause,
•nd
condemn
you
to
death.'
This sort of innocent typographical game, a kind of printed calligraphy, has,
I should tell you, recently been used as a jumping-off place for grave reflections
on the latest of intellectual revolutions. A famous French intellectual has said:
Thus the calligram aspires playfully to efface the oldest oppositions of our
alphabetical civilization: to show and to name; to shape and to say; to
reproduce and to articulate; to imitate and to signify; to look and to read.
(Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, p. 21)
The traditional book, it is true, suppresses the looking in favor of the reading.
It is rectangular because it breaks the narrative into optically convenient and
semantically arbitrary stacks of lines. In some traditions these are arranged
horiwntally, in some, like the Chinese and Japanese, vertically; some are read
from left to right, and some like Hebrew, from right to left so that the book begins
where an English book ends. The earliest Greek writing is sometimes read back
and forth, which is called boustrophedon, meaning ox-turning, as in plowing. I
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
am sure that all these conventions carry significance with them. For instance, the
fact that Western readers' eyes survey the page in the plane of the horizon back
and forth, while Oriental readers move their head vertically as though noddingthere must be some meaning in that.
Next, Scott's quotation says that the pages of a book are numbered consecutively. This pagination is, so to speak, the street address of the narrative. That
address system makes it possible to revisit locations in a book. For worthy books
are meant to be read in a double way, so that the first reading is somehow already
the second reading. One way' is to follow the stacks of lines and the sequence of
pages straight through. Of course, while we are barging on with the inexorable
clock-say it is 6:30 on a seminar night-the time of the narrative warps back
and forth. For example, the centerpiece of the Odyssey, Books IX through XII,
where Odysseus turns poet and tells of the len years when he seemed lost to the
world, is all flashback; it is only with Book XIll that we return to the present of
the story.
But there is a second way to scramble the time of reading. It is made possible
by the fact that a book is a bound stack of numbered pages. That means you can
put slips of paper or fingers in the pages you have passed. As a visible, weighty,
numbered thing, a book is all there at once, and we can treat all its tale or
argument as simultaneously accessible.
Literary theorists have in fact invented a word for the writing that fully
exploits the non-linear property of the book format. They call it "spatial" prose.
(J. Frank in Spatial Form in Narrative, 1977.) It is spatial because it depends on
continual back-reference, on always holding the text present, as if it were all
there simultaneously just as space is-while time is always either gone or yet to
come. It seems to me that the physical format of the bound book invites the writer
to make spatialist demands on the reader. That does not mean that authors who
may not have been writers at all, like Homer, or who wrote in scrolls that show
only one place at a time, did not compose spatially. All great texts demand
continual back-reference, but book texts make it mechanically easier. The
theorists I have mentioned thought that the so-called "Modernist" writers, above
all James Joyce, were peculiarly spatial, but you will see that every Platonic
dialogue (for example) requires you to refer back all the time-a demand which
you cannot, of course, fully meet until you have studied your way through the
text once. We might conjecture, on the other hand, that a people that values time
and its sacred cyclical order might keep its scripture in scrolls, as do the Jews
their Torah.
The other place where events that are strung out in time are kept simultaneous
is memory. A book is indeed a memory analogue: an external memory. This
seems to me a wonderful thing.
The last dialogue and the last book you will read this year-in May when all
reading is a drag-is called the Phaedrus. In it Socrates will claim that any
�BRANN
81
written text is pernicious because it can't answer back when questioned, and also
because it acts as a pharmaceutical pacifier: It keeps you passively reminded and
prevents you from being actively mindful (275). Readers of dialogues might
point out to Socrates that the texts in which he appears do answer back, and
readers of books might say that a paginated book does keep us actively casting
back and forth.
Finally, a book, in Paul Scott's quotation, is bound along one edge between
fixed covers. This physical fact means that books have spines; they are upright
vertebrates. They normitlly stand on shelves next to one another. (I can't help
telling you that in my private library at home only the books I respect stand np;
the indifferent ones have to lie prone on the top shelves.) Only the spine shows,
so a book is known by its backbone. That fact in turn means that a book is
identified by author and title. In antiquity titles were evidently not always given
by the author. Who knows whether Homer would have called his song about the
wrath of Achilles after the name of Hector's city? Or what Aristotle wonld have
called his lectures on being, later called by the ambiguous title Metaphysics,
meaning either "the book that follows the Physics" or "the subject matter beyond
nature"?
In modem times, on the other hand, titles are almost always carefully crafted
armouncements of the author's intention, and they are the first thing to think
about as soon as you have finished the book once. Some titles reveal, some
retract, some complement the contents of the book. For example, as a rising
senior you will spend a glorious summer with Tolstoy's fourteen-hundred-page
novel entitled War and Peace, of which 1340 pages are devoted to war and sixty
to peace. What did Tolstoy mean by his title? Did he mean that those last pages
of peaceful family life, the so-called First Epilogue, have as much gravity, as
much cosmic significance, as all the turmoil that went before? I think so, but you
may find that your seminar divides around that question, which is made more
interesting by the fact that the Russian word for "peace" also means "world."
*
That concludes my unpacking of the definition of a book as a small hard
rectangular object, made of paginated leaves bound along one edge. So far the
answer to the question "What is a book?" has amounted to this: A book is the
kind of artifact we call a medium. It is made to mediate a text to us.
In his Physics Aristotle will observe a fundamental twofoldness in the human
world. Some things in it grow, or at least move by themselves, and these, he says,
are natures. Other things are made by a human being out of some material
according to a plan, and these we call artifacts. (I might say, incidentally, that
one of our modem perplexities is our capability for turning natures into artifacts.)
Now to figure out what a natural being or what a given artifact truly is-a house,
a marble image, a tool-is complicated enough. But to think about the kind of
�82
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
artifact called a medium requires special subtlety. For a medium is meant to come
between the receiver and the source in such a way as to convey a message while
being itself overlooked. Telescopes, telephones, television sets, whose names
mean respectively things for scanning objects that are far off, for hearing voices
that are far off, for seeing images produced far off, are not the focus of the user's
interest when they are transmitting, and go dead or empty when not in use. But
as the book is not a medium that plays or replays some performance far off in
space or even in time, so it is not like a tape or disk that goes inactive after it has
been played. Sebastian's question-What goes on inside a book when it is
closed?- is not purely phantastic; even an unread book seems to have a sort of
secret vitality just because its text is all latent significance-imageless squiggles.
I ask the seniors if there has been a single seminar book in your three years here
that would gain very much from being illustrated. The solemn last paragraph of
Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit speaks of Spirit in time as presenting a
languidly moving "gallery of pictru·es." Ask yourselves, when you come to it,
whether you would wish someone to take Hegel at his word and produce an
illustrated Phenomenology.
In the image-smashing distmbances of late antiquity, the icono-clastic opposition to depictions of God and Christ was countered by the notion of a "Pauper's
Bible." Religious images, the iconophiles argued, are scripture for the illiterate.
Perhaps they should have conceded that for those who can "take up and read"
the written word is antagonistic to depiction, because pictures fix the narrative
in its flow, specify its intimations to the imagination, and rivet the eye on the
page. In shor~ illustrations turn a book from a medium into a presentation. They
capture the imagination and thereby drain the word.
I have only mentioned book illustrations to set off the peculiar wonder of the
verbal book as a medium-body, a medium that harbors its content without
presenting it-I mean, as I said before, that we are not caught by images, and we
read right past the print presented on the page. To me there is something elusive
and mysterious about this unpresented yet ever-present life of books which
makes the question what happens within them permissible and plausible. Of
course, I am too much of a coward seriously to propose that arguments go on
developing and characters go on conversing all over my library-and yet! And
yet-they do seem to have done just that from reading to reading. The mystery
here is that of mental life encased in a hard rectangular object.
A book, then, is a peculiar kind of medium, a medium not unlike a vessel of
the spirit-that is what makes it understandable that people might kiss a book or
swear on it or carry it always along. Yet although it is a peculiar medium, it is
still a medium. Being a medium means that it mediates between senders and
receivers, in this case, between the writers and the readers. Let me start with the
readers, since that is what we are-and there are, thaak heaven, more of us than
of them.
�83
BRANN
Readers as God-Parents
I call this section oflhe lecture "Readers as God-Parents" because I will later
liken writers to parents. A god-parent is the sponsor of a rite of spiritual
regeneration; a reader sponsors the rebirth of the book-body's soul. The first step
toward this revival is, of course, to tum the spatially all-present text back into
real, live, passing time.
There are many perplexities and complications in the conscious reading of a
book. The study of these problems is called "hermeneutics," named after Hermes,
the god of messages. It seems to me far more important to read books than to
engage in this study. I once offered a preceptorial on it which left us all unclear
whether anyone could in fact read a book. Let me proceed on the sensible
hypothesis that books are readable.
Then the first practical observation to be made is that there are different kinds
of books, and they should be read differently. It would be plain eccentric not to
quote from Frances Bacon's essay "Of Studies" here;
Some Books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested; That is, some Books are to be read only in parts; others
to be read but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence
and attention.
Let me give you examples. Some people will be outraged right away and that
was part of my pleasure in writing this lecture.
I. Mysteries. When you are about to invest a portion of your life in reading
one-on the hypothesis that you will get to be eighty and that it takes three hours
to read the mystery, that would be .0000042 of your life, but these things add
up-do the following. Tom to the denouement and find out whodunnit. If you
still care to read the book, start at the beginning. Otherwise, forget it.
2. Scholarship. Read the preface. If it is clear what will be proved and why,
go on. Otherwise, forget it.
3. Minor novels. Apply the sortes Biblicae, an old mode of reading. Sortes is
a Latiu word for "chances." "The chance of the Bible" is exactly what Augustine
was bidden to take when he was told to "take up and read." If the passages you
find at random are entrancing, begin at the beginning. Otherwise, forget it.
Notice that these kinds of books are not the ones you will read for seminar,
though it is true that one of the novels on our list is, among other things, also
a murder mystery-Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov; however, that is
scarcely a minor novel.
Notice also that the books we do read for seminar all have one thing in
common: None that I can think of has an index, at least not one made by the
author. Why do great books have no index? Because you are bidden to read them
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
84
whole and as a whole at least once, from their pregnant beginning to their
well-delivered end. Because you are not to look up subjects that interest you or
follow through topics you specialize in. Because understanding is not an encap·
sulated result but a way, the way through the book. Because a book of stature,
be it philosophy or fiction, is not about-round-and-about-something, but is
the presentation of a matter most adequate to it in the author's judgment. (I might
say, incidentally, that Hegel gives similar reasons for arguing, in the long and
famous Preface to his Phenof!1enology, that prefaces are impossible.)
When you are reading a book for the second time you may want to do the
following to the text, provided you own the book bodily. You may want to take
a marker of the color children use when they draw the sun, and highlight
passages. How is highlighting compatible with reading the whole well? It seems
to me to be permissible for four reasons:
I. Some writers occasionally stop to put their whole meaning in a nutshell.
Whether you have come on such a nugget, you cannot really know until you have
read the whole book. If you mark a nutshell for yourself, then, when you come
on it again, you can crack it and re-develop for yourself the argument, which is
all there, in nuce. An example of this sort of nutshell is Kant's epigram, in the
Critique ofPure Reason (B75): "Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions
without concepts are blind." Whenever you recall that sentence, you can recover
the whole Critique for yourself.
2. Often you will notice, some time into the book, that a motifkeeps recurring
and that you must at some point collect its incidences and figure out its meaning.
An example is the returning vision of large blueness in War and Peace.
3. A third case of occurrences inviting highlighting is the significant mystery.
A book will say things that you don't yet understand, that are pregnant enigmas
for you, and that you want to talk about in seminar. One example for me is the
second half of the fourth tine of the Jliad:
.•• Ll.t{)~
o' ~'t£Ae!em ~OUA:f\
... Dios d' eteleieto boule
. . . and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled.
What plan? When fulfilled? That is the puzzle dominating the epic.
4. Last among the occasions for highlighting that I can think of are the
passages of personal import-those that penetrate to your heart and you want
never to lose, the ones you keep to yourself or show to close friends. I won't give
an example now, but I will tell some, if asked.
Let me say it again: Highlighting, whether in sky-blue ink or sun-yellow
marker, is for the second reading. I think that though the books may look defaced
when you are finished, the writers are rejoicing in your reading of them, be they
still on earth or in either of the other places. That brings me to the author.
�BRANN
85
Writers as Parents
We speak of "Homer's gods." "Homer's gods," we might say, "are frivolous
creatures--just compare the lightness of their invulnerable immortality to the
gravity of his death-expectant heroes." Homer's gods, Homer's heroes, Homer's
Iliad: How is the author related to the book? Auctor means literally "progenitor,
parent." And like a child, the book goes forth into the world, sometimes falling
into hands the parent may shudder at.
But like a good parent, the author knew that this would happen and gave the
offspring what it needs in order to be on its own: self-sufficiency, a certain
repleteness. Here is what I mean.
In the course of the year you will be writing at least five small papers in your
language tutolial and several more in your other classes. On some of these you
will have conferences with your tutors. Your tutor will ask: "Wbat are you saying
here, what did you have in mind?" And you will tell all the things that you thought
but failed to say in your paper. That is what distinguishes an accomplished writer:
the ability to make the book independent, to turn it loose, to find a way to get the
reader to ask not "Wbat was the author thinking?" but "What is the book saying?"
Annie Dillard, a very fine contemporary writer, who has thought much about
composing a book, says in her book The Writing Life (p. 4): "Process is nothing;
erase your tracks." She is attacking a current school of writing teachers who exalt
process over product, writing exercises over perfected expression. Here you will
almost never be asked to write merely for the sake of writing. We take a leaf, so
to speak, from the books of real writers and ask you to think about a matter that
really does make you think, and then to say on paper, as perfectly as possible,
what you have thought. That is what the authors of our books have done-they
have thought and found the right words. "Thought" is a noun, but it is also the
past form of the verb "to think." Thought is thinking that has been done, thinking
perfected. So Annie Dillard should not have said "Erase your tracks" but "Absorb
your tracks; make your product point the reader to your tracks." For writing is
thinking frozen in its tracks by speech, speech crystallized so as to make the point
of origin visible within. A book is a translucent product containing its process.
That is how Homer's Iliad can become our Iliad. It preserves within it the world
that Homer meant with each word he said. (Incidentally, it is because we want
you to write papers somewhat as real wliters write them-first think, then
say-that you will have such a devilish hard time writing, but at least the task
will dignify rather than degrade you.)
So no more than we ask your parents what they meant by producing you, need
we ask what Homer meant in his epics. The offspring in both cases are amply
provided to speak for themselves. Or rather, you are amply provided to read it.
Even the Iliad, the one that is not a matelial thing to own, is yours, the reader's.
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
You bring it to life, melt its frozen state. Again I quote from Bacon, this lime
from his Advancement of Learning (Bk.l):
But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted
from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they
fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seed in the
minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions ami opinions in
succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble,
which carrieth riches and c~)lnmodities from place to place, and consociateth
the most remote regions iri participation of their fruits, how much more are
letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast sea of time, and
make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions the one of the other?
Now the notion that you bring the hook to life seems to be close to the claim
of a currently very busy school of thought: that the reader is the author. But what
I mean is in fact a world apart from the notion that you may tease the text into
any meaning your brilliant wit devises.
On the contrary: it is the book's will, not yours, that is to be done. There is a
book by Joseph Conrad (whose novella "The Heart of Darkness," to my mind
the greatest short story of our century, you will read as seniors). The book is
called The Mirror of the Sea. It tells of the difference between going to sea in
sailing vessels and on steamboats. A steamboat plows through the water; it
conquers the ocean. Its progress is mechanical, though its route is willful. The
sail ship on the other hand respects its element and responds to its every
indication. From departure to landfall, it is engaged in a fierce and loving battle
with the sea. Its course is contingent and its arrival uncertain. A great writer, to
extend Bacon's nautical figure, provides a book that is more like a sea for sailing
than an ocean for steaming.
And that brings me to my final reflection, on the greatness of hooks. Before
I finish let me say that I know full well that I have been speaking in similes and
metaphors and that I expect to be held to a more literal account in the question
period.
Greatness in Books
St. John's is known as a "Great Books College," and, as I said early on, I
know from your applications that you came because you want to read hooks that
raise you rather than demean you.
Mr. Curtis Wilson, a retired tutor who was twice dean of the college, used to
wish that we would stop talking of"the hundred great books," and instead speak
of "some very good books." I agree with "some," but, though I see his point-
�BRANN
87
greamess is not a very sensible sort of classification-I can't quite agree to
dropping "great," not at this moment in America.
To begin with, I want to prognosticate that the more books you read, the more
you will find that there is greatness, that it is an emergent quality that some books
just have, and that each reading confirms. The community that has in common
the reading of these books and the acknowledgment of their greatness is bound
by two powerful bonds: first, the fact of a shared judgment, competently come
by and continually confirmed, and second the fact of a practical willingness to
revere what is high, a willingness expressed in a daily schedule of study.
Some of you may know that nowadays these are fighting words in academe.
How, they ask, can any communal judgment have been fairly arrived at when
we are a people divided by a diversity of hopelessly opposed interests-who are
playing, as they say, a zero sum game? How, again, can any one human
expression be higher than another, when every text is a testimonial to some
human condition, and the tradition of chosen books merely represents the
winner?
In other words, the present trend is to want democracy without commonality
and equality without excellence. To me the wish seems outrageous-and again
I am yours to question in the question period-but doubly outrageous because
it contains the seed of a fair dream. The fair dream is that the human being in us
should be universally respected and that all our works should be universally
appreciated. The forced version is that we should live in a society in which,
without admitting a common humanity, every last group discrimination based
on extrinsic properties, such as race and sex, is outlawed, while all intellec1nal
discriminations based on intrinsic criteria of quality are proscribed as having
ulterior motives.
Let me offer two rules for choosing books to read that take some account of
what is fair in the desire for universal appreciation.
Here is Law One of the Discriminating Reader: Devour everything you can
swallow with relish, indiscriminately. Test texts as I recommended before, but
give everything a try. There are dozens of wonderful genres and fine works
within them: science fiction, utopias, and fantasy; children's, ethnic, and
women's literature; westerns, adventures, and thrillers; book reviews, political
flyers, and literary criticism. (If you come to see me in my office I will be
delighted to tell you my loves and hates in each category. I also know a lot of
rather pleasing trash, including comic books.)
Law Two of the Discriminating Reader then goes as follows: Read only a
limited number of books, perhaps a hundred and twenty or so; discriminate
severely; while attending to a text allow a little voice on the sidelines to say:
"This is great and worthy of my best time; that is not."
�88
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Far from being at odds, Law One and Law Two are complementary. Obeying
the first shows you to be a lover of books, a bibliophile; obeying the second
makes you a student, a reader.
But how will you judge that a book is great? I had a teacher, forty years ago
in Brooklyn College, who said that some books made her hair stand on end, and
they were great. Much as I like this criterion, which, I have since discovered,
was not original with her, I see some flaws in it. But there are many other
diagnostic marks, signs and indices of greatness, that people have listed, and we
might talk about them in the question period. Let me add to that multitude one
observation of my own, which does not so much pick out greatness as distinguish
greatness in works of fiction from greatness in works of reflection:
In a great epic or drama or novel, if any word were different, the tale told
would be other than it is; in a great philosophical treatise, every sentence could
be paraphrased and the truth told would be the same.
To make myself clearer, let me take the counter-example, that of lesser books.
A mediocre novel tells a tale coarse-meshed enough, with characters grossgrained enough, to be equally presentable in language only approximately
equivalent. A mediocre piece of philosophy, on the other hand, can't be told to
its advantage in other terms: It is ali idiosyncratic jargon and its ordinary
language paraphrase puts it to shame. That is why trying to say exactly what the
book says in another way is the useful initial exercise in seminar when the work
is philosophical, but is love's labor lost when the work is fictional. And that is
why it is usually harder to read a novel than it is to read a philosophical
text-except perhaps when that text is also a drama. I am referring to the Platonic
dialogues, the first of which you will be reading right after Homer. They are the
hardest of all, since they are philosophical plays-you will decide whether
tragedy or comedy.
Let me end, if not conclude. My question for myself and for you was: "What
is a Book?" My answer was: It is a specialkindofbody made to be inhabited by
a curious kind of frozen but fusible soul, a body fit to mediate its own peculiar
life. It has a parent, the author, who equips it with all it needs to live on its own,
and god-parents, readers, who can revivify its printed life. The books that realize
their book nature most perfectly may be called "great," and it is from these that
we at St. John's College have selected a number for study. Both because it is a
strenuous and wearing business to be constaritly in their presence, and for reasons
of inclusive humanity, it is good to read many lesser books as well.
Have I answered the question I posed for us? Not remotely. Let us try again
in the question period.
�Poems
J.H. Beall
Sandra Hoben
Kemmer Anderson
J.H. Beall is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, and an astrophysicist. His latest
published collection of poems is entitled Hickey, the Days. Poems of Sandra Hoben, a
graduate of the College, have appeared in the Partisan Review and the Antioch Review.
Her volume of poetry, Snow Flower, was published by the Westigan Press. Kemmer
Anderson, an alumnus of the Graduate Institute, teaches English in Chattanooga.
�90
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
Foxfire
J.H.Beall
A foxfire scattering of stars
and a lone planet hang low
over the nqrtheast, where the wind
comes from, down like a coyote,
nose down, its warm tongne licking
a chill out of the earth, the dawn's
chill of stiff awakenings after
the night's dancers, their supple sweat,
the way it loves its body, then sinks
into salt rest. The earth last
night sank so, its blush and rose
twilight giving up the light so well
that those in their houses walked out
into the roads and yards, arms folded
their skins flushed with an excitement
drawn of this pink light, and discussed
it-not the coyote's old trail
they stood on, but the huge
evanescent cathedral of light
that reared before them like a great
dancer, his headdress streaming
its eagle wildness, while they talked
their awe of its wordless beauty.
The subtle dawn, alone with foxfire,
now reclaims. It licks the wounds
that words have made in us, that we
in that first step down made of ourselves.
�POEMS
91
Wendy
J.H. Beall
At first each day she expected
at the window a faint tapping
not Unlike the new bud tossed
in a spring breeze, its index
prodding quizzically the cold, flat pane.
But different-night again
come alive. Then the years
like a mist obscuring
softened the longing pain, and she
wondered that it might have been
a dream. Her husband held her
and she woke as a princess
whose cheeks like pink blossoms
held a living promise: children
and her father's house. Where
after many years the tapping
came again late one night,
and perhaps because of the nature
oflove or the imperative of dreaming .
instead of rebuke she opened wide
the windows and gave her children to it.
�92
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Republic
(for William)
J.H. Beall
I recall you when the sentences
were not of silence, your eloquence
not a single stare. How one time
in a fit of humor at the pique
of au adversary, aside in my
cramped kitchen, you confided,
"I think I'm beginning to get through
to him." Always. The apologist
for another's ignorance. In the way
you smile now, you apologize
for my own at not being able
to enter into that world
where the mind flickers shapes
into existence, a dark theater
not unlike a cave you try
to climb out of, we try
to climb out of. What I want
to say is theater, really. Yearning
for a time when my life played
grandly upon the stage, the wall
of your memory-Nicholson
on that promontory for example
kneeling before the old, silent
father's fierce, blank gaze
(the hardest piece being the future)
tears on his face as he says
"auspicious beginnings-we both know
I was never really that good, anyway."
�93
POEMS
Leda and the Swan
Sandra Hoben
It so happens
she wasn't totally
averse to the situation.
She was walking along
the marshy edge of the pond, glad
to be away from the company of men.
She noticed things
that had escaped her for monthsthe ducks with brown and white feathers,
uniform as men in tweed suits,
and others, a flash of emeralds
at the throat. She'd been told
that with birds, fue male
wears rouge and diamonds.
How do they do it?
A pillow fight when the seam suddenly rips,
and at other times more like fish,
swimming past each other, never touching.
Engrossed as she was
she didn't notice
the swan gliding up to her,
his wings held heart-shaped,
one foot cocked over his back,
the other a rudder.
Then he stood in front of her,
stuck out his belly, and flapping his wings,
drew himself up to his full bird heighta bit ridiculous.
But he had no choice.
She lifted her arms, and he was in them.
�94
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Like the Inhabitants of Plato's Cave
Sandra Hoben
Like the inhabitants of Plato's cave,
my son, il) his third month,
is more interested in the shadow
of his hands than in his hands themselves.
He holds them up to the light
and watches the dark shapes fonn
as creatures march to join him,
facing forward, some whirliog and homed.
Once, in the beginning, my milk gave out
and he cried all day for the pain and injustice
I'd brought him to. That night
I curled around him, he turned
inside me once again, and we rocked.
The lamp burned behind us:
two Indonesian puppets cast on the wall.
But today when he cries, I give the pram a shake
and flip through his birth pictures,
those images of him naked and streaked
with my blood, throwing open his arms
and all his fingers against the harsh light.
It calms me-and therefore himto try to make out the figures:
the nurse's ann like a branch shading him,
the doctor's face as the scale tips.
Then they stapled shut the slash
across my belly with little hinges,
holding the rest of the dark inside me.
�POEMS
95
Parallel Lines
Sandra Hoben
By definition, parallel lines never meet. This fact makes it possible for
bird cages to exist, and jails of all sorts, railroad tracks, picture frames,
director'schairs. And v;e can walk to the store and back, water the garden,
watch the shadows lengthen on the lawn.
But parallel lines meet at infinity, which makes it possible to get to
Chicago, build fires, tame animals, and we have eggbeaters, hammocks,
the hulls of ships. We can tune banjos, swim, read books more than once;
folk dances can be passed down, and rings.
If parallel lines meet at infinity, it is also true they never meet;
conversely, if they do not meet at infinity, it is also not true they never
meet. And so we are lonely and confused, our dreams have coins in them,
our pets die. There are eclipses, earthquakes, falling stars. And although
we can see the spiral within shells and the delicate double circle within
flowers, we will never understand what we already know, and, even if we
did, there would be nothiog we could do about it.
�96
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Iliad of Assateague Island
Kemmer Anderson
Fog dissolves the form of horse into sand
and night at Assateague Island, but I
still hear the sound of snort and stomp on land.
Waves of hoofbeats trample around my eye
steering chariots through the press of shields
as I sleep by the beached black ships from Crete.
Drugged with a vision of Mountlda 's fields,
a warrior calls for immediate retreat:
I am sick of words, tactics, and command.
The olive boughs of home brush through my dreams
with a need to reap what I understand:
nothing in war is ever as it seems.
�Re-Reading:
A Note on Ibsen and Wagner
Elliott Zuckerman
Recently, in preparation for a seminar, I returned to The Wild Duck, a play that
I last read and discussed almost forty years ago. At that time, my Cambridge tutor
was an Ibsenite, and in his presence we subscribed to the view that Ibsen was a
dramatist of the highest rank-a view expressed during the same era by Una
Ellis-Fermor in the introduction to her translations for Penguin, where we can
still read, mentioned as a matter of course, that Ibsen was one of the five greatest
playwrights in history. The others, I suppose we can rightly assume, were the
Greek tragedians and Shakespeare, and about them almost everyone will agree.
But these days there seems to be doubt about Ibsen as the fitting fifth. At St.
John's College he has been only an intermittent visitor to the reading list, whereas
Racine and Moliere are central in the language tutorial. My candidate for the
fifth position would be Moliere, if only in order to have a representative of
Comedy-not the Shakespearian romance but the unalloyed comedy that is rarer
and harder to invent. But even where Ibsen is accepted into the Pantheon, be it
of five, six, or seven, he is the only one there who is in danger of being considered
old-fashioned. There is some significance in the fact that the great playwright
who is fading also happens to be the most recent.
My tutor had written a book about Ibsen's dramatic technique.' The thesis
was simple: that in order to get at the full meaning of Ibsen's dramas one had to
attend carefully to the stage directions. The characters are presented "not only
through the dialogue but also through the suggestiveness of visual details
contained in his visually important stage-directions, which so many producers
have perverted ... always to a play's detriment" (p. 11). That Ibsen attached
prime importance to the visual and directorial details is persistently documented,
not only in the texts themselves but in Ibsen's instructions to the producers of
the early productions and, above all, in the many drafts of the plays, where one
• John Northam, Ibsen" s Dramatic Method: A Study of the Prose Dramas. London:
Faber and Faber, 1953.
�98
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
can trace the evolution of those details. He was scrupulously attentive to such
matters as the placement of the white shawl in Rosmersholm, and there is much
to be learned from how Hedda Gabler wears her hair.
Such attention to the telling detail that is simultaneously realistic and symbolic seems to me to be Wagnerian. It was Wagner, after all, whom Nietzsche
called the supreme miniaturist. Given the size and length of the music-dramas,
Nietzsche probably intended to sound paradoxical. But seldom did Wagner allow
the sweep to override the mmnentary. I have in mind not Wagner's peremptory
stage-directions so much as that staple of his technique which is their aural
counterpart, the famous leitmotivs, the musical phrases that underline and
interpret the action at every moment. At their most obvious they have been
accused of merely duplicating what we already know-as in the well-known
remark, variously attributed, about idiots presenting their calling -cards in person.
At their most subtly effective they themselves constitute the true action and the
most interesting ideas-as in the third act of Tristan, where it is in the orchestral
interweaving of the significant musical phrases that we apprehend the remarkably descriptive self-analysis of the delirious lover. Each wave of the everdeepening self-discovery is set in motion by a fragment of the Old Tune, played
originally on the English Hom. Overtly the Tune is a mournful reminder that
Isolde's ship has not yet been sighted; but it is also used as a melismatic bridge
to Tristan's childhood, in the contemplation of which he realizes that the brewer
of the love-potion was none other than himself.
I wanted Ibsen's visual details to work as well as Wagner's musical details
do when they are at their best-to seem natural, as they do for Tristan and for
his blood-brother Amfortas, and not mechanical, as they often are for the Gods
of Rheingold and even for the ordinary people in Meistersinger, that most
breathtakingly complex but also most factitious (and least funny) of great
operatic comedies. Both playwright and music-dramatist had something like a
"system" for putting together works that could sustain a long evening (or many
long evenings), and systems are more likely to reveal a mechruiical than an
organic configuration.
What seemed to me to be the weakness of The Wild Duck was the obtrusiveness of its central symbol, the bird itself. There is something arbitrary in
furnishing the Ekdal household with a loft containing a wounded duck, along
with other birds and some rabbits, in an artificial forest of old Christmas trees.
Yet once the image is embraced-with, perhaps, the palliative observation that
the play is foreshadowing the final plays, which are explicitly and therefore
acceptably "poetic"-all the other images fit neatly into the central pattern. The
duck, that is to say, is uncomfortably necessary for the motion of the machine.
Among the other images, I am thinking particularly of one that I had not
properly attended to in my original reading. In the first act-the only act that
does not take place in the Ekdals' apartment-the comfortably furnished study
�WCKERMAN
99
of the Werle household is provided with "lighted lamps with green shades, giving
a subdued light" In contrast we can see further within to another room, "large
and handsome," which is "brilliantly lighted with lamps and branching candlesticks."
The green lampshades are missing from the first draft When Ibsen added that
important detail, he was visually reinforcing the connection between the first act
and the last Once we know the play and start it again, attentive to the greenish
light and noticing which of the actions and conversations go on in its shadow,
we realize that the peivading color of the Ekdal loft is being significantly
adumbrated from the outset By the end of the play we have connected the
first-act green with both the green of the "forest" in which old Ekdal goes
hunting-the abode of the wild duck-and the green of the sea, from the depths
of which the duck had once been rescued. Since almost every other image of the
play is related to that forest and that sea, the green shade can prompt any number
of green thoughts. In the setting of Act Five, for example, the "wet snow [that]
lies upon the large panes of the sloping roof-window" places the Ekdal studio
plainly under water. Both the framing acts are imaginatively submarine, and the
complex interrelatedness of the images does much to justify the arbitrariness of
the central symbol.
My sense of that arbitrariness was anyway diminished by the seminar
discussion. In response to the opening question-which was really an expression
of my doubts about the duck-someone reminded me that within the play (so to
speak) it was, after all, the Ekdals themselves who had invented their unlikely
attic; the loft and its inhabitants were projections of the Ekdals' strange and
self-deceptive psyches. The symbol seems less mechanical when one emphasizes
not the playwright's imposition into the play but the apt inventiveness of the
characters within it
There is an intellectual pleasure, albeit a minor one, in tracing and contemplating these visual and verbal interconnections. And because there are few
productions of Ibsen these days, and they seldom, so far as I know, follow his
visual prescriptions, we can only indulge in the pleasure by imagining his settings
while reading, helped, perhaps, by my Tutor's handbook. Those who enjoy the
musical equivalent of such tracing and contemplating are by no means similarly
deprived_ In addition to the music, available with an ease that the builder of
Bayreuth could scarcely have foreseen, the Wagnerian decades left us a legacy
of handbooks and commentaries, all for the delight of those devotees whom
Nietzsche ungenerously called Educated Philistines. To follow the mirrorings of
the motives is dazzling, and one is overawed by an appreciation of the master's
control of his system. Hence there is a danger. Seldom ·do such maps of
interconnections encourage one to delve downward from the motives, even in
such seminal places as the Prelude to the Ring, where the long-sustained major
triad should lead to questions not only about the myth that follows but about the
�100
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
nature of music itself. If the motion is merely lateral, one is condemned to the
surface.
If the Ibsen industry had ever matched the Wagner industry, then by now the
greens and the forests, the snows and the seas, the towers and the tarantellas,
would be as thoroughly codified as the swords and the dragons, the Desire for
Dominion and the Redemption through Love. But the visual and even the verbal
are never so powerful as the musical, and Wagner knew what he was doing when,
in his search for control of a vast audience, he enlisted the arsenal of tonal music.
At first his talent for music seemed slim, but it was expanded to greatness by the
demands of his genius. Had he been unable to commandeer the effectiveness still
latent in the language of Beethoven (and of Chopin and Liszt), Wagner's genius
would have been a great deal less than Ibsenian.
For decades the music-dramas have easily withstood the stylized productions
that ignore the prescribed pictures, or place the drama within some entirely alien
setting, usually to make a political point. Ibsen caunot survive comparable
treatment, for the settings that carry the symbolic weight are the counterpart not
of Wagner's settings but of his music. Ibsen in the Round is not the equivalent
of a Ring enacted on discs and slabs; it is like Wagner reorcheslrated or even
reharmonized. And just as no director, however self-centered, is allowed to
tamper with the music of Wagner-it is, indeed, held to be more inviolable than
even Mozart's and Verdi's, where the separable numbers can be omitted or
re-arranged-so no one ought to change the settings of Ibsen. Though he was
deprived of their sunlight, Ibsen, like his contemporaries Monet and Cezanne,
knew precisely where to place his colors.
�I
Results of St. John's
Crossword Number Two
On the next page is the solution to Crossword Number 1\vo, "Canonic Eponyms," by Trout. The nine clueless answers are various Saint Johns. The allusion
for older alumni was to Nine St. John's, a dorm building that used to be on St.
John's Street. The fourth of Charlotte Fletcher's essays was about the naming of
the College. All the names are to be found in a Martyrology, along with the
Catholic Encyclopedia and Butler's Lives.
There was only one submission, a correct solution solved jointly by Ann
Martin and Meredith Gardner. For this prize the amount of the book token is
increased to $50. Number 1\vo was a hard one. Number Fow·, by a new compiler,
Captain Easy, is easier. There is more cross-checking than is usual in such
puzzles, but the Captain hopes you enjoy the clues.
The solution to Crosswonl Number Three will appear in the next issue, along
with the announcement of the prize-winners.
�102
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Solution to Crossword Number Two
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�St. John's
Crossword Number Four
"Famous Pairs"
By CAPTAIN EASY
At the asterisked numbers, no clues are provided. The answers fall into five pairs
that have something in common. The clued answers include nine (or ten) words
that should be capitalized, a German word and a French word (both well known),
and two common acronymic abbreviations. As usual, three book tokens of $35,
redeemable at the College Bookstore, will be awarded to the first three correct
solutions opened at random. The date for the opening is a month after the mailing
of the issue.
�104
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Across
5.
11.
13.
14.
Shiner sounds earnest (6)
Tune arrangers have it (3)
Tutor, return the bow (3)
I can make a fuss when
raised (4)
16. Listlessness is current, righthand man comes back (6)
18. I sold broken images (5)
19. Ungulate takes a trip (5)
21. Lengthen likewise (3)
22. Study, replace the extremes
with aural ease (5)
24. Revelation in one book or
another (5)
25. Exploits in various essential
ways (5)
31. Spout "Raven!" (3)
33. Is this how we now refer to
connected twins? (4)
34. A band-Wagner's starts in the
Rhine (4)
35. Perhaps Grecian, but run
badly (3)
38. A bird-a loud bird (4)
40. Rising for a degree (10)
42. Whatever way you look at it,
he's essential (4)
44. Set disheveled Cockney
hairdo (5)
45. Follow the Development with
some more capital (5)
47. The element is Back Bay (3)
52. Iu retrospect, let Siegfried
display spirit (5)
54. Disconcertingly loud, the
Spanish in the practise of
swordplay (6)
56. Flyer in the afternoon (4)
57. St. John's College is not in this
league (3)
58. One is confused for an
eternity (3)
60. Sat on a mistuned Hammerklavier, for example ( 6)
Down
2. Stock rush (4)
3. Lake loses energy, flows back
in rage (3)
4. Pater, a movement in art (4)
5. A resort in southern
Penosy lvania (3)
6. Louis, perhaps, or I? (3)
7. State missing a brave (6)
8. Leap tlu·ough the stable tours
oddly (6)
9. YY (a clever clue) (4)
10. Decline tax in No. 3, reversed (9)
12. Funny priest, most ready
to eat (6)
14. A,noble number (5)
15. Victory mirrored in Peking (4)
17. Take a walk at the Albert
Hall? (9)
19. At first the unusual notes evoke
a melody (4)
23. A sound an sich (4)
26. Me? Prof? Err? Confound it, I
did! (9)
27. Ben sound like that woman (3)
29. Anooying horse (3)
30. Hope and Crosby went there in a
trio (3)
32. Big Bird, headless author of Treatises is back (3)
33. Etta's London showplace (4)
36. The Persian Milhaud (6)
37. It's OK in the Savoy (4)
40. Seed begins growing, drops (5)
41. Start "Singing in the Rain"
-it's sweet (6)
43. Can't see the color (4)
46. Emphatically, put down the
cheap wine (British) (5)
48. Ballet painter is backward,
incomplete, and elderly (4)
50. It can be square and lame (4)
�CAPTAIN EASY
1
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Down (continued)
51. League of Nations, in a dumb
location (4)
53. Tube, a southern source of
power (3)
54. Genetic and misdirected (3)
55. Eighty yards of worsted
pasture (3)
����
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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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105 pages
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The St. John's Review, 1991-92/1
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1991-1992
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Hunt, Jack
Sachs, Joe
Fisher, Howard
Kass, Amy Apfel
Rubino, Carl A.
Beall, J. H.
Hoben, Sandra
Anderson, Kemmer
Trout
Captain Easy
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Volume XLI, number one of The St. John's Review. Published in 1992.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_41_No_1_1991-1992
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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St. John's Review
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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99 pages
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Office of the Dean
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The St. John's Review, 1992/2
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1992
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Hunt, Jack
Sachs, Joe
Kraus, Pamela
Allanbrook, Wye J.
Smith, Edward C.
Allanbrook, Douglas
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLII, number one (1993)
Editor
EllfDttZuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. WU!tamson
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Jack Hunt
The St. John's Review Is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 for
three Issues. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are
welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O.
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back Issues are available, at
$5.00 per Issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1993 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction In whole or
In
part Without permission Is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's CoUege Print Shop
�Please note that this year, and for at least one year more, the
Review wlll be appearing semi-annually rather than three times
a year. Subscriptions wlll of course be adjusted so that what was
a year's subscription will still entitle the subscribers to three
Issues.
�Contents
1 . . . . . Seeing Through the Images:
Eva Brarm's World of Imagination
Dennis L. Sepper
21 ..... Joseph and Judah
Chantnah Maschler
41 ..... What is a What-is Question?
Joe Sachs
57 ..... "Words Should Be Hard" (Poem)
Elliott Zuckerman
59 ..... Anselm's Proslogion and its
Hegelian Interpretation
Adriaan Peperzak
Translated by Steven Werlin
79 ..... The Dialectic of Love in War and Peace
Randolph Perazzini
105 ..... Two Poems
Moira Russell
107 ..... Two Reviews
Eva T. H. Brann
111 . . . . . Crossword Contests
Decorations by M. C. Dodds
��Seeing Through the Images:
Eva Brann's
World of Imagination
by Dennis L. Sepper
At the outset of The World of the Imnginotion: Swn and Substance,•
Eva Brann explains how the project of the book originated:
In 1he Western tradition 1he imagination is assigned what might
best be called a pivotal function. It is placed centrally between 1he
faculties and intermediately between soul and world. Thus it bo1h
holds the soul together within and connects it to the objects
wi1hout. Yet the treatment given this great power even by habitually
definitive authors like Aristotle or Kant is tacitly unfinished, cursory, and problematic. The imagination appears to pose a problem
too deep for proper acknowledgment. It is, so to speak, 1he missing
mystery of philosophy. It was both 1he mystery and its neglect that
first drew me to 1he subject. (p. 3)
In the Preface Brann lists other motives for her Interest in Imagination. Beyond the odd neglect of Its mysteries by philosophy there Is
the recent vogue of imagery studies in cognitive psychology; her love
of fiction and the attendant wonder about how words are turned into
Imaginings; and "the doubly and triply enigmatic magic of the Imaginative life," the encompassing motive that led to the desire for a "delineation of the inner space into which the mental imagery Is, as it were,
• Eva T. H. Brann, The World ofthe Imagination: Sum and Substance (Savage,
Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), x!v + 810 pp. References to It are
indicated in 1he tex! by page numbers enclosed In parentheses. The book Is
now avallable in paperback.
Professor Sepper is In 1he Department ofPhllosophy of the Universlzy of Dallas
in Irving, Texas.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
painted, and a theory of Its reflection In the material Images of the
arts, particularly In paintings" (4).
These motives In effect articulate the structure of the book. Part
One Is dedicated to the history of philosophers' attempts to explicate
Imagination, Part Two to the chief phenomena and topics pursued by
twentieth-century psychological Investigations; this leads to Part
Three, In which Brann presents a three-fold logic/ ontology of Images
as real, mental, and Imaginary. Part Four treats questions of literary
Imagination; Five, the spaces of perceptual experience, of geometry and
physical modeling, and of the painter's Images. The last major division,
Part Six, discusses Imagination as worldly and world-making, especially In Its theological, public-political, and affective character, that
Is, In those aspects that direct It to life In a many-dimensioned world
of feeling, thought, and action.
Not the least of the book's achievements Is to organize a vast
amount of Information and literature that might otherwise scare off
beginning researchers, or, what would be worse, might lead them to
concentrate prematurely on just some part. The problem is that In
studies of Imagination a single approach cannot stand for the whole,
and the various contributions are so diverse and fragmentary and tend
to make so many presuppositions that one is In constant danger of
not even glimpsing the whole.
Yet anyone who has tried to assemble literature on the Imagination
knows that, at least at first glance, imagination appears to be among
the least neglected of subjects. Judging from the frequency and
prominence with which "Imagination" and Its related forms appear in
the titles of books and articles one Is tempted to say that it Is a very
popular topic. But by looking Into the contents we more often than
not find that these works are not really about Imagination In any
lmporlant sense. The problem Is that "Imagination" In the late twentieth century Is an attention-getter, a word loaded with almost wholly
positive overtones. It strikes us with admiration for artistic creativity
to read of the Imaginative VIsion of poet X or sculptor Y; we experience
anticipated satisfaction that a philosophic work brandishing Imaginative Reason will overcome the mincing small-mindedness of rationalism. We inwardly assent when anyone urges the cultivation of our
powers of Imagination, and we are easily brought to marvel at the
Imaginative Intensity of children, who (we believe) are richly endowed
with it. Yet If we were asked to give a reasoned argument for such
Impulses, we would probably discover that behind them lies less a
concrete understanding of what Imagination and Images are than a
�SEPPER
3
vague yearning for creativity, for visionary power, for transcending a
too mundane reality.
The historically minded will recognize traces of Romanticism In
these twentieth-century Impulses. To identifY them Is not to dismiss
them as false, however. Indeed, Brann, having taken a jaundiced view
of Romanticism, nevertheless remarks In the very last section of the
book ("Coda," p. 790) that "sober romanticism" Is a "perfectly acceptable term" for the "life centerecj on the imagination" that she proposes:
"a life in which the imagination is suspect except as it is seconded by
reflection and fulfilled in action, a life in which the imagination is not
worshiped as an autarchi!' source but understood as the enigmatic ·
conduit of visions."
The philosophical basis of The World of Imagination Is most concisely expressed in the Preface:
This book is frankly writien par/1 pris. It has a multiple thesis. Its
parts are these: There is an imagination; it is a faculty or a power;
spectfically it is a faculty for internal representations; these representations are image-like; therefore they share a certain character
with external images; in particular, like material images, they
represent absent objects as present; they do so by means of
resemblance. (5)
The sobriety of the romanticism announced in the coda Is grounded
here. The power or faculty called "imagination" Brann understands as
not essentially creative but recreative, or, more accurately, representational by way of resemblance. The object of imagining Is mental
images, which are like publicly visible Images. Accordingly, a great
deal of the book js devoted to understanding the power of imagination
by concentrating on the objectofthat power, on images, more precisely
on visual images. This Is true to the degree that at times it Is the image
even more than the imagination that is the real subject-matter of this
study.
But simply quoting from the beginning and end ofa book can falsifY,
subtly or worse, the meanings of an author. With Eva Brann's book,
we would thereby overleap the accomplishment of the nearly eight
hundred intervening pages: a compendium of the history and the
phenomena of the imagination, along with a significant attempt to
penetrate philosophically and psychologically the nature of images
and the power that produces them. The "sober romanticism" that she
espouses on page 790 Is hardly meant as a slogan, since every word
of her description has a qualification distilled from the preceding
investigation. Imagination is as central as the Romantics thought, but
�TilE ST.
4
JOHN'S REVIEW
not autonomous or autarchic, because It Is In need of being thought
out and sometimes lived out; and though It "sees," the source and
nature of the seeing Is puzzling, even mysterious.
1.
The positive notion of Imagination as creative Is a legacy of Romanticism, yet not just that, for although the precise filiations and Influences are In dispute there Is an ancestor tradition that goes back to
Neoplatonlsm and to the ecstatic and prophetic Imagination of medieval Islamic thinkers like Averroes; It passes through the Italian
Renaissance and Dante, for whom altafantasia and altotngegnoreach
to the threshold of divine illumination. Indeed, this tradition directly
enters Romanticism through F. W. Schelling's appropriation of
Giordano Bruno.
A Platonic origin for this tradition might at first seem an unlikely
prospect, especially if we are mindful of the apparently devastating
critique of mimetic art at the conclusion of the RepubUc, where Images
are described as several times removed from truth because the maker
of Images deals In derivative simulacra rather than ultimate reality.
Still, from other passages in the RepubUc (and elsewhere In the
dialogues-for example, In the Sophist), especially from the question
that occurs to many readers-by Book Ten of the RepubUc If not
sooner-of whether It Is not possible after all for artists to have direct
access to the Ideas, there Is justification for a more positive Platonic
conception of Imagination. From the simile of the Divided Line above
all: for although images strictly speaking appear on the lowest of Its
four divisions (images of physical things, the physical things themselves, the mathematlcals, and the Ideas), the different levels serve as
images or representations of one another, and there is in general an
ontological relationship of Imaging that ties together the line as a
whole. Viewed from this perspective the Divided Line shows not the
unreality of Images but the ontological dynamics of Imaging and the
sharing of reality on many levels that characterize the Good (for which
the Line itselfis an extended image). If Plato presents images variously
as intrinsically false, as representing an Other, and as standing for
the whole of reality, it is not surprising that quite different notions of
Imagination can claim descent from him.
In contrast, Aristotle has a more carefully circumscribed understanding of images and imagination, also more narrowly psychological; yet because of a crucial provision In the psychology they play a
central, indeed essential, role in human knowing and being. In the
�SEPPER
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third book of De Anima he remarks the existence of phantasia, a power
of soul that retains the effects (or aftereffects) of sensations in the
absence of the sensed objects. A little later, after his discussion of
agent and potential intellect, he makes an astounding and pregnant
claim: that there Is no thinking without phantasms. We also find out
that phantasms are Important to the practical life. since desire often
aims at Its object through their Intermediacy.
On the one hand it is easy to understand the point of these
affirmations. The Aristotelian conception of knowing has us derive
everything Intelligible from the sensible, and accordingly Imagination
can be seen as a middle power which is not dependent on the
immediate presence of sensible objects and which can perform a kind
of distillation of what individual sensations have provided. On the
other hand, Insofar as we conceive the best human activity as the
contemplation of the highest, noncorporeal being, and insofar as
understanding is in and through noncorporealintelligible species, the
doctrine that all thinking requires phantasms seems to tie thought
too closely to a remnant of the physical realm.
In later Greek and Latin Antiquity and in the Islamic and Latin
Middle Ages Aristotle's discussions of imagination, common sense,
and memory were gradually expanded Into a doctrine of internal
senses having corporeal locations in the brain (specifically in the
cerebral ventricles, that is, the four spaces or chambers within the
enfolding hemispheres of the brain). Any simplified presentation of the
internal senses doctrine risks distortions and historical falsifications,
not just of the exact delimitation of their functions but even of their
names; here It Is enough to say that the internal senses accounted for
the common field of sensation where the deliverances of the different
sense organs are compared and contrasted (the common sense), for
the various functions of remembering and recalling contingent experience (memory in general), for the ability to recall and recombine
tmages (under the names tmagination and phantasia), and even for
the mind's ability to perform a first classification or identification of
individuals under universal terms (called cogitation or estimation).
These internal, organically located, protocognltive powers served the
preparation and perfection of the phantasm that Aristotle had identified as necessary for thought.
Until the early seventeenth century this schema was a staple of
psychological theory so widespread that It is virtually Impossible to
find theories of Imagination that are independent of it; for the same
reason it is usually impossible to trace the particular sources of the
schema that actually influenced individual thinkers. By the end of
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that century, however, it had vtrtually disappeared. It was replaced In
large part by doctrines of Impressions acquired through external and
Internal processes conceived In accordance with the new science, and
by the various corresponding doctrines of ideas. In the Cartesian and
generally rationalist traditions the Imagination and memory, closely
tied as they are to the senses, are understood as tending to obscure
the truth-which Is, after all, proper to Intellect. Indeed, one can no
longer depend on images as having any cognitive reliability whatsoever, since they can easily represent nonexistent things, and since
even when they do represent an existing thing there Is no Intrinsic
assurance that they actually resemble it. In the empiricist traditions
the recombtnative capabilities of Imagination and memory constantly
threaten to tum cognition Into fantasy. Imagtnation and memory must
preserve the origtnal sense Impressions as unchanged as possible and
must reproduce, compare, and associate them accurately If error Is to
be avoided.
The powers of phantasia, imaginatio, and the other tntemal senses
were thereby divided and redistributed within a new natural scientific
framework, and from this division and redistribution was born the
modem conception, or rather conceptions, of Imagination. Insofar as
imagination simply reproduced, usually In weakened form, the deliverances of the senses It was Imitative; Insofar as it divided and
recomposed those deliverances It was in danger of leading the mind
away from truth Into fantasy. Even the empiricist thinkers who taught
that all thinking was to be understood In terms of impressions and
Images had to find ways of distinguishing some cognltively reliable
remnants from what was merely fanciful (when they did not ultimately
surrender to the apparent impossibility of finding such reliable remnants). What these modem developments left us with was the division
oflmagination tnto receptive and productive kinds: receptive imagination provides building blocks for thinking and understanding, whereas
productive Imagination makes fancies. The latter might offer entertainment but not objective truth; the former, although It yields materials for cognitive constructions, Is no longer based on an intelligibility
or transparency of phantasms that would allow one to posit a resemblance to existing things, much less abstract from them an tntelligible
species. Thus did modem philosophy both cognitively and ontologicaliy devalue the image and the power of productng it. Even in thinkers
for whom the Imagination plays a crucial role, or where a slgntflcant
attempt has been made to overcome the dichotomy of productive and
reproductive imagtnations-I am thinking especially of phenomenology and Kant-lmagtnation Is as much taken for granted as explained,
�SEPPER
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so that the reader Is left with the work of sorting out not just the details
oflts operations but also its foundational principles.
2.
I offer these historical remarks not as anything new; the reader can
find a much more detailed and historically thorough account (though
without my emphasis 'on the doctrine of internal senses) in the first
part of Brann. Rather, it is here, in these Platonic and Aristotelian
origins and the modem transformation, that we can quickly gain a
sense of the range of issues raised and touched by imagination:
cognition, creation, art, error, human psychology, the nature ofbeing.
And it is here that one can gain a sense of what Brann has set out to
do and what she has in large part accomplished: to give a view of
imagination and its images at once ample and focused, at once rich
and common-sensical, so that we might defend imagination against
the slights and belittlements that obscure its powers of enabling
human beings to inhabit a world, as well as against the exaggerations
that posit it as a faculty of world-making.
Influential streams of twentieth-century philosophy and psychology deny the very existence of imagination, in method when not in
fact. 'I)rpical here would be Gilbert Ryle's denial of internality in The
Concept ofMind, which treats imagining as a kind of make believe, a
role-playing that does not entail mental images; and, in psychology,
behaviorism and the streams within cognitive psychology that propositionalize imagination. The approach of the final chapters of Part
One and that of Part Two is largely determined by this negative
philosophical and psychological background. Brann's goal is to show
that the experimental evidence rigorously gathered by psychology in
the past decades provides solid support for affirming the existence of
images.
The ''hard data" about imagining that Brann presents will have to
be accounted for by any future theories. Those unfamiliar with the
experiments will be fascinated, and every other reader will be impressed by the quantity of literature that she has mastered. In one
experiment, for example, subjects are presented with pictures of
three-dimensional solids and asked whether they represent the same
solid differently oriented or two different solids. The response time
turns out to be proportional to the amount of mental rotation at a
constant rate that one would have to execute in trying to make the
pictured objects coincide. This and similar experiments strongly
suggest that the subjects are not merely sorting propositions but
�8
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
having and manipulating mental images. In another experiment the
subject Is instructed to study line-drawings of different-sized animals
drawn so as not to strtctly preserve their relative slzes (for example, a
rabbit would be middle-slzed rather than tiny In comparison with an
elephant). The subject is then told to imagine the pictured animals in
the space In front of him or her, getting closer and closer, until the
image begins to overflow the edges of the subject's field of Imaginative
space. Finally, the subject 1,; asked "to take a 'mental walk' toward the
images and to place a real'trtpod at that distance from a real wall at
which they judged the Imaged animal to be" when the overflow
occurred. 'The result was that the various distances at overflow were
roughly proportional to the real-life slzes of the different animals"
(244). Again, the Image-thesis is consistent with the experiment In a
way that propositions are not; moreover, the experiment shows that
Imaginative space has a basic resemblance to perceptual space and
that familiar Images have a strong connection to the knowledge and
memory of real relations In the world of experience.
Given this kind of data It may be hard to conceive that some
theorists dispute the existence of images and reduce them to propositional form. Accordtng to proposltionalism, when we describe ourselves as having Images, we mean nothing more than that we are
disposed to utter a not necessarily well-ordered set of statements
describing properties that we interpret as belonging to an Image. If I
say that I am Imagining my son asleep, I am perhaps actually
predisposed to make statements like "His eyes are closed," 'The
blanket is gathered up around his chest," 'The muscles of his face are
relaxed and he looks angelic," and so forth. All the apparatus oflogic,
sets, and linguistic theories assists this proposltionallzation of imagination.
The reason that this kind of theory has plausibility is doubtless
that for most people dayttme imagination is typically not very vivid
and distinct; furihermore, as imaginative attention shifts, one image
is very easily displaced by another Image or image aspect, or even by
a "statement." For example, I cannot say that when I first thought of
my son sleeping I visuallzed the blanket, the relaxed muscles, and the
like. First I sought to conceive an appropriate object of Imagining,
settled upon my son, then his sleeping-but only at this point did I
tum to images, and even then the Images (if such exist) were progressively adjusted by my attention and interests. My search was more
logical-discursive than imagistic. And once I settled upon my son with
eyes closed and blanket drawn up to his chest, I did not immediately
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picture the blanket that is his favorite--indeed, I did not picture it at
all until I was already writing this sentence!
Brann ably takes sides on the argument between imagists and
anti-imagists while being fair to both. The lesson that she draws from
the experiments and the theorizing of psychological science is not so
much that the existence of mental images is proved as that they make
very plausible the claim, advanced as well by common sense, that we
reaUy do imagine images. Western philosophy and science have almost
always associated ima'ges with the channnels of sense, so insofar as
we can show that Images as Imagined are governed by principles and
parameters found In sense we have good grounds for the existence
thesis. Although expedients might be Invoked to save propositionalism, they would be ad hoc and would have to appeal to yet deeper
mechanisms to account for the temporal functioning of imagination.
in cases like these--they are abundant-the advantage is overwhelmingly with common-sense folk psychology, which "naively" holds that
Imagining really does involve having mental images.
3.
In the first part of her book Brann reviews the opinions of the learned
on imagination; in the second part she establishes the existence of
Images. She goes on in the third to describe their nature. Part Three
presents the logic of images-which is simultaneously the ontology of
images-according to three kinds: real images (that is, real depictions
of real objects), mental images (unreal pictures of real objects), and
imaginary images (mental images of unreal objects).
"Real" is not intended approvingly, nor Is "unreal" derogatory.
Brann takes the real In a (Latinly) literal sense, as meaning
'"thinghood,' and material thinghood at that" (387). The metaphysics
of the image as founded in the principles of Otherness and Sameness
is explained by following Plato's Sophist. As usual Brann does. not
brush aside the unresolved difficulties of the argument and acknowledges that, as so often in the controversies about imagination, we are
faced with another divide on the question of existence of"such beings
as Images, meaning that some things, natural and artificial, display
the look of other things without being as fully what those others are"
(395). Her positive thesis, once the kind of being that resembles
another is affirmed, Is that we can develop a significant understanding
of a logic of pictures and picturing. Not a theory of picturing in
language (language is assertive, pictures are not), but in Images,
pictorial images.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
10
This logic has boih Internal and external aspects. Internally an
image has truih-value, because It can reveal someihing about what it
depicts and can correctly correspond to ihe visual facts; yet to be fully
true !he picture must be not just shown but also asserted, even if only
by having a title. Pictures always have a point of view, whereas
statements are not ordinarily perspectival-ihey try to state simply
how things are In lhemselves. Propositions follow syntactical rules,
but !here are no such rules for pictures; ''whatever markmaking Is
physically possible and cru1 gain acceptance is allowed" (40 1). Pictures
do not have discrete and countable subjects and predicates; ihus it Is
often not easy to say what a picture Is "about." Propositions use
general names, whereas ihe figures of a picture are always concrete
and determinate and usually lnok Uke somelhlng. Propositions are
digital, pictures are analog. Propositions can be put togeiher by
determinate connectives, but ihe concatenation of pictures Is much
more open-ended and indeterminate In meaning. Moreover, pictures
cannot be negated per se,lhat Is, one cannot concretely and positively
Image negations and contradictions.
Externally Brann argues for a syncretism oflheories ofhowplctures
represent originals. She presents four major lheories concerning lhe
object of representation: lhe causal (referring to lhe history of production),ihe aulhorial (referring to Intention), !he inferential (emphasizing
lhe pictorial competence of ihe observer), and ihe projective (basing
Itself on a lheoryofhowihe original is projected against a background).
Theories of ihe representational relation Itself she schematlzes Into
lhree types: lhe make-believe, based on socially established and
internalized rules of language use, ihe denotative, which holds !hat
pictures refer to originals as words do to lhlngs (symbolism), and lhe
resemblant, which comes In varieties speclfied according to ihe many
ways of producing resemblance. The overriding concern of her argument, however, is not to be eclectic but to showihat, once ihe existence
of images is affirmed and !heir resemblance to some original acknowledged, !here Is ample space for all ihese different lheories to make
!heir specific contributions to understanding images and imagination.
4.
Parts One lhrough Three of The World of Imagination move from
general philosophical iheorles of imagination lhrough psychological
lheories and phenomena to a logic of the nature of Images. Once it is
established that Images are and what !hey are, Parts Four lhrough
Six discuss ihe evocation, lhe making, and the use of Images In lhe
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context of their spaces and their capacity for allowing us to re-view or
re-envislon the world. Part Four examines the relations between
language and Images In epic, poetry, novels, myths, and fantasy; Part
Five, the Inner space of Imagining, the space of geometrical envisioning
and physical modeling, and the aesthetic space of painting; and Part
Six, the functions of imagination In theology, In private and public
visions and memories, and In Its attachment to place and to feeling.
The first three parts display Brann's deep sense of objectivity. She
submits herself to the task that the subject matter Imposes and carries
It out with energy, care, and fairness. In the last three we witness In
addition the stronger emergence of her philosophical and even personal preferences (though, as she grants at the beginning of the book,
her taking of positions Is implicit all along). But this hardly Impairs
the book's value. The discussions of literary, aesthetic, theological,
and political uses of Imagination are indeed shaped by her experience
and preferences, but few readers will be able to pretend to anything
ampler or deeper. Even where one can quickly think up alternative
emphases and different examples, the occasions are rare that she can
be accused of onesidedness.
In reading many passages I could not help feeling admiration for
the beauty and rightness of Brann's description. Her evocation of the
scene In the Odyssey In which Penelope Interviews the still-disguised
Odysseus Is a brief masterpiece of engaged Interpretation that
illustrates with supreme clarity the theoretical point that passages of
literature must often be pictured in order to be appreciated.
Yet It Is precisely when Brann so strongly emphasizes the primacy
of visual Images that I begin to feel an uneasiness. Not that she
oversimplifies things. For example, the scene from the Odyssey Is not
used to prove that literature simply translates seen things Into words
while reading does the reverse. As she remarks at the end of the first
chapter of Part Four:
So far In this chapter I have been concerned with literary Imagining
as It has Spectftcally to do with envisioning, be It of the figures or
the structure of a text. The objection will be raised that the "literary
Imagination• has other, more peculiarly literary function$, particularly the narration of events and the development of the Inner
characteristics of people, places, and objects. I readily grant that
all these are the business of Imagination In the wide sense. My
project In this book Is, however, to atlend to the imagination In Its
root-sense, as visual Imitation. That is why the power of verbal
Imagining to Imitate, within Its limits, the visual world, real or
Imaginary, Is here the center of attention. (486-87)
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The "root-sense" of visual imitation, she also contends, Is connected
to "a temperamental leaning toward the spatial aspects of literature,
toward a panoramic visual contemplation In preference to an essentially temporal narrative development, [wWch] ... betoken[s] a sort of
pre-political conservatism, conservatism In the literal sense, a liking
for the timeless looks of things" (486).
I noted earlier that In some ways this book Is more about Images
than about Imagination, T/tf! World ofimages rather than Imagination.
One can, I tWnk, take Issue with this "temperamental leaning'' and
assert that in Its enthusiasm for Images as timeless looks it underplays
something else that Is Important. In the ordinary sense of the word,
Imagination has more to do with the power of Imagining than the ol?fect
of Imagining; !tis the use of Images, not having them, thatls crucial,
and In use Images or phantasms (to use the ancient term) are not
Intrinsically more spatial than temporal. An animal that can retain
and recall visual images, the fixed looks of things, does not thereby
become an imagining animal. Having such a power Is a material
condition of Imagination, but one also has to add to It a formal cause,
the ability to take an image as an image. That means that a being
unable to take an Image as an Image would have hallucinations, not
Imagination. Such a creature would have the capacity for seeing but
not for recognizing a difference between appearance and reality, or
between original appearances and their reactualization.
Imagination is therefore a way of taking Images. What a visual
Image Is Is a semblance of a sensation (It Is sensation-like without
being a sensation). Although one might well grasp a great deal more
from the example of visual images than of other kinds, this taking of
a semblance as a semblance Is not Intrinsically visual. My memocy of
a tune Is a semblance of a sensation just as much as a remembered
image of my father's face, as Is also an imagined utterance of a
sentence like "I can Imagine someone speaking, even myself, as easily
as, perhaps more easily than, I can conjure up a picture of a face."
The Intentional act Is as crucial as the phantasm. Imagination, to
exist, requires both; or rather It requires the semblance of sensation
taken as semblance. This taking of the semblance occurs against the
background of the organic being's experience and so at least in this
sense shares In temporality.
The tradition that extends privilege to the visual sense as the
paradigm of sensation Is highly plausible, of course, and as long as
one maintains the spirit of analogy between visual and nonvisual
imagination the paradigm Is quite legitimate. This tradition has a
decided advantage thatls already indicated in the title ofBrann's book:
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13
the images of vision present us not merely with images but with a
context as well, with the background of the visual world. Things seen
and things visually Imagined appear withto a space, a context, a
world. Taste, smell, and touch cannot provide anything comparable.
Sound can; an argument can be made, however, that It provides a
world that Is not sufficiently determinate. A forest at dawn Is rich In
sounds, but the majority of what would be present to vision Is silent
and so does not appear. On the other hand, sound is in some cases
too close to the nature rof Inward experience to allow a detachment
sufficient for Imaging. Music appeals to a memoxy for sound, but
(apart from madrlgallsm and program music) It does not per se Image
anything. Still, a remembered tune does resemble and Image the
original performance.
At the outset Brann noted that she was excluding from treatment
nonvisual and In particular auditoxy lmagexy (13-14). The grounds are
several. Audltoxy lmagexy may Involve "an actual performance, a
voiceless exercise of the larynx, a physiological, not just a neurological
event." Auditoxy lmagexy Is non-mimetic and temporal, but It also has
a spatiality about It (I presume this means that any lessons it might
teach can be approached through the more intrinsic spatiality ofvisual
imagexy). The lmagexy of sound has been less well studied than the
visual; and treating It in any detail would end by raising even harder
enigmas than are dealt with In the existing book (14-15).
Putting aside the last point, one might well find the others arguable. (a) That the auditoxy is so close to actual performance may mean
that the auditoxy Is closer to being part of the external world and the
active life than is the visual; but then an ampler treatment might have
helped illuminate the transition from mind to world that is important
to all the practical uses of Imagination highlighted in Parts Four and
Six. (b) Sound Is as much a part of dreams and hallucinations as Is
sight, and It Is at least conceivable that lmaglnaxy conversation Is
more our constant companion In evexyday life than Is lmaginaxy
picturing. (c) Perhaps the salient point about the near-performance of
auditoxy Imagining is that It ordinarily Is inhibited; moreover, given
Brann's penchant for allowing common sense Its due I don't see why
the neurological situation or brain state ought to carxy much weight
in deciding what Is proper to Imagination. And (d) not evexy auditoxy
imagining can be conceived as an Incipient performance, for although
I may Inhibit humming the four-note theme of Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony when It comes to mind there is no way that I can give a
laxyngeal performance of the many simultaneous Instrumental voices
that I can, with effort, put before my mind. Indeed, it seems likely to
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
me that for the average person engaged In daytime Imagining It is
easier to produce vivid sounds than vivid sights.
Excluding sound Images because they are Intrinsically temporal
and derivatively spatial, whereas visual images are the reverse, also
appears problematic. One of Brann's chief witnesses is Kant, who
although he gave priority to temporality In actual experience claimed
that temporal consciousness has space as an ultimate condition (94;
cf. 586). Brann's discussiqn of this essential point seems unjustifiably
thin. And well it might. as dependent as It is on Kant's "Refutation of
Idealism," a passage added in the second edition of the Critique ofPure
Reason. This is not the place to argue Kant Interpretation; still. one
needs to point out that Kant apparently sensed the weakness of this
argument even as the second edition was In press, since he inserted
emendations In the preface. Moreover, the controlling element of the
argument Is the contention that "all determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception" (Critique of Pure Reason,
B 275); for Kant this permanent thing has to be outside consciousness,
since the concept of substance is based solely on matter (B 278). It is
thus not spatiality thatls atlssue but enduring substance. Some Kant
scholars consider this passage to be in tension, If not contradiction,
with the rest of the Critique; but, putting that aside, it Is clear that
there are many unresolved problems susceptible to attack. One might,
for instance, side with Descartes against Kant (and Brann) and argue
that the first experience of permanency comes In the discovery of the
self-evidencing reality of one's self In the failed attempt to doubt one's
own existence.
It is not my Intention to side with Descartes or to imply that Brann
has gotten Kant wrong, for I believe that the Issues are still open and
perhaps not even adequately understood. Nevertheless, it seems to me
that the temporality ofimaglnation and the imaginative role of sounds,
and especially oflanguage, need fuller attention. Here the better guide
is likely to be Hegel's Phi.Wsophy of Mind (the third pari of the
Encyclopedia ofPhi/osophical Sciences), of which Brann remarks that
"there is no assessment of the Imaginative function in the work of
knowing that is as grand and yet as just" (1 07). I would add: not simply
in the work of knowing, but also in the work of re-envisioning and
re-forming the world, In that temporal playing out of possibilities
which is the subject of the second half of her book.
Hegel's treatment of imagination culminates in language. Language
as spoken is a phenomenon that is in many ways as rich as the visual
Imagination, and one can argue that some of the phenomena that
Brann deals with, In particular literary imagination, are inconceivable
�SEPPER
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without it. I would contend that reading is not primarily a function of
visual imagination but of aural instead. An obvious rejoinder would
be that language is too closely involved with concepts to represent
imagination in its simplest form. Yet the visual image as timeless look
seems to me too simple to rise fully to the reality of imagination.
Indeed, I think that the "timelessness" is the result of abstraction
rather than an essential character of imagination. To illustrate by a
contrast of images, the fundamental object of imagination is less like
a timeless picture than a "film clip," from which we derive the
possibilities of both a static spatiality and a connected temporal
development.
Let me suggest here that the genus of imagination is the repotentiation of appearance. I apologize for this ungainly phrase, but at least
until we have a more naturalized, habitual way of speaking about it
something like this will have to do. The term does not in itself imply
representation; representation is one of the basic functions of imagination, but it is not exclusive to it, and representation itself falls
into the larger class of this repotentiation of appearance. The notion
includes both the origin in appearance and the power to re-evoke the
appearance in implicit or explicit relationship to an original real-world
object or to other appearances. In this sense the phantasm of which
Aristotle spoke is not simply a recalled or regenerated sense-image,
much less just a visual image called to mind in the absence of a sensed
object, but an enriched and prepared intermediate originating in
sensation and developed as an intention and an occasion of thought.
From this position one might eventually proceed to conclusions like
these: Although the Romantics were wrong in asserting that imagination made worlds, it is true that it can rehearse worlds, and that this
rehearsal is for the most part in Implicit comparison with the world of
existence. The images we form are like transparencies that can overlie
the world, or they are projections that tske the real and extrapolate
potentialities that are not, or not fully, realized. And it is precisely
because of the resemblance function of images that the work of the
imagination does not need the constant presence of the plane of
reality, because it carries significant, even essential elements of that
world with it. A reader of Brarm's Conclusion will recognize that this
is precisely where she arrives, the conclusion with which she tskes
the sum and identifies the substance of imagination. Here I could not
agree with her more. It is a real (and in some ways pioneering)
achievement to have structured the book so that every chapter is
interesting in its own right while helping to build up the final thesis
that is so briefly stated in the Conclusion. (I in fact recommend that
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
16
readers tum to It Immediately after finishing the introduction). Imagination understood and shown as a transparency laid over reality
more adequately approaches the essence of the matter than the
vartous philosophical and psychological traditions have managed In
more than two thousand years.
5.
Even ifBrann's use ofKant is questionable, his argument nevertheless
points In the right direction: that experience presupposes the existence ofwhat endures. What endures seems to me not so much matter
or space as world, which is precisely Brann's ultimate frame of
reference for imagination. The world, In turn, is the rather mysterious
unity of a manifold that has the dimensions of both space and time.
And spatial images, to give Brann her due, have the advantage of
embodying a multitude of determinate relations simultaneously
withtn a relatively fixed framework or space that Is a surrogate for the
real world.
Nowhere does this aspect of Brann's argument appear more
strongly than in Pari Five, "Depletion: The Theater of Imaging." It
begins with the assertion of an Inner vision (intuition) that has as its
field of play Inner space, which comes In three versions, the perceptual, the geometric, and the Imaginative. They are spaces that possess
strong analogical and logical connections to one another.
Perceptual space Is closely tied to perceptual memory, the most
basic form of reproductive imagination; the second, geometric one Is
a place of attenuated perceptions where "the deliverances of direct
vision and the insights of the Intellect find each other" (598). Brann
contends that It Is the three-dimensional Euclidean form of geometric
space that Is the space of our mathematical imaging; It Is contingently
three-dimensional (stnce we can in prtnciple conceive that there might
well have been more or fewer dimensions to our spatial experience),
but essentially Euclidean. This contention, far from expresstng another temperamental preference, is based on a mathematical principle: among the many geometries for which we have consistent
mathematical systems, only Euclidean space preserves proportionalIty between similar geometric figures, or rather it is only In Euclidean
space that geometrical slmilartty is possible. Imaging based in resemblance could have no other kind of geometric and experiential field.
And It Is on the basis of a space that preserves proportional relations
that we can build physical models crucial to the natural sciences. The
�SEPPER
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richness of analogical relations that it preserves even allows us to use
spatial images to model the realm of the mental.
Part F1ve further defends the thesis that imaging is based on
resemblance by arguing that pictures and paintings are imitations of
mental images, imagination-images. The thesis is developed chiefly by
way of claiming that "the great occidental and oriental traditions [of
painting] seem to be at heart phenomenalistic" (670). Paintings simultaneously simulate their objects and reveal them. Paintings are thus
"doubly images: They are physically based images of mental originals,
which are in turn memory-images of real or fictional originals," a state
of affairs that "permits the most straightforward account of the enigma
of painting: that a loss in verisimilitude is often a gain in verity" (673).
In a book that is full of moments of beauty one of the most beautiful
is the example that follows, the Old Stone Age cave paintings of
Lascaux, which provide "a psychological training ground for the right
responses to vital appearances by means of vivid visual imagery. If
so-if it was in fact vital that these apparitions should live in memory-their unsurpassable beauty turns out to be of the essence. If
beauty is indeed in essence memorable visibility, the magic of such
visions is not primitive but primordial" (675).
Parts Four and Six are so detailed in their historical accounts and
so rich in their panorama of phenomena of the imagination that they
deserve an extended treatment all their own. Here I will note simply
that the example ofLascaux embodies a principle repeatedly exemplified there, that in literature and in the various public and private uses
of imagination we see displayed its power of re-envisioning the world.
And at the heart of this principle is the basic phenomenon of imagination, transparency, to which Brann devotes her attention in the
conclusion.
She begins with an epigraph drawn from Victor Hugo: ''The universe
is an appearance corrected by a transparence" [773). Brann's initial
comment ls worth quoting in full:
In the philosophical part of this study I considered the productive
function of the imagination in constituting a koowable world, and
in the psychological part I reviewed Its reproductive role in cogoitively indispensable processes of visualization. I went on in the
logical part to analyze the constitution of images, and in the literary
and spatial parts I returned to the imagination as a power for
picturtog words and a capacity for shaping configurations. But the
last part was largely devoted to the Imagination as a world-making
agency. This activity begins to an Inner space with visitations rather
than exertions: it Is antecedent to the "labor by which reveries
become works of art," in Baudelaire's words. To this internal,
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
18
unlabored work of the imagination can be attributed our most
specifically human mission: to remake the world imaginatively. An
ortginary, world-constituting imagination plays its role in the blind,
arcane abyss beneath consciousness. The artful, poetic imagination
is embodied In overt, visible works before our eyes. But the worldrevising, world-emending imagination of which I am here speaking
projects an Inner world onto the external environment and elicits a
second appearance from the visible world. This imaginative world
is neither so interior as, to lack visibilily nor so external as to be
devoid of soul. (774)
,
To change the image but not the point, one might say that imagination is always at least implicitly biplanar: it sees one thing as a
projection of another, either in the same space of experience (for
example, when we project a sphere onto a plane in three-dimensional
Euclidean space) or between different spaces (when we project a
geometrical schematlzation of a physical situation, or when we analogize an intellectual process with corporeal images). In this sense it
does not matter what the nature of the image is, so that its being
intrinsically either spatial or visual Is not essential to its imaginative
use. What does matter is that one Is able to move in and between both
the planes.
6.
Although I take exception to the central preference in Brann's conception of Imagination, and though there are many particulars with which
I might quarrel in an even more extensive discussion, I can nevertheless say that these things do not greatly affect the value and importance of the book, for four reasons. First, as I remarked earlier, the
vtsual image, more readily and more fully than other kinds of image,
carries with It the possibilities of the world of appearance. Second,
whatever the status of the visual image, most of the claims Brann
makes about imagination are analogically transferrable to nonvisual
and extravisual Imagining. Third, her argument and tone are models
of moderation; she does not push arguments further than they can be
legitimately carried, and she remains fatr even in refutations. Fourth,
the book demonstrates the author's constant skill at making the
phenomena of image and imagination shine through the words so that
readers might see them for themselves.
This "Praise ofthe Imagrnation," as the Preface calls it, amply fulfills
the threefold result Brann hoped for: it is a book to read for the
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attraction of its matter, a compendium to consult for Information, and
a text for study in a course or seminar (4-5). Doubtless there will be
further disputes about its value and completeness In this or that
respect, for Instance whether the seven exclusions she made---some
"regretfully, others with unregenerate glee"-were all justified
(postmodem interpretations, the traditions of the Near and Far East,
imaginings produced by hallucinogens, the imagination of occult pmctices, political and commercial image-manipulation, non-visual imagery, and the psychodyniunlcs of image-formation and -connection); but
it is also beyond doubt that concerning the topic imagination the work
will serve as a source-book, or rather the source-book, for the next
generation.
It will not be a bad thing if people look upon The World of the
Imagination: Swn and Substance as a kind of resource or reference
work, something that its length alone assures. But it would be a shame
if its compendiousness deterred them from actually reading it. By just
consulting it or scavenging they would miss the best part: that in
attempting a genuine conspectus of images and imagination, the
author has synthesized her experience, the experience of a lifettme.
The result manifests what can be called by no more appropriate name
than wisdom. Let us be grateful for it; let us profit from it, so that we
might ultimately experience and know those insights of imagination
that (to quote Brann's concluding works) "convey at each return a
coalescence of meaning and appearance that the ever-available external phenomena forever lack," that "shape the imaginative life as a
prelude to action, an incitement to reflection, and an intimation of
paradise" (798).
�20
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
Joseph and Judah
Chaninah Maschler
.. .It cannot be but an industrious and judicious
comparing of place with place must be a singular
help for the right understanding of scriptures.
George Herbert, The Country Parson.
This lecture Is a brief commenl:aty on Genesis, chapters 37-50. These
fourteen chapters! hold the story of Joseph and his brothers, how
they, who were the twelve sons of Jacob by four different women (see
e.g.46:8), became the Children of IsraeJ,2 ancestors of the collection
of tribes who, as the next four books of the Pentateuch will show, after
four hundred years of slavery In Egypt (Exodus 12:40; cf Genesis
15: 13) and for1y years of wandering In the desert (Numbers 14,
Deuteronomy 1:3) became constituted as one people under one law. 3
What I chiefly hope to show Is how the concluding chapters of
Genesis4 comment on the conditions for Israelite and-who can
tell?-perhaps, eventually, human, solidarity. What! value In the story
Is Its truthfulness. The over-all message seems to be this: There Is no
"final solution" to the problems of human rivalry and envy. But the
reason for this tendency to human strife Is not that hule ("matter" or
"mother") Is refractory, but that hunian beings are. There may,
nonetheless, be '1nterim solutions." Acknowledging the need that
human groups have of both a Joseph and a Juda!I Is among these
Interim solutions. 5
Before proceeding to some comments on this text, I had better
remind you of the outline of the story.
Joseph-the first-born, 6 long-awaited,7 son of his father's favorite
wife, Rachel, the woman his father Jacob had loved at first sightS-is
so much hated by his ten half-brothers that they mean to kill him. By
a curious series of accidents, Joseph does not die. Instead, he Is sold
Into slavery In Egypt. In Egypt, he starts out being a house slave to
one of Pharaoh's courtiers, Potiphar by name. But before long Joseph
rises to a position not unlike that which he had held In his father's
house, second In command, becoming steward to Potiphar and superChan!nah Maschler Is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture
was giVen at the college In November. 1992.
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Intending all the doings on Potiphar's estate (39:4).
Potiphar's wife develops a fancy for the handsome Hebrew slave9
and trtes to seduce him (39:7). Joseph resists her (39:8-10). Mme
Potiphar, unsurprisingly, denounces Joseph to her husband for attempted rape (39: 16-18). Very suprlslngly, Potiphar, Instead of having
Joseph executed, or at least mutilated, puts him In jail (39:20). In jail
too Joseph finds favor with his superior, the chief jailer. Joseph again
becomes the second In command (39:23).
While Joseph Is thus ihcarcerated It happens one morning, three
days before Pharaoh's birthday, that Joseph notices that two fellowprisoners, men who had previously been highly placed courtiers to
Pharaoh but who had fallen out of favor, namely, His Majesty's Chief
Cup-Bearer and His Majesty's Chief Baker, look downcast. When
Joseph asks the jailed courtiers what Is troubling them they report
that they have dreamed dreams and feel the lack of an onelrocritic.
Joseph,while disclaiming expertise In the matter of dream Interpretation (what he says Is: "Don't Interpretations belong to God? Tell me,
please," 40:8), construes the dreams as foretelling that both men's lots
are about to change-the Chief Cup-Bearer will In three days be
restored to favor and resume his task of handing the cup to Pharaoh;
the Chief Baker will In three days be beheaded. What Joseph foretells
comes to pass: Pharaoh uses the occasion of the royal birthday
festivities, which call for a gathering of all his court, to reinstate his
butler and to execute his baker.
Two full years after the reinstatement of the butler and the execution of the baker, thus on the night preceding the royal birthday and
the attendant festive gathering of the court, Pharaoh himself dreams
a dream:
He was standing beside the Nile, when out of the Nile came seven
cows, handsome and sturdy, and grazed In the reed grass. But right
behind them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the
Nile ....And the ugly gaunt cows ate up the seven handsome sturdy
cows. Then Pharaoh awoke.
He went back to sleep and dreamed a second time: Seven ears of
grain, solid and healthy, grew on a single stalk. But close behind
them sprouted seven other ears, thin and scorched by the east wind.
And the seven thin ears swallowed up the seven solid and full ears.
Then Pharaoh woke up: It had been a dream.
(Throughout this lecture I use E. A. Speiser's translation, slightly
modiljling It on a few occasions, the one exception being Judah's
speech In chapter 44, where I use the translation of Eric I.
Lowenthal.)
�MASCHLER
23
When, the morning after, none of the courtiers, not even Pharaoh's
wise men, are able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams, the Chief CupBearer recalls how, while he was out of favor and In jail, a young
Hebrew fellow-prisoner had explained the fates which his own and the
Chief Baker's dreams foretold (41:9-13). Pharaoh straightaway commands that the Hebrew youth be rushed from his dungeon. Barbered,
bathed, and clad In decent robes, Joseph appears before Pharaoh,
hears Pharaoh tell the dreams, Interprets them to mean that God Is
by their means foretelling what He Is about to do-namely. sending
seven years of agricultural plenty followed by seven years of dearthand advises Pharaoh to act providently:
"Let Pharaoh... seek out a man of discernment and wisdom and
place him In charge of the land of Egypt. And let Pharaoh take steps
to appoint overseers for the land so as to organize the country of
Egyptfor the seven years of plenty. They shall husband all the food
of the good years that lie immediately ahead, and collect the grain
by Pharaoh's authority, to be stored In the towns for food. And let
that food be a resetve against. .. the seven years of famine .... "
Joseph's advice is taken, the whole court assenting, and Joseph
himself becomes, now for the fourth time, and humanly at the highest
rank, second In command.
"1 place you In charge of the whole land of Egypt." With that Pharaoh
removed the signet ring from his hand and put It on Joseph's hand.
He then had him dressed In robes of fine linen, and put a gold chain
about his neck. He also had him ride In the chariot of his second
In command, and they shouted "Abrek" before him. (41:37-43)
As Joseph foretold, so things turn out. The seven years of plenty
come and during this time Joseph has the over-abundant Egyptian
grain crop gathered In storehouses (41:47ff). Next comes the cycle of
dearth. Famine has struck the land of Egypt and along with It all of
the eastern Mediterranean, including the land of Canaan, where
Joseph's father and brothers dwell. Somehow, Joseph's father, Jacob,
learns that Egypt (normally the region's breadbasket) Is supplied with
foodstuff. Jacob therefor!) sends ten of Joseph's brothers, all except
his full brother, Benjamin, down to Egypt to buy provisions for the
family. The brothers succeed In their mission, returning home to
Canaan with food stores.
However, for reasons which the brothers could not fathom, the man
In charge of food distribution, whom we, the readers, know to be
Joseph, but who was identified by the awe-struck brothers as "the
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
24
man who Is lord of the country," had kept one of the ten, Simeon with
him In Egypt. The viceroy, Joseph, detained Simeon, In Egypt as a
hostage, ostensibly to test the truth of the story which the brothers
had told when he, Joseph, falsely accused them of having entered
Egypt as Canaanite spies rather than as members of a famine-struck
household. When the viceroy, that Is, Joseph, tormented them with
his false accusation, the bewildered brothers had replied:
"No, my lord, truly yow; servants have come to procure food. All of
us are sons of the same man ....Your servants have never spied ....
We, your servants, are twelve brolhers, sons of a certain man in !he
land of Canaan; the youngest Is today with our falher and anolher
one is not."
Only if the nine brothers return to Egypt with that youngest brother
who, they said, remained In Canaan with thetr father, only then would
the viceroy release their other brother, Simeon, whom the viceroy had
chosen to serve as a hostage and had bound before their eyes (42:24).
(Simeon, you may recall, had long ago been a ringleader In a terrible
deed of violent revenge motivated by "righteous Indignation," the
massacre of the people ofSchechem, whose Prince had raped Simeon's
sister Dinah. See 34:25, 30,31.)
As the famine persists In Canaan and grows more severe, Jacob
urges his sons again to descend to Egypt for rations. Judah reiterates
(43:3) what Jacob's sons had told their father earlier (42:29fi): Only If
Benjamin, Joseph's full brother, Is with them will the viceroy grant
them an audience, release Simeon, and meet their request to be sold
food. Jacob, who had, apparently, not been willing to put Rachel's
second son, Benjamin, at risk for the sake of perhaps freeing a son of
Leah, Simeon (cf 42:38), now that all stand to die of starvation,
consents to having Benjamin go down with his other sons (43: llfi).
The nine, along with Benjamin, appear before Joseph for a second
time. They are received with exquisite courtesy. Simeon Is brought out
to them (vajotseh alehem et shbnon, 43:23) enttrely unharmed. Mysteriously, they are treated as honored house-guests of the viceroy, who
dines In the same room with them, although at a separate table
(43:32). Still more mysteriously, the brothers' order ofbtrth Is known
to the steward and they are served accordingly, except that Benjamin's
food portion Is five times as large as that of any one else. No wonder
that the brothers get rip-roaring drunk at that meal (last half verse of
ch.43)!
Next, Joseph instructs his steward to ffil the brothers' sacks with
as much food as they can carry, to return each man's money, and
secretly to stash Joseph's, the viceroy's, silver goblet in the mouth of
�MASCHLER
25
Benjamin's bag. The brothers set out early the next morning to
re-ascend to Canaan. But before long the Steward overtakes them and,
as he had been instructed by his master, Joseph, he demands to see
the brothers' bags and, still following instructions, says to the brothers:
"Why did you repay good With evil? It [viz. the goblet you have stolen]
is the very one from which my master drinks and which he uses for
divination. You have done a base thing." (44:lft)
The brothers are, of course, completely mystified by this accusation.
As for the goblet, it proves to lie where it had been put, in Bet1iamin's
bag.
Earlier, in perfect confidence of their innocence, the brothers,
under Judah's leadership, had sworn that, should the goblet be found
in any of their bags, the one whose bag held the cup would be ready
to die and the remaining ten would become slaves to the viceroy. When,
under the steward's escort, the brothers re-enter Joseph's house and
re-encounterJoseph, Judah re-affirms this oath, except that he tries
to erase the death penalty for Benjamin. Joseph releases the brothers
from this vow, demanding only that Benjamin stay. The rest of them
may depart, With all the food, for Canaan.
All are silent, except for Judah, Jacob's and Leah's fourth son
(29:35), neither a first born With a firstborn's rights and responsibilities for leadership, nor a last born (vs. 30:17 ff), as was Benjamin, and
as Isaac, the brothers' grandfather, and Jacob, the brothers' father,
had been.
Judah requests of the viceroy that he be accepted as Benjamin's
placetaker. The speech in which he makes this request has an
overwhelming effect. Joseph can no longer contain himself. He sends
his Egyptian attendants out of the room, bursts out crying, and says
to his brothers:
"I am Joseph. Is my father really still allve?... Come closer to me... .!
am Joseph, whom you once sold to Egypt.. .. But do not worry now
or reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really God
who sent me here in advance of you as an instrument of survival.... Hurry back, then, to myfttiher and tell him, "Thus says your
son Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt; come to me Without
delay. You will live in the land of Goshen, where you will be near
me-you and your children and grandchildren, your flocks and
herds ....There I will provide for you.... "
With that he flung himself on the neck of his brother Benjamin and
wept; and Benjamin wept on his neck. Then he kissed all his
brothers, crylng upon each of tbem; only then were his brothers
able to talk to him. (45: 1-14)
�26
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Joseph's brothers and father, along with their wives and children
and livestock, come to settle in the Goshen region. Pharaoh has not
only given permission that the Jacob clan reside there but takes an
Interest In the clan's well-being; In fact, It Is at Pharaoh's command
that Joseph furnishes his brothers with Egyptian wagons that will
ease the clan's relocation. Once the brothers, their wives, and their
children, along with Jacob their father, have arrived In Goshen,
Pharaoh even honors Ja<;ob with a court audience. In every way our
story seems to have a happy ending:
The dreams of lordship which Joseph had dreamt at the very
beginning of our story (37:5-ll), when he was a youth of seventeen,
after his father, by giving him that princely robe (37:4), had made
manifest that he had chosen to elevate Joseph above his brothers,
have been borne out.
Jacob, the man who, at his mother's urging, had tried to acquire
his brother's first-born rights by stealth (chs. 27 and 25), and who
must, or ought (cf Hosea 12:4, Jeremiah 9:3), to have Interpreted the
suffering that thereafter befell him as deserved, lives to regain and
bless his favorite son and even meets and blesses the grandsons by
Joseph (47:29fl), finds out that his worries about Simeon, or perhaps
rather, his apprehensions that Simeon's brothers are guilty of having
sold one ofthelr own Into slavery, were unfounded, and dies peacefully
In bed (49:33). (By his sufferings I mean: the substitution, In the
marital bed, of the elder for the younger and beloved sister; the death
In childbirth of the woman he loved (ch. 35); the loss of Joseph-the
son who, in Jacob's Imagination, was his true firstborn (30:25,26).
being the firstborn by the wife so greatly loved that a seven-year
indenture as bride-price seemed to him but a few days (29:20); the
nagging suspicion that nine of his sons had sold their brother Simeon
into Egyptian slavery for food; the agonized waiting for the return of
Benjamin.)
Through Joseph's foresight and careful management, both his own
family and the population of Egypt are preserved (ch. 47).
But how can a story such as I have just told have a happy ending?
True, we have all the preceding stories ln the book of Genesis to show
that rivalry and envy need not lead to murder, as It did In the case of
the first pair of brothers, Cain and Abel: Abraham's firstborn.
Ylshmael, and his younger brother Isaac bury their father Abraham
together (25:8fl); the battle Esau plans against his younger twinbrother Jacob (33:1) Is staved off (33:10); earlier, Abraham had
providently prevented war between his own and his nephew Lot's
households (ch. 13); and even Laban and his son-In-law and nephew
�MASCHLER
27
Jacob and their households become, in a manner of speaking, reconciled (ch. 31). Yet deciding to split and make a treaty, which Is what
happens In most of these cases, Is not amity and peace. It Is truce and
avoidance, a "holding operation."
To see whether and how something better happens In the case of
Joseph and his brothers I want to look more narrowly at three
sentences(!)a statement by the Biblical narrator about Joseph and about his
brothers,
(2) the request of Judah already alluded to, that he be allowed to
go surety for his brother Benjamin, and
(3) a question asked by Joseph of his brothers and, I think, himself.
(1) The statement by the narrator occurs In ch. 42, vs 7, In the
context of the brothers' first meeting with Joseph In Egypt, after they
had spent some twenty years or so believing him dead or disappeared.
The narrator reports:
When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized (vqjakirem) them, but
made himself unrecognizable (vajitnakef) to them and spoke
harshly to them.
The root of the words I pronounced just now in Hebrew is repeated:
When Joseph recognized his brothers (vqjakef) while they failed to
recognize him (lo hakiruhu), he was remtoded of the dreams he had
dreamt about them and said to them: "You are spies. You have come
to look at the nakedness of the land."
When the brothers, poor yokels, staunchly deny that they are spies,
Joseph repeats his accusation:
"Yes, you have come to look at the land in its nakedness." What's
going on here?
·
It is altogether according to expectation that the brothers should
fail to perceive the seventeen-year-old father's pet whom they had put
In an empty desert watering hole some twenty years earlier in the
grandly dressed and probably enthroned viceroy of Egypt. Nor is it
strange that Joseph, contrariwise, seeing the ten of them together,
dressed as he remembers his kinfolk to dress and speaking In the
language of Canaan on which he had himself been raised, should
recognize his brothers. So our lexically economical text can be presumed to dwell on the root of the Hebrew word for "recognize,"
"discern," "identify," and, perhaps (see Brown, Driver, Briggs p. 648
top), "foreign," "strange," for reasons beyond the reported fact.
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
28
This same root, nkr, occurs twice, and at crucial places, elsewhere
In our text. It figures In the vignette at the end of our story's opening
chapter, ch. 37, when the brothers arrange for a messenger to bring
Joseph's blood-stainedcoatof distinctioniO to his father, so as to trick
the father into saying and believing that Joseph had been tom to
pieces by some wild beast (see 37:32 and look before and after). The
other spot where It occurs Is Inch. 38 (vss 25,26 to be exact}, the odd
episode about Judah and his widowed daughter-In-law, Tamar.ll
Spelling out the full meaning of this fact Is too large a task for me. I
do, however, want to use the fact that the thematic root, nkr, as used
In these two other places, Involves some sort of trickery; I also want
to use the fact that In the two locales just indicated some sort of coming
to one's senses, acknowledging of a wrong, seems to be lnvolved.l2
The present question is, what does It mean, psychologically, to
report (as does the narrator In the King James version) that Joseph
"knew" his brothers but "made himself strange unto them." The
blatantly false accusation that his brothers are spies comes to our aid.
Isn't It obvious that Joseph rather than his brothers Is doing the
spying?
He does so at great length. First he incarcerates the brothers
together (42: 17}, commanding that one of them be freed to return to
Canaan so as to fetch the youngest brother, Benjamin, whom they
had mentioned when the viceroy grilled them. One brother Is to be
released, the remaining nine are to stay in Egypt until the released
one returns with Benjamin. Joseph gives the brothers three days to
moan and bicker over who Is to stay, who to leave, meanwhile availing
himself of the opportunity to listen in on their conversation. ln the
course of these three days he overhears his brothers saying:
... but we are guilly concerning our brother [though we are Innocent
of the charge of spying], In that we saw his soul's distress when he
pleaded with us but did not listen. (42:21)
In addition, Joseph learns that the ten had not been an undifferentiated troop of enemies, since he overhears his eldest brother, Reuben's,
exclamation:
"Didn't I warn you to do no wrong to the boy? But you would not
listen. Now comes the accounting for his blood. • (42:22; cf 37:22,
37: 29,30)
I imagine that it was as a result of what he has thus found out that
Joseph changed his command: Nine are to return to Canaan while one
Is kept In Egypt as a hostage (42:19).
Throughout the three days Joseph spoke to the brothers via an
�MASCHLER
29
Interpreter, so that they are not aware that the viceroy is spying on
them.
When Joseph changes his mind about how many are to stay In
Egypt and how many are to return to Canaan, the narrator quotes
Joseph as having said "I fear God .. .," which jerked me Into realizing
that one man could hardly have carried enough food back to Canaan
to keep the father, the women, and the little ones back home alive,
and made me aware that Joseph's first command was, from a practical
point ofview, more than lll-considered. Are we meant to condemn him?
· Only on rare occasions does the narrator in Genesis tell us outright
which of two or more competing characters to side with. (To my mind,
this Is one of the attributes of the book which equips It for being
torah-instruction: We are called upon to judge, but the more we study
the narrative, the less confident we feel that we know enough about
fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers justly to appraise their
character and conduct. Every new connection we make between this
verse and that seems to change meanings and motives.) Thus In the
present instance the narrator seems to leave the reader free to follow
the Impulse of feeling sorry for the brothers and critical of Joseph.
Joseph, after all, Is perseveringly manipulative, playing with, indeed
tormenting, his brothers In Incident after incident; playing even with
his father, since he has the money with which the brothers paid for
foodstuff put back Into their sacks, so that their father may well have
been led to believe that they had sold their brother Simeon Into slavery
(cf 42:35,36). The fact that the narrator tells us (42:24) that Joseph
absented himself to cry when he overheard Reuben's speech (and thus
found out that at least one of his brothers had tried to protect him),
does not necessarily alter one's atlltude. It Is not Inconceivable to me
that someone who enjoyS lording it over underlings should weep while
playing some cat-and-mouse game with them. Yet when one looks
back at the preceding chapter everything begins to look different.
There, In chapter 42, we were told that Joseph had married Into
high Egyptian society, had acquired a new, Egyptian, name, and that
he called his firstborn son Menasseh "because God has caused me to
forget my hardships entirely and all my father's house" (42:51).
Clearly, It Is Joseph's Intention to separate himself from his past, no
longer to be his father Jacob's son but to become fuJJy Egyptian. When
the brothers appear before him, they and his past are invading this
carefully contrived new life of Joseph's. He feels spied on, naked,
vulnerable, when suddenly they stand before him. When he catches
himself being, after all, unable to forget his father's house, this may
well have been a shaming realization. Only thus can I explain Joseph's
�30
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
shocking locution "you have come to look at the nakedness of the
land." Therefore, when Joseph, In 42:25, ordered his servants to
return the money with wWch his brothers had paid for corn, It was
probably not In order to mystifY them or to alarm Ws father (though
this was the effect, see 42:28,35,36). Rather, Joseph, who seems so
much In control, Is making a private, only half voluntary, gesture,
whose meaning he only half-knows, a gesture of making a distinction
between the rest of the hungry and his own hungry brothers. The free
gift of grain Is a token of kinship.
There Is, however, only one person in his father's household who
Is entirely unsullied with responsibility for the crime committed
against Joseph, thus fit to be loved unreservedly, Ws younger brother
Benjamin. The sons of the concubines Bilhah and Zilpah, with whom
Joseph prior to age seventeen used to go sheep-herding, probably
hated him as much as did Leah's sons, since the enigmatic verse 37:2
(about Joseph's being a tattle-tsle) probably applies to them. Joseph
must have realized tWs. AB for Reuben, though Joseph had wept upon
hearing how this oldest brother and arch rival had tried to protect him
(42:24 after 42:22), upon reflection Joseph may have believed that
Reuben was merely trying to re-lngratiate himself with Jacob after the
unsavory episode of his sleeping with his father's concubine Bilhah
(35:22; cf 1 Kings 2:13 ff and Solomon's reply In vs. 22). Simeon and
Levi, next after Reuben In the order of birlh, had proved by the
vengeance they took for the rape of their sister Dinah to what extremes
of violence their pride could lead them. Joseph must have supposed
that, as at Schechem so In Dothan, Injured pride drove Simeon and
Levi to murderous hatred. And as for Jacob, Joseph must have come
to realize In the course of all those years since he was seventeen, when
his father publicly declared his choice ofJoseph for' the leadership role ,
of fir:;;t born by giving Wm that coat of distinction and provoked not
only those dreams of Joseph's but Joseph's teUing his brothers what
he had dreamt, that Ws father was much to blame for what happened
thereafter.13 Only Benjamin, memento of their common mother Rachel,
Is a kinsman altogether free of blame. No wonder, then, that Joseph
Is obsessed with the idea of getting Benjamin to join him In Egypt.
Let this suffice, for the time being, as commentary on the first
sentence.
(2) I turn, next, to the second of the three sentences I promised to
discuss, namely, Judah's request in ch. 44 vs 33. It runs as follows:
"Please, let your servant [I.e. Judah] stay as servant to my lord
lnsteadof(tru:hath) the boy [ie. Benjamin], let him be his placetaker,
but let the boy 'go up' with his brothers.
�MASCHLER
31
The long address of Judah from which I culled this sentence (the only
long speech in Genesis) Is what released Joseph to make himself
known (httvada) to his brothers (45: lft). How difficult this moment was
for Joseph is, perhaps, shown by the narrator's telling us:
"And there stood no man with him when Joseph made himself
known to his brethren." (45: I end)
I do not believe that the narrator is merely repeating the information
that Joseph had sent all his Egyptian attendants out of the room when
he broke down in front of his brothers and said to them:
"I am Joseph. Is my father [really] still alive?"
Postponing a reading of Judah's speech in its entirely, I turn to the
third sentence on which I promised to comment, namely, Joseph's
question. In the ultimate chapter of the Book of Beginnings Joseph
asks (50: 19):
"...Am I In God's stead?" 14
The story of Joseph and his brothers, and thus the book of Genesis,
might have ended with chapter 48 (Jacob's adoption of Joseph's two
sons and the transfer of the one piece of real estate in Canaan that
Jacob holds in his own name, viz. Schechem, to Joseph); or, conceivably, with chapter 49 (holding the so-called "blessing" of the twelve
tribal fathers along with Jacob's charge that he be buried to lie with
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebeccah, as well as with Rachel's
sister, Leah. in the ancestral burial cave of Machpelah, rather than
with Rachel, on the road to Bethlehem; cf35: 19,20). Instead, the book
of Genesis closes with chapter 50. This chapter begins by telling us of
· · the elaborate, Egyptian-style (see 50: 2, 50: 11) funeral rites for Jacob.
Only fairly late in the chapter, In vs. 50:8, 12-14, are we advised that
Joseph's brothers are members of the mourning party for their father
(as Ylshmael had been part of the mourning party for Abraham in vs.
25:8 and as Esau had been part of the mourning party for Isaac In vs.
35:29).
We are thus somewhat prepared for the fact that in vs. 50:15 the
brothers fear, in spite of the grand reconciliation between Joseph and
his brothers that had been descrtbed in ch. 45, that now that the
protecting presence of Jacob, their common father, is no more, Joseph
will get even with them. The brothers therefore send a messenger to
Joseph whom they have instructed to say to Joseph:
"Your father gave this command before he died: 'So shall you say
to Joseph, "Forgive, I urge you, the crime (pesha) of your brothers,
and their sin (chatatem), although they did eVil to you."'"
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
32
Mter the messenger Is through speaking, the brothers themselves
approach and, saying
"Now, then, forgive, please, the crime (pesha) of the bondsmen of the
God of your father... ;
they throw themselves down before Joseph and declare
"Behold, we are your boJ;!dsmen."
When Joseph, In reply, says to them,
"Don't be afraid. For am lin God's stead?"
I Imagine he Is, first of all, commenting on the discrepancy between
the brothers' declaring themselves "bondsmen to the God of Joseph's
father" and their simultaneously offering themselves to this father's
son as "his bondsmen." That these two masters-the God of Israel on
the one hand and Pharaoh or Pharaoh's place-taker, Joseph-are
separate and distinct the Book of Exodus will show at length (cf
Leviticus 25:42, the restrictions upon enslavement of an Israelite by
an Israelite; also Leviticus 26: 13).
Second, I Imagine that something Is being said (either by Joseph
or by the text) about the true locus of forgiveness. Human beings are
not the ones either to give or to withhold forgiveness, not even when
they have personally been wronged. As Ifto emphasize this, the Mosaic
code contains procedures which remove the burden (and the light) of
forglvlng from human beings. Someone meditating on Leviticus 5:202615 might even want to go so far as to say that here lies an
Insufficiently explored "way" towards recognizing the reality of God:
Faith would thus be tantamount to believing .In' the· possibility of
altering the meaning of a person's or a group of people's past, a faith
that would set one free to conduct oneself In that hope.
But I also wonder whether, when Joseph, through the question he
addresses to his brothers-"Am I In God's stead?"-denles his own
divinity, and tries to reassure his brothers that the evil which they
Intended against him was or became Intended by God towards good
(50: 19,20), he Is realizing that his own passions too have been turned
towards good by a power beyond himself. His earlier disdain for and,
later, rancor against his brothers, the rush of love for Benjani!n, the
!-told-you-so, resentful, and burdened showing off to his father16_all
this too was being used by God for good. For example, as a result of
his manipulating his brothers In that deeply ambivalent way which I
tried to describe earlier, all his brothers, not only Juda!I, have proved
their solidarity with one another. This, perhaps, is why, as our text
�MASCHLER
33
has It, Joseph Is now able to speak to his brothers' hearts (50:21 end;
contrast this with the end of 37:4?).
The Bible recognizes. It seems to me, that "playing God" (as Is
ahnostnecessarilythe temptation of a solitary leader, and as may have
been Joseph's penchant In particular) can be guarded against only If
there Is atleast one other human being with whom authority is shared,
or who has gifts the leader lacks and needs, or who serves as his critic.
Locke seems to have perceived this when he slyly reminds Flhner, the
author of Patriarcha. a political tract In defense of perfectly centralized
royal power, that according to the Bible, a child Is under the authority
not only of Its father but of Its mother as well (see e.g. Leviticus 19:
1-3). I wonder whether Judah serves In this capacity In our story.
You will remember that It was Judah's speech, In ch. 44, that
released Joseph to declare himself to his brothers. Let me recite his
speech to you:
"Let your servant, I beg, please have a word in private with my lord.
Do not be angry with your servant for you are as Pharaoh. My lord
asked his servant, 'have you a father or a brother?' We said to my
lord, 'We have an aged father, and there Is a little son of his old age;
his brother is dead, and only he Is left of his mother so that the
father dotes on him. •Yet you said to your servants 'Bring him down
to me that I may set my eyes upon him.' We told my lord 'The boy
cannot leave his father; for If he should leave his father, he would
die. • But you declared to your servants 'Unless your youngest
brother comes down with you, you shall not come before me.' When
we returned to your servant, my father, we reported my lord's words
to him. Our father said to us 'Go back and bring us some food.'
Then we told him 'We cannot go down; only If our youngest brother
. . . Is with us, can we go; for we shall not be allowed. to see the man If
· our youngest brother Is not with us. • But your servant my father
said to us 'You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me,
and I said, he must have been tom to pieces! neither have I seen
him since. If you tske this one from me as well, and he meets with
disaster, you will send my white head to Sheolin grtef.' Now then,
please, let your servant remain as a slave to my lord Instead of the
boy, and let the boy go up with his brothers. For how can I go up
to my father If the boy Is not with me? I could not bear to witness
the evil that would overtske my father. (Ertc I. Lowenthal translation, pp 97-101, TheJosephNarrat!veinGenesls, Ktav, New York,
1973.)
The most Immediate effect on Joseph of Judah's speech was, I
Imagine, that It triggered awareness In Joseph that he had allowed his
yearning for Benjamin to overwhelm aU other considerations, that he
had allowed himself, in effect. to become his .ftd;her's rival for
�34
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
BeiJJamin's consoling presence; that, knowingly and unknowingly, he
had-In scheming to get this brother by his side-been avenging
himself not only on his brothers but also on his father. The effect on
us, the readers, Is harder to describe: Look again at the speech and
notice, for example, how the possessive adjectives "your," "my," and
"our" are being used. What Is uncanny about the speech Is its
detailed, Imperturbable, exactness, Its objectivity about every Item
In the family's history. There Is no rancor or regret, no emotional
complexity even, In Judah's quoting Jacob as having said, to Judah,
his legitimate son,
"You know that my wife bore me two sons .... •
(as though Leah had never been a wife to Jacob, and as though her
six sons counted for nought; compare the narrator's switches from
"his sons" to "Joseph's ten brethren" to "Benjamin, Joseph's brother"
to "his brethren" to "sons of Israel" in the early verses of chapter 42;
notice also how Jacob answers Reuben in 42:38: "My son shall not go
down with you; for his brother is dead, and he alone is left.") Nor is
there any self-dramatizing when Judah says, simply, that, quite apart
from having solenmly sworn to go surety for Benjamin (erawon), he
could not bear to see the effect on Jacob of losing Benjamin, so that
life as a member of the Jacob clan would be impossible for him were
he to return to his father without Benjamin.
Hear now how Judah spoke to his widowed daughter-in-lawTamar,
in chapter 38, when he found out that he had wronged her:
"You are in the right rather than I."
Judah makes no atlempt to excuse or justify himself but acts in the
light of his new knowledge: His twin-sons (Perez and Zerah) by Tama.t
are accepted by him as legitimate placetskers ofJudah's deceased sons
Er and Onan (see 46: 12), but Judah henceforth abstains from sexual
intimacy with Tamar. Such inthnacy between a father- and daughterin-law Is, of course, forbidden in the sexual code of Leviticus 18.
Let me add one further detail to the characterization of Judah. It
is hidden away in that amazingly packed opening chapter 37.
Long ago, Jacob had sent Joseph off from Hebron, Abraham's site,
to his brothers at Schechem, probably on a mission of reconciliation.17
A mysterious man, encountered by Joseph while he is looking for his
brothers, advises Joseph that his brothers and their herds have left
Schechem for Dothan. Before he gets close to the brothers they catch
sight of him and conspire to kill him.
They said to one another: Here comes that master dreamer! Why
�MASCHLER
35
don't we klll him now and throw him tnto one of the pits? We could
say that a wild beast devoured him....When Reuben heard this, he
tried to save him from their hands .... "Shed no blood" Reuben told
them. "Just throw htm tnto that pit, out there tn the desert, but
don't do away with him yourselves•-his purpose betng to deliver
htm ... and restore htm to his father. So when Joseph reached his
brothers, they made Joseph strip off his coat of disttnction (ktoneth
passtm) ... seized htm and threw him tnto the pit. They sat down to
their meal. Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites comtng
from Gilead ...bound fur Egypt.
Then Judah [seetng the caravan] said to his brothers, "What would
we gain by killing our brother and covertng up his blood [I.e. killing
htm without actually spilling his blood, namely, by letttng htm die
tn the pit]. I say, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites....After all, he is
our brother, our own flesh." His brothers agreed. Meanwhile [however] Midiantte traders passed by, and they pulled Joseph up from
the pit. 1hey sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of
silver.
Reuben's plan had been to free Joseph from the dried-up watedng
hole. I Imagine Judah had figured this out for himself. But Judah,
sizing up the situation more accurately than his elder brother, knew
that it would be hopeless for the two of them-Reuben andJudah-to
protect Joseph against the other eight, or to escape their notice. Under
the circumstances, selling Joseph to the Ishmaelltes was a good plan.
Judah Is prevented from canylng It out because, so I Imagine (on the
advice of Lowenthal), Joseph's cries from the pit have been heard by
the band ofMidlanlte traders, so that the latter rather than Joseph's
brothers became the ones to "profit" from selltng Joseph Into Egyptian
slavery.
Thus Judah's, like just about everyone else's, planned action tn the
Joseph story, becomes deflected .from tts intended course.IB Yet this
should not prevent us from recognizing that Judah, though very
different from Joseph-not Irresistibly handsome, not first or last
born, not equipped to dream up long-range designs, not a charmer of
the great-has attdbutes of character befitting a leader. Even Jacob
must have recognized this when, In 46:27, he Is reported to have "sent
Judah before him unto Joseph to show the way to Goshen" (ve-et
jehudah shalach lefanav eljosefl-horot lejanav goshena. ... )
That verse carries much weight with me: First, because our enttre
story is about sending and being sent, especially, about sending and
being sent ahead of others. Second, because It seems confirmed by
whatJacoblssupposedtohavesaidofJudahandofJosephlnchapter
49, where he foretells the twelve tdbal fathers' fates. Of Judah Jacob,
In 49:8, says:
�36
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"It is you whom your brothers Will praise."
Of Joseph he says, in vs. 49:26 end:
•... One set apart from his brothers" or, perhaps, "the prince among
his brothers."
As If to spite the fact that Jacob's adoption of Joseph's sons Menasseh
and Ephraim In the chapter preceding this Patriarchal blessing seems
to show that th.ejlrst-bom()fRachelremn.inedJacob's "elect, • the book
of Deuteronomy, in having Moses mention Judah next after Reuben
(33:7), quietly differs In Its judgment, as does Chronicles 5: l. This
leads me to wonder whether those who preserved our story may,like
me, have had complicated reservations about identifYing Joseph as
our story's hero. Were It the case that Joseph, In 47:18 till the end of
the chapter, Is serving his master Pharaoh too weJI,19 the narrative
might bear the tmplication that Joseph, In serving as a functionary
for the Pharaoh's turning free Egyptian peasants into tenant farmers
(albeit tenant farmers who retain four fifths of the yield of the land and
their own work) Is partly to blame for the future enslavement of the
children oflsrael.
•••
Notes:
l. In the synagogue reading-cycle they are divided into the four
weekly "portions": vayeshev=37:1-40 end; mlkkets =41:1-44:17;
vaylggash =44: 18-47:27; vayyechi =47:28-50:26. Readers unfamiliar With the synagogue articulation of the Bible text may like
to look at the Soncino Press edition of the Pentateuch, edited by
J. H. Hertz. That edition also gives the "portions" from the Prophetic Writings read inlmediately after the recitation of the Pentateuch portion, called "haftarah" =conclusion. The rabbis
responsible for selecting the hqftarah must have had reasons for
juxtaposing a particular prophetic With a particular pentateuch
portion. For example, I am Impressed by the fact that they chose
to have the second portion of the Joseph story, 41:1-44:17,
followed up by the story of the judgment of Solomon in 1 Kings
3:15-4:1. I Imagine the rabbis were Inviting the congregation to
think of both Joseph and Judah as being "tested," as were the two
mothers In the judgment of Solomon story. And when they selected
1 Kings 2:1-12 as "follow up" to 47:28-50:26, they must have
wanted the congregation to meditate on Jacob's "last wlll" side by
�MASCHLER
37
Side with David's. One reason for my reporting this sort of information is that only thus, through examples, can I convey that
Bible exegesis "sub specie unitatis," as I defended it in an earlier
essay ('Thinking about the Garden Story"), and practice It here,
Is not, or need not be, opposed to higher Bible criticism. Only if
multiple authorship deprives the Bible of all authority, only then
must one choose between exegesis and documentary hypothesis.
Since, however, the authority of the Bible is no greater and no less,
for me, than the authority of our entire multi-stranded, tensionfilled, Intellectual, legal,and moral tradition, the respect for the
text which prompts me to exegetic endeavor is not only compatible
with but calls for individual judgment and choice in the present.
2. For the change of name, and its Import, see ch. 32, especially vss.
27 - 29; there Jacob, on the night before meeting his estranged
brother Esau, wrestles with a man who blesses him and changes
his name from Jacob (heel) to Israel (god-wrestler), meanwhile
refusing to disclose his own identity. Notice the strange echo of
this episode In Rachel's words, at 30:8, when her maid Bilhah
conceives a second son, whom Rachel calls Naphtail. See e.g.Exodus 12:40; cf Genesis 15:13.
3. Deuteronomy 29:9ff; 31:9ff; see also Deuteronomy 17:14ff, especially vss 18 - 20: "...When he has ascended the throne of the
kingdom, he shall make a copy of this Torah in a book at the
dictation of the Levitical priest. He shall keep it by him and read
from It all his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God
and keep all the words of this Torah and observe these statutes.
In this way he shaU not become prouder than his feUow country
meri...
4. Plato's Laws, N, 720c.
5. The historic fact, if it be one, that the Joseph story's poising of
Judah over against Joseph is connected with the rivalry between
the royal House of David (the Southern Kingdom of Judah) and
the royal House of Saul, the Benjamlte (the Northern Kingdom) is
not only compatible with but commentary on the moral that I
draw.
6. 30:22ff.
7. 30: Iff; Barren Rachel so much envies her fruitful sister Leah that
she longs for death. Desperate for children, she gives Jacob her
maid-servant Bilhah to wife so that whatever children may be born
of that union will legally rank as her own, through adoption.
Through her maid-servant, Rachel acquires two sons, whose
�38
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
names (Dan and Naphtali) commemorate her rivahy with her
sister. Finally Rachel herselfbecomes pregnant and bears Joseph.
Immediately after the birth of Joseph, Jacob leaves his father-Inlaw's homestead and returns to Canaan to establish a separate
household of his own (30:25).
8. 29:9; 29:16-20.
9. Joseph, as far as I know, Is the only man In the Pentateuch who
Is called handsome-jafe toar vifeh mareh=of beautil'ul form and
fair to look upon (39:7). Since the same phrase Is used to describe
his mother Rachel (29: 17), Joseph may have looked like his
mother. Perhaps Rachel, In tum, looked like Jacob's mother
Rebeccah, who-being Laban's sister-was Rachel's aunt. Jacob,
you will remember, had been his mother's favorite whereas Jacob's
twin brother Esau had been his father's favorite. Cf David in l
Saniuell6:2-ruddy-complexioned, with fine eyes, fine to behold;
Absalom in 2 Samuel 14:2-praised for his beau1y; Saul, in l
Samuel 9:2, praised for his tallness.
10. K'tonet passim. I call this mysterious, conceivably many-colored
or embroidered, tunic a "coat of distinction" because the same rare
word is used at 2 Samuell3:18, to refer to the princess Tamar's
garment.
11. CfRobertAlter, TheArtofBiblicalNarrative(Basic Books, 1981).
I was both thrilled and (such Is vani1y) disappointed that Alter
noticed the verbal (and more than verbal) echoes of 37:32f (Zoth
matsanu.. Haker-na hak'tonet, bincha ht 1m lo. Vqjakirah. Vajomer:
k'tonet b'nL Chajah raah achaltehu. Tarof toraf Jose.Jj In 38: I7
("And she said: Will you give me a pledge-eravon? ....And she said:
Discern (Haker-na] please, to whom the signet, the cords, and the
staff belong [le mi. ha chatometh, etc.] And Judah acknowledged ...
(vajakerjelwdah]" and In 42:7ff. Fully to appreciate these verses
requires that one put them together with one another, and with
Judah's pledge, in 43:8ff, to be placetaker (eravon) for Benjamin,
and with his living up to this trust In vss 44: 18ft', and (finally) with
the nine-for-one, one-for-nine, and one-for-one games that Joseph
plays with his brothers.
All-Important though It Is for us, today, to discriminate between
a mere symbol or pledge on the one hand, and the moral and legal
category of serving as stand-in for one's brother, friend, or fellowhuman being on the other hand, I nevertheless believe that the
passages to whose vernal linkage I am calling attention are
ultimately connected with Abraham's substitution of a ram for
�MASCHLER
39
Isaac, Isaiah's song of the suffering servant, and Freud's entire
theory of dream interpretation. Substitution, and coming to one's
senses, orfailing to, upon recognizing what is being substitutedfor
what and why, or failing to seems to me to be the over-arching
theme. On the motif of suretyship, see the Appendix to Benjamin
Nelson's The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal
Otherhood (2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, 1969)
12. I imagine that Jacob's refusal to be consoled over the supposed
death of Joseph is not altogether unlike AchUles' mourning for
Patroclus: Jacob must have realized that he is partly responsible
for Joseph's "being tom."
13. Cf. Deut. 21:15ff: "If a man have two wives, the one beloved and
the other hated, and they have borne Wm children, both the
beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was
hated; then it shall be, in the day that he causes his sons to inherit
that which he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved
the firstborn before the son of the hated, who is the firstborn. But
he shall acknowledge the first born, the son of the hated, by giving
Wm a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstborn of
his strength, the right of the firstborn is his."
14. Cf 30:2, Jacob's angry reply to Rachel's "Give me children or else
I die." Substitution-of a husband or a ruler for God, of a coat for
a man's corpse or for the man, of a signet, cord, and staff for their
owner, of one Israelite for another-appears to me to be one of the
major themes of our story. Indeed, Benjamin Nelson, in the
appendix to The Idea of Usury, points out that within Jewish
tradition the Joseph story became the emblem of the obligation
that any Israelite be willing to serve as stand-in for his fellows.
15. "If anyone sin and commit a trespass against the Lord, and deal
falsely with his neighbor in a matter of deposit or of pledge or of
robbery or have oppressed his neighbor or have found that which
was lost and deal falsely therein and swear to a lie, in any of all
these that a man does, sinning therein, then it shall be, if he has
sinned and is guilty, that he shal; restore that which he took by
robbery or the thing which he has gotten by oppression or the
deposit which was deposited with him or the lost thing which he
found or any thing about which he has sworn falsely, he shall
restore it in full and add the fifth part.... and he shall bring ...a ram
without blemish from his flock .... for a guilt offering to the priest
and the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord and
he shall be forgiven ...."
�40
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
16. I am thinking of Joseph's second dream, how In It his father, the
sun, and his mother, the moon, along with his eleven stellar
brothers bow down before him, he alone being the same Inside
and outside the dream, unsubstituted for; furiher, I am thinking
of his telling this dream, not only to his brothers but also to his
father, who rebukes him (37:10,11). I am also thinking of his
outrageous Insistence on flaunting his status as ihe father's
favorite when he wears that coat of distinction while supposedly
sent on a reconciliation mission to his brothers (37: 14ff; 37:23).
Finally, I am thinking of the message which, at 45:9ff, Joseph
commands his brothers to give to his father: "Hasten ye, and go
up to my father and say to him: Thus says your son Joseph. ..."
17. I owe the suggestion that this was a mission ofreconciliation (along
with a number of other details In my commentary) to Eric
Lowenthal (11te Joseph Narrative in Genesis, Ktav, New York.
1973), though his over-all reading of the Joseph story Is rather
different from mine. Such an Interpretation of what is going on In
37:13 requires that one take stock of the fact that If Jacob had
merely wanted news about ihe flocks he could easily have sent a
servant, that the trip, from Hebron to Schechem, is long and
perilous, and ihat "sending" and "being sent" are !hematic to our
story. This means that I readvs. 37:13in the light of Exodus 3:10.
18. CfProverbs 16:9 ("Man plans his journey by Ws own wit, but it Is
the Lord who guides his steps"), 20:24 ("It Is the Lord who directs
a man's steps; how can morlal man understand the road he
travels?"), and the Player King's lines In Hamlet Act iii scene 2. The
passages from Proverbs are also cited by Gerhard Von Rad, "Die
JosephgescWchte," BibUsche Studien, 5 (Neuklrchener Verlag des
Erziehungsverelns GMBH, 1964). On what this implies, namely,
a double causality, human will and divine redemptive will, see
Maimonldes' Guide to the Perplexed in ii, 48 and Malmonldes'
"Letter on Astrology," Lerner and Mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Cornell, 1963).
19. CfExodus 22:25, Deuteronomy 23:20, Numbers 18:21, Deuteronomy 10:9
I
�I
What is a What-is Question?
Joe Sachs
Once when I was talking to a senior about possible topics for his essay,
he looked around, leaned forward, slid his eyes left and right, dropped
his voice, and said "I'm thinking about writing on ... Wlttgensteln."
That was the most dramatic occasion on which I've been made aware
of a rumor that seems to circulate among some students that there Is
a secret, wicked doctrine that Is concealed from them by some
unknown authority, because to reveal It would be to unmask the fact
that Plato has been refuted. For, so the story goes, Wlttgensteln refuted
Plato.
Now to make the last sentence have any meaning at all, one has to
take the name Plato as shorthand for "Plato's theory of forms." And
what is that? Our dean once gave a lecture called "Plato's theory of
forms," and pointed out that, If the phrase was to refer to anything
that could be found In the clialogues, every word In it, except "of,"
would need to be changed. Let us see what Wlttgensteln's famous
refutation actually refutes. It consists In arguing that the various
things we call games are not all alike. One of them might resemble a
second In some characteristics, but have clifferent characteristics In
common with a third, with pairs of games overlapping in many diferent
ways, so that some two might have no characteristics In common at
all, except for membership In the same extended farnlly. You have your
brother's nose, he has your mother's eyes, she has her grandfather's
forehead, and so on. You are all Smiths, but "Smith" is not a word
with a single meaning. There are people with the Smith chin, others
with the piercing Smith gaze, but there Is no Smithness, and you
would never be tempted to think there was. All there Is that belongs
to all the Smiths Is an array of family resemblances.
Now If Meno had only had the chance to hear talk of family
resemblances, as he had heard about effluences, the clialogue that
Joe Sachs Is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was delivered
at the college in Santa Fe In Aprll of this year and In Annapolis in May.
�42
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
bears Ws name could have been over ln lhree pages-or could lt? How
would we decide when we had a llst of all the relevant characteristics
of all the tWngs called virtues, to be sure there were none common to
them all? And why, when Socrates gives two examples of definitions
of shape (75b, 76a), does he not llst characteristics at all, but set the
thing he's defining as a whole ln relation to something else? And have
you noticed that Socrates never asks a question llke "what is a game?''
He often refers to a game called draughts, which footnotes tell us is
something like checkers, but only as a way of sharpening by contrast
the meaning of the thing he is interested in at any time. And in the
Lysis, in which some friends have been wrestling, he does not use the
occasion to ask about wrestling or playing, but about friendshlp.
There is a memorable occasion ln the Parmenides when the old
phllosopher tells the young Socrates that he is not yet completely
ph!losophlc (130e), just because he wants to inquire not about dirt
but about the just and the beautiful. By that standard, Socrates at
the age of seventy had still not grown up as a philosopher. Plato never
stated a theory of forms for Wittgenstein or anyone else to refute, but
Socrates often resorted to the hypothesis that there are invisible looks
that belong to intelligible things. If we want to understand what he
meant, we have to pay some attention to when he turned to this
hypothesis, how he followed it up, and what he was looking for on
such occasions. Wittgenstein and others like him tell us to look to the
use of a word, if we want to find Its meaning. Socrates uses the word
etdos only when he has ftrst asked what something ls, and he does
not ask that question Indifferently about anything and everythlng. We
have to ask, what guides the asking of the what-is question?
But where should we begin? You have read dialogues that take aim
at virtue, rhetoric, and justice, to mention only the first lhree on the
list. But something odd happens in each of them. The inquily aimed
at virtue seems to concentrate instead on what learning Is, the one
that asks about rhetoric shifts to a relentless asking of the question,
what ls the best life?, and the tmmense dialogue about justice seems
to encompass everything In the world, but especially the question of
what would be the best possible education. Like our own seminars,
the conversations of Socrates never seem to keep to the opening
questions, so before we've gotten anywhere with the question of what
Socrates chooses to ask about, we already have to worry about why
hls questions don't seem to stick. Like the statues of Daedalus that
Socrates mentions near the end of the Meno (97d-e), they seem to get
up and run away, though perhaps they do not altogether escape, but
try to lead us somewhere.
�SACHS
43
This fact, that Socrates' own what-is questions always tum out to
be about something else than the thing they were first asked about,
Is to me the most Important and revealing thing about them. We Will
return to this soon, but first it turns out that the easiest place to begin
looking at the what-Is question Is in a dialogue in which Socrates does
not lead the discussion. In that dialogue there is someone else who
has a methodical way of proceeding with such questions, and he never
lets the original topic run away, but keeps battering at It so directly
that it Is soon Impossible to tell what It Is. I am speaking of the Sophist
, a dialogue in which the Eleatic Stranger learns before our eyes how
to ask what something is, not by witnessing or Imitating Socrates, but
by the reliable method of trial and error. He starts out the dialogue as
a disciple ofParmenldes, and in the course oflt discovers, and displays
to us, that Parmenldes was wrong about who and what are most truly
philosophic.
In the first half of the dialogue he presents the orthodox
Parmenldean line, that there Is a universal method for getting knowledge, applicable indifferently to any topic, that cares no more about
the art of the general than about the art of removing lice (227a-b).
Topics of inquiry do not count for philosophy; logical structures do.
Philosophic discipline requires purging ourselves of any motive to care
about any one thing more than any other. Once we are pure, disembodied logicians we can begin to learn. Now you may think this Is what
Socrates himself says In the Phaedo , but one shouldn't decide too
quickly what It means to say that philosophy Is nothing but the
practice of dying and being dead (64a). For one thing, in both the
Symposium and the Republic, Socrates likens philosophy to erotic love
(210a-d, 474c-475c). But one only needs to take one step back from
the Phaedo Itself to see that even there the questions about philosophy, dying, and being dead are not dispassionate but urgent ones.
Socrates rebukes his friends for their grief over his dying (117c-e), but
that Is only because he wants to harness all that powerful feeling to
what he.calls keeping the logos alive (89b). Phaedo reports that those·
present were never far from laughter or tears, and spent the whole day
in the grip of an unaccustomed experience he calls wonder (58e-59a).
The philosophic approach of the Eleatic Stranger Is too methodical,
too patient, too relentless to let wonder or desire get in Its way.
The Stranger has a technique for moving from a word to the thing
meant by It (218b fl), a universal strategy for capturing what anything
is, the method of division. It begins by casting a net, finding some
general class of things that the looked-for thing must necessarily
belong to. Then, to shift the metaphor, it begins quartering the field,
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
always dividing the class before it in two. Why should there not
sometimes be a division into three parts? Because the power of logic
is greatest where contradictories are concerned. The two parts of any
division must be made in such a way that anything in the world must
be found in one or the other of them. Black and white is an inappropriate division of colors, but black and not-black form a pair of classes
that include everything there is, not even restricted to colors, since
there is no possible middle ground between them into which anything
could slip. To locate anythihg in one side of such a division, it is only
necessary to assure oneself that it cannot be in the other side. In
practice one might fail to make all divisions exhaustive and mutually
exclusive, but it is never a very difficult matter to correct them. The
method is as simple as it is universal. And if something is in the
original class, and repeatedly narrowed down into smaller and smaller
sub-classes, mustn't one eventually reach a class that includes it and
nothing else? I think the answer has to be yes: the Stranger's method
is infallible. But one only needs to read the dialogue to see that the
Stranger's method fails. How can this be? We have just endorsed the
law of contradiction, and now we find that something infallible fails.
The problem, though, is not a collapse of logic, but a misapplication
of it. Doctors can't be expected to make shoes, and logicians are not
philosophers. The ancient Eleatic school and the modem analytic one
are victims of the same mistake.
The Stranger's method of division is too logical in the sense that it
is nothing but logical. It is a mechanical repetition of a logical
procedure; point it in a new direction and start it up again, and it will
grind on to a new conclusion. Ask it which of the two conclusions one
should choose, and it is silent, because it can only get its teeth into
contradictory alternatives, but its own products can never contradict
one another. The infallibility of the method is its vice, because it will
always succeed in telling you what something is, no matter how often
it has already given you different answers to the same question. I will
remind you what the sophist turned out to be: he was a hunter of the
children of the rich, a businessman who trafficked in wisdom as either
a manufacturer, traveltng merchant, or local retailer, a professional
athlete whose sport was debate, and a purifier of souls, who opened
the posssibility of!earning by refuting the mistaken opinion of knowledge. The Stranger calls this result unsound (232a), but it is not
mistaken. My summary of the six definitions already shows how to
reduce them to four, since the retailer, traveling salesman, and
manufacturer differ in only incidental ways, and perhaps we could get
them down to three by saying that hunting for customers is subordi-
�SACHS
45
nate to the purpose of transacting business with them, but now we
are stuck. The sophist has to make money out of his teaching, has to
be able to win arguments, and has to have an effect on his students
that changes the opinions they already had. But what is he really
after-money, victory, or the betterment of his students? Tell me
please, by logic alone, how to answer that question. In fact I already
went outside the bounds of the Stranger's method when I said that
the first four definitions could be reduced to one because they all had
the same purpose. End~ and means can be distinguished by human
beings, but not by means of logic.
From the standpoint oflogic, it has to be purely arbitrary to decide
whether the sophist is most properly considered a businessman, an
athlete, or a healer of souls. From the standpoint of anyone who might
consider entrusting the education of a son or daughter to him, it is
the only question that matters. ''What Is a sophist?" is not answered
by a list of characteristics that specify membership in classes. It is
only answered when we know which of those characteristics govern
the rest, and make someone a sophist. How do we decide that? I don't
know of any recipe, and I don't see how any answer to the question
can be without risk of error. We have crossed over from the safe domain
oflogic to something called philosophy, and we have done so at exactly
the same place that the Eleatic Stranger did. Not only was a swarm of
definitions of one thing an unsound result, but the sixth definition of
the sophist in particular outraged the Stranger as a human being
(23la). It seemed to give the sophist more honor than he deserved. In
trusting his own desire to do justice, the Stranger abandons his
principle that the method of the logos must honor lice-pickers and
generals equally. He understands that abandoning his neutrality
means giving up Parmenides as his spiritual father (24ld), and that
plunges him into the deepest questions about being and not-being.
The dialogue seems to tell us that we can't find out what anything is
unless we are willing to ask-that means abandon all our present
opinions about-what everything is.
Let us step back and try to understand what has happened. Does
the what-is question ask for a definition of a word? If so, there could
not be so much at stake in asking it, and there would be nothing wrong
with arbitrarily picking one definition out of many as long as everyone
involved in the conversation understood it and agreed to it. But the
Stranger made clear from the beginning that the point was not to draw
lines around a word but to leave the word behind and find the thing
meant. The definition is what makes the thing what it is. That in turn
means that there must be something else involved with the thing on
�46
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which we focus the question. We think of a definition as an identity,
a group of words that can be substituted for a single word, but in the
dialogues of Plato the what-Is questions that are asked are always
looking beyond the things asked aboutto their rootedness In the whole
of things. What defines virtue? Not any group of words, but the nature
of human beings. And what defines the sophist? According to the
Stranger, when he has broken loose from Parmenldes and is free to
be Socratic, It Is the nature of being itself, an irreducibly twofold
structure that allows for the possibility of Images. The Socratic what-Is
question Is always the question about how things are, asked In so
radical a way that It permits no ready-made opinions to remain as
crutches.
Now it is possible to arrive at this kind of questioning from any
starting point, but it is also easy to see why Socrates only asks the
what-is question about certain kinds of things. There has to be some
issue that matters enough to us to make It worthwhile to call Into
question all the safe opinions on which we base our lives. Parmenides
had It exactly backwards when he told Socrates that philosophy
requires a studied indifference to its topics. Philosophy can only be
about what matters to us. This also explains a common phenomenon,
that the asking of the what-Is question makes other people laugh.
Martin Heidegger, at the beginning of a book called What is a Thing?,
suggested that philosophy could be defined as that at which menial
servants laugh. The snobbishness of his remark is out of place and
obscures his Insight. Someone who does not care about the thing In
question can't see the point of suspending his prejudices, and he is
as likely to be a professor as a servant. But it Is even more important
that this very laughter wears two faces, for It need not be the smug
self-congratulation of the unexamined life, but can also be the spontaneous childlike delight we all take In the sudden appearance of
wonder.
Indifference seems to be the only reaction one cannot have to a
philosophic question, If one Is aware of it at all. And the fear that the
presence of desire will destroy our "objectivity" Is misplaced. First of
all. In the new landscape opened by the experience of wonder we lose
the familiar landmarks by which our desires are ordinarily steered.
What we thought we wanted may lose Its appeal. Achilles and Priam
gaze at each other In wonder, and no longer wish each other dead.
Second, the power of wonder takes us beyond vanity, so that selfishness itself can make us give up cherished but worthless opinions.
Gorglas and Thrasymachus, two of the vainest humans one could
Imagine, become absorbed in following the arguments of Socrates and
�SACHS
47
each spends a long time willing not to be the center of attention. And
finally, objectivity is static, while desire is dynamic, so if philosophy
Is an activity In which we can be changed, only desire can set It In
motion and keep It In motion. In Plato's portrait of him, the old
Parmenldes Is reluctant to get Involved In a philosophic discussion,
and compares himself to an old racehorse with no desire to run, and
to an old man falling In love, with no desire to feel desire (137a).
Now there Is another character in the dialogues who Is even less
able to move and change than is Parmenides, and whose very name
means standing-still or staying-In-place, and this Is Meno. Let us look
at the Meno to see an example of how Socrates asks and answers a
what-Is question. That's right, I said "answers," and I am not referring
to the lame conclusion that virtue comes by divine lot. Socrates himself
discounts this result as one In which no trust can be put because It
evades the true question about virtue (lOOb). All the energy of the
dialogue is In Its first half, before Meno finally and irrevocably digs In
his heels (86c-d). !tis in that first half of the dialogue that I claim that
Socrates in fact answers the question about virtue, not by giving it a
genus and specific difference or any such neat package that we can
thoughtlessly carry away, but by sketching a first approach to an
answer that would carry the inquiry to a new plane if anyone paid
enough attention to notice It, and made enough of an effort to follow
It up. Of course Meno Is not the person to do either of those things,
and no one else present steps forward, as often happens In other
dialogues. But the dialogue remains alive for us to enter into, and
when we have gotten past our first exasperation over the fact that
Socrates won't tell us anyihing, but only ask more and more questions
and claim total ignorance, we can begin to notice that he does make
some dtrect assertions.
One of the strongest of these occurs just before the discussion
breaks down, and Socrates says he would fight for it in word and deed
(86b-c). That Is the conviction that Inquiring all by Itself makes us
better and braver people. Doesn't that have to mean that self-directed,
philosophic learning is at least one way that at least some virtues are
acquired? Now that may seem to be a weasely, Meno-like claim that
falls to tell us what virtue is, but let's look more closely at exactly what
Socrates says. He says that by believing one needs to Inquire after the
things one doesn't know, we are better, more man-like, and less inert.
There are three surprising words here that probably don't quite match
your memory of the passage. Socrates does not say that the belief in
question leads us to become better, but that merely believing It, we
already are better. But in what respects, exactly, are we better? Now
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
all of you know that the topic of the dialogue, virtue or excellence, is
arete, and that it is related to the words aner, man, and andreios,
manly or brave. But Socrates avoids by a fraction of a milllmeter saying
that believing in the need to inquire makes us more manly, andreioteros; instead, he uses the word andrikoteros, more man-like. And
finally, the second way that we are better is by being less inert, less
argos. You may recall that in the Odyssey, Odysseus has an old dog
named Argos, who recognizes him after his twenty-year absence. If
you are like me, you wonder, when you read it, why Odysseus's dog
has the name of Agamemnon's city, but it doesn't. Argos is a common
adjective meaning lazy, a contraction of a-ergos, inert.
So while it is surprising that in the mere believing of something we
are already better people, these are two very weak sorts of goodness
that Socrates gives us credit for. We are less like lumps of rock, and
more nearly resemble men. But even this approach to virtue has
far-reaching implications. F1rst, what does masculinity have to do with
virtue? Just because a connection between them is built into a
language, no speaker of the language is compelled to accept it, but to
Meno that connection is the whole story. Meno's various efforts to say
what virtue is add up to a fairly simple and coherent picture. Virtue
in its strongest and most proper sense can belong only to men, and
to them only in the prime of life and when not enslaved (7le); these
manly fellows have the power to help their friends and hurt their
enemies, for what else is human excellence but the ability to rule other
people (73c-d)? He later adds that the man of virtue will help himself
to gold and silver, as well as to honors and offices, since these are the
beautiful things that give delight (77b, 78c-d). But instead of admiring
this lovely picture, Socrates keeps raising picky objections. The most
persistent one is whether any action can be good without temperance
and justice (73a-b, d, 78d), but the first one is whether a woman who
acted in the same way would be any less excellent than a man (72d-e).
Meno, when compelled to, pays lip service to both of these pieties, but
never shows any sign of believing them. But it is equally clear that
Socrates is talking about a simply human excellence that has no bias
toward the male. His claim is an equal-opportunity insult: none of us
knows how to live well. When he says we need to be more man-like he
means more like human beings. We are none of us what we are born
to be and meant to be.
Now I am not claiming to get all this out of one slightly unexpected
adjective, but that adjective confirms a theme that is present in most
of the dialogues. Socrates is always comparing the virtues to humble
arts like shoemaking. This makes some people climb the walls, notably
�SACHS
49
Callicles in the Gorgias (490e-49la). Why is Socrates so insistent
about this comparison? We come into the world without shoes, as
Socrates himself displays, but we are not condemned to go barefoot
and vulnerable If someone has taken the trouble to develop the
capacity to fit us with shoes. Shoemaking is in us as a possibility, but
it takes work and at least a little thought to get it out into the world.
I think the meaning of Socrates' constant comparison is this: If we
thought even as much about how we ought to live as the shoemaker
does about how to protect feet, our lives would be revolutionized. We
have to work to become what we are by birth and by tight, and it is
only in a minority of people who excel the rest of us that we even see
what a human being is. And that is the reason for Socrates' faint praise
when he says that believing in the possibility of!earning already makes
us more nearly human. Without that belief we are as inert as rocks,
as static as Meno.
Meno does explicitly deny that learning is possible (SOd), and he is
literally motionless. He repeats in the center of the dialogue the same
words he had flung at Socrates at the beginning, as though no
conversation had gone on at afl. How like some people we afl know,
Meno is, and how like ourselves. Between his repetitions a spectacular
event has taken place, but spectacles no more than arguments have
power to move him. If he had been sharp enough to see what Socrates
was doing in the slave-boy scene, Meno would have been moved to
anger. Socrates dangles in front of Meno a nonsensical concoction
about priests, priestesses, and reincarnation,just because that's what
it takes to get him interested in anything, which drops out of the
dialogue with hardly a trace, but what Socrates shows to Meno is living
proof that his slave is a better man than he is. Meno is immune to the
insult, but we are meant to look at him and at his slave, and to wonder
at the sight of a world turned upside-down. Socrates shows us that
the splendid Meno is not as much of a human being as is some
nameless piece of property that he owns and orders around. Now I am
not claiming that the slave is a model of excellence. All he does is try
to understand something, recognize that he doesn't, and try again,
and all Socrates claims is that this is a motion away from the inert
and toward the human. The understatement is breathtaking, and is
typically Socratic. Remember that the two arts Socrates most often
praises and recommends as models of the virtues are shoemaking and
medicine, and that Socrates himself has no use for either of them. But
even that much art would mend our lives.
Let us sum up what this reading of the Meno amounts to. It says
that virtue is activity that brings out our properly human capacities,
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that learning either is that activity or inevitably accompanies it, and
that merely believing that learning is necessary and possible is the
start of the acquisition of virtue. What would Socrates say about this
formulation? He has in fact given us a standard to test it by, in his
two sample definitions of shape as the only thing that always turns
out to follow along with color, and as that to which a solid reaches, or
the determining boundary of a solid (75b, 76a). He tells Meno he would
love to hear even that sort of statement of what virtue is, and ours
does in fact resemble it. It appears that virtue is the only thing that
always turns out to accompany learning, and is that toward which
human activity reaches, the determining boundary of human nature.
This sort of answer is nothing one can rest with; in fact it is a destroyer
of rest, an invigorating answer that won't let us stand still. But it
explains why the clialogue that asks what virtue is dwells on what
learning is. And it gives us more ammunition to understand Meno
himself.
When Meno won't pause even for a second to think about the
definitions of shape, Socrates accuses him of hubris. Now the root
sense of this word applies to a horse that won't accept confinement.
Any question Socrates asks, anything definite that needs to be thought
about, Meno jumps over like a fence. He will not stay within any
determining boundary that would permit learning, and therefore
inevitably stays within his ignorance. And twice later (SOB, 81E),
Socrates calls him panourgos, someone who will do anything, in the
sense of stop at nothing, a shameless and unscrupulous man. When
Meno wants something, he takes the shortest route to it, without
stopping to wonder what he does to himself in the process. So he
misses the mark of properly bounded human activity on both sides:
in doing anything he can do nothing. He is panowyos and argos at
the same time, since he has not begun to think about which desires
he ought to satisfY, and has left himself helpless in the one arena in
which his boldness and eagerness would have been of some use to him.
The clialogue is so far from falling to say what virtue Is, that it says
it in a strong positive statement of conviction by Socrates, in the
negative example of Meno, the tiny beginner's example of his slave,
and, we have to add, the ever-present positive example of Socrates
himself. But none of these are explicit statements. Why is the clialogue
so indirect, inexplicit, and tantalizing? The fact that it is never
straightforwardly explicit means that we readers have to do all the
work, though Plato has handed us all the necessary tools. In the case
of this clialogue, we will only see what it says virtue is Ifwe begin enact
it ourselves, to learn it without being instructed. I said earlier that the
�SACHS
51
what-is question is never about a word. To anyone who has experienced such a question, the suggestion that it asks how a word is used
Is simply childish. We looked at one side of the what-Is question when
we saw that It asks how a thing Is defined, how It fits In with all that
Is. But It Is equally true that the very asking of such a question begins
to define us, to shape us and work us into new beings, launched into
learning.
But we seem not to .have said anything about the eidos of virtue.
At Meno's first attempt to speak about virtue, Socrates told him to
keep an eye on some one look that is the same In all virtues, however
many and various they might be. We have gotten as far as to say that
vtrtue always has the look oflearnlng, and to see that learning Itself
does not look like Meno's ability to quote from teachers and poets, but
does look like his slave's honest puzzlement and at the same time like
Socrates' energetic questioning. But this Is far from being able to see
what makes all virtue what it is. We are about as far along that road
as the slave-boy Is in geometry. Socrates describes that condition as
being on the borderline between knowledge and opinion, in just the
way we are at the moment we are awakened out of a dream (85c). The
slave, and we, could easily go back to sleep. In the Republic especially,
Socrates keeps cautioning that philosophy is a long road and hard
work (435d, 504b-d, 515e). The dialogues as a whole are only concerned with Its first step, the transition from sleep to waking, and they
do have the amazing power to set us in motion, but where we go after
that Is up to us.
But we can sketch out some directions we might choose to take.
For example, how should we think of the relation between a broader
form such as virtue and a narrower one such as justice? This probably
sounds like a silly question. Virtue Is obviously a genus of which
justice is one species; broad classes contain all sorts of smaller
sub-classes. But It is not a good idea to be hasty In matters of this
sort, and what seems obvious here is not at all necessary. The idea of
classes is one of the ways that logic can trlvialize philosophy. It is
precisely the mistake of the Eleatic Stranger to think that what is
looked for by the what-Is question can be trapped In classes without
being understood. The sophist does belong to the class of hunters,
and to that of salesmen, and to that of athletes, and so on, but that
is just the trouble. Every characteristic he has assigns him to some
class, and every one of them says something about him, but that
doesn't mean we can assume that they say what he Is. Some of those
classes he belongs to are merely parts of what he Is as a sophist, and
others are Incidental to what he primarily Is.
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But suppose we found some characteristic or cluster of them that
was both necessruy and sufficient to his being a sophist. Because of
Its necessity, every sophist would have to be In that class, and because
of Its sufficiency, everything In that class would have to be a sophist.
You will be surprised to hear that this Is not good enough either. It
would give us a test by which we could unfailingly Identify sophists,
but It still might not reveal what they are. How Is that possible? Think
of any proposition In Ew;lid about triangles, the more obscure the
better. I choose I.20, but' any one will do. In any triangle, two sides
tsken together in any manner are greater than the remaining one. Now
because this Is a proven proposition, It Is necessruy, and If Its steps
are reversible, which I think they are, It Is also sufficient to determine
a triangle. So as a good logician, I define trisngle as that of which two
sides tsken together In any manner are greater than the remaining
one. This Is an Infallible marker for a class that contains all triangles
and only triangles, yet It completely misses the point of defining
something, which Is to reveal what It Is.
.
In order to think about anything worthwhile, we have to abandon
the picture of classes nested within classes, and both Plato and
Aristotle In fact did that. Plato really did have a theory of forms, but
It Is nothing like what Is meant by virtually everyone who uses that
phrase nowadays. The thing that Wittgensteln is said to have refuted,
Plato had already refuted, In a more complex way. Plato's own theory
arose out of difficulties like the one I mentioned a moment ago: How
should we think of the relation between virtue and virtues? In the
Protagoras, Socrates asks whether justice, moderation, and so on are
not lnstsnces of virtue but parts of one whole, as the mouth, nose,
eyes, and ears are parts of one face (329d). And this Is a common
theme In the dialogues, as Socrates always seems to force people,
against common sense, to conclude that courage or justice or temperance Is Impossible In Isolation from the rest, and from wisdom. They
are as different from one another as eyes are from a mouth, and putting
them together does not blend them into a homogeneous mixture. Why
then shouldn't someone be brave while being unjust, intemperate, and
stupid? But If Socrates' suggestion Is tempting to you at all-If you
suspect that real bravery Is possible only In someone who Is just and
temperate and wise-then you have a tough problem on your hands.
It used to be called the problem of the one and the many. Aristotle
reports that Plato solved It by postulating that each form Is put
together In the way a number Is (Metaphysics 987b 21-2). Four Is not
something that belongs to each of Its units, but only to all of them
together. But the forms are not mathematical numbers, with identical
�SACHS
53
units, but are complexes of other forms, each distinct from the rest,
but impossible outside the complex. That means we can't stmply add
up wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, because none of them
is anything at all in isolation from the rest. Wherever courage, say, is
found, virtue as a whole is already in play. But we can't get at virtue
itself, apart from the virtues, because it is nothing but the being-together of them all.
We know about this theory of Plato's only because Aristotle tells us
about it, and because that permits a kind of hindsight to be applied
to a few very obscure passages in the dialogues. Jacob Klein and
Robert Williamson have been inspired to make partial reconstructions
of it. • I mention it only to show that the technical and labortous side
of philosophy is as much a field for tmagination and wonder as is the
beginning of philosophy, when the what-is question first takes hold.
And I can report on yet another road one might take in the same
pursuit. Aristotle follows his teacher's lead in many more respects
than is usually seen, but in this one he charts a new course. It begins
with the observation that we call something medical, for example, in
a vartety of ways (Metaphysics, Bk.IV, ch. 2). There is a medical knife,
a medical book, a medical degree, a medical procedure, and a medical
person. Only in the last case is the word used in its prtmary sense, as
indicating the presence of a certain kind of knowledge and skill. The
knife is an instrument of that skill, the book one of the causes of it,
the degree a sign ofit, and the procedure an act or effect ofit. Whenever
something other than a human being is called medical, it is meant in
a dertvative sense that points to the primary one. This structure of
meaning operates everywhere, and again, Aristotle is not interested in
the way words are used, except as a pointer to the causal structure of
the world. And yet again, it is not the structure ofspecies within genus
within higher and higher general classes that reveals anything about
the world, but a more complex and intimate pattern that could never
be found by logic alone.
For example, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle asks a question he says
was asked in ancient times and must always be asked and struggled
with (l028b 2-4), what is being? By the end of the seventh book of
that work, he has determined that being is meant in its prtmary and
• Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Tiwught and the Origin of Algebra (M.I.T.
Press, 1968), Ch. 7, c. Robert B. Williamson, "Eidos and Agatlwn In Plato's
RepubUc," In FourEssays on Plato's "Republic, "Vol. XXXIX (1989-90), numbers
1 and 2, of this magazine.
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proper sense only of animals, plants, and the cosmos as a whole. They
are the only things that are in their own right, and everything else is
in some way derivative from them. Now this goes far beyond anything
present in linguistic usage. Language doesn't even know that it is
saying "being" in more than one way, but misleads us by appearing
to collapse them all into one. Aristotle is correcting the language by
discovering complexity where it suggests simplicity. Hls thinking is
moving entirely among the things at which language points, and points
in an inadequate way. Butit is a much greater step to single out active,
organized, self-maintaining wholes as the only things in our experience that display being as such. Language claims that title equally
and indifferently for tables, rocks, flowers, wood, bones, and all sorts
of other things that Aristotle thinks are only beings of the second rank,
beings-by-courtesy, derived from and dependent on those few things
that are always at-work-staying-the-same. Butwhatlfthe true beings
themselves have sources and causes? If they do, then the same pattern
continues, and even the primacy beings in our experience are derivative beings in the true order of things. This is exactly what Aristotle
concludes, as he follows the causal order upward to forms, and then
to the being-at-work offorms, and fmally to the divine intellect. Being
is not the class that includes evecything indifferently, but the activity
that proceeds from one source to the organized whole of all things.
Beings belong to a complex pattern that points to the highest being.
Now this pattern of one primacy meaning that governs the rest is
found everywhere in Aristotle's writings, but even it does not serve as
a method of lnqutcy for him. When he asks, in the NicomacheanEthics,
what is the good?, he seems to conclude that the various goods are
not linked by derivation from one primacy good, but are all the same
by analogy (1096b 27-30). That means that the human good has to
be a separate topic of lnqulcy, not found by derivation from a higher
good. Thomas Aquinas, lncidentslly, uses the word "analogy'' to refer
to the other pattern of meanings derived from one primacy instance, ·
but for Aristotle it makes a great difference which of the two patterns
is at work. For example, when we speak of a healthy diet, we mean
one that contributes to the health of an animal; it is not the diet but
the animal that can be healthy ln the primacy and governing sense.
But suppose we speak of a healthy society? Do we mean one ln which
the people are physically fit and free of disease, or one in which the
people co-operate in a way analogous to the parts of a healthy animal
body? The former would be a case of meaning by derivation, the latter
one of meaning by analogy. Aristotle's inquiries are guided by the
�SACHS
55
things for which they are looking. and do not seek to fit those things
into ready-made patterns of any kind.
In fact, in the Physics there is yet a third and most surprising
structure, that has only recently begun to become evident to me.
Aristotle asks what motion is, and gives an answer that applies to four
kinds: change of being, qualitative change, quantitative change, and
change of place. The definition seems to apply most directly to the first
two kinds. but the Physics Is organized around a progressive narrowIng down of all change to change of place, as the primary motion. The
number of kinds of motions is reduced In stages from four to three to
two to one. But the primary motion involves the least change, while
the primary change is the one that turns out to be least properly called
a motion. Change and motion name the same four kinds of action in
two opposite ways, so that the upward scale of motions is ·.he
downward scale of changes, with birth and death at one enr'. and
change of place at the other. This in tum reflects the twofold nature
of nature, as life and cosmos, in which Aristotle permits both sides to
be primary at the same time. One recent book about the Physics claims
that the early definition of motion Is discarded when the later books
are reached, but in fact that understanding of change In terms of
potency and being-at-work remains dominant, even while the motion
that displays it least Is being found to be the primary motion. in the
eighth chapter of the last book of the Physics there is a final demonstration of what Is wrong with Zeno's paradoxes that brings the
definition of motion to the forefront, and shows that all motion must
be understood as change, even at the limit of mere change of place,
and that all change must be rooted in the potency that goes with the
nature of some being. The meaning of motion, and its relation to
change, are imbedded in the way this world is organized. To get the
structure of meaning straight is to come into sight of the way things
are. In this case that produces a paradox beyond any that Zeno
imagined, a structure in which two things are simultaneously prior to
and derivative from one another.
So what is a game? Perhaps there is some common element present
in everything we call a game. Perhaps there is not, and they only share
a set of family resemblances. I can't work up enough interest in the
topic to form an opinion about it. All I can say is that, as far as my
own experience goes, there is no what-Is question there at all. But
what is virtue, or motion, or the good, or being itself? Reading Plato
and Aristotle has made it obvious to me that these are questions I have
a stake in pursuing, and has drawn me into the pursuit. The briefest
of sketches have shown us four different structures by which the one
�56
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
thing asked about might be related to the many things called by Its
name, none ofwhich Is as crude as either of the two alternatives about
games. To recapitulate them: the one thing In question might be
composed of the very things that are derived from It; It might be the
primary Instance to which all the others point; It might be an Internal
relation, present In the many things by way of analogy; and It might
be part of a bi-polar relationship, In which It and something akin to It
jointly govern a group of things that bear both of their names.
Aristotle's lnqulrles along the path of the what-is question are so
diverse, and the theory he attributes to Plato Is so unexpected, that
we are in no danger of becoming Platonlsts or Aristotelians. Even If we
wanted to, where Is the method to follow, or the procedure to Imitate?
Philosophy of a Platonic or Aristotelian kind Is nothing but activity
stimulated by the what-Is question, opened and re-opened In wonder,
led by desire, full of hard work but more enlivening than tiring, offering
not doclrlnes and dogmas but wide-open possibilities, as broad as the
human capacities we are so likely to leave unused and Inert.
�Words Should Be Hard
Words should be hard to come across,
As odd ones are in ancient manuscripts.
Let's take the appellation of your lips.
It shouldn't be reachable with ease. We first
Should have to search, and even then
Be sent from stem to root in the lexicon.
As for the kiss itself, the elusive bird
Should lurk in the glossary of highly
Irregular verbs. For, after all,
As the antic distich says, it's in that act
That the soul (poor thing) desires to cross over.
Elliott Zuckerman
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Anselm's Proslogion
and its Hegelian Interpretation
Adrtaan Peperzak
translated by Steven Werlln
To Paul Ricoew-, as a sign
ofgratitude and admiration.
1. Hegel on Anselm
St. Anselm is the only philosopher of the middle ages whom Hegel
discusses seriously in his lectures on the history of philosophy. Hegel
also devotes important pages to Anselm in his lectures on the philosophy of religion, especially in the Introduction to the main part-which
deals with religion that is Christian or "absolute"-where he explains
the credo ut intelUgam (I believe in order to understand).' There are
two main reasons for Hegel's interest:
(1) In contrast to those of his colleagues in theology and philosophy
who proclaim at every turn that the human mind cannot know God,
let alone prove his existence, Hegel believes that genuine faith does
not merely permit, but even requires, the believer to seek to understand rationally what he believes.
(2) According to Hegel, Anselm's proof of the existence of God,
presented in the Proslogion, is an expression--clumsy though it might
be-of the heart of all philosophy and all theology that deserves to be
called an absolute science.
It is more than probable that when Hegel dealt with the argument
that Ansehn makes in the Proslogion he had not read the whole book,
and so did not know the chapters, so important for understanding the
book, In which the author sets out, In a prayer, the emotional context
This essay is a translation of ..Le proslogion d'Anselme apres Hegel, .. which
appeared in the Archivio di Filosojla, Anoo LVIII (1990).
Adriaan Peperzak holds the Arthur J. Schmitt chair in Philosophy at Loyola
University of Chicago. Steven Werlto, an alumnus of St. Joho's College,
Anoapolis, Is his sludent.
�60
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
within which thought must move in order to att:am a cert:am understanding of God. In fact, all the quotations that Hegel offers to his
students are taken from Tennenman's History of Phllosophy. That
book makes no clear reference to the Indissoluble union between the
religious sentiment, expressed in chapters 1, 14, 16-18, 22, and
24-26, and the work of the understanding presented in the context of
prayer. Without a sense of that union, Hegel interprets the Proslogion
as though it were a thematic discourse, comparable to the philosophical treatises of modems such as Spinoza, Leibnlz, and Kant.
But the Hegelian interpretation is dominated not only in its form,
but also in its content, by the perspective of eighteenth-century
philosophy, notably by Kant. Hegel does not give a precise analysis of
the concept that Anselm starts out from, namely id quo malus cogitarl
nequit (that than wWch a greater cannot be thought). instead, Hegel
declares that concept to be equivalent to a number of different
expressions: to "the concept of the most perfect" and "the universe of
reality'' (der Inbegri.ff der Realttl.it and das Allgemeine der Realitdt)expressions which suggest the omnitudo realitatts (totality of reality)
of Leibnlz and Kant-and, on the other hand, to "the thought of a
highest" (der Gedanke eines Hochsten) and to "the Wghest thought"
(der hiichste Gedanke).
But even if Hegel did not know the framework that Anselm introduces his argument within wWch there is nevertheless a surprtsing
resemblance between their conceptions of what Hegel calls the "proofs
of the existence of God." Hegel tells us, in Ws Lectures on the Proofs of
the Existence of God, that any such proof is nothing but a way of
conceptualizing "the rising of the Spirit towards God" (ein denkendes
Au.ffassen dessen. was die Erhebung des Geistes zu Gott ist).2 In trying
to take in what is true in the various proofs, Hegel starts from Christian
faith, just as Anselm had, in order to comprehend what that faith has
testified. For Hegel, if the attempt is to succeed, the comprehension
that it reaches must include the necessity of its conclusion, and to ·
this end, the hypothesis the conceptualization starts from must show
itself to be a self-evident truth. For him, Anselm's great discovery is
that the content of the concept from which he deduces the necessary
existence of God does not have any foundation except itself. Even If it
is only taken as the thought of a hypothetical possibility, it imposes
by its own force the necessity of what it hypothesizes. The belief In the
existence of God, which, as an empirical fact, is prtor in time to the
deduction of that existence, is no longer required for knowing that God
exists as God. The proof shows Itself to be a proof a priori, a deduction
of the necessary implications of a pure concept. The task that then
�PEPERZAK
61
remains is the deduction, from the concept of God, of a subjective and
historical expression, which is the Christian faith. Such a deduction
will also show that the initial concept Is at the heart of that emotional
faith which Is prior in time to its assumption.
In fuct, Anselm's argument contains all that is necessary for a
complete philosophy: the concept of the perfect, or of God, is nothing
but the concept of the Logos (or of "the Logical"-das Logische-as
Hegel often says), which includes within itself all being and all thought.
The argument, which can rightly be called "onto-logical," is only a way
of proving that the Logos, or God, is the absolute identity of thought
and being, the first and the last, the foundation and the end of all that
is and all that is thought.
For Hegel, like Anselm, faith has an emotional side. But Hegel goes
much farther than Anselm, thinking as he does that the essence of
faith lies in its emotional form and that its contents are identical to
the theological science that one discovers in transforming emotional
adherence into rational knowledge. Although the truth of reason does
not depend on faith, faith is not superfluous: insofar as humans have
knowledge, they must also express truth in the emotional side of their
lives. A complete philosophy would also have to undertake analyses
of the representational, imaginary, and narrative dimensions offaith,
but in order to be brief I limit myself to its emotional aspect.
Like Hegel, Anselm trusts the power of reason to advance the
understanding of what he believes. We shall see, however, that he is
also convinced that there is an insurmountable gap between God as
he reveals himself through a living faith and God as he Is known by
rational thought. Anselm believes that reason can shed light on faith
because he accepts reason as a human means of deepening "the
elevation of his soul in faith towards God." Indeed, reason can
appropriate certain aspects of faith through the clarification of faith
by concepts. And yet, Anselm never uses reason to oppose what he
has received as the truth from the faith of the religious and historical
community that he is at home in.
Hegel does not oppose faith to reason either. He too is convinced
that they cannot contradict each other. He depends on what he calls
a "faith in reason" (Giaube an die Vemtmftl,3 which pretends to more
than Anselm's confidence in reason does. From Anselm's perspective,
we might say that Hegel bets on two different sorts offaith: a faith in
God and a faith In the Reason of Logic. For Hegel himself, however.
these amount to only one faith. God is the Logos; Reason, understood
rightly. is God. Faith is only a temporary way of atiaching oneself to
the truth of the Logos, a truth which better manifests itself when one
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
has understood that the Logos is the "only necessary" thing. Because
religious faith is only reason, as expressed in the human psyche, not
yet "elevated" to the level most adequate to Spirit, Reason is the
supreme measure that faith is subject to. The Logos thus controls and
judges all religious faith, including the faith of the absolute, or
Christian, religion. 'The elevation of the spirit to God" must obey
logical necessities if it is to be fully worthy of God and humanity.
The concept that Anselm begins from in the second chapter of the
Proslogton and that Hegel takes to be the concept of the highest
perfection, is understood by Hegel as the abstract concept of the
absolute: the concept of the idea insofar as this latter is the original
identity of thought and being. His love for Anselm's argument is
understandable: by means of an analysis of the abstract concept of
perfection, the argument shows that the highest thought, the thought
of what is most universal, implies being. Thought and being are, then,
just two aspects of the One, which is also totality. The thought of
perfection is the Infinite. It encompasses not only all finite beings and
thoughts, but also the pseudo-infinite that most theologians contrast
with it. Despite certain blunders, a monk of the middle ages-which
were, for Hegel, very obscure-had surpassed Kant in affirming with
all lucidity the central truth of absolute Idealism: in the identity of
thought and being, the Logos is the Infinite and the Perfect. The Idea
of all ideas, the Essence of all that is, is not surpassed by anything or
any thought. It exists as the beginning and the end, as the meaning
of all that is and is thought.
For Hegel, there are two weaknesses in Anselm's effort:
(l) An adequate proof of his thesis would start either from thought
and show that it includes being or from being and show that it
necessarily implies thought. The difference between the two paths is
the difference between the a priori and the a posteriori proofs of the
existence of God. In either case, the proof would have to begin with
the most objective and necessary sense of thought or being and not
with a particular instance, whether subjective or otherwise contingent. Anselm starts out from the subjective consciousness of a certain
individual who thinks the notion of perfection. He does not begin with
the Logos as it displays itself in a Logic that is universal and necessary.
(2) Anselm limits himself to a phenomenological perspective, but
Hegel shows clearly in the Encyclopedia that such a perspective is not
sufficient for proving that the secret of the universe consists in the
self-realization of the absolute as the spiritual identity of subjectivity
and objectivity. Only (onto)logy, a logic which encompasses all that is,
can prove the thesis which Anselm sketches out in the Proslogion.
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2.Anselm
Now that we have seen how Hegel transforms Anselm's argumentum
untcum into a foreshadowing of post- and anti-Kantian idealism, let
us now see what we can learn from Anselm htmself.
Any interpretation of the "single argument" must begin with a
correct grasp of the framework It exists In, its text and its contexi; so
I will consider these at length. First, I will consider the title of the
Proslogion. It means "allocution," as Anselm remarks in his preface.
He contrasts this aUoqutum with the soliloquiwn. or soliloquy, of the
Monologion. The Proslogion Is thus neither, like the other book, the
meditation of someone "who would seek what he does not know by a
reasoning in the silence of his interior," nor is It a theological or
philosophical treatise. It is a speech addressed to someone. In fact,
the Proslogion Is addressed to many people. Like all writing, it is
addressed to Its readers. This direction is barely mentioned by Anselm.
Anselm also speaks, In many passages, to his soul (anima mea), to his
heart (cor meum), or to the "little man" (homunclo) that he Is. But the
principal addressee is, however, one who is continually present as
though he were someone who hears and intervenes, without making
a sound. It is God-Deus meus, my God, or Dominus meus, my Lord,
or simply Til. The frequent repetition of meus in Deus meus and
Dominus meus shows that the connection which binds Anselm to "his"
God is more intimate than the relation between a philosophical mind
and a theme that it might try to comprehend. The relation between
the writer of the Proslogionand the heart that he exhorts or reproaches
seems to create a distance between the texi and Anselm htmself, but
Anselm undermines this impression by directing himself primarily to
God and by constantly identtJY!ng htmselfwith his soul and with the
homuncio to whom he addresses htmself. The book, oriented as It Is
from the beginning towards God, is a prayer that Anselm's heart
directs towards "his God." All of the arguments and all of the analyses
that arise In the texi are presented as parts of a long prayer, one that
tolerates no distractions.
This prayer is a direct and an utterly natural expression of faith. It
is not subjective-if that word means "arbitrary." On the contrary,
Anselm appeals, in describing its content, to what has been transmitted to him by the historical community that calls itself the "Christian
Church." In Chapter Two he says "credimus," or "we believe." This
community had, In its thousand years, borrowed from the languages
of many cultures in order to translate and interpret the heritage of its
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
faith, a faith which was not particular to any of those cultures, but
was strong enough to redeem them all. One of these languages Is the
language of Hellenistic onto-logy, translated into Latin, which Anselm
found in the works that he read In his abbey. He uses that language
when, after the Invocation at the beginning of Chapter Two, he
reformulates the rock of the Christian faith: "Grant that we might
understand, as much as you think It beneficial, that (quia) you are,
as we believe it, and that you are what (quod) we believe. Now, we
believe that you are something (aliquid) than which one can think
nothing greater."
If we take the understanding (intelllgere or intellectus) that Anselm
seeks to be a synonym for "wisdom," then the prayer seems to carry
on a biblical tradition that is expressed, for example, In the wisdom
literature and in many of the psalms. Anselm then changes the "You"
(credimus te esse) into a "something" (aUquid) that one can only "think"
(cagitare). Is this not a metabasis eis allo genos, a change of kind?
Hasn't Anselm left the biblical tradition in order to adandon himself
to the pagan world of Greek philosophy? Are we confronted once again
by the insurmountable difference between the God of Abraham and
the God of the philosophers?
Anselm's Intent is to show that the God of faith Is the one and only
Lord and God, and that all the value of our life and our Intellect
depends on this single God. Anselm uses a reason that has been
educated by certain great Greek thinkers in order to "understand a
little" (aUquatenus inteUfgere, Chap. 1) that God is what he Is, but he
always maintains his radical and intimate connection with the emotional fountain that springs from desire and hope, and Is the fruit of
religious maturity.
Anselm would firmly deny that there could be a contradiction
between the God of faith and the God of philosophy. He often warns
us not to overestimate the power of the intellect, yet he never deprecates the gift of reason through which man Is seen to have been created
in the image of God.
Although the beginning of the second chapter might suggest that
the faith that Anselm starts from Is a belief in a doctrine composed of
true propositions, this Is not the case. Uke the pistis which Paul
speaks of, Anselm's faith (fides) is, from the start, an utter abandonment and a complete confidence. By God's grace, faith engages the
believer in the practice oflove on the basis of gratitude and joy in hope.
In faith, a life Is seized by an orientation that becomes both a habit
and a disposition of the soul and the body. "God" is thus the name of
the Unique One who orients, penetrates, supports, and consoles even
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before granting a clear consciousness of what he Is bringing about in
the soul.
At the same time, a living faith inevitably deploys Itself in all the
essential dimensions of the human being engaged by It, and so also
In the Intellect, which Is, in Itself, an inclination towards more light.
An authentic believer Is engaged by his faith in an effort to comprehend
what he lives, having received and understood that faith in the
community which heed~ its tradition. Every authentic believer tries In
this way to gain a certain wisdom. If he has learned methods of
reflection, If he has, for example, studied Neoplatonic treatises, he
uses the practical techniques found in those works, orienting them
according to the wisdom that all faith hopes to blossom into. The
Christian faith has never required that the believer be intelligent, or
that he dedicate himself to philosophical or theological studies. Just
like the blind and the deaf, those who are not intelligent are called to
essential wisdom. But if an authentic believer is authentically philosophical, It Is Impossible for his philosophy to be isolated from what
constitutes the deepest Inspiration of his life. His faith inevitably seeks
an understanding of itself along the path of ontology.
The orientation of a life that seeks God, an orientation grounded In
belief and in love, Is thus the moving force of, and the condition for,
the philosophical investigation Anselm proposes to us. The Investigation is not an autonomous enterprise, because belief and love not only
precede it, but also accompany it and support it. It is therefore natural
that the long chapter that opens the investigation consists of a prayer
in which "my whole heart" (totumcormewn) asks God to help, to teach,
to illuminate, and to renew the man who looks up, from his miserable
state of ignorance, in order to see whether, in hope, his God will grant
what he desires. Anselm's project Is In no way apologetic: neque entm
quaero inteUigere ut credam (for I do not seek to understand in order
to believe); he hopes only to acquire or receive a certain understanding:
credo ut inteUigam.
In concentrating on a philosophical task within a prayer, Anselm
tries to link two fundamental attitudes: the more radical of the two Is
that of the faith in which he finds himself naked before the face of his
God. The other Is that of someone who reflects upon God by seeing
him through a thought In which he appears as a theme or an object.
The stake In the enterprise-and this is the stake in all theology that
Is not atheist-Is to know whether these attitudes can be combined.
Anselm's wager Is the hypothesis that the philosophical intentaccording to which God Is manifest as a thought, as something said
thematically----<:an be integrated Into the Intent of prayer. If he sue-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ceeds in it, a believer who is (also) a philosopher will have expressed
his faith by speaking to God about God himself, offering to him the
perspective, the presuppositions, and the means of phtlosophy. Philosophy will have lost its autonomy, but it will have been saved by its
integration into the prayer which fulfills its purpose. While seeming
to reduce God-in the course of his allocution-to a theme, or to
something said, Anselm continually calls him ''You," "my Lord," and
"my God." He speaks to Gqd and offers to him what he thinks of him,
submitting whatever he thinks he knows to God's ultimate judgment.
Anselm's understanding is thus determined by desire and expectation;
he knows and feels that even when his understanding Is made
thematic, his thought Is drawn, guided, and Illuminated by the You
that hears it. The investigation is an exercise in Speaking. and, insofar
as grace has preceded his faith, that Speaking is first and foremost a
way of responding to the one who is his Ufe. The wisdom that he
prepares is discovered to be a gift that fulfills a vision at the heart of
faith. He seeks a concrete knowledge instead of the abstract consciousness and near-Ignorance from which he staried. The God whom
he believes in grants him food for thought. He grants him to think that
very God. As a beginning, God grants him to think God in the form of
a concept that scarcely reveals the tnfinite richness ofwhat he "always
already" is for the heart and the soul of the believer.
The living faith in God is not only the point of departure; it is also,
roughly spreaking, the criterion that allows one to judge whether the
Investigation effectively reaches its end. Faith guides reason all along
Its path. It is, for example, very clearly evident in Chapter Fourteen.
Having proven that God exists as omnipotence, life, truth, justice,
mercy, goodness, and etemi1y themselves, Anselm must note to his
regret that this God, God as (re)presented in the fullest of concepts,
does not correspond to God as he appears prior to all philosophy and
thanks to the experience of faith. The gap between the truth of God
revealed in faith and the truth of God thought by reason Is the gap
between the hidden wisdom of an emotional adjustment to the God
whom one can call "Tu, Deus meus," and the lucid concept of certain
contours of God-a concept that has nonetheless not yet reached its
full completion. Faith is not prevented by any lack of speculative
brilliance from guiding and evaluating the results of philosophy,
whose inner logic obeys only Itself. Without faith, philosophy cannot
find God, because it lacks the perspective and the orientation through
which it can knowwhat direction to search in. Without faith, It cannot
even construct Its initial concept. Without that concept, however,
there can be no beginning and no proof.
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The movement that begins In faith and strives towards a more
illuminated faith here is a process by which an abstract concept
becomes concrete and "fulfills" itself little by little. Where does this
movement lead? Chapters Fourteen and F1fteen show that the doctrine
that can be deduced from the starting point does not so completely
fulfill the concept that the God of thought can be recognized as the
true God of faith.
When Anselm asks, in Chapter Fourteen, whether his "soul" has
found what it sought oy means of the deduced concept-that is, to
know God as it knows him by a faith that has not yet been transformed
Into ontological understanding-he notes that it has not: "that which
Is the highest of all beings, beyond which nothing better can be
thought, which Is life itself(tpsa vita),light, wisdom, goodness, eternal
blessedness, and eternllyutterly happy, and who Is all this everywhere
and always,"ls not the God that the prephilosophical faith recognizes
as its God, the God it prays to and depends upon as Its "creator and
recreator." This discovery plunges the disappointed soul into a crisis,
as much emotional as Intellectual.
The disappointed soul must learn to accept two things If it is to
overcome the depression that threatens It: (l) that the ontological
argument has made the soul see something of its God-"the soul sees
you in a way" even If "It does not see you such as you are" (sicuti es)and (2)-that even this "something," which becomes more visible through
the course of twelve chapters,is still an abstract thought. The logic that
has been uncovered has not yet reached the sense in which the soul
feels that God Is truth and goodness, etemily and blessedness.
The second movement of the Prosl.ogion (Chap. 16-26) Is a new
attempt to identify the God of philosophy with the God offaith. Though
Anselm strongly afllrms their thorough ldentily, he acknowledges In
the last chapter that the utter lucidi1ythat belongs to faith In reference
to Itself remains an ideal that will not be realized on earth. Anselm
seeks the reason for the gap between the two ways In which God
reveals himself In the wretched fate of men as the Inheritors of a
heritage of sin. The tradition of evil (starting with Adam and Cain) that
cuts across the tradition of faith (starting with Abel) plunges us into
a darkness of Ignorance and deformily that we are unable to depart
from entirely. This is to say that we all, believer and unbeliever, carry
the opposite of wisdom at the heart of our existence. We are all fools.
instpientes. We all tell ourselves In our hearts, In one way or another:
Non est Deus. "there Is no God."
What prevents the insipiens from becoming sapiens, or wise?
Anselm asks himself this question at the end of Chapter Three,
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
immediately after he has set out the core of his single argument, thus
surrounding that argument between two quotations of the fool who
says in his heart that there is no God. The fool hears with his ears and
grasps with his consciousness the thought of something than which
nothing greater can be conceived, but he does not realize what this
thought necessarily includes. The concept with which Anselm tries to
formulate the core of what "we believe"-abstract and enigmatic as
that concept is-does not stand, for the fool, as a thesis that affirms
the proposition that existence is contained in the essence signified by
the words he has heard. The fool grasps the (pseudo)definition of God,
but he cannot pass from the reference it contatos to the thing to which
it refers.
Why not? What prevents him from making that transition? If
Anselm is right in saying that the transition is logically impeccable, it
would seem that the fool lacks Intelligence or logical ability. Butifthat
Is where the obstacle lies, then we would have to say that all atheists
are bad at logic and that all those believers who do not see the logical
necessity of the argument are just as foolish and stupid (stultus et
lnsipiens, Chap. 3) as the fool who says there Is no God. In Chapter
Four, which explains why the fool, even while truly "thinking," says
In his heart there Is no God, Anselm makes a distinction that Is already
evident between "thinking the word (voX) that signifies a thing (res)"
and "comprehending what the thing Is," but he does not say why the
atheist Is stupid and foolish enough to deny the connection between
the two. Immediately after his "explanation," however, Anselm thanks
God for having given to him what he sought: the understanding of the
concept that he previously had possessed by faith alone. Thanks to
divine illumination, a "little man," full of darkness, understands that
the abstract concept IQM demands that one transform It Into a phrase
affirming the existence of what Is thought or represented in the
concept. • Apparently, logic alone does not suffice in order to pass from
the abstract concept to the evidence of a concrete thought. But why
Is the the fool unable to pass from the nearly empty concept of God to
Its merely partial fulfillment? What experience or motivation does he
lack?
If we can suppose that the fool is not only the atheist that we find
outside of us, but Is also someone living In our heart, then the answer
to the question seems to be found in the first chapter of the Proslogion,
*IQM is an abbreviation of id quo malus cogitari non potest (that than which a
greater cannot be thought). [Translator]
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where Anselm asks God to grant him the right orientation, the attitude
that will allow him to progress from a blind faith to one that has been
illuminated by the comprehension of its contents. Without God's
assistance, man Is bent over (incW"Vatus) so that he cannot look above.
Anselm writes, "I am not able to look [anywhere] but down" (Chap. l);
without the illumination that comes from the face of God, the eyes of
man remain blind. That Is why the writer asks: "Lift me up, until I am
able to direct my gaze above. •
What humans lack, What prevents them from using philosophical
reflection to Intensify and elucidate their faith In God, is a perspective
that distinguishes between the high and the low, and looks upon the
being of the world In the context of that difference. Instead of speaking
of high and low, one could also speak of more and less, of smaller and
larger, or of better and worse. The need for such a perspective is
evident In the initial concept that Anselm uses to tty to condense the
heart of faith so that It can be thought by anyone. The formula of the
IQM has no meaning-what It Is trying to say cannot be grasped-if
the one who hears It or speaks it does not presuppose that the universe
of being can and must be thought within an ultimate dimension
characterized by the possibility of a gradation In the greatness of
beings. Only then can beings be compared to one another. Anselm's
ontology presupposes both a comparison of different dimensions of
the universe of being and an intuition of the directions In which one
might encounter the greater and the less.
The meaning of "greater" and "less" is not very clear, but it Is In any
case far removed from the emphasis on quantity characteristic of
modern science. If we speak, like many of the commentators, of
qualitative differences, It is a little bit clearer; at least we are made to
see that matus and minus are, In relation to being, supposed to point
to something about value. A reading of all those passages In which
that most fundamental presupposition appears confirms that rnatus,
as It is used in the IQM, refers to what has more value. It Is a synonym
for melius (better). In fact, as early as Chapter Three, without giving
any argument, Anselm passes from the concept of matus In the IQM
to that of melius. He writes: Si enim aliqua mens posslt cogitare aliquid
melius (For if some mind could think something better...) This latter
concept will dominate the rest of the Proslogton.
The perspective that the whole argument rests in Is thus one in
which God is sought by starting from a universe characterized by a
ladder of beings arranged according to their greater or lesser "value,"
"goodness," or "greatness." God is not sought within this universe:
that would be to think him as a being within a dimension that
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
encompasses him. It would then be possible to think of something
greater or to identitY hlm with the totality of all the degrees of being,
that totality which-even If It Is something---surely Is not God. What
Is sought Is something that separates Itself by a "not" from what
thought can (re)present to Itself of what Is greatest.
If this manner of approaching the universe of beings Is a condition
sine qua non for grasping the meaning of the abstract concept that
Anselm offers us, one can understsnd what the fool would need In
order to follow Its deduction. It Is not that the nonbeliever lacks logic,
but that he has no sense of what Is high and what Is low. His world
does not point towards summits, because It Is filled with Indifference.
Neither the nonbeliever's world, nor the nonbeliever himself, has a
radical orientation that directs his life, his actions, and his feelings
towards the height that can awaken, or has already awakened, the
most radical human desire.
Who would not here be reminded of Plato? For him, not only the
psycne and the poUs, but the whole cosrrws, appears as a wonder
within a dimension greater and higher than the essence and the being
of ideas-within the dimension dominated by the agathon. The
agathon Is neither a being nor an essence, nor an idea among the
Ideas, nor the greatest nor the highestldea. It is the Good itself, beyond
the whole gradation of beings, outside of the totality of the gradual
differences that can be compared. All of Plato's work Is likewise set In
a "space" oriented by what Is low and what Is high. To understsnd It
one must discover the meaning and the necessity of the references
expressed by words like "€KE'ia<" (up there) and "€rrtKnva" (beyond). To
understsnd It Is to know-or at least to surmise-what the upward
orientation that results from true eplstrophe demands.
Just like the sophist and the tyrant, the fool cannot discover the
true Good because he Is not looking In the right direction. He does not
love the Good, and does not recognize what Is better even when It Is
presented not just In an abstract concept, but concretely. That Is why
he understsnds the IQM as an indifferent thing ''without any [real]
meaning" or "as having a foreign meaning," a meaning that deforms
what the concept says (Chap. 4). He does not follow the dynamism of
the concept, and he denies what It suggests, because his way of being
In the world Is not religious. Bent towards what Is below, he is not
open to the light that comes from above.
But are we not being unjust when we accuse the atheist of
indifference and Insensibility to the degrees of difference between the
better and the worse? It goes without saying that the atheist whom we
are speaking of does not coincide with some one who pronounces the
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words "there Is no God," anymore than someone who says the contrary
would thereby already be a believer. But even If we only speak of those
who say In their hearts that God Is an illusion or a pseudonym for
some finite thing, It would be unjust to pretend that they do not have
enough taste or culture to distinguish the degrees of a long ladder of
value or being. What they deny Is not that there is a multitude of
degrees of quality, but that there exists a single "thing" beyond all that
can be thought to be exceedingly great and good. They admit the
possibility of something better, but not of the Good Itself. Ansehn
wrestles with their quite civilized relativism when he identifies what
exceeds any possible maximum ofbeing and goodness with what exists
independently as the absolutely Good that all the degrees of goodness
and being, including all possible maxima, depend upon. He presupposes not only a ladder from what Is lowest to what Is highest-a chain
that may be without definite endpoints--but also an attraction exerted
by what escapes all gradation, the non-graded that Is beyond what Is
Infinite In a merely finite way, the Good beyond all that Is. The
philosophical enterprise presents Itself as an attempt to reconstruct
the orientation that the heart and soul of the believer experience In
faith and because of faith. This reconstruction will not succeed If the
endpoint of the orientation Is not present both In the perspective In
which, and In the movement by which, thought finds itself, In hindsight, to have been guided and transformed. The logical task that
Anselm tries to explain must be sustained by what Is at least a seed
of wisdom. Otherwise, the Initial foolishness will prevent one from
perceiving and feeling the rightness of the logical passage that transforms the abstract concept of the IQM into the affirmation of a
proposition that sets out Its existence. Logic alone Is not enough; an
orientation and a movement that Is prelogical, a good destre and the
attunement of emotion-or a certain faith and hope-are necessary
above all.
The whole ProslogiDn Is the deployment of an emotional certainty
that becomes conceptually conscious ofltselfbymeans of an (onto)loglcal strategy. That Is why Its second half, beginning after the disappointment expressed In Chapter Fourteen, Is dedicated to a deepening
of the discovery In two respects:
(1) The prayer becomes more Insistent, giving free rein to the
fundamental sentiments that testifY to the proximity of a God who
seems far away because even someone bathed In his light cannot not
see him completely.
(2) The discovery that the light of God, as It Is In Itself, Is "too much
for me" (nbnia miltq and "inaccessible" (Chap. 16) develops into an
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72
amendment of the formula from which the investigation had started.
Anselm writes, ''Thus, Lord, not only are you that than which one can
think nothing greater, but you are something greater than can be
thought" (Chap. 15). Even so, this correction does not abolish the
initial formula, because the new "definition" can be justified rationally
by the original formula. lf God were not great enough to exceed all that
can be presented or represented in human thought, then human
thought would still be able. to think such a thing, and God would not
be IQM (Chap. 16).
.
Thought can thus think something beyond all that enters into it. It
can think beyond what it thinks, beyond all the beings and all the
ideas, beyond the being of beings itself, beyond the universe of being,
ErrE~enva
Tiis oVcrtas.
We must conclude, then, that the true sense of the initial abstract
concept of God is not yet evident in Chapters Two and Three. Nor is
it present in Chapters 4-13, where God is understood as truth and
goodness, eternal and omnipresent, the source of all that is true and
good, etc. A truer grasp requires one to open one's soul to a reality
that surpasses what can be thought.
Can one experience this reality? As the end of the Proslogion proves,
there is a joy (gaudi:um) that makes it evident that one can. The path
that Anselm pursues is not, however, the path of a purely emotional
experience-though such a path would also be possible-but that of
an (onto)logical investigation sustained and guided by such an experience. That is why, after a long prayer that constitutes a new
departure, Anselm goes on to deepen the provisional outcome of his
investigation by making a new appeal to the concept than which
nothing better can be thought (Chap. 18). ''The second sailing,"
however, which is the task of Chapters 18b-26, does not bring much
new knowledge. Instead, it reenforces, unifies, and simplifies aspects
deduced in the course of the first part of the book, by insisttng that
God is not the highest, the best, the being that is superior, the most
lasttng and the most extended being, but extra omne tempus, metaphorically "outside of time" (Chap. 19), and ante et ultra omnia,
metaphorically "before" and "beyond" everything (Chap. 20). The
"presence" of God (Chaps. 20, 22) is a presence that is utterly unique
and not temporal in any sense. It is thus no longer a presence, a here
and now, opposed to the past and the future. The eternal presence of
God differs as much from the present, which is opposed to the future
and past within temporality, as transcendence differs from the totality
of beings. ''You alone, Lord, are what you are, and you are who you
are" (Chap. 22). The "Greek" question as to the being of God seems
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here to coincide with the question of God's presence as It was revealed
to Moses and was known to Ansehn as Ego sum qui sum. At the same
time, the expression ''you are who you are" seems to allude to the word
by which Jesus ventured to identify his omnipresence in history as
EyW djlL, or "I am."
The deepening of the argument, which occupies Chapters 15-26,
culminates in a formula that attempts to summarize the essence of
God in the truest and simplest manner, a formula found In Chapter
Twenty-three. It Is a formula whose radiance the three last chapters
celebrate: "God Is the good Itself." At the same time, if one would like
to know what this divine good means, one must not only know all that
has been said about its existence, its properties, and Its unique
essence, but also that It Is a trl-unlty of truth and love. Or, to
summarize it in an (onto)logical manner, which does not, however,
exclude allusions to the NewTestsment: God Is the Good thatis simple
and uniquely necessary, the one and total perfect good, the only tWng
that is good. To say It with Ansehn and Plato, God Is the Good.
3. Ansehn against Hegel
The reaction that Ansehn would have had to the Hegelian Interpretation can now be summarized as follows:
(1) The faith that seeks to understand neither wants to nor can
abolish itself as the foundation of the meaning ofllfe and of thought.
It can tWnk of itself as something more than an expression of a
speculative truth-an expression that is perceptible, Imaginary, and
emotional-and It would like to do so because to reduce It to such an
expression would remove its character as a face-to-face encounter
with God. In the faith that Is understood as an encounter, the soul
lifts itself up to tell God all that It has grasped of him. But It knows
all the while that it has grasped only a little compared to the inaccessible light that the soul feels Itself to be enveloped in, even though It
cannot see that light.
(2) God Is not the identity of being and thought that encompasses
all things, but the Unique One, which, of course, contains the fullness
of being and the good, but In a way that separates it from what exists.
Thanks to creation and re-creation, God is known. The ascent towards
the absoluteness of God Is, In effect, the heart of human being and Its
logos, and thus the source of all other truths. But it Is not an idea: it
leads and judges the whole history of the Intellect, because It precedes
and exceeds reason by an adherence that Is older and more prophetic
than reason. TWs adherence, manifest In love and In hope, Is as
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'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
different from any (onto)logical comprehension as God Is different from
the ideas and beings of speculative thought.
4. Two Remarks
In the course of the analysis I have just given, Plato and Hellenistic
Neo-Platonism have been present in the backround. In fact, many
aspects of the Proslogion show more affinity with Platonic inquiries
that they do with the Hegelian system. In particular, that idea of the
ayae6v which occupies the center of the RepubUc seems very close to
the bonwn that dominates the Proslogion. Uke Plato's Good, the God
of the Proslogionls before, outside of, and beyond (epekeina, ante, and
ultra) the universe ofbeings. Anselm's God rules, as the absolute end,
not only the desire that Initiates the whole search and the entire
process of the Investigation, but also the entire universe, In relation
to which he Is the one who "gives." One could multiply the structural
parallels between the Proslogion and the Platonic works, or also the
works of Plotinus, but It is also necessary to say that there Is a certain
affinity or convergence even with respect to their contents. It is no
surprise that many Fathers of the Church thought that Plato had read
Moses and that God had sent him to the Greeks In order to prepare
them for a more authentic revelation.
However, a comparison of the Investigations undertaken by Plato
and Anselm would require that the words In which they are written
be understood apart from the context of the life and the culture In
which each Investigation had Its expression. Thus Anselm's Good Is
not the sun of Plato's aesthetic-religious universe. In Plato's cosmos,
where wonders both mortal and divine show themselves in the
illuminated space between heaven and earth, the Good shows Itself
In the beauty of essences, the excellence of communities and of
individual human beings, the nobility ofworks, and the natural justice
of a good education. The idea of KaAoKayaela does not leave room for
the Good to manifest Itself as a personal being who can hear or forgive.
Also, the meaning of"giving" is determined as an anonymous source
of light, which neither hears nor speaks. The whole ethic of the polis
and the human psyche is dominated by an admiration for the way in
which their excellence unfolds in a beautiful life. Arete Is above all the
success of being In the various forms of well-proportioned harmony.
The Good Is identical with Beauty. Neither a thing nor a person, the
Good-and-Beautiful Is the anonymous beyond without a face. The
destiny of all being Is to fulftllltself as the wonder that at its core, In
�PEPERZAK
75
the "idea," it is. It must shine forth in order to let the idea, which is
also the ideal, become manifest In the splendor of the phenomena.
For Anselm, bonwn. the Good, is heard, received, and felt in a
different way. When he says to God: "You are nothing other than the
unique supreme good... " (Chap. 22) or 'This good, it is you, God the
Father..." (Chap. 23), he is attempting to make the name "good"
coincide with the true name of God. In calling God "good," he expresses, first of all, biblical reminiscences, and not so much the
concepts of agat/wn and bonwn he had received from the tradition of
the noble pagans. This is evident, for example, in Chapters 8-11, in
which the first stage of his onto-theo-logical discovery of God reaches
Its culmination: the mercy that seems so difilcult to reconcile with
justice Is surely an aspect of God inherited from the biblical tradition
and not from Plato, whose aesthetic ethic does not exclude the worst
cruelties towards weak infants, the handicapped, criminals, and
barbarians.
It Is, at the same time, remarkable that, In his prayer, Anselm does
not address himself to God by calling God bonwn or summum bonwn.
His preferred vocative Is "Lord" (Domine), but he also, though less
often, calls God altissime Domine, bone Domine (Chap. 4), Domine
Deus, Dominus meus et Deus meus, Deus meus, and Deus meus et
Dominus meus. Only once does he call to God with the words 0
trrunensa bonttas (Chap. 9), but In every case It Is the word Tu or es
that accompanies these names, and what Anselm asks for and destres
is to see his God face to face. God, the creator who has "formed" and
reformed all, to whom all being and all knowledge is indebted for what
It is, evidently does not allow himself to be thematlzed as an Idea or
as something said. EVen the most beautiful words, like "good," cannot
name him for one who is striving to maintain a face-to-face connection
that allows one to address him with the pronoun Tu.. Saying ''you"
affirms God in an act of speaking and prevents one both from reducing
God to a theme and from trying to circumscribe God within a dogmatic
thesis. In using the second person singular pronoun, Anselm distinguishes himself not only from Plato, but also from his own argument. That God Is the Good, and even Goodness Itself (bonttas ipsa),
is an expression that belongs to the genre of thematic discourse.
EVerything must be done to furnish this concept with a way to enter
Into the full richness of biblical heritage and the whole spiritual
experience of Christianity, but the truth of speaking to God will never
be able to coincide with the truth of a phtlosophical reflection, which
treats that truth in the third person, reducing it to an object, as great
and as supreme and as infinite as one would like to make it. The
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'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
language of (onto)logical discourse results in a provisional name or
pronoun, a pseudonym rather or a pro-pronoun of God. The Good of
the Platonic tradition has served Anselm, as It can sttll serve anyone
who, belonging to another tradition and history, has received and
acquired another sort of knowledge of God, made up of faith and of a
desirous intimacy In hope.
The second remark I would like to make concerns the ambiguity,
no doubt Inevitable, of onto-logical language. It Is evident in the
Republic, where Plato Is careful to separate the Good itself from the
whole collection of beings, even whlle, in the very same context, he
treats the Good as an "idea," calling It "the idea of the Good," and
presenting the knowledge of the Good as an ideal knowledge.4 The
Good cannot be what Is beyond (hrEKEtva), it cannot be transcendent
or infinite, and at the same time be an idea. It cannot even be the idea
of the summit. As Plotinus saw very well, the One is absolutely
separate from the totality of beings or ideas. Although Anselm too
knows very well that God is neither a being nor the being of the totality
of beings, he also juxtaposes an insistance on the fact that God is
outside of (extra), before (ante), and beyond (ultra) the universe, with
expressions that call God the highest good (summwn bonum), the end
of a ladder of values. If we wanted to discuss Heidegger's rough and
cavalier critique ofwestern ontology, It would not be difficult to defend
Anselm, with other thinkers from Plotinus to Malebranche, against it.
We might insist, for example, on the meaning of the formulas "the
truth itself," "the good itself," or "the essence Itself." We would have to
acknowledge that even the Initial concept that the whole argument of
the Prosloglon Is based upon yields itself to two different interpretations. IQM can be understood as an indication of what does notln any
way belong to the ladder of gradations. But one can also read it as
that which is the greatest of all fmite beings. Anselm might reject the
second Interpretation by arguing that one can think something greater
than the entirety of all finite beings, but the atheist could answer
him-andnotjustthe atheist, but many believers would do it too-that
he commits a petitio principii, since the possibility of an idea of the
infinite Is not given as Immediately and rationally evident.
But this is to begin a new reading, a re-reading of the Proslog!on
from the point of view ofits logic. Wbatl have tried to show is, however,
that a reading that restricts itself to the logic of the argument is a second
reading, because it requires first of all that one explain how the sense
of the words of the "onto-logical" argument, is experienced, perceived,
and lived by the author. This could not be done without a clear
consciousness of the intimate connections between the (onto)logical
�PEPERZAK
77
argument and the religious experience that Is Its dynamic and prophetic support.
Let us come to a close by saying that on the basis of a discipline,
one many years long, of religious life-a discipline above all emotional
and meditative-Anselm did not think It necessary to explain at length
that the td quo malus non cogitar! potest ls neither an id, nor the
greatest of all beings, nor universal being, nor the history of being or
beings. It is the horlzon which rules all other horizons (and above all
that of the finite, the temporal, the historical, and the Intentional). For
one who admits the possibility of thinking God, that horlzon is the You
to whom all being and the experience of thought belong .
•••
Notes:
1. G.W.F. Hegel, Geschtchte Der Phtlosophte 19 (XV), pp. 164-69, and
Vorlesungen iiber dte Phtlosophte der ReUgfon. Gloclmer 16 (XII) pp.
214-18.
2. Gloclmer 16 (XII), pp. 392 and 399.
3. See Hegel's Berlin Inaugural speech of October 22, 1818, in Berliner
Schrlften 1818-1831, Hamburg, 1956, p. 8-9.
4. Plato, Republic, 509b and 517c.
�78
THE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
�The Dialectic of Love in
War and Peace
Randolph Perazzini
Although he dreaded nothing so much as ridicule, Tolstoy never let
that stop him from adopting positions and doing things that, even to
a sympathetic eye, make him look ridiculous. At the age of sixty-one,
for Instance, having recently fathered his fourteenth child, he became
convinced that Jesus wanted everyone to be celibate; and to the deep
humiliation of his wife, Sonya, the man who had long sung the praises
of married life and childbirth wrote and published The Kreutzer
Sonata, a novel which denounces marriage as "legalized prostitution."
If universal celibacy were to make the race extinct, Tolstoy wrote, he
would have "no more pity for these two-footed beasts than for the
icthyosaurus,"l but he realized there was little danger of that. Celibacy
was "an ideal to strive for," but only a few individuals would be able
to regain such innocence. Unforlunately for him, Tolstoy was not one
of those few: for at least ten years after The Kreutzer Sonata, his diaries
and his wife's chronicle the frequent demands of his passion that left
her increasingly ashamed and estranged, but invariably left him
cheerful and animated.
It would be a mistake to think that such contradictory behavior
(verging on hypocrisy) was a product of Tolstoy's old age, after his
famous conversion. That conversion only gave him slightly different
terms in which to express the dilemma that he embodied his whole
life. On the one hand, Tolstoy was a darling of nature, blessed for more
than eighty years with robust health, strength, appetites and the
capacity to satisfy them. He was wealthy, high-born, brilllant, and
talented. He could play like a cliild and talk with peasants as easily
Randolph Perazzini delivered this lecture In Santa Fe In September, 1991, and
in Annapolis in September, 1992. At the time he was a tutor at the Santa Fe
campus.
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1HE Sf. JOHN'S REVIEW
as he could concentrate on intellectual matters for twelve hours at a
stretch and publicly stand up to the Tsar and the Holy Synod.
On the other hand, Tolstoywas a prophet possessed by a God whose
love Is embodied In every manifestation of life. From his earliest days
he was often filled with a sense of love that made all things one, and
he longed to melt permanently Into the whole.2 Because life Is the gift
of God, Tolstoy was convinced that living Is a matter of the utmost
moral seriousness. Anything less Is a desecration. He regarded ideas,
therefore, as vain trifles tmless they were carried and lived to their
limits. As a young man he could not study Stoicism without subjecting
himself to physical duress; in old age he could not believe in moral
purity without embracing celibacy, poverly, and asceticism.
in War and Peace, written at the prime of his life, we have Tolstoy's
attempt to show how human life-lived In the flesh, organized into
societies, and conditioned by ttme--ls our access to God's blessing.
Throughout the novel, Tolstoy contrasts two ways of living. One
way, which we see most blatantly in Napoleon and the old Prince
Bolkonsky, Is rooted in the natural order. It starts from the premise
of an autonomous and sufficient self, and seeks harmony by imposing
the selfs image, order, or will onto the world. For Tolstoy, all such a
person really does Is look at himself; his actions, however gratifying,
are cut off from life and bound, therefore, to be fruitless. In building
his life on the self, moreover, such a person Is building on the most
uncerlaln of foundations, because at some moment each of us will
die-inevitably, irrevocably, and alone. And if I am the basis of
everything, my death means the annihilation of the universe. (Tolstoy
was so terrified by the possibility of such meaninglessness that a few
years after finishing War and Peace, when by all outward signs his life
was at Its richest, he couldn't undress alone for fear that the sight of
his belt would tempt him to hang himself.)
The other way of living, which Kutu2ov and Platon Karataev exempli(y, Implies an Immaterial order Tolstoy calls the ''whole." This kind
ofllfe takes for Its premise the infinite web of relations which sustains
all things moment by moment. Its kind of harmony comes when we
are most deeply Involved in what we're doing: at such moments, we
forget about ourselves and become one with the activity or person at
hand. Such lives usually go unnoticed, like Captain Tushin's heroism
at the Battle of Schon Graben, but it is here, Tolstoy Insists, that life
Is affirmed and history given content. By opening themselves to what
life offers, such people experience God's love in the flesh and spirit so
that it passes through them like wine through water. 3 They come to
fruition through the unfolding of God's providential scheme, and they
�PERAZZINI
81
are redeemed from the horror of death and awaken Into cahnness and
peace.
That sounds very nice, butlt's not so simple-not In War and Peace,
and certainly not In the dilemma of Tolstoy's own life. Our experience,
after all, Is absolutely personal: that Is to say, every one of us has his
or her own life which no one else can ever experience, and every one
of us cannot help feeling ourself to be free and autonomous. Since God
has given us this life with Its consciousness of freedom, it must be for
our good. To think otherWise, for Tolstoy, Is blasphemy. So there must
be a right way to be a self, without which love is Impossible; by the
same token, since a self Is essential, being self-less Is as dangerous
as having the wrong kind of self. The love which animates Tolstoy's
universe, then-or rather, the human way for that love to be knownIs dialectical: It requires constant efforts to heighten the self so that
the self can be thrown away. The more we have In us to throw away,
the greater our joy and the more worthy we are of the whole which,
like a parent, is waiting to catch us.
In the stories of Nlkolay Rostov and Prince Audrey Bolkonsky, we
see the transformation of egoists Into people who love. Prince Andrey4
arrives at an unconditioned and undialecticallove which is, perhaps,
closer to the divine, but which can only be realized In death; Nlkolay
finds a human love that roots him In the flesh and the cycle of
generation while gracing him with the touch of spirit. With his
Insistent egoism and unceasing aspiration after the truth. Prince
Audrey is more like Tolstoy, but the commonplace Nlkolay is his hero.
In the stories of Princess Marya, Pierre, and Natasha, on the other
hand, we see characters with an Innate tendency toward the whole
develop the kind of selves which allows them to live happy and fruitful
lives-the kind Tolstoy's God Intends them to live-In spite of the
sufferings they undergo during the novel and, by implication, after its
end.
Nikolay and Prince Audrey each enter the army to be a hero. Their
ambition assumes they can use events to magnlty themselves In order
to exert power over others. Prince Audrey wants to command the
Russian army and defeat Napoleon, while Nlkolay only wants to make
the Emperor love him. Thinking as they do, they understand events
In reference to themselves, a ridiculous delusion In people so Inconsequential, but a frightening one In a Count Rostopchln or a Napoleon.
At the beginning of their careers, however, both Nikolay and Prince
Audrey undergo an experience which begins to show them what's
wrong with a life aimed at self-aggrandizement. Because Enns Bridge
Is the novel's first battle scene and a paradigm for all the others, in
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the interest of time I'll speak just of it and leave aside the mission to
Vienna which begins Prince Audrey's education.
Before Nikolay comes under fire for the first time at Enns Bridge
(II, 5), he has ''the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large
audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish
himself. •5 He has been embroiled in a dispute with his commanding
officer and expects the skirmish to vindicate him against "his enemy,•
the colonel. Since the whple point of the battle, he imagines, is to awe
his enemy with his courage and make him seek reconciliation, when
the hussars are finally sent onto the bridge, he rushes far ahead
"thinking that the farther he went to the front the better" and has to
be called back. He is confused because "there was no one to hew down
(as he had always imagined battles to himselij," and he is unprepared
to take part in what's really happening since he has not brought a
torch, not expecting to be sent to do something as unheroic as burn
a bridge. He has nothing to do but stand there waiting to be kllled.
Mter the man next to him is shot, Nikolay sees the sky, 6 "calm" and
"deep," and has a sudden glimpse of his connection with It and ofthe
fragility ofllfe: "'In myself alone (he thinks) and in that sunshine there
Is so much happiness ... Another instant and I shall never again see
the sun, this water, that gorge!'"
That insight makes him realize how much he loves life, but as soon
as the danger is over, his egoism reasserts itself, and he misinterprets
his feelings to mean that he is a coward. Because he can only conceive
of the world in relation to himself, Nikolay cannot seriously regard the
possibility of his own destruction; he only Indulges in self-gratllYlng
images of getting what he wants by dying romantically. His behavior
here and later atAusterlitz (not to mention his brother Petya's heroism)
demonstrates that a way of life aimed at enlarging the self by Imposing
it on others is incoherent: it encourages recklessness under the name
of colU'age, and it demeans the normal and healthy desire to live by
calling it cowardice. On the other hand, the part of Rostov that
recognizes his connection with the whole of God's creation, symbolized
by the infinite sky, realizes that life is a blessing which it is sacrilegious
to squander.
Nikolay's mistaken conclusion suggests a consequence of egoism
that is deadly in the moral sense as well. To sustain the delusion that
the world is an object for the aggrandizing selfto impose on, the egoist
not only cuts himself off from reality by regarding events in reference
to himself, but sooner or later he has to betray his own humanity as
well. In its most extreme form we see Napoleon and Count Rostopchin,
self-deluded actors trapped in the isolation of their own madness, who
�PERAZZINI
83
are so far lost to human feeling that the one measures greatness by
the number of corpses left on the battlefield, and the other incites a
mob to murder a helpless youth "for the public good" (993). But even
its less extreme forms are deadly: thewaxen-facedPrince Vasili spends
the novel "like a wound-up clock" saying things "he did not even wish
to be believed" (4), while Boris Drubetskoy overcomes the "feeling of
horror at renouncing the possibility of real love" (609) in order to marry
Julie Karagina's estates and forest.
Nikolay also betrays himself, though he is such a novice at egoism
that his case is more silly than repulsive. Although the Battle of Schi\n
Graben is an important Russian victory, it is a humiliating fiasco for
Nikolay, who falls off his horse, sprains his wrist, and has to run from
the French like "a hare fleeing from the hounds" (201). Poor Rostovl
From the affair of the stolen purse to the hapless cavalry charge,
nothing in his military career has happened the way it was supposed
to. He has given up a peaceful, happy life among people who love him
to live in wretched conditions and let people he doesn't even know try
to kill him. And most confusing of all, everyone else seems to think
this is perfectly natural. So Nikolay goes along, betraying himself by
living as if what he knows to be false were true.
Appropriately enough, his self-betrayal begins with a lie. When he
visits his old friend Boris (III, 6), Nikolay begins the story of his
experience at Schi\n Graben intending to tell the truth, "but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and inevitably" he turns itinto a self-glorifYing cliche.
In the middle of his story, Prince Audrey comes in and immediately
recognizes that Nikolay is lying. Confused and embarrassed, Rostov
falls silent and then tries to pick a fight with him. As he rides back to
his regiment later, however, something in Nikolay's heart whispers
that he has lost touch with himself, for "he felt with surprise that of
all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have
for a friend as" Prince Audrey.
By now, Prince Audrey has also had enough experience to doubt
his own illusion of heroism, but since he is more self-reliant that
Nikolay, he has not fallen into such an easy trap of trying to deny what
he knows. His egoism is a more integral part of his character and his
self-delusion runs deeper than Nikolay's. He will shed it gradually as
he matures, like something foreign to his nature, but Prince Audrey's
progress toward love will be stymied again and again by a self-delusion
that is each time harder to recognize: it takes death finally to free him
of egoism.
A revelation at the Battle of Austerlitz sweeps aside his egoism's
first illusion. PrinceAndrey anticipates it the night before (III, 11) when
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
he recognizes the "dreadful" character of his egoism: that he would
trade everyone dear to him for "a moment of glory, of triumph over
men." And the proud young man who slouches In the best drawingrooms with his eyes contemptuously half-closed Is honest enough to
admit that his aspiration springs from a pathetic longing to be loved
by anyone, by the cook and the coachman. Nonetheless, PrlnceAndrey
wants nothing but glory. By compelling the love of others through an
act of astounding heroism. he wants to share with everyone what Is
absolutely personal and unshareable-the sense, which Tolstoy
thinks we all have, especially when we're young, that there Is something tenibly special and precious about me, and that Ifeveryone knew
me as I do, from the Inside, they couldn't help but love me. Prince
Audrey's longing for glory and power is his soul's attempt to break out
of the Isolation of being an autonomous self by sharing that self with
the whole world.
Of course, he has It backwards. Now, and for most of the novel,
Prince Andrey is so deeply Impressed with the experience of being
himself that he cannot remember that the other person Is also unique
and precious to herself, that she has "other human Interests entirely
aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those that occupied him"
(785). 7 The first step toward learning that Is to recognize the InsignifIcance of the self and the peace and happiness of being embraced by
God. That Is what happens to him on the field at Austerlitz (Ill, 13),
where Prince Andrey gets the moment of glory he wanted. His heroic
charge before the eyes of his surrogate father, General Kutuzov,
prevents the outright capture of the Russian army with Its commander-in-chief and even wins the praise of his false Idol, Napoleon.
And having gotten what he wanted, Prince Andrey gets shot and sees
how worthless It is: all that running, shouting, and fighttng over sticks
and dirt, driven by fear, anger, and "paltryvanity." Notonly''grealness"
but even life and death fade to Insignificance before "the lofty, justB
and kindly sky" which contains the whole of creation, and whose "quiet
and peace" is ready to penetrate anyone who will only look up. And
because life has been freed of the terrible burden of having to be
significant enough to withstand the fact of death, Prince Andrey can
see it for what it really Is: a free gift, the kiss of God,9 and therefore
something "beautiful."
By the time Pierre visits him two years later, Prince Andrey Is living
at Bogucharovo.IO He seems to be living according to ideas derived
from his vision at Austerlitz-the same ideas that Pierre wllllater learn
In prison and that Tolstoy himself fully agrees with. Uke the people
who flee Moscow In 1812 not from self-conscious patriotism but only
�PERAZZINI
85
because "it was out of the question to be under French rule" and, by
doing so, actually "carry out the great work which saved Russia"
(929-30), Prince Andrey lives only for himself: that is, he devotes his
attention to the things which are of immediate concern to him, not
trying to direct the course of life, but only to live the best life he can,
avoiding evil.ll He lives by ali the right Tolstoyan ideas-and Tolstoy
shows that he's terribly wrong, because his ideas have grown not from
the love which connects him to the whole, but from the despair of
disappointed egoism. If the world were a machine that we could
comprehend, the rightness or wrongness of an idea would determine
its truth or falsity. But for Tolstoy the world is a miracle, infinitely
beyond our comprehension, so truth is to be judged not be ideas, but
by the state of the heart which holds them.
Events in the novel suggest how the right ideas can be wrong.
Because he acts only for himself, Prince Andrey institutes all the
reforms which the self-consciousness of Pierre's benevolence prevents
him from accomplishing. And we are free to believe that by freeing his
serfs and building them schools and hospitals, Prince Andrey improves the material conditions of their lives. But because he thinks of
peasants as objects to be disposed of according to economic principles,
not as human beings to involve himself with, his reforms can do
nothing to improve the moral quality of their lives. Events in the novel
may suggest that Prince Andrey was right in thinking that such
improvements would even harm the peasants (417). Is it merely a
coincidence that in all of Russia (at least as portrayed in the novel)
only the peasants at Bogucharovo betray their homeland in 1812 by
rebelling against their countrymen and siding with the French? And
if we are not meant to contrast them, why does Tolstoy include the
incident in which Marva Kuzminichna, the Rostov housekeeper, gives
twenty-five rubles of her own money to a young, unknown relative of
her master's who shows up during the abandonment of Moscow to
ask for help (980)? fl'olstoy couldn't know it, but there is a sharp
contrast between the rebellion at Bogucharovo and the way the
peasants on his estate, Yasnaya Polyana, acted during the Revolution:
armed with axes, pitchforks, and scythes, they fought off the Communist-led "expropriators" and saved his house from being burned. 12
Tolstoy himself had been dead for seven years by then.)
After Austerlitz, Prince Andrey cannot hold on to the incomprehensible something he saw in the sky which made the insignificance of
life a blessing, but he can remember well enough the nothingness of
human affairs and the paltriness of the individual self he is still
trapped ln. It takes Natasha to restore that vision. When he first sees
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
her running and laughing across !he driveway at Otrodnoe (VI, 1).
Prtnce Andrey feels "a pang," and for only the second time In !he novel,
he remembers !hat other people have lives of !heir own, lives which
are separate from his but capable of being "brtght and happy" nonetheless. Later, he overhears her rapture with the moonlit night. These
two brtef encounters with !he spontaneous joy she takes In !he world
outside herself arouse in Prtnce Andrey "an unexpected turmoil of
youthful thoughts and hopes" which convince him !hat his life is not
over. His emotions, Tolstby tells us, are connected to "all the best
moments of his ltfe," but he still doesn't know how to feel !hem except
in terms of his aggrandizing self. So when he decides to end his
self-imposed exile, Prtnce Andrey thinks, "'It is not enough for me to
know what I have In me-everyone must know it: Pierre, and !hat
young girl who wanted to fly away Into !he sky. everyone must know
me, so !hat my life may not be lived for myself alone while others live
so far apart from it, but so that it may be reflected In !hem all. and
!hey and I may live In harmony!"' (462-63).
Prtnce Andrey's delusion !hat !he way to make !he world harmonious Is by projecting his Image onto It is no different from !he lie which
Napoleon gives to justttY !he Invasion of Russia. namely, !hat Europe
would have been blessed by unity and peace under his benevolent rule
(91 0-11). The monstrous arrogance of !he assumption !hat he had !he
rtght and the wisdom (let alone !he power) to annul !he cultural and
political herttage of centuries and to dictate to millions of people how
!hey must live helps us to see !hat it is actually Prince Andrey who
first betrays Natasha.
That may take some explaining. Let me star! by returning to Prince
Andrey's "best moments," which Tolstoy identifies as "Austerlitz with
the lofty heavens, ... Pierre at !he ferry, (Natasha) thrilled by !he
beauty of !he night., and !hat night itself," and "his wife's dead
reproachful face" (462). Why Is !hat one of his "best moments"? The
answer, I think, Is suggested by Prince Andrey's explanation of the
effect Natasha has on him after they become reacquainted at !he ball.
Listening to her sing, he almost weeps because of a ''vivid sense of !he
terrible contrast between something infinitely great and indefinable
within him and !hat narrow and physical something !hat he, and even
she, was" (512).1 3 In other words, Natasha makes him feel constantly
what until now he has felt only In his "best moments,'' !he awesome
and incomprehensible condition ofbeingboihan embodiment of God's
Infinite and eternal love, and an individual human being who dies.
Natasha has !he same effect on him as "!he lofty, just. and kindly sky":
she makes his deluded aspiration for power and eminence vanish like
�PERAZZINI
87
the morning fog. But just as he could not hold onto the sky after
Austerlitz, so now he cannot matotato both sides of the dialectic. Once
again he comes down on the side of the self, and the separate and
limited world he thinks he can know and control.
Perhaps Prince Andrey throws away his chance for happiness with
Natashajust because he loves her as he has never loved anyone else.
It's not until he has been mortally wounded at Borodino, some nine
months after their engagement is broken off, that he first Imagines
how things felt to her. 'He realizes then that he had never considered
her character and needs, never "pictured to himself her soul," and so
only then does he feel"the cruelty of his rejection of her" (1023). Like
Napoleon, who regards the war as a "personal struggle between
himself and Alexander" (972), Prince Andrey seems to see his engagement to Natasha as a contest between himself and his father. Having
projected onto her the image of"some ideal love" (858) that has nothing
to do with who Natasha is, he agrees to the test ofher constancy which
his father demands. But by treating her as an object to hang his
self-gratifying fantasies on, Prince Andrey betrays her Individual
dignity and worih, the value which being an embodiment of God's love
Imparts to each of us. And by thus betraying her, he betrays his own
"best moments." And that may be precisely what he's after.
The egoism which Infects Prince Andrey's attitude toward Natasha
shows itself in his behavior. First he abandons her abruptly for three
weeks without telling her that he will be out of town; the Irony of his
having gone to seek his father's approval for marrying makes
Natasha's pain over this unexpected rejection more poignant to us.
Then he does not try to make Natasha's entry into his family less
difficult by telling Marya of his happiness and winning her support;
instead he annoimces his engagement in a letter to her from Europe
asking her to intercede with their father, which he should know will
only make his sister's life more miserable. Is it any wonder that Marys
Is predisposed against Natasha when they meet? Worst of all, after
their engagement Prince Andrey insists that Natasha suspend her life
for a year while he goes on what should be their honeymoon trip
without her. Starving for the love he has withheld, she finally tries to
run away with Anatole Kuragln, and Prince Andrey Is free to return to
the hopelessness and self-pity he seems to relish. The inviolability and
dominance of his Individual self have been preserved. Rather than
accept her In all of her otherness, he has remained committed to his
idea of how she should be. And if the cost of doing so is bleak despair,
a loss of faith that makes him a living corpse and the universe
something Indifferent and alien, so much the better. For how else can
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
he prove to himself how noble he Is than by the exquisiteness of the
pain he feels at the meaningless joke the universe has played on him?
Egoism leads Prince Andreyto throwaway his chance for happiness
with Natasha, and aristocratic pride leads him to throw away his life
at Borodino. But the Instant before the grenade explodes, all his
self-defenses fall away, and he realizes once more that he loves "'this
grass this earth, this air"' (904). Later In the operating tent, softened
by the memory of"all the best and happiest moments of his life" (907),
he catches up with his eneniy, Anatole, groaning and sobbing painfully
after his leg has been amputated; and suddenly Prince Andrey Is
overwhelmed with "ecstatic pity and love ... for his fellow men, for
himself, and for his own and their errors" (908). Tolstoy means us to
see that Prince Andrey and Anatole really are the same, for they both
treat Natasha with the same self-centered disregard. That one of them
Intended to marry his plaything Instead of discarding her only makes ·
his cruelty the more perverse; It doesn't lessen her pain one whit, any
more than all of Napoleon's noble Intentions, even If they were true,
would make the thousands of victims any less dead. In a world where
our actions affect other people, good Intentions can be a dangerous
kind of self-congratulation, when what's really needed Is to open
ourselves to what life offers, the painful no less than the pleasant, so
that we can come to our own fruition in God's providential scheme.
In order to celebrate life this way, the egoist needs to deepen his
sympathies and feel his limits so that he can find peace In his
underlying identity with the rest of humanity, each of whom also
embodies God's love. Recognizing others as such, he can then rejoice
In the surface differences which reflect the Infinite power and richness
of that love. To deepen his sympathies, Tolstoy suggests, the egoist
needs to suffer. Only then, unable to Ignore his own mortality, is the
sense of his uniqueness softened enough for him to realize that others
have also had the same experience, and to feel toward them as he feels
toward himself. To know his limits, the egoist needs to stretch them:
that Is, with all his efforts to strive for grealness, honor, and wisdom,
and by so doing to learn how powerless, ephemeral, and Ignorant he
actually Is. This Is part of what I meant when I said that the dialectic
of love demands that the self heighten itself In order to throw Itself
away. F1nally, to rejoice In the otherness of people, the egoist needs to
feel the assurance of being loved and to find some particular other
who calls his soul without trying to own it.
Prince Audrey's revelations at Austerlitz and Borodino both occur
under the Influence of Intense physical pain, and Tolstoy explicitly
connects the two phenomena. When he wakes up on the field at
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Austerlitz, Prince Audrey's "first thought" Is: "'Where Is It, that lofty
sky that I did not know till now, but saw today? And I did not know
this suffering either. Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till
now"' (312). And his repeated disappointments as he aspires toward
the wrong things-glmy, power, social reform, romantic love, and
finally a kind of Satanic hopelessness--are all lessons In the insufficiency of the self which the obstinacy of his egoism makes necessary.
But what Is it that calls his soul?
Just before Natasha is returned to him {XI, 15), Tolstoy tells us that
"all the powers of (Prince Audrey's) mind were more active and clearer
than ever." He distinguishes between "human love" "which loves for
something, for some quality, ... purpose, or ... reason," and "divine
love" ''which Is the very essence of the soul and does not require an
object." Human love is conditioned and speclflc. It joins particular
individuals, each of whom is defined In pari by what he or she honors
and contemns, and the regard each feels for the other Is at least parily
the consequence of who that other person Is. Human love, therefore,
requires us to be worthy of being loved, another reason we heighten
the self In order to love. So, for example, Nikolay realizes in the F1rst
Epilogue that his habit of hitting peasants is a moral failing which
demeans him for Marya's love, and he tries to change it.
Divine love, on the other hand, Is absolute. Like the sky whose
justice and kindliness is that It overarches the whole world equally
and without distinction, divine love derives from a source infinitely
beyond creation. All of the distinctions and judgments that we have
to make to live in our world are trrelevant to it. 'To love everything and
everybody and always to sacrifice oneself for love (Tolstoy writes)
meant not to love anyone, not to live this earthly life" (XII,4). So Prince
Andrey "unconsciously detaches himself' from the world. For a time
after Natasha returns to him, "love for a particular woman ... (binds)
him to life," but with that binding come '1oyful and agitating thoughts"
which prevent him from feeling the ecstatic love that graced him in
the operating tent.
Prince Audrey's "last spiritual struggle between life and death"
occurs in a dream, and divine love wins out. By the time his sister
arrives two days later, Prince Andrey shows a greater insight Into
others than he has ever had before. With his egoism gone, he understands Marya's unspoken thoughts and motivations and wants to do
what will comfort her. But It is dreadful for her to be with him because
he understands not from sympathy-not, that Is, from Inside a self
that feels--but from some great spiritual height from which he has to
make a conscious and reluctant effort to concern himself with human
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TiiE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
interests. By the time Prince Andrey dies, Natasha and Marya both
know "that this had to be so and that it was right."
Whatever his death means for Prince Andrey, for Marya it is in
painful contrast to that of their father, who fmaily opened his heart
on his deathbed and offered her the love which he spent his life trying
to hide. His life was poisoned before the novel opens when the mad
Emperor Paul exiled him to his estate; although the next Emperor,
Alexander, has long since rescinded the edict, the old Prince's egoism
keeps htm imprisoned in the country. To annul his banishment, he
exiles the world instead: by his will alone, he deludes himself, is his
life determined. And in order to insure that he is never hurt again, he
tries to regulate every detail of the life on his estate. But the old Prince
is in a state of permanent rage because he knows that all of his efforts
must fail. He can never be in control of his life because everything he
does is a desperate reaction to his fear of death; and he can never be
impervious to pain because he loves his children, especially the
Princess Marya. So the more he loves her, the more miserable he
makes himself, and her.
Because human love connects us to someone who will die, it is a
constant and inevitable threat. The only way to be secure from loss,
grotesquely enough, is to be already dead. Until then, the egoist makes
every effort to imitate the dead-imprisoning his emotions in codes of
behavior which regulate the self as if it were a machine, starving them
by trying to restrict his encounter with what life has to offer. Although
the old Prince has nothing but contempt for Prince Vasil!, their
respective worlds ofBald Hills and Petersburg are invariably described
as mechanical and lifeless. He in the personal sphere, Prince Vasil! in
the social, and Napoleon in the historical are all extreme examples of
the blasphemous incoherence of a life based on the delusion that the
self is autonomous and sufficient.
But because the old Prince does love, Tolstoy finally absolves him
of egoism and, by so doing, begins Marya's redemption as well. She
does not need to soften the self until she can feel her connection to
the whole. On the contrary, she needs to develop enough respect for
her self to participate in the dialectic of love. For all their apparent
differences, Marya is her father's daughter. Her most cherished hope
is also the hope she most fears and suppresses, that some man will
love her with an "earthly love" (237). To her horror and shame, "all the
personal desires and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within
her" reassert themselves after the old Prince's stroke (X, 8). Though
she accuses herself of wishing for his death, her father knows better.
By thanking her for the years of sacrifice and devotion and begging
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9I
her forgiveness, the old Prince Implicitly acknowledges the naturalness and legitimacy of her hopes. Princess Marya could not have loved
her father with such patient devotion and understanding If she did
not want so badly to love and be loved. It Is love which makes us
capable oflove: as Natasha will later say about her cousin Sonya, "To
him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be
taken away'" (1275).
As If to confirm the rightness of Princess Marya's hopes, as soon
as her father Is dead Tolstoy sends Nikolay Rostov to rescue her from
rebellious peasants. Though he once wanted to be a hero, Nlkolay's
military career has been composed of the "simple and agreeable" (715)
banalities of regimental life punctuated by personal failures at Schon
Graben, Austerlitz, and Tllslt. As a result, he now has the stature to
perform the most heroic act In the book without even noticing it. He
is so outraged by the peasants' refusal to let Marya escape the French
that, unarmed and alone, he overcomes the entire village. Time and
fox-hunting have taught him to throw himself Into the moment so that
he acts with undoubted conviction and his attention completely
absorbed in the matter at hand. Nikolayalso overcomes Marya's heart,
just in the moment of Its greatest trauma and anguish, because here,
too, he forgets himself listening to her. But love Is dialectical: so
because the self which he forgets Is generous and honorable and
knows what It feels like to love a parent, the consideration he shows
her is as sympathetic and comforting as it Is sincere. Although she
feels ashamed of having fallen In love with a man who may never love
her just days after her father's death, Marya relishes her feelings for
Nikolay and never tries to fight against them. She has begun to learn
that life gives her a right to be happy: the self must be nourished by
love if It is to give itself In love. Perhaps this Isn't always the case.
PerhaRS some rare people have spiritual gifts so high that they can
•
sustain themselves indefinitely on the mere hope oflove. Perhaps. But
poor Sonya, the "sterile flower' (1275) of the book, is Tolstoy's portrait
of what happens to an ordinary person who lives on hope too long.
Fortunately, life fulfills Marya's hopes. The lesson of self and
happiness that she begins to learn when she meets Nlkolay, she
finishes learning from his sister Natasha. The "tender and passionate
friendship" (XV, 1) which grows up between them after Prince Audrey's
and Petya's deaths helps each of them develop the particular kind of
self she needs: Marya's "life of devotion, submission, and the poetry
of Christian self-sacrifice" helps Natasha to acquire the moral ballast
she lacks, while Natasha's "belief In life and Its enjoyment" helps
Marya to overcome her BolkonskY habit of denying herself happiness.
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Two actions late in the book show that Princess Marya has developed
the respect for self which makes her happiness in the First Epilogue
possible. F1rst, she must let the dead bury the dead, and give her
blessing and encouragement to the awakening love between Natasha
and Pierre. Then she must act for her own happiness by practically
proposing to Nikolay when his misguided honor threatens both of
them with loneliness and separation.
The friendship between Marya and Natasha is one example of the
miracle of love, which brings happiness and life out of suffering and
death. That power is central to the stories of Pierre and Natasha which,
taken together, symbolize the redemption of Russia through the fires
of war. Like Marya, both of them have such a strong, innate tendency
toward the whole that they lack selves in some crucial way. Natasha
(whom I will not have time to discuss in this talk) has to develop the
moral depth to recognize what's worth giving herself to and what isn't,
while Pierre will never find what his heart wants until he throws away
the false selves he has accepted and becomes as a little child.
Early in the book, Anna Mikhaylovna leads Pierre up the back stairs
of his father's mansion, directs him in the performance of various
rituals whose significance he does not understand, and insures that
he is successfully inltiated into a new world, membership in which
brings a new identity. As a result of her sponsorship, the illegitimate
Pierre is transformed into the Count Bezukhov, 14 heir to one of the
greatest fortunes in Russia. By presenting the scene through Pierre's
naive eyes, which observe the literal events without understanding
whattheymean or what's at stake, Tolstoy emphasizes how completely
disconnected Pierre is from the events that are shaping his fate. But
unlike Nikolay at Enns Bridge,I5 Pierre misunderstands events by
disregarding hlnlself. He doesn't realize that he is the issue, that Anna
Mlkhaylovna and his cousin are fighting to secure or steal his inheritance. Pierre is so unassuming that he has no real self. Appetites he
has aplenty, along with sudden passions, a hear! full of kindliness,
and a head confused by windy abstractions. But he has no spectfic
convictions or aspirations, no particular loves (even deluded ones)
which could help him choose which appetites to foster and which to
restrain, which career to follow, how to understand the intentions and
character of others, what to give his hear! to. As a result, the events
that happen inside hlni are just as mysterious and alien as those that
happen outside of him. Whether it is the way he becomes Count
Bezukhov or Helene's husband, whether it is the lust which makes
him prey to her or the fury that drives him to shoot her first lover,
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Pierre always feels that these things "had to be" (80) and "could not
be otherwise" (222).
Pierre's self-betrayal is also marked by a lie-he tells Helene he loves
her when he doesn't-and he, too, consents to live as if what he knows
to be false were true. Not surprisingly, he soon finds his life loathsome.
The blessings of youth, health, marriage, riches, and position become
so many curses, and the only thing that Pierre owns is his torment.
With no basis from which to judge, all actions become indistinguishable
and meauingless. "'What is bad? (he asks himself after the duel) What
is good? What should one love and what hate? ... All we can know Is
that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom"'
(378-79). Once again we see that ideas alone are Insufficient to contsin
truth or falsity: without a self to ground It, Socrates's most powerful
insight becomes a cry of despair.
Pierre and Prince Andrey are the chief representatives of the
opposite poles of human experience which the dialectic of love brings
together, so Tolstoy is careful throughout the novel to syncopate and
Invert their stories. Prince Audrey begins In disappointment and rises
to the height of military glory before his first revelation embitters his
life; Pierre begins by being raised to the pinnacle of worldly success,
which collapses under him, plunging him Into the belly of despatruntil
he Is plucked out by his first revelation (V, 1). It comes to him after he
has been emotionally and spiritually wounded at the duel. He meets
Joseph Bazdeev, an old man with "bright eyes," who persuades him
not with words but with "the calm firmness and certainty of his
vocation, which radiated from his whole being," that God exists, that
He is in every manifestation ofllfe, and that He is to be "apprehended,"
therefore, not by "lntellect"16 but by living. Connected for the first time
to another human heart, Pierre feels "a joyful sense of comfort,
regeneration, and return to life."
Prince Andrey loses his first revelation by getting the ideas right
while forgetting the vision of the sky which animated them; Pierre, on
the other hand, hangs on to the faith that can redeem him, but so
clutters it with vague and far-fetched ideas that it does him no good.
He confuses Bazdeev's spiritual truth with the Freemasonry he practices. Like Princess Marya, Pierre has so little respect for himself that
he consistently assumes that truth and goodness are to be found in
"the far distance" (1226), in lofty abstractions and vast goals. Although
Bazdeev tells him what he later learns In prison, "that God is here and
everywhere" (1226), Pierre cannot hear it yet because without a self
there is no here, so God must be everywhere else. Thus he misses the
principal aim which attracted Bazdeev to Masonry. Instead of trying
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to apprehend the mystery of an immanent God, Pierre gets lost In
words and turns God Into the Architect of the Universe, who plays a
kind of numerological hide-and-seek with the world.
Pierre misses the second aim of Masonry as well, the purification
and regeneration of the self, because his contempt for self leads him
to think It can be transformed with a wish. This shows not only how
little Pierre knows himself, but also how easily self-lessness falls Into
the same complacency anq hypocrisy that beset egoism. For all his
longing for the good, Pierre spends most of the novel leading a
dissipated and profligate life wWch at one point becomes so bad that
even his Incestuous, adulterous wife is embarrassed by it.
Having missed the first two alms of Masonry, he has no chance of
contributing to the third, the Improvement of mankind. Rightly understood, this aim Is the consequence of the first two: when a person
who works unceasingly on purifYing himself touches another whom
he recognizes as another embodiment of God's love, the other has the
chance to know love. Only thus can he be "Improved." But without a
self from which to feel the humanity of others, Pierre can only
understand the third aim as an Invitation to make people the objects
of his self-conscious benevolence. Like Prince Andrey, Pierre does not
establish a human relationship with Ws peasants, as Nikolay does In
the First Epilogue. Instead, Pierre Is content with staged receptions
where he Is pleasantly embarrassed by the sight of his own good
Intentions. The only effect his "benefits" (411) bring Is to make the
peasants'life harder: In order to build the brick schools and hospitals
he has ordered for their good, the serfs' manorial labor has been
Increased. A life based on the obligation of self-sacrifice for the sake
of others turns out to be as Incoherent as one based on self-aggrandizement. The problem, then, Is not In the content of the aim-not In
egoism or self-lessness-but rather in the attempt to reduce life to a
program based on one pole of human experience. Morality Itself
becomes Immoral when It hardens Into a prescribed code.I7
Freemasonry entangles Pierre In another fu.lse identity added to the
one Anna Mikhaylovna gave him. After the first flush of enthusiasm,
he fmds that Ws life Is more loathsome than ever, only now he's better
at running away from it. He doesn't begin to find hiniself until he
. discovers that he has fallen in love with Natasha (VIII, 22). Actually,
Pierre has always loved Natasha, but It takes the shock of sympathy
when he feels her shame and anguish after betraying Prince Andrey
and attempting suicide to make him realize it. By feeling the pain of
someone else's limits and failures, Pierre can forgive himself for his
own failures and propose to her although he Is already married. If he
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were free, he tells Natasha-that is, if he had not married a woman he
knew to be stupid and immoral-he would marry her on the spot. But
since he Isn't free, he has nothing to gain from his declaration. For
Tolstoy, the absence of personal motive Is the touchstone of sincerity,
and so Natasha takes it, responding to the first gift of love she has
received In over a year with "tears of gratitude and tenderness." Freed,
at least In spirit, from the consequences of his self-betrayal, Pierre
rushes outside where he sees "an immense expanse of dark starry
sky" crowned by "the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812." Feeling
the connection between the comet and "his own softened and uplifted
soul," Pierre feels for the first time the sacredness of his own life.
Now that something outside himself has called his heart, Pierre sees
that the questions he has tormented himself with are trrelevant to the
all-engrossing activity of living. He becomes obsessed with the idea of
throwing himself Into the general catastrophe which the French army
Is bringing to Moscow: "He now experienced a glad consciousness that
everything that constitutes men's happiness-the comforts of life,
wealth, even life Itself-Is rubbish It Is pleasant to throw away ..."
(840). Though he doesn't understand It yet, Pierre recognizes that only
by ridding himself of everything extraneous and abandoning himself
to the terrible force of the whole can he find the self that can love and
be loved by Natasha.
So he goes to Borodino, where the "terrible stormcloud" he has been
desiring ''with the whole strength of his soul" (836) engulfs him. In the
novel's greatest Irony, Tolstoy sends Nikolay shopping for horses and
keeps Prince Andrey on the sideline, reserving for the civilian Pierre
the honor of defending his country in the great battle before Moscow.
He ends up at the Knoll Battery, ''which the French regarded as the
key to the whole position," but which Pierre assumes to be "one of the
least significant paris of the field ... just because he happened to be
there" (884-85). The stormcloud does indeed burst, nearly killing him:
dazed and terrified, Pierre jumps up and runs back toward the battery
and Into "a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man In a blue uniform" (889).
Instinctively they grasp each other by the throat, surprised, frightened,
unsure who Is the captor and who the prisoner. By restricting the
portrayal of actual battle to this one Incident, the novel implies that It
Is here, far from Napoleon and Kutuzov, unconcerned with heroism,
honor, or fatherland-here, where men are most free because they are
concerned only with themselves at that very Instant-precisely here,
where the battle Is reduced to the smallest possible unit, that history
happens. And because In that instant Pierre's grip Is tighter than his
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
opponent's, the Russians recapture the Knoll, win the Battle of
Borodino, and destroy Napoleon's army.
Pierre, of course, never knows that Tolstoy has emblematically
fulfilled his Insane delusion ofbeing L'russe Besulwf, the one destined
to end Napoleon's career. That is to say, he never realizes that by living
up to the demands of his own private life which bring him to Borodino,
he has done his part to defeat Napoleon. Nor does he realize that he
has discovered freedom, though In a dream the night after the battle,
Bazdeev tells him, "'To endure war is the most difficult subordination
of man's freedom to the law of God"' (941). But Pierre does come to
understand it In prison, under the Influence of his final sponsor,
Platon Karataev. Piaton 18 is the only sponsor that Pierre himself seeks
out. He begins his search when he throws away the identity Anna
Mikhaylovna gave him and runs down the same back stairway which
she had conducted him up. Then he forgets his mad plan of killing
Napoleon to abandon himself once more to what life offers, the chance
to save a child and defend a young woman. Arrested, tried, and sent
to a firing squad, Pierre achieves the sacrifice he has been longing for.
Faced with imminent death, he, too, discovers that the self is an
absolutely personal locus of "memories, aspirations, hopes, and
thoughts" (1068) whose existence Is precious only to himself and
depends entirely on an Impersonal and Incomprehensible whole.
As it turns out, the whole has sent him there to witness executions,
not to be executed himself. But Pierre's sacrifice Is complete nonetheless. Everything In his past life-"his faith In the well-orderingl9 of the
universe, In humanity, in his own soul, and in God"-has "collapsed
Into a heap of meaningless rubbish" (1 072). Suffering, it seems, is just
as necessary to the self-less, not to deepen his sympathies, but to
teach him that the self is precious precisely because It Is finite and
his alone.
Once again Pierre Is redeemed from despair, this tinle through
Platon Karataev, whose ''well-ordered arrangements" (1073) as he
prepares for sleep begin to restore "the world fuat had been shattered
... in (Pierre's) soul with a new beauty and on new and unshakable
foundations" (1076). From a simple peasant Pierre learns that fue self
exists most truly when it is absorbed in the moment-by-moment
encounter with God's love, which we call Ufe. Furthermore, because it
Is life which makes everything precious, it cannot be burdened or
trivialized wifu an "aim" (1226). Life is its own "aim." 1hat, Pierre
realizes, is true autonomy and the best evidence that life is sacred. He
was wrong-headed to try to embrace the whole with vast aspirations
and abstract philosophies, when all the time "the great, eternal, and
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infinite" (1227) is here, In you and me, In daily life, If only we will look
at it. This discovery makes Pierre "much simpler" (1228), his servants
say, much more natural and direct.
Pierre also learns that because the encounter with the divine which
constitutes our true self is absolutely personal and immediate, we
live free from the causality of external conditions and time past. That
he experiences freedom in battle and discovers it in prison confirm
what his dream told him: that human freedom exists in the momentby-moment encounter with a context over whose course we have no
control.
Pierre learns these things by suffering the hardships of a month in
captivity. The "Christian"20 life that Pierre learns from Platon is very
similar to the divine love Prince Andrey discovers. Like that love, the
love Platon exemplifies is entirely impersonal. Tolstoy writes:
"Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life
brought him in contact with, particularly with man-not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be" (1078). It is
important for Pierre to discover this kind of love because through it
he learns to rejoice in the infinite variety and otherness of people.
But the problems which unconditioned love raises do much more
than that. Pierre recognizes "that in spite of Karataev's affectionate
tenderness for him ... he would not have grieved a moment at parting
from him" (1078). And because he learns to feel the same way about
Platon, Pierre is able to turn away from him moments before he is shot,
in order to keep his own attention focused on living. Tolstoy says that
Pierre's behavior expresses "the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to
another" (1177). This incident and Tolstoy's explicit approval may well
be the most troubling thing in the book, for It flies In the face of every
morality based on love as well as the natural compassion even Platon's
dog shows. And to make matters worse, Tolstoy seems to confute the
lesson of Pierre's prison experience, which taught him that intellectual
activity distracts from the immediate encounter with life which is
freedom and happiness. We should open ourselves to what life has to
offer, the novel has often implied, the painful as well as the pleasant.
But Pierre prevents himself from realizing that Platon has been shot
by counting the number of three-step units to Smolensk, as frivolous
a use of rationality as one could imagine. And Tolstoy approves.
Tolstoy makes Platon's death as troubling as he can, I think, to
insist upon two important points. The first is that any system of
thought and behavior, including the one presented in the novel,
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
reduces life from a miracle to a machine. So, for Instance, although
he Is convinced that self-forgetfulness is the key to effective and
meaningful action, Tolstoy also knows that it is only Intermittently
possible, and sometimes the very worst way we can act. Pierre forgets
himself and abandons himself to the moment when he realizes that
he is not a spectator at Borodlno. Just as he had volunteered to supply
a thousand men because he was swept up by "the necessity of
undertaking something and sacrificing something" (840), so now he
suddenly volunteers to bring ammunition for the gunners. He runs
toward the ammunition wagon, but the habit of self-doubt makes him
pause-and saves his life when a shell hits the wagon (889). If he had
acted like a good Tolstoyan, he would be dead. Again, Tolstoy is tireless
In his insistence that unless we are firmly grounded in the common
and personal interests he calls "real life" (457), our lives will be empty
and futile. At the same time, however, he also knows that ''real life" Is
the most unreal thing of all, that the only thing real is the incomprehensible something which Prince Andrey discovered In the sky. We
cannot help but make systems of thought and behavior: It Is the
essential activity of human life to understand the truth and act in a
way that acknowledges the moral significance of our existence. But
heaven help us, Tolstoy Implies, if we should come to believe the
systems we make, If we should mistake them for the life they try to
describe.
The night after Platon's death, Pierre has a dream (XIV, 3) which
justifies his heartless turning away in terms of the "divine love" that
Platon represents. It tells him that the selfs first duty is to preserve
itself, for "while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine,"
and "to love life is to love God." Tbe primacy oflife comes from Its being
sacred, but Its primacy does not excuse us from risking our lives when
the situation warrants it. In fact, there seems to be something crucially
important about facing death, not as a distant abstraction but as an
immediate possibility. To express this complex responsibility we have
toward life, the dream repeats "the same thoughts" It brought him the
night after Borodino: "Harder and more blessed than all else Is to love
this life In one's sufferings, In one's Innocent sufferings." Then, as if
to reward Pierre for having put life's claims first, the dream passes
Into a vision ofhow the soul does not die, but only returns to the whole.
Unconditioned love Is not really heartless In turning away: since Platon
continues in the whole, it's only the delusion that we are separate and
personal selves which makes his death seem sad. "How simple and
clear It Is," Pierre thinks In the dream, comforted.
�PERAZZINI
99
When he wakes up moments later, however, Pierre still cannot face
Platon's death. And this, I think, is the second point Tolstoy means to
drive home: delusion though it is, we encounter God's love as separate
individuals. The whole may be what's true, but it's not where you or
I live. The vision leaves us dissatisfied. Pierre's dream sounds remarkably like Prince Andrey's thoughts moments before his dream, the one
in which death wins out over life. Perhaps it is a greater spiritual
achievement for Prince Andrey to choose the whole, or for us to be
comforted by the visiort of Platon 's returning to the whole, but Tolstoy
doesn't seem to think so. He calls Prince Andrey's thoughts "too ...
brain-spun" (1090). In choosing life-individual, human life, however
much of a delusion it is-we are committing ourselves to being
dissatisfied With the comfort ofknowing that we Will dissolve back into
the wholec We are committing ourselves, that is, to a sentence of death
in all its dreadfulness. And to recognize the sacredness of life under
those conditions, "to love this life in one's ... innocent sufferings" is
"harder and more blessed than all else." Divine love redeems Pierre,
then, by teaching him how to turn away from suffering and death, not
from callousness but from understsnding and faith. It teaches him,
we might say, the lesson of Job.
Pierre having chosen "this life," Tolstoy sends Russian partisans to
attack the convoy the next morning and free the prisoners. It is during
this action that fifteen-year-old Petya Rostov becomes a hero: like his
brother Nikolay at Enns Bridge, he rushes ahead of everyone-but he
is killed. Petya's death is not necessary to redeem Pierre from captivity
or to free his country of the French. It kills his mother spiritually and
hastens his father's death, but It restores Natasha to life by re-awakening the love in her which seems to have died with Prince Andrey. It
is the way of life to bring all things to an end, and to make all endings
someone else's beginnings. So it is in the novel, and so it Will be With
this lecture-after a brief epilogue.
Near the beginning of this lecture I said that Tolstoy regarded ideas
as vain trifles unless they were carried and lived to the extreme. That
was true of his convictions about moral purity and art, and it's
certainly true of his theory of history, which is nothing but the dialectic
oflove writlarge. It is not enough, for Tolstoy, to have explored a vision
of the relation between self and whole as it exists In one time. If that
vision is true, Tolstoy seems to believe, It must also inform the relation
between self and whole through time. The mechanical notion that an
individual causes an historical event derives from the egoistical delusion that the world is an object for the self to act upon. Because the
world is a whole comprised of separate beings, each of whom has the
�100
'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
legitimacy and value of embodying God's love, the relationship between leaders and the people has to be reciprocal, dialectical. We make
them possible, Tolstoy insists, and they are the means by which we
acquire a societal and historical self. Cause-and-effect is fine for
billiard balls, but it is blasphemous to think of ourselves that way.
But even extending the dialectic of love to apply to history doesn't
take it far enough for Tolstoy: near the end of the Second Epilogue he
expands the context once again and applies his vision of the relation
between self and whole wliJtout regard to time, in the metaphysical
discussion of free will and necessity that ends the book. If life is its
own "aim," being gifted with life confers a kind of autonomy on each
of us-the autonomy of making our own life what it is. Not that we
have any conirol over the conditions around us or the sequence of
events that happens to us; but rather, we make our life in a moral
sense by lransforming, moment by moment, the things life offers us
into our life. By the same token, since life is the whole, the course of
events and the conditions within which we live grow from it without
regard to what we want, expect, or need. As tiny parts of the whole,
we do help bring these events about, but never as we intend and
always in ways that we cannot realize. Necessity and freedom, then,
are also dialectically related: neither can exist without the other.
Whether or not Tolstoy is justified in applying the dialectic of love
to these larger and larger contexts, the book that comes of it is like
some vast symphony that takes a single theme and explores it,
develops it, lransforms it until it reaches monumental proportions.
For all of its heterogeneous material and hundreds of characters, War
and Peace embodies a remarkably single vision: that love embodies
itself in separate beings whose vecy separateness not only makes
possible the recognition of the whole, but also animates the universe
by making it inevitable that that recognition will be forgotten and
recalled endlessly.
�PERAZZINI
101
Notes:
l. Henry Troyat, 'Iblstoy, trans. Nancy Amphoux (Garden City: Double-
day, 1967), 499.
2. When Tolstoy was five, his older brother Nlkolay told him about a
magical green stick on which a secret was written that would end
disease, anger, and misery; the stick was buried in a forest on their
estate, and Its discovery would make everyone love each other as "ant
brothers." In his Mef11Dirs, written seventy years later, Tolstoy writes:
"The ideal of the 'ant brothers' clinging lovingly to one another only
not under two armchairs draped with shawls but of all the peoples of
the whole world under the wide dome of heaven, has remained
unaltered for me. As I then believed that there was a little green stick
whereon was written something that would destroy all evll in men and
give them great blessings, so I now believe that such truth exists
among people and will be revealed to them and wli1 give them what It
promises." By his own wish, Tolstoy Is buried where the green stick
was said to be hidden.
3. I owe this lovely image to Emily Bronte. Catherine Earnshaw uses it
in Chapter 9 of Wuthertng Heights.
4. It's worth noting, I think, that Tolstoy always calls him "Prince
Andrey, • using his full formal name to suggest the dominance and
tenacity ofhis egoism. He is the only character that Tolstoy so names.
5. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise &Alymer Maude, ed. George
Gibian (New York: W.W. Norton, 1966), 1079. All future references
will be placed within square brackets in the text When quoting more
than once from a particular scene, I will give book and chapter
references once rather than repeat what is often the same page
number.
6. The Russian word, nebo, means both "sky" and "heaven. •
7. Thlstoy measures Prince Andrey's progress from egoism to love by
repeating four s!mllar moments. The first time Prince Andrey realizes
that others have their own legitimate life Is the night before Austerlitz,
when he has a momentary glimpse of what it must have felt like to
his wife, Use, to be pregnant and dumped so lovelessly in the country
with his father and sister. The second time happens as he is driving
toward the house at Otrodnoe (VI, 1) and sees Natasha for the first
time. The painful sight of a life so "bright and happy" (It must also be
"foolish." he assures himself parenthetically) and so "separate" from
his begins his return to life. The third time (from which this quotation
is taken) is in 1812; visiting Bald Hills after It has been abandoned,
he sees two peasant girls running away with green plums they have
taken from his orchard, and wishes them well. The last time Is when
he is thinking about "human" and "divine love" after Borodino and
understands what things must have felt like to Natasha; moments
after this insight, the real Natasha returns to him. Each time his
insight Is deeper and more explicit, and his sympathy fuller.
�102
TiiE ST. JOHN'S REViEW
8.1 have changed the Maudes• translation here. They call the sky
"equitable, • but spravedlin!lf (related to pravda, "truth, justice") really
means "just" in the sense of impartial, equitable, or fair.
9. I wish I could take credit for this Image, but in fact It belongs to
Luciano Pavarottl, who used It to describe his vocal talent.
10. The name of Prince Andrey's estate, Ironically enough, means something like "enchanted by God" (Bog and charovat?
11. Tolstoy's idea of the right way to live sounds like the just life in the
Republic, both in its analogical, social manifestation and Its real,
moral sense: "Thus, Glaucon, it was after all a kind of phantom of
justice-that's also why It was helpful-its being right for the man who
ts by nature a shoemaker to practice shoemaking and do nothing else,
and for the carpenter to practice carpentry, and so on for the rest...
And in truth justice was, as It seems, something of this sort; however,
not with respect to man's minding his external business, but with
respect to what is within, with respect to what truly concerns him and
his own. He doesn't let each part in him mind other people's business
or the three classes in the soul meddle with each other, but really sets
his own house in good order and rules himself; he arranges himself,
becomes his own friend, and harmonlzes the three parts ... • (443c-d,
translation by Allan Bloom) In What Is Art?, written three decades
after War and Peace, Tolstoy develops an aesthetic vety much like
Socrates' in Books II-III and X of the Republic.
12. Troyat, op. cit., 731.
13. I have changed the Maudes' translation again. Neopredelimyj, which
they translate "illimitable, • is more strictly "indeterminable" and
"indefinable. • Tbe word they translate as "limited" is uzkij, "narrow. •
And telesn!lf means "physical" and "corporeal" more than "material.•
Tbe adverb beskonechno, "infinitely," is the same word which Prince
Andrey repeatedly uses about the sky.
14. Pierre is the only character in the novel whose name changes, from
"Monsieur Pierre" to Count Bezukhov, then to "the man who does not
give his name," and finally back to Count Bezukhov-but a different
person from the first time he bore that name. I take this as a literal
sign that he spends most of the novel discovertog his self.
15. Tolstoy uses mlli!aty imagety more than once to associate Pierre's
experience as he is maneuvered into marriage with Nikolay's early
mlli!aty experience. Most important is the dreadful "line" (199, 200,
225) each has to cross: on this side is life, safety, and what they have
been; on the other side is uncertainty, pain, and death. Each has a
sense that just by having crossed that line, he will be Irrevocably
changed.
16. The Maudes use "reason, • but the Russian, wn, is not quite so specific.
It means "mind, brains, wit, intellect. •
17. Tbe failure of Pierre's religiosity anticipates the contradictions that
would embitter the last thirty years of Tolstoy's life, after his conversion. Not only did he welcome the role of spiritual leader to the
�PERAZZINI
103
disciples his Chrtstian anarchism attracted, but as the "apostle of
love• he quarreled with every frtend he ever had, especially his wife
Sonya, whom he refused to see on his deathbed.
18. The name Is, Indeed, the Russian form of Plato (and the word
tolstyj--remarkable colncidencel-means "thick, heavy, stout, fat•). In
Anna Karentna, another peasant named Platon sparks the religious
conversion of the autobiographical character Levin.
19. The Maudes translate this "right-ordering,· but the word,
blagoustrqjsbJo, Is the same word that Tolstoy uses on the next page
to descrtbe Platon's way of preparing for sleep. The Maudes translate
the second appearance as "well-ordered," and I have adopted this
phrase for both.
20. In Russian, the word for "peasant" (krest:Janin) differs only slightly
from the word for "Chrtstian• (xristtonln). Platon himself makes the
pun which associates the two.
�104
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
Two Poems
Moira Russell
Illusory
jar Vmcent Van Gogh
So much sadness, even when there is so much yellow in the world.
yellow past sun, past joy. past comfort,
yellow as a quilt for the eyes, yellow as an explosion.
I can't tell you when it was I first knew
that there was no blackness in the world-not even in night;
that there was always a hint of color, a saving grace,
hiding deep somewhere within the blackness.
The stars bum yellow. white, blue-red and gold.
so there Is only red-blue darkness. yellow blackness. Illusory.
Even in eyes' pupils.
the gateway to darkness.
live yellow sparks. In the beginning there was yellow.
not sun yet, nor even light.
color without form,
wriggling and kicking In God's hand, like an infant.
its color yelling out
like an infant's first squall; then as it lit up to white
and then burnt down to deep tawny lions gold
God smiled at yellow. the very first of all his children; he knew
that he had created as he had wanted to.
Moira Russell attended St. John's College in Santa Fe and was graduated from
the Universlt;y of Delaware in 1992. She lives in Albuquerque.
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
106
Strange Me~?ting
Often I imagine
my two grandfathers, never knowing
each other In llfe, ,somehow meeting.
Different ends
of the same spectrum, cruelly, they'd talk
of what they held In common:
money, whiskey, women, death.
Yet even there
they are dMded-take whiskey: one lived In Prohibition,
a dapper bootlegger, a dandy;
one lived in endless poverty,
violent llfe and violent death, a powder-monkey
working with dynamite all day
and coming home and making moonshine, bragging
that his "likker" was as powerful-he'd drink-no,
better.
Their lnfluence on me
is so powerful
it is unseen; like the moon
pulling on creatures deep within the sea,
like hidden water
running through the earth, their blood,
oil and water, runs uneasily In my veins,
never mlxlng, yet mlxed In me,
powering this hand that writes of their imagined meeting,
strangers in name, but uni1y In heredity.
�I
Two Reviews
Eva T. H. Brann
Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander and 'The Ionian
MissiDn, New York: W. W. Norton (1970, 1981).
Cynthia Ozlck, 'The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, New
York: E. P. Duttoq (1983).
This time I want to commend to the attention of the community a pair
of books that belong to a series, and a collection of stories. The series
and the collection are connected by nothing but their Incongruity.
Among the many reminders to us that we do not live In the very best
of all possible worlds Is the fact that the texts that edlty do not
Invariably delight and the tales that are salutary to the soul do not
always give the most pleasure. I do think the well-balanced reading
life should range over both extremes. Here, then, Is an example of
each, one a realistic British sea-romance and the other a theological
Jewish fantasy.
For the adults among the readers of the Hornblower books who
have longed for one more adventure there is relief: Patrick O'Brian's
fifteen-book Aubrey-Maturin series, the best fighting navy novels I
have ever read. (Consider that Joseph Conrad writes about commercial vessels, though he wouldn't have liked so crass a way of putting
it.) Like the Hornblower novels, this series follows the rocky rise of Its
hero through the navy list durlng the Napoleonic wars. Unlike the
Forester stories, this series Is an entertainment meant for grownups.
The way I went about It was to get the first and the eighth volume,
Master and Commander and 'The Ionian MissiDn. I mean to get the
fifteenth as soon as It Is available In paperback, and then to fill In
haphazardly, as If picking up occasional tales about a familiar setting
and Its likable Inhabitants.
To me the chief delight of these books Is the sea talk. The special
vocabularies of all the honest trades-so antithetical to jargon-are
always wonderful, but among them the speech of sailors Is most
wonderful. For one thlng, It is vigorously poetical and exuberantly
traditional; for another, !tis an essential part of the working life of any
boat-skippers who can't rely on the crew to know the language of
their orders might as well go and do It themselves (which Is what my
skipper, Bert Thoms, our tutor who died In 1978, would often have to
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
108
do). Naturally not everybody Is so fond of sailing speech. In the opening
chapter of the voyage to Brobdingnag, Swift Inserts a sardonic halfpage of nautical gibberish-at least, I think It must be that. O'Brian,
on the other hand, Is persuasively professional, and there are sometimes whole pages oflanguage that I can't make heads or tails of but
In which I have utter faith. For example, Captain Jack Aubrey has just
set his Sophtes old-fashioned spritsail topsail. edging away another
half point:
At the taffrail Mowett was explaining the nature of this sail to
Stephen, for the Sophie set It llytog, with a jack-stay cltoched round
the end of the jib-boom, havtog an Iron traveller on It, a curious
state of affairs In a man-of-war, of course.
Well, of course. Like most members of this community, I don't like
being subjected to Insignificant speech even If! can divine Its Intention
very well, but I love listening to significant speech though I don't
understand a third of it.
The other objects that are lovable about these books are Its Captain
Jack Aubrey, called "Goldilocks" behind his back by the crew, and his
friend, the ship's surgeon Stephen Maturln, a hopeless sailor and an
Indefatigable naturalist. In fact, the most horrifying engagement In the
books Is the mating of a pair of praying mantises observed by Stephen,
a mating that Is carried on undeterred by the fact that the female Is
the while systematically dismantling her mate. The beauty of It Is that
In this romance the Incident Is a metaphor for nothing at all-just a
well-observed piece of natural history.
Young Jack as well as middle-aged Jack Is fattish and blond, daring
and cautious, insubordinate andTorylsh, moody and exuberant, naive
and cunning, childlike and commanding, bearlike and delicate. Although he makes love In ail ports, he is altogether present only In two
places. One Is the quarterdeck of his sloop Sophie (and later of his
frigate Swprise) before and In battle, the other Is in the captain's cabin,
sawing away at his fiddle In concert with friend Stephen's cello. They
both know the mUsic of the "London Bach." As It happens, Stephen
has come across the fact that "Bach had a father," and has brought
some of father Bach's scores on board. Playing them reveals a side of
the amateurishly musical Jack that realigns his figure from lovable to
moving.
There Is, of course, third among delights, lots of naval action:
chases, engagements, sllpplngs-away, bombardments, hoardings,
love trysts In exotic ports-and very little pretense of plot otherwise.
Years of pleasure!
•••
�BRANN
109
ConseiYatively speaking, one might say that the people in Cythia
Ozick's book, particularly In the title story, "The Pagan Rabbi" (1966),
are not outdoor folk. The nearest the rabbi comes to the ocean Is
sewer-straddling Trilham's Inlet Park, off Long Island Sound (I have
reason to think) but not to be found on the going map of New York
City and environs. Here he hangs himself with his prayer shawl from
the young oak with whose roving splrlt he has fallen In love. Hence
the tale Is fantasy, but it Is dead serlous fantasy. In the epigraph of
the story, taken from the Talmudic Ethics ofthe Fathers, Cynthia Ozick
announces the danger that drives Rabbi Kornfeld to his death:
Rabbi Jacob said: "He who Is walking along and studying, but then
breaks off to remark, 'How lovely Is that tree!" or 'How beautiful is
that fallow fieldl'--8crlpture regards such a one as having hurt his
own being.•
This saying speaks to me because I was brought up the other way
around, to think that total absorption In Inward talk while walking
through a fallow field-or a field of corn in tassel-is a sin against
nature.
Kornfeld's embittered widow suspects him of studying nature-botany, perhaps mycology. But those Baconlan distractions are not his
undoing. He develops a mad and beautiful theory of"free souls." Only
the human soul Is Irremediably Indwelling. The souls of natural
beings, of trees and animals, can roam free, leaving the natural body
at peace, allowing It to see, to witness, to confront Its own soul. What
has captivated the rabbi is not the science of nature but the souls of
nature: water and wood nymphs. the visible spirlts of myth. In the
feiYently God-involved mode of a piously sedentary learned Jew he
has surrendered to paganism-to open-eyed wandering about (he
joins a hiking club), to visible splrlts (he begins by descrying a naiad
and ends by embracing a nymph), and to the supersession of God's
will by the free Imagination (he thinks that If Moses had told the
Hebrews of the doctrine of "free souls" they would have preferred to
stay enslaved In Egypt while letting their souls wander at pleasure In
Zion).
No one in this story Is lovable or even pleasant, not the runaway
rabbi, not the bitter rebbetzin, nor the bookseller who tells the
tale-not even, or least of all, the rural spirit that seduces him, for In
love-battle with a Jew, the nymph proves to be a demon. But they are
all reenacting an old and deadly serlous antagonism, and thus they
command respect.
�llO
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
Results of
Crossword Number Four
Solution to "Famous Pairs" by Captain Easy
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The winners of the $35 book tokens, redeemable at the St. John's
College Bookstore, are:
Jerry Bains, Phoenix AZ
Christopher Lee, Portland ME
Steve Stalter, Topeka KS
The solution and the names of the winners of Crossword Number
Five will appear In the next regular Issue.
�112
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Crossword Number Six:
"Poreus"
By Cassandra
Answers to ten clues, marked by asterisks, are to be decoded phonetically before entry Into the •diagram.
Across
I. Composer reverses role
as young knight (8)
*4. To flout reality, conceal
what Is bizarre (5)
7. Spawn of vile animals,
Initially (3)
10. Meat for least Important
or most Important man?
(4)
*12. Once started, wandering
nude takes right path (8)
*13. Give us any new order,
then rescind It (5)
14. Make candy money (4)
16. Regular fee sent directly
to Pole (4)
18. Sewer with top off reveals
water (4)
19. Hydrogen works when
used for making beer (4)
*20. Unknown artist and
celebrity finally join
forces to produce kind of
picture (1-3)
21. Give authority to put In
combination of French
and English (6)
24. Left gun out-it's found
In chest (4)
25. Half-Japanese car game
(3)
*26. Expense Is nothing like
Latin song (6)
27. To claim as one's own,
put pointless pointer on
entry (8)
Down
*I. How to address Turkish
governor: "Do as I say!" (4)
2. Possessed, found In part
of Hell (3)
3. Dancing girl and fat
treatment (7)
*4. Place for products of
burning, like hightension beam (7)
5. Following bad pun?
There's nothing in It (4)
6. Sneer about birds (5)
8. Extra room for tenth
British monarch (5)
9. Poor leaderless seminar
must stay put (6)
*1 0. Avoid taking trick-or,
taking fifty, avoid giving
enough money! (9)
11. Began bad ode about
writer (6)
*13. Linger longer to display
old-fashioned corset (7)
14. Ethical maxtm starts
from the lips (5)
*15. Where to dispose of what
Is finished-and ruined,
you tart! (3-4)
17. Money Is corrupt heart of
despot (4)
22. Metal beast (3)
23. Organ froduces soundyes? (3
�CROSSWORD
1
113
3
2
9
8
7
4
110
6
111
12
13
14
15
17
16
18
19
21
20
24
26
5
23
22
25
(2.7
As usual, three book tokens of $35, redeemable at the College Bookstore
(Annapolis), will be awarded for the first three correct solutions opened
at random eight weeks after the mailing of this issue. Marl< envelopes
" Crossword No. 6."
��
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Hunt, Jack
Sachs, Joe
Sepper, Dennis L.
Maschler, Chaninah
Peperzak, Adriaan
Perazzini, Randolph
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLII, number two (1994)
Editor
Elliott Zuckennan
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
John. VanDoren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Richard Schmidt
The St. John's Review Is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 for
three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes appear semiannually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays, stories,
poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the
Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD21404-2800.
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Bookstore.
©1994 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or
in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
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��Contents
1 ..... Introduction
5 . . . . . Torah and Logos
David R. Lachterman
27 ..... Autonomy and Authenticity:
How One Becomes What One Is
Daniel W. Conway
41 ..... The Eleatic Stranger's
Socratic Condemnation of Socrates
Jacob Howland
61 ..... The Myth of the Reversed Cosmos
in Contemporary Physics
Pierre Kerszberg
81 . . . . . Nietzsche, Solitude, and Truthfulness
Gregory Schalliol
95 . . . . . From Rationalism to Historicism:
The Devolution of Cartesian Subjectivity
Carl Page
113 . . . . . Hegel on Time
Eva T. H. Brann
137 . . . . . A Bibliography of the Writings
of David R. Lachterman
Compiled by Brian Domino
��Contributors
Eva T. H. Brann is the Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis. She
is the author of many essays and books, among them Paradoxes of
Education in a Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1979) and The
World ofimngination: Swn and Substance (Savage, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1991).
Daniel Conway currently teaches at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the
Center for Ethics and Value lnqulcy.
Jacob Howland is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa. He studied with David Lachterman at Swarthmore
College as an undergraduate, and at the Pennsylvania State University, where he received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1987. His book, The
Republic: The Odyssey ofPhilosophyrecently appeared in theTwayne's
Masterwork Series (New York: Twayne, 1994).
Pierre Kerszberg is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Invented Universe,
which appeared in 1989 with the Oxford University Press.
Carl Page is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Emocy University.
He was a student of David Lachterman at the Pennsylvania State
University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1987. His book, Philosophical
Historldsm. will appear this year with the Penn State Press.
Gregocy Schalliol studied Philosophy at Yale College (B.A.). Northwestern University (M.A.), and the Pennsylvania State University,
where he received his Ph.D. ln 1987, under the direction of David
Lachterman. He is currently Assistant Professor of Classics and
Philosophy at the University of South Dakota.
��I
Introduction
The essays collected in this special issue of the St. John's Review are
dedicated to the memmy of David Rapport Lachterman, who studied
at St. John's College from 1961 to 1965. At the kind Invitation of the
editor, we have solicited memorial essays from several of David's
former students and colleagues. These essays reflect not only the
range and breadth of David's scholarly interests, but also the scope
of his influence on those who knew and loved him.
David Lachterman was born in Alabama in 1944, and he spent his
formative years in Falls Church, Virginia. He was admitted to St.
John's College at the age of sixteen, and he completed his brilliant
career of undergraduate studies four years later; he was awarded
highest honors in the College. Upon completing his studies at St.
John's, David pursued graduate studies in Philosophy and Classics
at Harvard University and Oxford University. He received his doctorate
in Philosophy in 1984 from the Pennsylvania State University. David
taught Philosophy and Classics at Syracuse, Swarthmore, and Vassar.
At the ttme of his death In 1991, he was Professor of Philosophy and
Classics at the Pennsylvania State University.
David was known throughout the world as a scholar of extraordinary breadth and versatility. Fluent in eight languages, he was
considered an expert In such diverse fields as Ancient Philosophy and
Classics, Jewish and Arabic philosophy, the history of mathematics
and the exact sciences, modern philosophy, German Idealism, renaissance Platonism, literary criticism, and postmodern thought. His
many lectures and essays reflect the unparalleled range of his erudition and scholarship. Although diverse and far-reaching, David's
intellectual interests centered on a common theme and project: he had
embarked upon an ambitious genealogical analysis of modernity,
hoping eventually to articulate a unified, definitive account of the
epoch as a whole. In 1989, he published an enormously influential
book with Routledge, The Ethics of Geometry, which not only traces
the transformation of ancient to modern mathematics, but also locates
in this transformation the roots of modern philosophy. At the time of
�2
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
his death, David was preparing a sequel to The Ethics of Geometry,
which he had provisionally entitled The Sovereignty ofConstructlnn.
We begin this Issue of the Review with a transcription of one of
David's most famous lectures, 'Torah and Logos." In this lecture,
David tnvestlgates the real and perceived tensions that obtain between
the Hebrew concept of torah and the Greek concept of logos. As David's
opening remarks Indicate, this lecture represents his life-long attempt
to reckon (and partially repay) his debts to his teachers and students.
Although well known to many of David's friends, colleagues and
students, 'Torah and Logos" has never before appeared tn print.
In "Autonomy and Authentlcl1y," Daniel Conway challenges the
popular reception ofFrledrich Nietzsche as a teacher of autonomy and
the champion par excellence oflndlvldual authenticity. Conway argues
that the familiar exhoriatoryrhetorlc ofN!etzsche's post-Zarathustran
writings Is tempered by an equally promtnent critique of voluntarism,
which calls tnto question the very possibility of autonomy and authenticity. Nietzsche's model for "How one becomes what one Is" thus
Involves elements of volition and cognition, of self-creation and selfdiscovery.
Jacob Howland next takes up the question of the ambiguous nature
of the philosopher. In his essay 'The Eleatlc Stranger's Socratic
Condemnation of Socrates," Howland undertakes an Investigation of
the Eleatlc Stranger's famous condemnation of Socrates tn Plato's
Sophist. While critical of the Eleatlc Stranger's verdict, Howland
concludes that it nevertheless captures the paradoxical nature of the
Socratic philosopher.
Pierre Kerszberg too addresses the myth of the reversed cosmos,
illuminating Plato's cosmology In the light of contemporary physics.
In his essay 'The Myth of the Reversed Cosmos In Contemporary
Physics," Kerszberg demonstrates that contemporary physicists attempt to fix time's arrow in a prospective direction, even though the
laws of nature are perfectly consistent with the position of time's arrow
In a retrospective direction. Plato's myth of the reversed cosmos
furnishes clues that help us to recover a sense of human life within
any abstract reconstruction of experience.
Gregory Schalliol next tnvestlgates the complex relationship of the
philosopher to the human community. Taking as his point of entry
Nietzsche's complicated praise of solitude, Schalliol excavates the
paradox that underlies the philosopher's attempts to found communities and societies. In order to prepare oneself for the founding labors
of philosophy, Nietzsche argues, one must retreat tnto solitude and
husband one's strength and vitality. As Schalliol points out, however,
�INTRODUCTION
3
this sort of solitary self-transformation serves to distance the philosopher further from those tndividuals who are likely to constitute any
human community.
In his essay "From Rationalism to Historicism," Carl Page charts
the dialectical relations that obtain between the positions of rationalIsm and historicism. Expostng the supposed oppositions between
rationalism and historicism as merely apparent, or dialectical, tn
nature, Page unearths the,common root from which these disparate
plants have grown and bloomed.
We would like to express our gratitude to the St. John's Review for
affording us the opportunity to honor David Lachterman In such an
appropriate forum. In particular, we would like to thank Elliott
Zuckerman, who worked tlrelesslywith us to brtng forward this special
edition of the Review. On behalf of our fellow authors, we present these
essays in the memory of our friend and colleague, David Rapport
Lachterman.
D.W.C.
P.K.
State College, PA
"'* * * *
To the essays introduced above, we have added Eva T.H. Brann's
essay on Hegel and Time, also presented in honor of David Lachterman.
E.Z.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Torah and Logos
I
David R. Lachterman
Evety speech has a long ancestry, even if it was composed for a novel
occasion. It may help to clarify my purposes In today's speech If I say
a few words about Its genealogy and genesis. Its remote ancestor was
my undergraduate teacher, Simon Kaplan, a learned and pious man.
I recall vividly the day he admonished me In a thick Russian accent-!
can't successfully mimic It: "Mr Lachterrnan, you spend all your time
with the Greeks, none with the Jews." Although he prepared a reading
list of traditional Jewish authors for me, It was many years before I
undertook to read the list. I was, however, able to repay a small portion
of the extravagant favors he did for me, as teacher and as friend, by
helping Wm with the English translation of Hermann Cohen's Religinn
of Reason, a book about wWch I shall have more to say later.
The more proximate ancestor of today's speech was the presentation of some similar remarks to a group of Jewish undergraduates of
Swarthmore College, who had decided to read and discuss Jewish
works. Remembering Simon Kaplan's admonition, I chose four sample
classical texts, In the hope that one or more would capture their
imagination.
I should tell you that that presentation had two by-products. First,
the students voted unanimously to read and discuss Portnoy's Complaint Instead of The Guide of the Perplexed. Second, some years later
I met two of the students In that original audience who were then
college teachers themselves and, strangely, recalled the talk I had
given, under the title 'Torah vs. Logos." One was sure that I was
defending Logos; the other was equally convinced that I was on the
side of Torah. Accordingly, I have altered the title of my talk today to
'Torah and Logos."
My title, 'Torah and Logos," expresses a duality, a tension between
alternatives wWch I take to be decisive for Jewish, and perhaps not
only Jewish, identity, or self-understanding. This same tension Is also
conveyed by the better-known historical phrase "Athens and Jerusalem," the two cities symbolizing pWlosophy and exact science on the
one hand, and the Biblical teacWngs on the other. As Hermann Cohen
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
6
wrote In reply to an open letter published by Martin Buber: "as
ardently as I feel 'from Zion comes forth the Torah,' so do I feel with
equal earnestness 'from Hellas, that Is, from Greece, comes forth
science.•"
Let us look at this contrast more closely. IfTorah means In Hebrew
"teaching" or "Instruction," thanks to the Greek translation, the
Septuagint, it has come to be understood as Nomos, as Law. Logos Is
the most many-sided and essential of all Ancient Greek words. The
word Is, of course, well known to all of us thanks to Its presence In
our word "logic" and In the family of English terms ending In "-logy":
"biology," ''psychology," "anthropology," for lnstsnce, to say nothing of
"technology'' and "ideology." It Is hardly an exaggeration to say that
the self-understsnding of modern Western man, to the extent that It
Is Inseparable from the sciences and the technical endeavors made
possible by the sciences, still carries the seal of the Greek experience
of lngos. The Greek dictionary will tell you that lngos can mean, among
other things, sentence, speech, discourse, reason, and reasoning, as
well as the rational pattern brought to light by speech and reasoning.
It signifies, In general, the power and the products of Intelligence and,
more specifically, a telling account that tallies with the real nature of
things.
The first thing to be stressed here is that the exercise and pursuit
of lngos, of a true account of the world, Is "autonomous"-that is, it is
a law unto Itself, or, put differently, It acknowledges only those "laws
of reason and reality" it can discover under its own power, without
guidance or control by anything or anyone else. This already brings
Into view the fundamental contrast between Greek philosophy and
traditional Jewish belief, a contrast made clearer by the following two
anecdotes:
The most lmportsnt Greek philosophical work prior to Socrates is
the poem by Parmenides entitled "Truth." It begins with a scene of
"revelation" in which a mysterious and anonymous goddess puts forth
for Parmenides' benefit a doctrine of what truly "Is," as distinct from
what merely seems to mortal men to be. At the crucial turning-point
In her speech she addresses these remarkable words to him:
But you must test by logos the very controversial proof arising from
what I say [Kptvm 8€ MywL noXU&!jpLv lX<rxov <e E!1E8<v i>'l8eVTa].
What this means Is that human reason is and must be the touchstone,
the final criterion, of the veracity of what the goddess "reveals."
In starkest possible contrast stsnds a traditional story about the
giving of the Torah to the Jews. According to this story, to be found in
�LACHIERMAN
7
the S!fre on Deuteronomy, God went from nation to nation offering to
each his "teaching," his commandments, with the promise to show
special favor to the nation that accepted his covenant. Each nation,
In turn, requested to hear what these commandments were, before
deciding whether or not to obey them. Each, In turn, having heard
God's commands, found reason to reject the divine offer. Finally, God
turned to the Jews, who Immediately replied, "We shall do and we
shall hearken" (kol asher 4Jhber adonai na'aseh ve-nishmtt, see Exod.
24:7). That Is, the commitment to obedience Is prior even to the
knowledge ofwhatwill be commanded; God's authority, as manifested
In the very fact that He has revealed himself, eliminates both the
necessity and the possibility of questioning Divine commands, of
weighing by human reason whether or not these commands are
sensible or feasible.
So, the first contrast Is that between the autonomy and independence of logos, and the authoritativeness of Divine Revelation: When
God commands Abraham "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom
thou lovest, ... even Isaac, ... and offer him ... for a burnt offering" (Gen.
22:2), Abraham rose early tn the momtng to do God's will; when
Socrates is told by Chaerephon that the Delphic Oracle has declared
that no one In Athens is wiser than he, he promptly makes the oracle
a junior partner, so to speak, in a Socratic dialogue, questioning and
analyzing what could have been meant by that statement, convinced,
from the starl, that the statement, as It stands, Is dubious and
probably false. Socrates'wily daimonion, the surrogate for oracles and
their gods, Is worlds apart from Abraham's simple reply to the divine
nomination," 'Avraham': 'hineni"'-"Here I am" (Gen. 22:1).
A second contrast Is closely associated with the first: No Greek
thinker believed that logos Is easily discovered or achieved; coming to
knowledge of the world's rational nature rather involves an arduous
struggle to surmount Ignorance and misguided preconceptions, particularly those underwritten by prevailing and authoritative opinions,
the shared consensus of the community. If comprehensive wisdom,
sophia In Greek, Is always the goal of rationalinqutry, the movement
towards that goal can only be called phi/osophta, the love of wisdom,
where It Is understood that love arises from a distance between the
lover and the target of his love. It Is characteristic of the best among
mortal men that they seek wisdom, not that they already have It or
can readily secure it.
What the Bible calls hokhnwh, the Hebrew term for wisdom, Is a
rather different matter. Divine Wisdom expresses ltselfin the "statutes
and ordinances" (huqqim ve-mishpatim) transmitted to Israel by Moses
�8
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
from Mt. Sinai; human wisdom consists in the unwavering fulfillment
of these commands-"Observe therefore and do them," Moses says In
Deuteronomy 4:6, "for this Is your wisdom and your understanding
[btnah) in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these
statutes, shall say: Surely this great nation Is a wise and understandIng people."
While It would be false to say that wisdom, according to the Bible,
Is effortlessly achieved, It is true that wisdom Is always available If a
pious Jew makes the effort to grasp and to put into practice what God
has authoritatively demanded from him. This seems to be the basic
teaching of the famous lines from the Book of Proverbs concerning
hokhmah;
Trust In the Lord with all thy heart
And lean not upon thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him
And He will direct thy paths.
Happy Is the man that flndeth wisdom...
Her ways are ways of pleasantness
And all her paths are peace.
She Is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her
And happy Is evezy one that holdeth her fast.
(Prov. 3: 5-6; 13-18)
This Biblical version of ''wisdom," as conformity to, and confidence In,
God's understanding of the world and of man, circumscribes the
horizons of human "inqulzy," both practical and theoretical.
This remains the case, or so I suggest, even In the so-called
Wisdom-or saplential-literature in the Torah and the non-canonical
books where Greek Influence has long been suspected. and where
hokhmah Is personified much In the way sophia. Is personified In
contemporaneous Greek writings. To cite only a single example, from
the apocryphal First Book ofBaruch: 'Wisdom was God's possession,
but he gave her to his servant Jacob. This [i.e., Wisdom] is the book
of God's eternal law; to follow it is life, to abandon It, death." A constant
refrain in the Wisdom literature, canonical and non-canonical, Is the
line from Psalm lll: 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning ofWisdom"
{tehilia.t hokhmah yir'at adonaQ.
Once again the contrast with the Socratic tradition Is strikingly
salient. In a medieval Arabic manuscript recently edited by L.V.
Berman and IlaiAion, the spirit, If not the letter, of the original Greek
tradition is finely captured. 'The indications which point to the fact
that philosophy is better than religious law [shmi'ah) are many... first:
the perception of things by wisdom [hilanah) comes about through
�IACHTERMAN
9
their natures, whereas their perception by religious law comes ihrough
their appearances."
Plato calls the summit and goal of practical inquiry, Inquiry into
the best human life, the Good, or the look of the Good; he maintains
that the Good is the greatest subject of study, perhaps only dimly
glimpsed at the climax of relentless philosophical investigation. The
Bible, on the other hand, declares "It has been told thee, 0 Man, what
Is Good" (Micah 6:8). As for, theoretical inquiry, the Greek philosophers
were In constant search 'after the first or primordial principles of
reality, the archai The traditional Jewish attitude Is nicely illustrated
by a Talmudic discussion provoked by the question why the ftrstletter
of the first word of the first verse of the Torah, naroely, bereshit, "in
the beginning," is not aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
but beth. Since everything In the Torah Is there according to divine
plan, this departure from mathematical symmetry must carry some
message: since the design of the letter beth points ahead to what
follows rather than back to what, so to speak, preceded God's decision
to create the universe, the alert reader is aware that Inquiry into those
ultimate matters Is pointless and perhaps contrary to divine Intention.
This attitude Is further illustrated by the following passages: ''Whosoever reflects on four things, It were better for him if he had not come
Into the world-what is above, what is beneath, what is before, and
what Is after" (Haglgah 2: 1 of the Mishnah); and 'The process of
creation may not be expounded before two" (Haglgah 116).
What matters are the human actions required by the covenant
sealed at the foot of Sinal. Moses was allowed to see only the "backside" of God-which the tradition interprets as the Divine attributes
of action-justice, charity, compassion, and so on, which are the
exemplars of appropriate human behavior.
Much more needs to be said about both of these contrasts. However,
I am obliged to pass on to one further theme that additionally
complicated and, at many times, embittered the encounter between
Athens and Jerusalem, between Logos and Torah.
For Jewish tradition itis not divine revelation pure and simple that
claims authority over autonomous human reason, but divine revelation given uniquely to a particular people at a particular place and
time. The uniqueness of the revelation given at Sinai goes hand in
hand with the doctrine that the Jews are "the chosen people," "the
'pick' of humankind," as Yehuda Halevi will write. Outside the perspective of traditional Judaism, this doctrine often appeared to express the intolerant and Intolerable "excluslvism" of the Jews, their
�10
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
willful separation from the unanimously, or at least widely, shared
convictions and preoccupations of non-Jews.
Once again the contrast between Jewish religious belief and Greek
philosophical attitude could not be more pointed. Logos has no
particular "place"; it is not the possession of a particular people. We
traditionally speak, therefore, ofthe wt!versalismofGreekph!losophy,
at least in respect to its highest intentions. A contemporary of Plato,
the orator !socrates, makes the general point quite clearly when he
writes:
Those who share in our education have more rlght to be called Hellenes
[Greeks] than those who have a common descent with us.
Socrates himself more than once calls attention to his disregard of
place, his "outlandishness," as we might say. While Socratic conversations begin in a particular place with particular persons, their aim
Is to outstrip and leave behind the contingencies and limitations of
their particular origins. For the Jew, on the contrary, even in a
condition of actual dispersion and exile, religious belief and practice
make constant reference to an otiginal place: "If I forget thee, 0
Jerusalem, let my tight hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember
thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth: if I prefer not
Jerusalem above my chief joy." Whether being the Chosen People is
Israel's burden or its glory, in either case, the covenant with God
implies a special relationship, not shared by other peoples. In particular, the "ceremonial observances" commanded by the Torah are the
outward symbols of the inward obligations impressed on the Jewish
soul by this covenant.
Needless to say, believing Jews have never been oblivious or
insensitive to the competing demands of particulartsm and universalism. Let me simply mention two fundamental ways in which this
competition makes itself felt in the Jewish tradition itself.
What the Hebrew Bible calls "the end of Days" will be the reign of
universal justice and universal brotherhood. This profoundly wtiversalisticvlslon of the Messianic times Inspires the well-known lines:
"On that Day, the Lord shall be One and His Name shall be One." And
yet, according to the teaching of the prophets, Jerusalem will be the
focal point of the Messianic future and the non-Jewish nations will be
under the dominion of the restored Israelite kingdom. Maimonides, in
the final section of the Mishneh Torah known as "laws of Kings and
Their Wars," emphasizes that all the commandments of the Torah,
including the law of animal sactiftce in the Temple, will be obeyed in
the days of the Messiah.
�IACHTERMAN
11
A second instance is the doctrine of the "Sons of Noah" and the
so-called Noachide commandments. The Talmud discusses at some
length the moral and social duties God requires of all mankind as
such, even without the benefit of more detailed revelation. The Rabbis
specified seven such "commandments for the sons of Noah," including
the prohibition of homicide and adultecy and the establishment of
courts of justice or bet din. Then the question arose whether those
who obey these Noachi<Je commandments, the "pious among the
peoples of the earth," as they are called, merit eternal life, or "the world
to come" ('olam ha-ba), as do Jews who fulfill aU the commandments
of the Torah. Maimonides, In his authoritative code, makes a significant distinction at this point. If a man performs the Noachide commandments because of a decision of reason, or from purely human
ethical conscience, he "has no share In the world to come." Only If the
non-Jew respects those commandments as testifYing to the existence
and following from the will of God are his actions meritorious. We can
conclude that Biblical morality, even in Its minimal form, presupposes
both the existence and the self-revelation of the Biblical God. As
Nietzsche was to see with overwhelming clarity: when the God of Sinal
Is presumed to be dead, "evel}'thlng Is permitted." Furthermore, to
quote Emil Fackenhelm: "If revelation must go, with It must go any
possible reUgious justification for the existence of the Jewish people.
In the absence of a binding commandment supernaturally (that Is,
exira-rationally) revealed to a particular people, It makes as little sense
to have a Mosaic religion for the Jewish people today, as, say, a
Platonic religion for the modem Greek nation."
Fackenhelm's analysis demonstrates how the two lines of reflection
and opposition I have been pursuing ultimately converge: traditional
Judaism presupposes the miracle of an historically particular revelation, while classical Greek philosophy Insists upon the universality of
the conclusions reached by natural reason. If I have today a thesis, or
better said, an hypothesis, It would be: "Extremes diverge."
I have deliberately set out the contrasts between reason and
revelation, universalism and particularism, In an exlreme manner so
that the seriousness of the debates these themes generate can be fully
visible. In any case, I hope that what I have said so far begins to throw
some light on a characteristically fierce and exaggerated exclamation
made by Splnoza, of whom I shall have more to say later: ''The Jews
despise philosophy."
A recent author, Jacques Derrida, attempts to respond to this
------'*, only to widen its form, Its heart-wrenchingness. In the
context of Levlnas, Derrlda writes: "Are we Jews? Are we Greeks? We
*The manuscript has the Greek word B~Epvw, which is a mistranscription. IE.Z.J
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
live in the difference between the Jews and the Greeks. which is
perhaps the unity of what is called history. We live in and of differences, that is, in hypocrisy." Or as Joyce put it in Ulysses: "Jewgreek
is greekjew." The two terms meet. Or do they meet?
The tensions and polarities I have been discussing first became
historically prominent in the Hellenistic period of Judaism, the period
in which the successors of Alexander the Great exercised political
control over the Jews livl!lg in Jerusalem and Judaea. The historical
sources reveal, in a remarkably prophetic way, a pattern of cultural
and intellectual confrontation that will define the situation of European Jewry for the next two millennia. The Greeks were both characteristically curious to explore the claims of Jewish monotheism and
prompt to assimilate what they had learned to their own tradition. The
Jews, on the other hand, displayed a marked ambivalence which, in
the end, led to exireme social disruption: some Jews, especially those
from the upper levels of society, were eager to imitate the institutions
of their Greek masters, to establish schools of the liberal arts and
gymnasia along Greek lines and to endorse the identification of the
Biblical God with the Greeks' Zeus Xenios, "Zeus who is hospitable to
strangers." Other Jews were much more wary, especially when they
realized that this cultural assimilation was not simply a matter of
abstract ecumenicism, but entailed, as well, the abandoning of religious practices sanctioned and demanded by the Torah. Thus, even
an otherwise sympathetic Greek observer of Jewish belief found
reason to denounce the "misanthropic and xenophobic life" of the
Jews, while, at roughly the same time, other Greeks were praising the
Jews as "a nation of philosophers" because of their adherence to the
unique (celestial) God. Some of the ambivalence marking this epoch
is shown in an old' tradition which makes Pythagoras, Socrates, and
Plato acquainted with the Torah, from which the "Lion's share" of
Greek philosophy was allegedly taken.
This conflict came to a head in a relatively brief period, from 169
to 167 B.C., when the pro-Greek party within the Jewish community,
the "Hellenizers," as they were called, made common cause with their
Greek masters, to the point of requesting from the king, Antiochus IV,
a decree suppressing the practice of Judaism. This event directly
provoked the Maccabean revolt, which Jews commemorate in the
Hanukkah ("dedication") festival. This festival recalls the day (25th of
Kislev, 164 B.C.E.) of the cleansing of the Temple, the destruction of
the pagan altars on the same day on which pagan worship had been
instituted three years before. Originally called Suklcot (''Tabernacles of
the month ofKislev"), it is now celebrated with eight days of kindling
�J.ACHIERMAN
13
the lights. The record of this revolt is punctuated by expressions of
extreme distress at the willingness of fellow Jews to be "seduced by
the flattery of those who violate the covenant," in the words ofthe Book
of Daniel (11: 32). Clearly it was the lingering and painful memory of
this period that inspired a later Jewish writer, in 65 B.C., when yet
another civil conflict had been ignited between Hellenizers and traditionalists, to say, favoring the traditionalists:
Cursed be the man who rears a pig and cursed be those who instruct
their sons in Greek wisdom (hokhmah yevanilj.
We could compare the same point as made in another Rabbinic source
(Baba1onfan Ta/m.Jd, Menahot, 99b [? ed.D. with a cbarncterlsticTalmudic pose.
The lessons of these initial encounters between Athens and Jerusalem are many and multiply ironic. Chief among them: the price
exacted for acknowledgment of what was distinctive in Jewish thought
proved to be nothing less than the abolition of its very distinctiveness;
the edict prohibiting Jewish worship in Jerusalem aimed at having
"Jews forget the law and do away with ail their holy ordinances," as
the apocryphal First Book of the Maccabees puts it.
Once Jewish monotheistic belief had been recognized as rational
(i.e., "logical") by the Greeks, it was generally expected that the Jews
would free this belief from its entanglement with the particularistic
claims and rituals underwritten by the revelation on Sinai. The
Hellenizers within theJewishnation draw the general implication: "Let
us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles [that is, the Greeks]
round about us, for since we separated from them many evils have
come upon us."
At all events, the pattern established during this period, as I
suggested earlier, preoccupied and fascinated Jewish thinkers thenceforth. Needless to say, the Alexandrian Greek empire as such soon
vanished from the scene of world history; the imperialism of Greek
logos continued to hold sway, especially after it had been juxtaposed
to, or absorbed within, Christianity. Let me simply allude to two key
instances of this state of affairs:
Hegel, whose ambition was to articulate nothing less than the
universal and unique logos of the whole of reality, including the reality
of human self-consciousness and human history, experienced Judaism, especially the perpetuation of the Jewish people in the modern
age, as a "thorn in his side." Modern Judaism, in his eyes, is an
anachronism for two interrelated reasons:
(l) While Jewish monotheism affirms the universality of the One
God, the God of heaven and earth, Jews simultaneously believe that
�14
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
God's "real work" consists only In maintaining the "external, political,
ethical existence" of one people. This "particularism," according to
Hegel, is overcome by the historical advent of Christianity and its
universalistic gospel.
(2) Secondly, what Hegel regards as the cultic form of Jewish
religious existence is exhausted in unwavering and unthinking obedience to positive, God-given laws.
This "positivity'' of the,Mosaic law, as he calls It, leaves no room for
the exercise of rational freedom through which all human beings
secure moral dignity. The Jews play the role of slaves to God their
master. Hegel here follows St Paul, for whom the "law of the heart"
overrides the written law of the Torah.
I do not have time, on this occasion, to enter into the complex
history of the interpretation of, and practical response to, Judaism
furnished by Hegel's real and self-styled disciples. In the name of a
"humanized world of liberated men" to be achieved in the near future,
Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, and Karl Marx felt themselves
obliged to comment, If not to reflect, on the contemporary social and
political situation of the Jews in Christian Europe. One quotation from
Marx's essay "On the Jewish Question" will have to suffice here as an
indication of the principal direction their comments took: "In the final
analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind
from Judaism."
However, even In the absence of overt, external conflict, the "civil
war" between Athens and Jerusalem, between universal reason and
particular revelation, was reenacted time and again within the soul
and Intellect of individual Jews. Is this an eternal fratricidal conflict,
or a battle of shadows in a hall of mirrors?
I won't venture to answer this question. In place of an answer I shall
offer today very brief portraits of four thinkers-Yehuda Halevi,
Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, and Hermann Cohen-whose
responses to the dilemmas I have been discussing are exemplary:
"exemplary" not in the sense of furnishing cut-and-dried solutions,
but in the sense that their life-work exemplifies, In very different ways,
the intensity and poignancy of the issues they had addressed, and
that we continue to address. They are, in the most exacting sense of
the term, our contemporaries. A thinker of high caliber is never
content to have the calendar or accidents of birth determine his
partners in dialogue; the only relevant criterion is the seriousness with
which others have argued their positions, whether they did so yesterday or a thousand years ago.
�IACHTERMAN
15
Let me, then, turn to the earliest of the four thinkers whose works
are so many concrete variations on the general theme with which I
began: Torah and Logos.
Yehuda Halevi
Yehuda Halevi, born In Spain In the eleventh century, was the
greatest lyric poet of the Jewish Medieval period. He was also the
author ofa most remarkable work, TheBookoftheKhazars, a dialogue
between the king of the Khazars, a powerful tribe in the Southern
Caucasus which did In fact convert to Judaism, and representatives
of pagan philosophy, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The dialogue
begins when the king has a dream In which he Is told: 'Thy way of
thinking Is Indeed pleasing to the Creator, but not thy way of acting."
The king summons the spokesmen of the four traditions so that he
might learn how to change his way of acting and begin leading a
"God-pleasing life."The emphasis falls, from the first, on right practice
rather than on accurate theory.
The king Is dissatisfied with the speculative accounts offered to him
by the Aristotelian philosopher, the Christian, and the Moslem. He
had not even Intended, he says, to speak with a Jew, since he was
"aware of the Jews' reduced condition and narrow-minded views, as
their misery left them nothing commendable." However, once he
decides to talk with the haver, the scholar, he is greatly surprised to
hear him begin, not with a statement of belief In a Creator of the world
or with a discussion of those attributes of God that serve as universal
evidence for every believer, but rather with the declaration: "I believe
In the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led the children of Jacob
out of Egypt with signs and miracles ... who sent Moses with His Law
and subsequently thousands of prophets, who confirmed His Law by
promises to the obedient and threats to the disobedient."
The haver's starting-point contains the key to Halevi's fundamental
teaching: It is continuous tradition and not reason or argument that
serves as "evidence" for the existence of the Biblical God and as the
basis of faith. According to Halevi, there Is an unbroken chain that
links the Patriarchs to the contemporary Jew, thanks to the continuous teaching and Interpretation of the Torah. What was first a matter
of direct personal, usually auditory, experience for the Jews at Sinal
Is now a matter of knowledge based on that uninterrupted tradition.
The persuasiveness of this sort of knowledge, Halevi claims, does not
fall short of the original, firsthand experience.
The arguments of the philosophers, on the contrary, are only
satisfactory In part and are, as Halevi says, "still much less capable
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
16
of being proved." Tradition Is decisive and authoritative where speculative reason is incomplete and uncertain.
This leads to a second aspect ofHalevi's fundamental teaching: The
king of the Khazars is only fully persuaded at the end of the third book
of the dialogue, In which the haver has expounded in considerable
detail the ceremonial laws of the Torah. Thus, what seems to stand
furthest apart from the necessary conclusions of autonomous reason,
what appears to be solely; a reflection of historical and local contingencies-sacrifices on the altar, the wearing oftejllllmand fringes, and
so forth-proves to be, according to Halevi, the unique and unambiguous route to piety and justice. We could interpret this to mean that
the terms of the covenant between God and the Laws are not discretionary, that is, the pious man cannot pick and choose among the
Divine Commandments, eliminating those that do not answer to the
criteria of purely human reason. "Covenantal existence," to use
Fackenheim's phrase, gives man's life a total sense which the flawed
and incomplete demonstrations of reason cannot rival.
At all events, this brief summary explains, I hope, Halevi's general
position in regard to the "Greeks," as expressed in the poem which
concludes The Book of the Khazars:
See, yea. see my liiend, and avoid pilfalls, nets and snares. Let not Greek
wJsdom entice thee, which has no fiuit, but on\y blossoms... Ifyou listen
to the misleadiog words of its adepts, built upon frail fuundatlons, thou
wilt tum awaywith aheartemplyandfuint, andamouthfullofdross and
thorns. Why should I seek crooked ways, and forsake [the Torah] the
mother of paths?
Spinoza
I now leap from Yehuda Halevi in the eleventh and early twelfth
centuries, to Baruch Spinoza in the seventeenth. In my judgment one
cannot find a more potent symbol of the conflicts I have been trying
to describe. This might be brought home by the following reflections:
while the names ofHalevi, Malmonldes, Mendelssohn, and Cohen, to
mention only these, are likely to be familiar to serious students of
Jewish thought, Spinoza Is surely known to, and usually studied by,
everyone acquainted with the history ofWestem philosophy. Because
he Is the most prominent philosopher of Jewish origin, his views on
the nature and shortcomings of Judaism have always been especially
Interesting to Jews and non.Jews alike.
Moreover, one episode In his career continues to be the focus of
general attention. On July 24, 1656, a herem, a sentence of excom-
�LACHTERMAN
17
munication and anathema, was pronounced against Spinoza by the
elders oftheJewish congregation ofAmsterdam. In part this document
reads:
May he be cursed in the day and cursed in 1he night, cursed in his lying
down and cursed in his rising up. Cursed in his going for1h and cursed in
his coming in; and may 1he Lord not forgive Wm...
The force of emotion IIJanlfested here is matched by the heart-felt
attempts made by many modem "enlightened" Jews to have the
excommunication lifted. Hermann Cohen, for example, responded,
negatively, to one such attempt by German Jews In the early twentieth
century; but as recently as 1948 David Ben-Gurion campaigned to
have the ban annulled.
What Spinoza signifies or symbolizes Is, for me at least, rendered
most Impressively and poetically In a scene in Isaac Bashevls Singer's
greatest novel, 'The Family Moskat:
His hero, Asa Heshel Bannet, the son and grandson of Chasldic
Rabbis, Is shown arriving from cosmopolitan Warsaw in the remote
provincial town of Teresphpol Minor. He steps from a third-class
compartment of the train dressed in a flimsy gabardine jacket, carrying a cheap basketin place of a leather suitcase. "In his pocket," Singer
writes, "rested a worn volume, 'The Ethics of Spinoza In a Hebrew
translation."
All of the conflicts and tragedies of Asa Bannet's subsequent career
are prophetically crystallized in tWs initial image. For example, when
he returns to his native village and confronts his pious grandfather,
he is told:
·
Good night. A simple life, I tell you, that's the best. No questions,
no pWlosophy, no racking your brains. In Germany there was a
philosopher and he philosophized so long 1hat he began to eat grass.
What is it in Spinoza's thought that has evoked such extreme and
extremely disparate responses? What accounts for his becoming so
apt a symbol of the lacerating tensions within the soul of the modern
Jew?
Asa Bannet carries with him a copy of Spinoza's Ethics; however,
it is in another book, The Theological-Political Treatise, published
anonymously in 1670, that Spinoza sets out his position vis-a-vis
Judaism most trenchantly. In the present context I can do little more
than state thatSpinoza's chief targets are the twin pillars of traditional
Judaism as it was understood both by Spinoza himself and by his
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'!HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Jewish forebears: the doctrine of revelation, on the one hand, and the
doctrine of ceremonial or ritual obligations, on the other. Splnoza
carries out this attack In the form of an htstorlcalinterpretatlon of the
Torah; what has since Ws day become a familiar and commonplace
program of scholarship was in his day a radical innovation-namely,
the effort to understand the Bible as the product ofhuman, not divine,
authorship. taking stock of all the uncertainties, ambiguities, contradictions. and "ulterior motives" to be expected In any work produced
by human hands-in this case, many different human hands.
This historical approach to the Bible had, for Splnoza, as It does for
many of his present-day heirs, two major consequences:
(1) First, nothing In the Bible can be taken as evidence of Divine
Revelation, since, after all, the deeds and the speeches ascribed to God
and to the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, were "Invented" or
"concocted" by other human beings, more particularly, by human
beings who addressed their readers' primitive Imagination, not their
mature pWiosophicalintelligence.
Furthermore, miracles are as such impossible since they would
Interrupt the completely deterministic order of nature which Spinoza
believes has been put beyond question by the modern science of
physics.
(2) Second, the human, all-too-human, authorship of the Torah
furnishes a new, more sophisticated explanation of the "ceremonial
laws," the statutes and ordinances commanded from Sinal. The
rationale behind these is narrow, and above all political: the priests
of the original state of Israel used them to secure or to enforce social
unity and ethical unanimity among Its citizens. This consideration
permits Spinoza to argue that once the Jews were exiled from the land
of Israel the Mosaic laws lost their binding force.· In particular, the
Jews no longer have any justification for remaining "a nation apart"
from the Gentile majority.
In the light of these two implications of Spinoza's re-interpretation
ofJudaism it Is scarcely surprising that his co-religionists were deeply
offended. As one seventeenth-century reader was led to say about the
Theological-PoUtical Treattse,lt Is a work "forged In Hell by a renegade
Jew and the Devil."
Moses Mendelssohn
I come now to the tWrd of my four "exemplary" thinkers. Moses
Mendelssohn, who lived from 1729 to 1786, has been plausibly called
"the first modern Jewish pWlosopher," or, even more Incisively, by the
poet Heinrich Heine, "the Jewish Luther." His writings, but even more
�IACHTERMAN
19
strikingly his career as a whole, Ulustrate the precarious position of a
Jewish thinker In the modern era. For Mendelssohn was, above all, a
"child of his age," and his age was the age of the Enlightemnent. The
centralclalmoftheEnlightenmentwasthathumanreason,oncefreed
from the shackles of external authority, both theoretical and Institutional, could define and eventually achieve moral and political goals
which all mankind would spontaneously endorse. "Progress," progress
sponsored and promoted by reason, by logos, alone, became the
watchword of European thinkers In the eighteenth century; It was this
watchword that gave life to the notion of "universal tolerance" embraced by the "progressive" thinkers of that era.
Mendelssohn seemed to his Christian contemporaries to have
arrived providentially on the scene, Inasmuch as he was aJewwhose
philosophical work fell squarely within the compass of the Enlightenment program. It Is impossible to read eighteenth-century accounts
of Mendelssohn without detecting again and again the note of surprise
that accompanies the praise bestowed on his achievements: that a
thinker of Jewish birth and commitment could prove so "reasonable,"
so much In harmony with the agenda of the Enlightenment, seemed
to underscore and confirm In practice the theoretical postulate of
universal tolerance. Accordingly, Mendelssohn was welcomed Into the
"Inner circle" of Christian progressives (although his nomination to
membership In the Prussian Academy of Sciences was vetoed by
Friedrich Wilhelm the First, then King of Prussia).
Mendelssohn won his special standing in the eyes of European
Intellectuals In large measure because his Jewish origins did not
appear to affect his philosophical opinions. The God whose existence
he set out to prove (for example, In his book Morgenstunden) is not the
God who revealed himself on Sinal, but the necessary deity at which
unaided natural reason arrives when It considers the contingent
character of the world. Similarly, the principal moral teachings of the
Bible are truths which each and every person will accept if reason Is
allowed to take Its natural course.
And yet, Mendelssohn remained sentimentally or emotionally a
Jew. In doing so he exposed himself to a curiously, If not predictably,
baneful process that led from "universal enlightenment," through the
social and political "emancipation" of European Jewry, to the seemingly rational demand for Jewish assimilation, that is, conversion. A
Christian Interlocutor, Lavater, decided to challenge Mendelssohn's
enduring commitment to Judaism directly; he asked him either to
refute publicly certain arguments In behalf of the compelling superiority and rationality of Christianity or, in case he found them lrrefut-
�20
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
able, to become a Christian himself. Mendelssohn, unable to turn
aside from this explicit challenge, eventually wrote his major work in
religious philosophy, significantly entitled Jerusalem
In this book Mendelssohn shows himselfto be a disciple ofSpinozawhose "pantheism" he elsewhere esoterically abjured-in at least one
decisive respect. The particular "laws and ordinances" issuing from
the revelation on Sinai and thereby setting Jews apart from non-Jews
still have an instrumen14! and transitory value, even if they lack an
absolute and transhisto'rical value: the threat of "polytheism and
anthropomorphism," in a word, "idolatry," is a genuine threat, at least
so long as all men are not equally enlightened:
genutoe theists must maintain some kind of unity among themselves, in order to prevent the forces of darkoess from trampltog
everythtog underfoot.
Adherence to the ceremonial laws is thus a symbolic and, as it were,
political act designed to uphold the claims of reason against the
challenge of unreason, even though the advocates of reason recognize
that these ceremonial laws are not in themselves reasonable. Thus, in
the end, Mendelssohn's account of the place of Judaism differs only
in detail and emphasis from that furnished by his Christian admirer
Lessing, whose seminal tract, The Education of the Hwnan Race,
consigned Jewish beliefs to a primitive and long outmoded stage in
the progressive history of rational mankind.
Let me try to summarize what we have learned from these first three
exemplary thinkers:
Yehuda Halevi tries to demonstrate that the superiority of reason
over tradition is indemonstrable; hence, the only trustworthy basis for
a "God-pleasing" life is the tradition which demands fulfilhnent of
"statutes and ordinances" on the grounds that Divine revelation shows
these to be obligatory.
Spinoza, having tried to cut the ground from beneath the very
notion of revelation, rejects the possibility that such particularistic
"statutes and ordinances" could be binding on the free and rational
mind.
Mendelssohn attempts to fmd some middle ground between these
two extremes; the particularism of the ceremonial laws is justified only
as a "holding action" against the threat of irrational idolatry; when the
latter is irreversibly defeated, the non-moral or ceremonial "statutes
and ordinances" will no longer be valid.
�IACHTERMAN
21
Hermann Cohen
I have left myself little time to discuss Hermann Cohen in any but
a superficial way. The following reflections will have to suffice. Cohen,
who was born in 1842 and died in 1918, lived an uneventful life as far
as external episodes are concerned-for most of his adult life he was
an exceptionally prominent professor of philosophy, first in Marburg
and then in Berlin. Inwardly, his life was a single dramatic event, an
"inner dialogue between. his philosophy and his religion, between
reason and piety," as his English translator, Simon Kaplan, has
written. Let me quickly examine each of these aspects of Cohen's
career. He owed his prominence chiefly to his work as an interpreter
of Kant's philosophy; his commentaries on Kant's major texts became
the basis for the so-called Marburg School ofNeo-Kantianism, which
had a wide influence in academic philosophy until it was sublated by
Heidegger during the 1920s. His commitment to Kantianism was
buttressed by an equally deep interest In Plato, especially in Plato's
theory of forms and his conception of mathematics. According to
Cohen, Plato's Forms are anticipations of Kant's notion of the ideas of
reason which serve as regulative hypotheses in the sciences; the
Forms understood as such hypotheses provide the motive-power for
open-ended "research programs" directed upon the discovery of the
ultimate principles of reason and, hence, of reality. !tis apparent that
Cohen annuls any significant differences between Plato and Kant, or,
more generally, between the ancient and the modem versions of
rationalism.
Plato and Kant thus share the merit of establishing philosophy on
a purely scientific basis. Science, for Cohen, means a thoroughly
rational account of the universal and necessary principles underlying
all domains of human activity, scientific activity, sense, ethical activity,
and, finally, aesthetic activity. "Universalism" and "rationalism" are,
for Cohen, the two sides of a single coin. Only what reason, acting
autonomously, comes to certify as true carries validity for all human
beings without exception; In science, necessary laws of nature; in
ethics, moral imperatives commanding the respect of every rational
agent. This Is the thesis that sustains Cohen's own "system of
philosophy," which he articulated In an Imposing trilogy: The Logic of
Pure Cognition, The Ethics of Pure WUl, and The Aesthetics of Pure
FeeUng.
Cohen was, at the same time, a deeply committed Jew. Unlike
Mendelssohn, however, Cohen was not content to relegate his JudaIsm to the domain of sentiment; on the contrary, at the heart of his
philosophical labors Is his attempt to demonstrate the fundamental
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
identity between the teachings of Plato and Kant, on the one hand,
and the teachings of Judaism, especially prophetic Judaism, on the
other. He pursued this first attempt In a pair of important essays, 'The
Inner Relations of Kantian Philosophy to Judaism" and 'The Social
Ideal in Plato and the Prophets," and then in his crowning work, The
Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism His efforts towards
this goal are marked by a characteristic generosity of spirit; thus,
Cohen acknowledges and then discounts Kant's insistence that the
"euthanasia" of Judaism Will benefit all people, "not least the Jewish
people Itself." Similarly, Cohen treats Plato's "elitism," that Is, the
claim that not all men are equally qualified to become philosopherkings, as a contingent defect In Plato's system, easily corrected by
reference to the moral egalitarianism of the Biblical prophets.
Cohen's undertaking brings him face to face with both of the
essential tensions I have been trying to explore with you today: the
conflict or apparent conflict between reason and revelation, and the
discrepancy between what Is universal to all human beings and what
Is particular to one group of human beings. His own sense of these
tensions arises In the form of the question: What place Is there,lf any,
for religion within the system built up by autonomous reason? Kant's
work, "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone," thus serves as the
prototype for Cohen's "Religion of Reason out of the Sources of
Judaism."
Cohen came to see that systematic philosophy, precisely In virtue
of its universal validity, leaves out of account the individual as such.
This can be seen most readily In the domain of ethics-the moral
duties endorsed by reason apply to all rational agents alike and make
no distinction among individuals . To quote Simon Kaplan once again,
"the general law of duty falls helpless and silent in the presence of the
individual with his Imperfections and frailties, confusions and fears."
The task of religion is to establish and to make meaningful a direct
connection between each individual and the ideals of moral selfperfection by which we measure and suffer over our moral shortcomings. Moreover, this connection must be such that from it the
individual can discover or rediscover the universal application and
truth of those moral ideals. These thoughts are at the root of Cohen's
central concept of the "correlation" between man and God: On man's
side, correlation takes the form of repentance, the acknowledgment of
transgression and the desire for forgiveness; on God's side, correlation
means God's promise to redeem the individual, to cleanse him of his
sins and fulfill his desire for self-perfection. In the language of
Leviticus: ''Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord thy God am Holy." (Lev. 19:2)
�IACHIERMAN
23
Furthermore, the individual who recognizes this correlation between
himself and God is at the same time conscious that the God who
promises Wm salvation promises It to mankind as a whole, that God
treats all individuals In the same way and requires that they treat one
another In accordance with the twin demands of love and justice.
In fact. correlation, far from being an Isolating and ultimately
egoistic relationsWp Is, in Cohen's argument, the source of the discovery that all men are my fellow-men, rather than those who merely
share the world with me in· a contingent and meaningless way. Thus,
the individual's love of God must express Itself concretely as his love
and devotion to his fellow-men, or, In other words, the search for
perfect social justice Is equivalent to the worship of God. The exemplary Instance of the fellow-man is the poor man, whose poverty Is
undeserved; consequently, social justice entails the abolition of poverty.
TWs is the foundation of Cohen's abiding loyalty to non-communist
socialism.
These arguments lead Cohen to "resolve" the fundamental tensions
within Jewish thought; his solutions would command respect and
deserve the closest study even If they should prove, In the end, less
than fully persuasive. I can only mention his proposals here:
(1) Revelation Is not a single episode that occurred at Sinai; it Is, In
Cohen's words "the creation of human reason" itself; that is, the
capacity that distinguishes humans from animals and makes them
receptive to uncompromising ethical demands. Consequently, the
particular "statutes and ordinances" announced In the Torah have, at
best, a secondary status; the progress of human reason over the
course of histo:ty justifies their reform or even, as In the case of animal
sacrlftces, their elimination. The insights of reason, not ceremonial
duties, bear witness to the "correlation" between man and God.
(2) Analogously, Israel's election, its status as "the chosen people,"
In no way licenses Jewish self-righteousness or pride. Instead, the role
of the Jews Is to suffer In behalf of the truth of monotheism, to ''pass ·
through history like a Job" as Cohen writes, suffering not In punishment for Its sins, but In order to keep alive the hope and the promise
of the ultimate redemption and unity of all mankind.
The particular condition of the Jews Is that their historical mission
has universal significance. Cohen took seriously the words of Balaam
In the Book of Numbers: Israel "shall dwell alone and shall not be
reckoned among the nations" (Num. 23:9) and on this basis he
opposed Zionism. The dtaspora, the loss of political nationhood, is the
only appropriate condition for a people whose destiny Is to symbolize
the trans-national brotherhood of all peoples. The Messtanlc age,
�24
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which was for Cohen the central notion of prophetic Judaism, is the
goal of historical existence in its entirety; "the unity of humankind,"
Cohen argued, "Is the eternal value of the human race," for this human
unity Is the best possible Image of the unity and uniqueness of God
himself. Cohen followed Kant In describing the achievement of this
Messianic age as an "Infinite task." Progress toward It Is never-ending.
I will have done Cohen and his themes a grave injustice If my sketch
has left you with the Impression that he was simply an academic or
scholastic thinker interested In system-building for Its own sake.
First of all, the dilemmas to which Cohen wanted to make a
systematic response are real and deeply embedded in the history of
Jewish thinking. Secondly, the central position of the individual,
particularly the suffering individual, in Cohen's religious philosophy,
exempts him from the kind of charge a Klerkegaard, for example,
lodges against the Hegelian "system." It cannot have been mere
accident that Cohen's most ardent and most thoughtful student was
Franz Rosenzweig, frequently and rightly called the "Father of Jewish
Existentialism." Furthermore, Cohen is extraordinarily sensitive to the
living forms ofJewish religious practice; you need only read the pivotal
chapter on the significance ofYom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, to
become convinced of this. Here, as elsewhere In the Re1igionofReason,
his writing displays a singular beauty, beauty of the sort achieved only
when the whole soul is engaged with and by the most vital questions.
I have conscientiously refrained from offering an explicit assessment of Cohen's ambitions, since my aim was rather to bring to light
the concerns to which those ambitions were addressed. It would be
extravagant simply to apply to his work the phrase he used to
characterize Kant's Religion Withtn the Limits of Reason Alone-a
"gewagtes Spte~" "a daring game"-just as It would be Insufficient to
point to the fact that Cohen's rejection of Zionism, in the name of the
universal mission of Judaism, went hand In hand with his belief,
expressed in 1907, that "Germany... Is the motherland of culture for
European Jewry In general."
Nonetheless, it seems to me appropriate to conclude by delineating,
in the sketchiest way, the lines of inquhy one might take If Cohen's
hypotheses were to prove artificial or Inadequate.
To free Jewish "particularism," "parochialism," of the onus history
has Imposed upon it, one would have to show either that the Greek
understanding of universal logos is Itself parochially or specifically
"Greek" or that the genuine universalism of Greek logos underwent a
profound transformation when it was wedded first to Christianity and
then to modern science. The modern version of W1iversal rationality
�LACHTERMAN
25
may tum out to be indistinguishable from a kind of totaUtartanism in
which the particular, far from being reconciled to, and within, the
whole, is irrevocably canceled.
The first line of potential inquizy still assumes the superiority of the
claims of reason, whether Greek or modem, over the claims of Biblical
piety and observance of revealed commandments. A second line of
inquizy would have to confront their respective merits. One path it
might follow is to explore the differences between the eros of which
Plato speaks-an eros whfch leaves behind both fellow-men and the
institutions they share, as it moves towards knowledge of the Beautiful
Itself-and the love, ahavah, of which the Jewish tradition speaks.
Cohen himself makes this love the central theme of his religious
philosophy: 'The love of God must unif'y all the things and all the
problems of the world." Or, in the words of the seventy-third psalm:
"But as for me, the nearness of God is my Good."
�26
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Autonomy and Authenticity:
How One Becomes What One Is
I
Daniel W. Conway
y<voL' olos <out f.La6wv-
Become who you are.
-Pindar, Pythian Odes, II, 73
Nietzsche's fascination wilh Pindar's Imperative endured throughout
his entire productive career. He toyed wilh variations of !he slogan,
placed it in !he mouth of his "son," Zaralhustra, and recommended it
fondly to Lou Salome just before !heir final estrangement. I Nietzsche
lhought so Wghly of his borrowed maxim !hat he Inscribed his
"autobiography," Ecce Homo, wilh !he subtitle, Wieman wird, was
man ist (How one becomes what one Is). Despite Ws fascination wilh
!his cryptic teaching, however, Nietzsche offers his readers very little
in !he way of illumination, and he neglects to explain how exactly one
sets out to "become what one is."
Nietzsche's uncharacteristic silence has heightened, ralher !han
dampened, !he enlhuslasm of Ws readers for !his cryptic slogan.
Perhaps no olher philosopher is so warmly received as a champion of
autonomy and aulhenticlty, and !he "existential" Nietzsche, originally
lionized by Anglophone readers in !he fifties and sixties, is In fashion
once again. Various Ingenious Interpretations have been advanced
recently of Nietzsche's Pindalian motto, and readers once again view
him as a laconic guide in !heir own quest to become what they are. In
!his essay I would like to temper somewhat !he enlhuslasm for
Nietzsche's call to aulhenticlty, by drawing attention to several
counter-currents resident wilhin his lhought. While Nietzsche is
widely hailed as t!Ie champion par excellence of aut!Ientic!ty, he also
stands as one of t!Ie greatest critics of voluntarism. In light of t!Iese
counter-currents, It would appear t!Iat "how one becomes what one
Is" Is a matter that lies largely beyond one's control.
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
28
Nietzsche's Critique of Autonomy
The term "autonomy" rarely appears in Nietzsche's postZarathustran writings, and never with reference to his own moral
philosophy. This absence Is surprising not only because Nietzsche
wrote in the shadow of Kant and German Idealism, but also because
his books apparently promote a moral "ideal" that bears at least a
family resemblance to autonomy. Nietzsche routinely praises triumphs
of self-command, self-legislation, self-overcoming, self-mastery, selfreverence, self-control, and self-creation. He is widely received, especially within the tradition of existentialism, as the champion par
excellence of self-reliance and autonomy, of the willful creation of an
authentic self. 2 Nietzsche translates Kant's Injunction to unite subject
and sovereign In a kingdom of ends Into a more lyrical call for the
Integration of creator and creature within a single soul:
In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material,
fragment, excess, dirt, nonsense, chaos: but in man there is also
creator, form-giver, hammer-hardness, spectator-divinity, and seventh day. (BGE 225) 3
Despite such familiar sentiments, however, Nietzsche has good
reason to resist both the term "autonomy" and the concept Itself,
especially as a normative moral ideal, for he has no means of verifYing
the authenticity (or inauthenticlty) of any given se!f.4 He consequently
does not exhort his readers toward authenticity, and he furthermore
constructs a compelling case against the promotion of autonomy as a
normative ideal. While Nietzsche occasionally deploys a strongly
voluntaristic rhetoric, the ideal of self-creation that is popularly
atiributed to him Is simply incompatible with the diminished volitional
resources of late modernity. The frustrations of Nietzsche's own life
and career vividly demonstrate the futility of the voluntaristic ideal
popularly ascribed to him.
Part of the confusion here is attributable to Nietzsche's designation
of himself as an "Immoralist," as a philosopher who takes his stand
"beyond good and evil." While this designation perhaps suggests that
Nietzsche has somehow freed hlmselffrom the Western moral tradition, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if we view
autonomy as a departure from, or transcendence of, conventional
morality, then the case of Nietzsche militates against the promotion
of any such normative ideal. Nietzsche indicates that the achievement
of autonomy is simply incompatible with his historical situation:
We have been spuo into a severe yam and shirt of duties and cannot
get out of that-and in this we are "men of duty," we, too. Occasionally,
�CONWAY
29
that Is true, we dance In our "chains" and between our "swords";
more often, that Is no less true, we gnash our teeth and feel
impatient with all the secret hardness of our destiny. (BGE 226) 5
The mysterious "philosophers of the future" may succeed in achievIng (and promoting) genuine autonomy, but Nietzsche and his fellow
"free spirits," Imprisoned In the heteronomy of conventional morality,
can do little more than rattle about in their chains.
The primary problem with autonomy as a moral ideal lies In the
difficulty involved in verifyfug its supposed achievement. This problem
derives from the more basic problem of veriJY!ng the authenticity of
any "ideal" self advertised as "higher," or more "genuine" than one's
current, empirical self. Any alternative "!"with which one might come
to identifY Is always Itself a product of the same historical conditions
that produced one's current self. The idea that one can adopt a
verlflably genuine or authentic self, upon which the ideal of autonomy
Is founded, Is philosophically indefensible. Nietzsche consequently
rejects the pursuit of autonomy, as well as the distinction between
"authentic" and "empirical" selves, upon which It trades.
Nietzsche's readers often point to Toward the Genealogy of Morals
as advocating a recovery of the natural, Instinctual self whose repression represents the opportunity cost ofhuman civilization. He speaks,
for example, of the "splendid blond beasf' within us as a "hidden core
[that] needs to erupt from time to time," and as an "animal [that] has
to get out again and go back to the wilderness" (GM 1: 11). While the
philosophical anthropology articulated In Essay II of the Genealogy
may appear to disclose a primal animal nature that might somehow
serve as a stsndard of authenticity, the Genealogy also reveals that
such a "nature" (If Intelligible at all) is forever lost to us, by virtue of
our irreversible acculturation. Nietzsche ridicules the Stoics for wantlng to live "according to Nature" (BGE 9), and he argues (ostensibly
against Rousseau) that any attempt to identifY the authentic self with
the noble savage resident within oneself Is hopelessly romantic,
Implicating one In "the return to nature in tmpwis naturalibus" (TI 9: l;
cf. 9:49).
From a Nletzschean perspective, then, it comes as no surprise that
self-proclaimed champions of autonomy-Rousseau, Kant, Rawls,
Rorty, et al-fail to proffer a non-circular method of Identifying a self
that Is more genuine, more real, or more authentic than the empirical
self that one currently Is. The achievement of autonomy Is either
Impossible (as Hegel argued against Kant), or political (as In the social
contracts drawn up by Rousseau and Rawls). or trivial (as promised
by the currently popular strategy of narrative re-description). 6 These
�30
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
strategies succeed only in steering agents toward those "techniques
of the self' (to borrow Michel Foucault's termF that more closely cleave
to a specific cultural or political ideal. Such "techniques of the self'
may secure for their practitioners various rewards and privileges, but
they do not deliver their practitioners to genuine autonomy. Philosophers and moralists generally praise certain individuals as "autonomous" not because they are genuinely autonomous, but because their
heteronomy instantiates favored political ideals. Nietzsche thus contends that genuine autonomy is not a moral ideal at all, for
"'autonomous' and 'moral' (stttUch] are mutually exclusive" (GM 2:2).
What is usually called, and applauded as, "autonomy" is in fact the
antithesis of genuine, supra-moral autonomy. Self-proclaimed champions of "autonomy'' in fact want nothing to do with genuine. supramoral autonomy, and they have rigged their respective social contracts
in order to ensure that "autonomy'' conforms in practice to conventional morality.
Nietzsche thus exposes autonomy as a disguised moral ideal, which
trades on the misleading promise of freedom from all ideals. Like all
ideals, autonomy functions to constrain moral development rather
than to promote its unbridled development. Here it is imporiant to
bear in mind that Nietzsche's celebrated "immorallsm" constitutes
precisely his opposition to aU ideals. Nietzsche views idealism in any
form as "cowardice," as a "flight from reality'' (EH:destiny 3), for ideals
necessarily place pre-established constraints on the forms of life that
might emerge. "All idealism," Nietzsche maintains, "is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary'' (EH:clever 10). As an "immoralist," Nietzsche refrains from proposing a single ideal in accordance
with which all must be domesticated, and he Instead encourages an
untamed proliferation of rare and exotic individuals. 8 Nietzsche's
general aversion to idealism thus places him in opposition to the
philosophical ideal of "autonomy'' as well, for the pursuit of one's
authentic self necessarily devaluates the embodied, non-autonomous
self that one currently Is.
Nietzsche's critique of autonomy is linked inextricably to his diagnosis of modernity as an age beset by advanced, irrecuperable decadence. The feats of self-transformation required to deliver one to
autonomy are simply incompatible with the diminished vitality of the
age. Nietzsche does not indicate whether autonomy was attainable In
bygone ages, but he makes it quite clear that the achievement of
genuine autonomy outstrips the residual vitality of agents representative of late modernity. What modernity calls an "individual," the
pride of the Enlightenment, Is nothing more than a "moral milksop,"
�CONWAY
31
a domesticated animal that has internalized the demands of culture
and consequently operates under the illusion of self-legislated freedom. If we measure ages by "their positive strength," then "that
lavishly squandering and fatal age of the Renaissance appears as the
last great age; and we modems ... appear as a weak age" (TI 9:37). Even
the "sovereign individual," who possesses "the right to make promises,"
owes his "rare freedom" to his "conscience," which, Nietzsche shows,
is itself an implant of socially enforced heteronomy (GM 2:2). The
conscience, a fiercely vigilant homunculus that relentlessly reckons
one's debts and obligations, represents the final-and most forbidding-barrier to genuine autonomy.
Nietzsche snickers at the idea that the right to make promises
stands as evidence of genuine autonomy, for he views the conscience
as the internalized, mnemonic distillation of socially enforced punitive
and carceral practices. Whereas the noble savage and blonde beast
require sturdy cages or constant external surveillance, "men of conscience" are sufficiently disciplined to police themselves. The closest
thing we know to genuine, supra-moral autonomy is not the debt-paying,
promise-keeping, originally positioned author of the social contract,
but the criminal, the monster devoid of conscience. Nietzsche defines
"the criminal type" as "the type of strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick" (TI 9:45). Manu,
the architect of the Hindu caste system, understood the need both to
exclude the chandalas and to render them politically impotent, lest
their exclusion strengthen and embolden them (TI 7:3).
Under the Influence of Christianity, the institutions of Western
civilization have for the most part implemented what Nietzsche calls
"moralities of taming" (TI 7:3). Social practices of self-formation have
succeeded in sickening (and thus domesticating) those individuals
whose "virtues are ostracized by society." The conscience thus prevents individuals from straying far from the internalized norm, and
the institutions of modernity marginalize or stamp out those rare,
exotic plants that do manage to blossom. On a rare occasion, however,
"a man proves stronger than society: the Corsican, Napoleon, Is the
most famous case" (TI 9:45). Napoleon thus represents the closest
approximation known to Nietzsche of genuine autonomy, for Napoleon
approached the task of lawgiving (relatively) unconstrained by conscience and tradition. He consequently describes Napoleon as a
"return to Nature," which he defines as
an ascent-up into the high, free, even terrible Nature and naturalness where great tasks are something one plays with, one may play
with. (TI 9:48)
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
32
Self-creation vs. Self-discovery
Nietzsche's critique of autonomy thus furnishes us with an insight
Into what he does not mean by human flourishing. The determination
of a positive account of human flourishing is complicated, however,
by Ws apparent recommendation oftwo separate models ofself-perfection.
AB we have seen, he is best known for apparently promoting a volitional
model of self-creation that entrusts the project of self-perfection to the
will. Speaking on behal,f of his unknown "friends," he proclaims,
We, however, want to become those we are-human beings who are
new, unique, Incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create
themselves. (GS 335)
Nietzsche tends to convey this model of self-creation through a
cluster of aesthetic metaphors. In an oft-cited passage, he recommends the project of self-creation by issuing an "Imperative" to fashion
one's life into a work of art:
To "give slyle" to one's character-agreat and rare art! It is practiced
by those who survey all the strengihs and weakoesses of their
nature and then fit them Into an artistic plan until everyone of them
appears as art and reason and even weakoesses delight the eye.
Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece
of original nature has been removed-both times through long
practice and daily work at it. (GS 290)9
This strongly voluntaristic model of self-creation Is further reinforced by Nietzsche's apparent ridicule of the Socratic/Enlightenment
ideal of self-knowledge, which presupposes that some inert self lies
waiting to be discovered. Nietzsche counters the Delphic injunction
by calling into question the verypossibilily of a definitive self-knowledge:
"Everyone is most distant from himself." All who try the reins know
this to their chagrin, and the maxim "know thyselfl" addressed to
human beings by a god, is almost malicious. (GS 335)
The "object" of self-investigation continually changes as a result of
the Investigation Itself: "Learning changes us; It does what all nourishment does wWch also does not merely 'preserve'-as physiologists
know" (BGE 231). Every gain In self-knowledge contributes to who or
what one is, thus continually displacing one's "true" self and indefinitely postponing a conclusive self-discovery. Proponents of this volitional model ofNietzschean self-perfection thus conclude that because
no inert self lies waiting to be discovered, it must be the case that we
create ourselves.ID
�CONWAY
33
For all the textual support in its favor, however, this model of
self-creation fails to capture Nietzsche's account ofhuman flourishing.
First of all, the project of self-creation runs aground on the shoals of
idealism. Any attempt to fashion a more authentic self necessarily
involves a flight from the emptrical to the ideal. The detennination
that one's empirical self is inadequate, unsatisfactory, or defective
implicates one in the metaphysics of morals that Nietzsche's "immoralism" ostensibly opposes. Second, this model of self-creation is overly
voluntaristic, for it fails to take into account the general limitations of
one's creative capacities. One does not "become what one is" simply
by dint of an act of will, and to preach otherwise verges upon crue11y. 11
For these reasons, perhaps, Nietzsche also promotes a cognitive
model of human Jlourtshing, which sanctions a process of self-discovery.
Especially in his post-Zarathustran works, he cautions against the
misleadingly voluntaristic model of self-creation for which he is currently hailed, warning that
at the bottom of us, really "deep down," there is, of course, something unteachable, some granite of pure splrituaijatum, ofpredetermioed decision and answer to predetermioed selected questions.
(BGE 231)
Nietzsche's fatalism, which plays an increasingly important role in
his post-Zarathustran writings, thus mitigates the optimism and
exuberance conveyed by his rhetoric of self-creation. 12 This "spiritual
fatu:rri' comprises those intractable, relatively permanent elements of
one's identity that one cannot readily change. It is crucial that we
discover this spiritual jatum, for It effectively restricts the sphere of
self-overcoming, thereby limiting the range of selves we can become.
On this strongly cognitive model, the task of self-overcoming will
apparently require a healthy reverence for that jatum within oneself
that proves resistant to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nietzsche consequently proposes amor faii as his "formula for greatness in a human
being" (EH:clever 10).
While Nietzsche may appear simply to vacillate between these
models of human flourishing, his actual goal is to propose a synthesis
of the two. His term for this composite model of human flourishing,
which combines elements of both self-creation and self-discovery, is
self-overcoming. Describing his resistance to the powerful influence
on him ofWagner, he writes,
You want a word for lt?-If I were a moralist, who knows what I
might call it? Perhaps self-overcoming (Selbstaujhebung].-But the
philosopher has no love for moralists. Nor does he love pretty words.
(CWP)
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
One "becomes what one is" by overcoming oneself, which involves
elements of both cognition and volition.
As we have seen, Nietzsche's readers cusiornarily define self-overcoming
through a process of elimination: authentic selfhood is a matter either
of creation or discovery, and we have good reasons for eliminating one
of these options. Proponents of the model of self-creation, for example,
arrive at their determination of Nietzschean self-overcoming not by
way of actually creating themselves, but by way of their doubts
concerning the possibility of self-discovery. It is Nietzsche's intention,
however, to expose the distinction between self-creation and self-discovery
as sheltering a fulse dichotomy.I3 One "becomes what one is" only by
combining elements of cognition and volition, discovery and creation.
If, as David Lachterman suggests, "construction is the mark of modernity,"14 then Nietzsche is sinmltaneously representative of modernity and resistant to it. While his voluntaristic rhetoric suggests the
construction of selfhood, his fatalism recommends the discovery of the
self.
The composite nature of self-overcoming is crucial to Nietzsche's
program of political education, for only the combination of self-creation
and self-discovery engenders the cruelty-both to oneself and to
others-that ensures the nomothetic impact of self-overcoming. On
their own, self-creation and self-discovery both fail to fascinate and to
arouse. Both are eminently safe (and fatuous) strategies for "becoming
what one is," and they are likely to seduce no one.I5 Only the volatile
mixture ofvolition and cognition, which the philosopher's experiments
cruelly detonate, can engender that dimension of Dionysian excess
that simultaneously galvanizes and jeopardizes the economy of the
soul. This potentially mortal expenditure in turn guarantees the
self-intlicted violence that others find so compelling, so erotic. In order
to become nomothetic, and thus political, a strategy of self-overcoming
must combine elements of both volition and cognition.
Genealogy and Self-overcoming
Nietzsche's composite model of human flourishing is embodied in
his practice of genealogy, which combines invention and discovery to
deliver a compelling account of how he has "become what he is." For
example, Nietzsche's account in the Genealogy of the "slave revolt in
morality'' is best understood as both an Invention and a discovery; It
Is neither purely fictitious nor adequately supported by empirical and
historical evidence. It combines Nietzsche's indefensible, pre-genealogical
prejudices with a plausible "scientific" account of the historical trends
that inform modernity.
�CONWAY
35
Nietzsche's own quest to "become what he is" exemplifies a type of
life informed by genealogical self-knowledge. We might think of genealogical self-knowledge as a by-product of genealogical investigation
In general, or as the dividend that accrues to the self-referential
Implications of one's investigations. Genealogical self-knowledge combines elements of both volition and cognition, thereby eliding any
sharp distinction between self-creation and self-discovery. By the time
one gains genealogical Insight Into "oneself," this cognitive act has
already reconstituted-and thus postponed-one's self. In fact, it is
this admixture of creation and discovery that propels the self ahead
of one's investigations ofit. The more directly one seeks self-knowledge
through genealogical investigation, the more certsinly one ensures the
failure of this quest, especially if one assumes that the self is an inert,
fixed datum awaiting discovery.
Nietzsche thus begins the Genealogy by pre-emptively dashing any
lingertng hope that his investigations might unearth a genuine, authentic self:
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge-and with good
reason. We have never sought ourselves-how could It happen that
we should ever find ourselves?...So we are necessarily strangers to
ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law "Each Is furthest from h!mseli"
applies to all eternity-we are not "men of knowledge• with respect
to ourselves. (GM PI)
Paradoxically, then, genealogy yields a type of self-knowledge, but
only to those genealogists who do not directly seek it. Through
genealogy, Nietzsche himself becomes what he is, even If there is
nothing that he is.
Much of the self-knowledge gained via genealogical investigation Is
negative, as one becomes gradually disabused of the prejudices one
previously harbored about oneself. Nietzsche ridicules the "pride" of
the "English [sic] psychologists" who preceded him, for it prevented
them from subjecting their own methodological "idiosyncrasy" to
critical scrutiny (GM 1:2). Genealogy liberates one not from the past,
but from certain oppressive or counterproductive interpretations of
the past that presently hold one captive. Genealogy does not banish
the contingency of one's historical development, but it transforms
"mere" contingency into an intelligible-and thus Interpretable-condition of one's identity. One remains a creature born of contingency,
but genealogy can "redeem" this contingency by Uluminatlng alternative (and potentially enabling) accounts of the past
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
36
By exposing the contingency of the dominant "techniques of the
self," genealogy liberates one (in theory) from calcified conceptions of
the limitations and possibilities of human "nature." Genealogy
re-acquaints one with the plasticity of the human soul and thus
reclaims an expanded range of self-overcomings. Of course, whether
or not one is practically free to implement these genealogical insights
is another matter. In addition to disclosing historical contingencies,
genealogy also reveals the historical sedimentation that encrusts
contingency in quasi-necessity. For example, while the Genealogy
reveals that the hegemony of the ascetic ideal is, strictly speaking,
contingent, Nietzsche harbors no hope that he might somehow exploit
this historical contingency to enshrine an alternative ideal. The political significance of Nietzsche's genealogy of morals thus lies not so
much in its (dubious) account of the development ofWestern morality
as in its exemplification of an alternative ascetic practice that may
succeed in inoculating us against the redemptive metaphysical yearnings thatthreaten our demise. Nietzsche's achievement of genealogical
self-knowledge, a goal he attains but never pursues, exemplifies a
model of self-overcoming that is consistent with the depleted volitional
resources oflate modernity.
Resistance and Self-experimentation
The goal of self-experimentation is neither to overthrow the ascetic
ideal, nor to reverse the advance of decadence, but to illuminate and
implement "forgotten" techniques of the self. These experimental
techniques of the self must remain irreducibly ascetic in nature, but
they may afford a greater, or variant, range of affective expression than
more familiar techniques of the self. Convinced that what passes for
autonomy is simply socially rewarded heteronomy, Nietzsche rails
against those elements within himself that most closely correspond to
socially inscribed ideals:
What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? To
overcome his time in himself, to become "timeless." With what must
he therefore engage in the hardest combat? With whatever marks
him as a child of his time. (CW P)
Nietzsche thus places himself in opposition to modernity as a
whole, and he resists his age by resisting its reilections within himself.
The point of Nietzsche's combat is not to eliminate those elements of
his identity that "mark him as a child of his time," but to digest them,
to incorporate them within the "manifold whole" of his self:
�CONWAY
37
Facing a world of"modern ideas" that would banish everybody into
a corner and "speciality." a phUosopher...would be compelled to find
the greatness of man, the concept of "greatness," precisely in his
range and multiplicity, in his wholeness In manifoldness. He would
even determine value and rank in accordance with how much and
how many things one could bear and take upon himself. (BGE 212)
One "becomes what one is" not through the castrative practices
sanctioned by Western morality, but through a constant process of
Incorporation and Integration. From this resistance of one's age
emerges a self that is not newly created, but newly configured.
Which selves should the philosopher embody? While all techniques
of the self are equally heteronomous, some will prove more advantageous in the pursuit of some pragmatic end. Nietzsche, for example,
is intent on discovering those "techniques of the self' that will prove
most resistant to the advent of the ''will to nothingness"; he consequently privileges those ascetic disciplines that promise to retard the
deterioration of the affects. Since he does not know a priori which
specific ascetic practices will be least threatening, he resorts to
self-experimentation. Nietzsche thus probes the resiliency of decadence, implementing and embodying selves that accommodate an
Increasingly greater range and depth of affective expenditure. He
"guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful," a gambit that
proves that he "has turned out well" (EH:wise 2). If successful in his
guesses, he may seduce other fellow travelers to their "forgotten" next
selves, and perhaps help them to resist their own decadence. If
unsuccessful In this guessing game, he may reinforce the hegemony
of the ascetic ideal and thus inadvertently hasten the advent of the
''will to nothingness."
Nietzsche consequently combats danger with danger. He can offer
no assurance that self-experimentation-either as a general strategy
or in his own specific experiments-actually succeeds in retarding
decadence. It may be, as he suggests in his more pessimistic moments,
that the project of resisting the decadence of modernity is simply futile.
Or it may be, as he suggests in his more exuberant moments, that
philosophers can successfully wage war with their age and thus resist
those strains of idolatry to which they are most vulnerable. All he
"knows" from his genealogy of morals is that the available range of
selves has been artificially and dangerously circumscribed in late
modernity, and that the predilection for self-destructive technologies
of the self threatens the very survival of the will. Nietzsche thus hopes
to contribute to a proliferation of rare ·and exotic selves whose identities he cannot begin to predict. In this respect, his experiments
represent a desperate gamble, for he may contribute to the production
�1HE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
38
of frightening monstrosities. It Is perhaps fitting, then, that Nietzsche
announces, "It Is only beginning with me that the earth knows great
politics" (EH:destiny 1).
"'"'"' * *
Notes
1. Nietzsche closes hJs letlerofJune 10, 1882, with the sentence: "Pindar
sagt einmal, 'werde der, der du bist!'" Friedrich Nietzsche, Sil.mtllche
Briefe, Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bi\nden, ed. G. Colli and M.
Montinari (Berlin: Walter deGruyter/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,
1986), Vol. 6, #239, p. 203.
2. For a thorough reckoning of Nietzsche's debts to Kant, and of his
Influence on the development of existentialism, see Frederick Olafson,
Principles and Persons (Baltimore: Johos Hopkins University Press, 1967}.
3. With the exception of occasional emendations, I rely throughout this
essay on Walter Kaufmann's translations and editions of Nietzsche's
books for Viking Press/Random House. Numbers refer to sections
rather than to pages, and the following key explains the abbreviations
for my citations. BGE: BeyondGoodandEvil; CW: TheCaseofWagner;
EH: Ecce Homo; GM: Thward a Genealogy of Morals; GS: The Gay
Science; TI: 'livilight oftl-.e Idols.
4. On the relationship between autonomy and authenticity, see Agnes
Heller, A Philosophy ofMorals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
5. This confession of heteronomy appears under the title "We Immoralists!"
6. Richard Rorly claims to borrow and adapt from Nietzsche the idea that
one achieves autonomy by fushioning for oneself a "final vocabulary"
that differs in some way from the "final vocabularies" one has inherited.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), ch. 5. Rorly's use of the term "autonomy," however,
carries a positive rhetorical charge that his model of self-creation has
not earned. If, as Rorly believes, one is obliged to create oneself from
the existing vocabularies of one's historical epoch, then either everyone
is autonomous or no one is. Since original self-creation is ruled out by
Rorly's historicism, he has no defensible means of distingUishing
between those who achieve autonomy and those who do not. In order
for Rorly to propose autonomy as an ideal achieved by some, but not
all, he must suspend his historicism and appeal to some metaphysical
standard whereby genuine autonomy can be distingUished from
"mere" reflections of the historical epoch in question.
7. Foucault explains his interest in techniques of the self in an interview
entitled "On the Genealogy ofEthics: An Overview ofWork in Progress,"
�CONWAY
39
collected in The Fbucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon,
1984).
8. Nietzsche distinguishes himself from the "whole European and American species of libres penseurs," who "still believe in the 'ideal.'"
Declaring himself "the first Immoralist," Nietzsche thus implies that
immoralists no longer want "to 'improve' humankind, in their own
image" (EH:um 2).
9. Although readers often treat this passage as decisive, as representative
of Nietzsche's mature thought (see Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Ufe
as Literature [Cambridge: Harvard Universlly Press] p. 227), Nietzsche
subsequently abandons (or transforms) this Apollinian model of selfperfection. In his post-Zarathustran writings he applauds "the constraint of a single taste," but only insofar as it enables the soul to
accommodate that dimension of excess that Nietzsche associates with
the Dionysian. Strictly two-dimensional, self-contained souls attest to
an irreversible dissipation of will, to an irrecuperable advance in
decadence.
10. Rorly apparently derives his account of self-creation from his antiessentialism and historicism. Because no authentic self exists to be
discovered through cognitive processes, he reasons, the self is therefore a construct (see Chapter 2). Rorty's reasoning is valid, of course,
only in the event that his guiding disjunction-discoveryvs. creationis both exclusive and warranted.
11. I develop this point further in my essay "Disembodied Perspectives,"
Nletzsche.Studten, Band 21, 1992, pp. 281-89.
12. Nietzsche's revision of the motto he adopts from Pindar perhaps reflects
this growing emphasis on self-discovery. "Become who you are"(GS 270)
is replaced by "Become what one is" (EH). See also GS 335.
13. Nehamas claims that Nietzsche never decides between the discovery
of truth and its invention (p.234). In his account of the "aestheticism"
he ascribes to Nietzsche, however, he leaves litile room for self-discovery, and he ventures no sustained account of the cognitive component
of self-overcoming.
14. David R. Lachterman, TheEthlcsofGeometry:AGeneakJgyofModemity
(New York: Routledge, 1989), especially Chapter One.
15. 'Ihis would be fine with Rorly, who confines the pursuit of self-perfection to
the private sphere precisely so that it will not spill over into the public
sphere, where It may cause harm to others. In keeping with the tenets
of his "liberal ironlsm," Rorlywould rather forego the potential benefits
of a self-perfection that exceeds the bounds of the private sphere than
endure the lnev!tsble harm it would cause. "Cruelly Is the worst thing
we do," he maintains (p. xv), and any incursion into the public sphere
of an individual's private pursuit of self-perfection Is potentially cruel.
�40
TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
�The Eleatic Stranger's
Socratic Condemnation of Socrates
I
Jacob Howlandr
(Note: The following article concerns a topic, the philosophic trial of
Socrates, that was first suggested to me by David Lachterman tn an
Honors semtnar he taught on Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy at Swarthmore College in the Sprtng ofl979. I studied with David
throughout my undergraduate years and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation,
also on the philosophic trial of Socrates, under his supervision at Penn
State. David Lachterman is truly the father of my logos, but is
responsible, like Socrates' gods in the RepubUc, only for the good in
it. My gratitude for his gifts as a teacher is inexpressible, but I cherish
most of all the memory of his friendship.)
In order to understand the Statesman one must begin by noting Its
central position In the heptalogy 1heaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist,
Statesman, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, a dramatically and substantively unified series of dialogues that depicts the last days of Socrates .I
Socrates' encounter with the Eleatic Stranger occurs on the day
followtng the prellmtnary proceedings of his public trial. While Plato
leads us up to these proceedings In the Euthyphro, he substitutes the
Sophist and Statesman for the judicial hearing that takes place tnside
the Stoa of the King Archon. This narrative substitution confirms
Socrates' initial suspicion that the Stranger has come to condemn him
(Soph. 216a-b). Yet Socrates himself invites a philosophical version of
the public indictment by asking the Stranger to speak about the
natures of the sophist, statesman, and philosopher (Soph. 216d217a). tn the Sophist, the Stranger sets out to substantiate the
Intertwined accusations of bad theoriztng and bad citizenship that
together constitute the charge of sophistry he brings against Socrates. 2
The ensuing philosophic drama Is not without twists and turns. In
the Statesman, the Stranger seems to retract the accusation of bad
theorizing tn the course of formulating that of bad citizenship. This
retraction Is connected with changes In the manner or method of his
inquiry that serve to establish his own Socratic character. Most
This paper was orl~y delivered at the Third Svmposium Platonicum of the
International Plato Sociecy, held in August of 1992 in Bristol, England.
�42
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Important, the Stranger mirrors Socrates' Impure and prophetic dialectics In reorienting the process of diaeresis with a great myth that
emphasizes phronesis and the concept of due measure. Yet the
Stranger's acknowledgment ofhls philosophical kinship with Socrates
does notamounttoacqulttal on the charge of sophistry. The Stranger's
final position seems to be that the philosophical goal of phronesis Is
accessible only through Socratic inquiry, but that Socrates' own
practice Is deficient In phronesis precisely to the extent that his
unrestrained devotion to Inquiry unravels the bonds of political community. The Stranger's verdict Is thus disturbingly ambiguous. Socrates turns out to be a sophist just to the extent that he embodies
pure philosophic zeal. Put another way, the most perfect available
instance of the eidos or genos "philosopher" is no longer a philosopher.
Conversely, the genuine philosopher falls short of the perfection ofhls
own eidos by suppressing his own philosophical nature: he forgoes
the full acquisition of phronesis In the name of phronesis Itself. The
philosopher Is thus a radically paradoxical being: he Is the being whose
proper understanding of his own nature leads him to retreat from his
own nature, or who becomes what he Is only In being less than what
he Is. The Stranger's philosophical parricide of Parmenides (Soph.
241 d), which was deemed necessary to capture the sophist, seems
also to have anticipated the essential negativity whereby the philosopher evades eidetic definition.
I
Who, or what, Is Socrates? The heptalogy frames Its focal question
In political, religious, and theoretical terms. Socrates begins the
Theaetetus by identi(ying himself as a patriot who feels care and
friendship for his fellow Athenians (Tht. l44d), yet he narrates the
dialogue to Euclldes from his prison cell. He also Intimates in the Crlto
that his true home Is Hades. 3 Is Socrates at home or a stranger In the
Athenian political communlty?4The ambiguous character of Socrates'
devotion to elenchic discourse increases our perplexity. At his public
trial he offers the story of Chaerephon's visit to Delphi as proof of his
piety, but then explalr)s that he Immediately set about trying to refute
the oracle (Ap. 20e-2lc). Socrates proclaims his Delphic or Apollonian
moderation (Ap. 23a-b], but the "terrible eros' for naked dialectical
exercise to which he admits In the Theaetetus (l69c 1) Is nothing If not
extreme. And while Socrates asserts in the Apolngy that he Is concerned above all with virtue (Ap. 29d-30b], In the Theaetetushe speaks
ofhls philosophic eri'>s as a disease and accepts Theodorus's comparIson of him with certain savage and monstrous criminals (Tht. l69a-b).
�HOWLAND
43
Is Socrates a model of aidEs or hubris (cf. Soph. 216a), moderate
humility or extremism, healthy virtue or criminal sickness?
Socrates' association with the god Apollo, whose arsenal includes
afflictions as well as cures, underscores the religious dimension of the
problem he poses to his fellow citizens. In the Phaedo, Socrates
compares himself with the swans who serve Apollo (Phdo. 84e-85b),
but in the Apology he associates himself with the gadfly, a species of
pestilence (Ap. 30e-3la). It is unclear whether Socrates is a heavensent blessing (cf. Ap. 30a),or a plague upon the Athenians. This issue
is raised most sharply by Socrates' proposal to the judges that he be
boarded in the Prutaneion, as befits one who has greatly benefited the
city (Ap. 36d-e). Socrates' proposal seems implicitly to suggest that he
may serve the community better in death than in life, for meals at the
Prutaneion were also granted to the phannakoiwhowere to be expelled
from the city during the Thargelia, a festival of civic katharsis in which
the Athenians cleansed themselves of religious pollution. It seems
more than coincidental in this connection that Apollo presided over
the Thargelia, and that Socrates was supposed to have been born on
the very day of this festival. 5
The virtually inseparable themes of political infection and religious
impurity are connected with further ambiguities that center upon
Socrates' strange combination of knowledge and ignorance. In the
Th.eaetetus Socrates paradoxically presents himself as a midwife of the
soul who is himself utterly Inexperienced in giving birth to wisdom,
but who Is nevertheless capable of judging the wisdom of the offspring
of others (Tht. 150b If.). Socrates Is thus apparently both less than
"the god" to whom he owes his maieutic art and more than human,
for he asserts that "human nature is too weak to grasp an art of
whatever it is Inexperienced" (Tht. 149cl-2).6 A positive Image of the
power of philosophic anticipation or foreknowledge presupposed by
Socratic Inquiry Is furnished by the association throughout the heptalogy of Socrates with prophecy. 7 In the Th.eaetetus, however, the
paradox noted above Is presented In a distinctly negative light. The
Issues of aidos and Impurity arise here once again: Socrates admits
to Theaetetus that their manner of conversation has been "shameless"
(anaides) and "Impure" (me kntharos), and that they are consequently
"no good" (phauloq, since "We've said thousands of times 'We
recognize' and 'We don't recognize,' and 'We know' and 'We don't know,'
as though we somehow understand one another while still being
Ignorant of knowledge" (Tht. l96dl0, el-5; l97a4). Although the
context of these remarks may strike the reader as narrowly theoretical,
this passage foreshadows Socrates' perception of the Stranger, who
�44
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appears to him to be a "refutative god" come to punish him for being
poor (phaulos) in speeches, much as Zeus the god of strangers is
shown by Homer to exact retribution from men who lack aidos and
are marked by hubris (Soph. 216a-b). In thus linking his theoretical
impurity and shamelessness with the theme of arrogance and injustice toward gods and men, Socrates anticipates the Stranger's own
strategy in exploring the most perplexing question of all: Is Socrates
a philosopher or a sophist?
II
In the Sophist the Stranger progressively hunts down Socrates,
although he urbanelyforbears mentioning the old Athenian by name.8
The Stranger's criticism of Socrates emerges most clearly in the sisth
diaeresis of the sophist, which ostensibly defines "the sophistical art
that is noble In kind" (Soph. 23lb). The first cut of this diaeresis allows
the Stranger to identif'y his own philosophic method as a branch of
the separation of like from like, as opposed to the discrimination of
the worse from the better by the art of purification (he kathartike)
wtthin which he locates Socrates' practice of removing by means of
refutation the vain conviction of wisdom that impedes genuine learning
(Soph. 226b ff.). The Stranger's attempt to define Socratic sophistry is
nevertheless itself an act of political as well as theoretical purification, 9
as is evident from his suggestion that we fail adequately to guard
against the savageryofthe sophist in assigning him the honor properly
accorded to the philosopher (Soph. 23la). 10 Because it seeks to draw
fixed distinctions between contrary formal elements that do not
combine with one another, the method of bifurcatmy diaeresis that
the Stranger employs throughout the Sophist and in the first third of
the Statesman seems to offer a promising way in which to isolate the
impure element of sophistry,II Yet Socrates' Impure practice of philosophical purification Itself promises to resist unambiguous classification. The results of the sisth diaeresis are therefore problematically
mixed. The Stranger ultimately suggests that Socrates is noble insofar
as purgative refutation is in fact prerequisite to the acquisition of
wisdom (Soph. 230d-e), but that he is a sophist because-in spite of
his claim to be a philosophical midwife-he lacks the positive ability
to replace refuted opinions with more adequate teachings. Specifically,
Socrates suffers from what the Stranger later characterizes as "some
ancient and uncomprehending Idleness among men of old regardtng
the diaeresis of gene according to eide" (Soph. 267 d5-6) .12 The method
of diaeresis, the Stranger Implies, would allow Socrates finally to
overcome the theoretical impurity atiaching to his knowledge of
�HOWLAND
45
Ignorance. Yet It must be emphasized that in the sixth diaeresis the
Stranger does not adequately distinguish his philosophic method from
Its Socratic rival, for In order to give the nobility of Socratic refutation
Its due he Is forced to combine the separation of like from like with
the discrimination of the better from the worse. It appears that
philosophy cannot isolate the mixed eidos of noble sophistry without
being compelled to share In it. The Stranger is thus himself open to
the charge of theoretical impurity when judged according to his own
practice of eidetic divlsiori. 13
The sixth diaeresis explicitly affirms the philosophical value of
Socratic refutation while criticizing Socrates' lack of a positive philosophical method. There is, however, an Implicit criticism of Socratic
refutation that comes to light when we compare the actual results of
his philosophical practice with the Stranger's description of these
results. While the Stranger asserts that those who have been purged
of seeming-wisdom by noble sophistry "are harsh on themselves and
grow tame before everyone else" (Soph. 230b8-9), all evidence-IncludIng Socrates' own remarks to Theaetetu&-suggests otherwise. 14 The
Stranger Is uncerialn whether human beings are tame or wild, and
specifically whether Socrates is a gentle dog or a vicious wolf (Soph.
222b, 23la; cf. Tht. 169a-b). The latter question is surely connected
with the Issue of Socrates' effect upon those who undergo his refutations: he claims to have made Theaetetus "tamer" (Tht. 210c3), but
exposure to Socratic dialogue seems generally to make men more
savage. As we shall see, the Stranger develops this implicit accusation
of bad citizenship In the Statesman. Yet he also abandons the accusation of bad theorizing set forth In the sixth diaeresis, in that he
comes to acknowledge that Socratic Inquiry Is necessary for the
acquisition of positive philosophic Insight. Let us now see how Socrates himself motivates the Stranger's partial recantation of the charge
of sophistry. IS
III
The Stranger Is of course not alone in critically questioning the
political implications of Socratic discourse. In the conclusion of the
Clouds Arlstophanes seems to predict that the Athenians, aided by
their gods, will punish and perhaps execute Socrates for the rough
treatment they have suffered at the hands of youths who have spent
time with him.l 6 At his public !rial Socrates numbers Arlstophanes
foremost among his first accusers, and the links forged by the comic
poet between Socratic sophistry. harshness, and savagery seem to
stand behind the Stranger's philosophical indictment as well.l7 The
�46
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Stranger's teaching is connected with that of Aristophanes also
through the political image of weaving first introduced by the manly
woman Lyslstrata, the character that best exemplifies within the
dramatic universe of Aristophanes the balance between courage and
moderation recommended by the Stranger himself. IS Unquestionably,
however, It is the Stranger-at least prior to his telling the myth of the
reversed cosmos-who bears the clearest resemblance to
Aristophanes' Socrates. Both of these dramatic characters employ the
technique of diaeresis, utllize the relative measurement exemplified in
mathematics to the exclusion of due measure "relative to the becoming
of the mean" (PoL 284cl, d6), pay equal attention to things big and
small but seem to ignore (if not to disdain) the intermediate domain
of human things, and obfuscate the distinction between men and
animals.19
This ambiguity ofldentities is nothing new in the heptalogy. Indeed,
upon meeting the Stranger Socrates assumes that he is in disguise,
and goes on to emphasize the many apparitions of the philosopher
(Soph. 216a-217a). Furihermore, the Stranger cannot convict Socrates of sophistry without establishing Ws own philosopWcal credentials. I have suggested that he did not succeed in doing so in the
Sophist These reflections help us to understand, first, that Socrates
is Implicitly criticizing the Stranger when at the beginning of the
Statesman he chastises Theodorus for supposing that the relative
worih of human souls is susceptible to mathematical measurement,
and second, that when he goes on to emphasize the importance of
refamiliarizlng ourselves through speeches with those who are akin to
us in soul Socrates Is implicitly challenging the Stranger to remove
his sophistical disguise of eplstemic precision and disclose the proper
measure of self-knowledge (PoL 257a3-8, 258a2-3). 20 This, I submit,
Is just what the Stranger proceeds to do.
IV
The Stranger responds to Socrates' challenge by setting forth a
series of divisions that exemplifies the shortcomings of bifurcatory
diaeresis with regard to the knowledge of human things. As Mitchell
Miller observes, the definition of the object of statesmansWp as a
cousin of the pig or a featherless biped (PoL 264e-266e) Isolates the
kind or class of man without revealing "the essential cilaracter-the
eidos In the fullest sense of this term-of man.''2 1 In particular, these
definitions overlook the power of logos without which neither political
community nor philosophy could come to be. 22 The absence of logos
helps to explain why eros and thwnos possess merely physiological
�HOWLAND
47
significance In the divisions, and so cannot serve as differentia of the
human specles.23 Yet it has also been argued that the unique "potentiality" or "freedom" of man eludes definition via an enumeration of
formal elements, and In particular that such elements can express
human erotic or thumotic striving only Insofar as they are employed
as Images of that which man In his Intermediate condition aspires to
be, I.e., that which he literally Is not but nevertheless Is like. 24 When
applied to the human soul the method of diaeresis freezes that which
Is essentially In motion, for it seeks to replace the fluid relationship of
likeness with a rigid opposition between what man is and what he Is
not. While diaeresis masks the ambiguous Intermediacy of the human
soul, poetic eikasia uncovers it. 2 5 These arguments are in my view
confirmed by the Stranger's subsequent use of mythical Images to
express the uniquely unfinished, open, and malleable nature of the
human aniroal.
The Stranger's employment of a prophetic myth to correct the base
results of a technical treatment of the human soul should be compared
with Socrates' similar conduct In the Phaedrus. 26 AB in the Phaedrus,
talk about the souileads to non-certifiable, "Inspired," or theoretically
impure discourse about the Whole.27 Just as the myth will serve as
the basis for subsequent divisions (PoL 268d-e). human life must be
guided by Intelligent Insight into the contexts of speech and deed, or
what the Stranger will call phronesis. Phronesis is not diaeresis-for
It is knowledge not of eide, but of due measure-yet the Stranger
Indicates that It must guide diaeresis. 2B If further confirmation of the
Stranger's kinship with Socrates is needed,ltls provided by his explicit
identification of philosophy with the acquisition of phronesLs by means
of Socratic dialogue. In the reversed cycle of the cosmos-the era of
Cronos---philosophlzing would amount to "learning by Inquiry from
every nature whether each with its own kind of private capacity was
aware of something different from all the rest for the gathering and
collection of phronesis" (PoL 272c2-4). The residents of the reversed
cycle, however, are able directly to observe the model of phronesis
provided by their divine shepherds, whereas In the current cosmic
cycle-the era of Zeus-these divine caretakers have withdrawn (PoL
272e-273a) and our perceptions of the fitting, the opportune, and the
needful bear the Impress of cultural history. To acquire phronesis in
the current cycle therefore Involves more than gathering together
perceptions: it requires that one critically sift through opinions In
order to separate that which is justified by nature from that which
rests upon nomos alone. Furthermore, In the current cycle logos Is
restricted to human beings, and the potentially dialogic diversity of
�48
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the many species of animals is narrowed to the diversity of the families
or kinds of human souis. In sum, one might say that the philosophical
zoology of the reversed cycle fmds its cosmic counterpart in a distinctly
Socratic anthropology.
Given that phronesis is the power by which humans are to govern
themselves in the current cycle, the myth would seem to vindicate
Socratic philosophizing both theoretically and politically.29 Yet the
paradoxical ambiguity that is associated with Socrates throughout the
heptalogy attaches to hirh here above all, for the myth uitimately
suggests that Socrates, like his Aristophanean double, pays insufficient attention to the human origins and the human context of his
own philosophical activity. In particular, his refusal to allow anything
but death-and perhaps not even death (cf. Ap. 4la-c)-to lirhit his
dialogical pursuit of phronesis effectively ignores the distinction between the human beings among whom he lives and their brutalized
cosmic twins.
It would appear that philosophy in general, and Socrates in particular, could not exist during the reversed cycle. 30 For one thing, eros
and thwnos seem to require as a spur to activity the harshness of
nature that emerges only at the beginning of the current cycle and
that compels human beings to attend to their literal and metaphorical
nakedness, the vulnerable condition of their psyches as well as their
bodies.sl Necessity now forces us to weave protective webs of myth as
well as defences for the body. The "indispensable instruction and
education [paideusls]" and the arts of survival that enable us to do so
are said to be gifts of the Olympians (PoL 274c5-d2). but the active
involvement of gods in the current cycle conflicts with the Stranger's
mythical cosmology. Stories about philanthropic gods are presumably
an essential component of the indispensable paideusis to which the
Stranger refers. 32 Socrates, however, seems curiously unaffected by
current psychological and physiological exigencies. Like a resident of
the reversed cycle he is protected by a datmOn, disdains warm clothing
(including woven wool), and sees no conflict between leisurely inquiry
and the unrelenting pace of work and political life. 33 Most irhportant,
he treats others as if they were as independent and thick-skinned as
he himself is. 34 Socrates' philosophical anthropology involves the
persistent attempt to think ex arches, or to uncover the beginnings of
the human things (Tht. 15ld, 200d). According to the Stranger,
however, our natural beginnings are so harsh as to be humanly
unbearable. It is not sufficient to say that Socrates forces his interlocutors to strip off the covering of nomos that protects them from this
harshness (cf. Tht. l69a-b). because the Stranger later suggests that
�HOWLAND
49
the soul itself is a web of natural elements woven In accordance with
nomos. 3 5 In unraveling this interior web, the Stranger Implies, Socrates upsets the psychic and political balance of moderation and manliness at which statesmanship aims above all, and thereby exposes
human beings to the pre-political savagery of their own unbridled
lhumos."6
v
There can be no doubt that the Stranger has Socrates in mind when
he later argues for the absolute authority of the rule oflaw as a "second
sailing" in the absence of a god-like king who possesses phronesfs.3 7
Socrates' own second sailing Involved a tum toward logoi for the sake
of protecting the soul from damage resulting from a direct confrontation with physical nature (Phd. 99d-e), but Socratic logos conflicts with
the analogous defensive function of nomos. The employment of phronesis conflicts with Its fullest acquisition. Judged by the myth of the
reversed cosmos, the philosopher Is not a god, for his own being Is
characterized by an internal tension and opposition that resists logical
resolution. Rooted as it is In the nature of the cosmos, this paradox
is inescapable. sa
*****
Notes
l. Except where the context indicates that I am discussing the character
of "Socrates" in Aristophanes' Clouds, all references in this essay to
Socrates are to the "Socrates" of the Platonic dialogues.
2. The notion that Plato presents a philosophical version of Socrates'
public trial in the Sophist and statesman has been advanced most
recently by Cropsey (1986). Similar views may be found in Benardete
(1983), Klein (1977), Miller (1980), and Rosen (1983). One should
observe that the intertwining of Socrates' public and philosophical
trials reconfirms the dramatic and substantive integrity of the heptalogy. It is clear over the years he was composing these dialogues. Plato
was always guided by a sense of the unity of these concurrent trials:
in dramatic time the intervals between these dialogues consist of a few
days, a day, or, in the case of the transition from the Theaetetusto the
Euthyphro, perhaps only minutes. Speculation about the order in
which the dialogues of the hepialogy were composed Is therefore
irrelevant to the study of Socrates' philosophic trial. Most Important,
the Socrates who argues with Euthyphro, addresses the jury of
Athenians, and discourses with friends in his prison cell is for our
�50
'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
purposes the same Socrates as the one who meets the Stranger.
Chronological speculation is in any case open to serious criticism: See
Howland (1991).
3. See Crt. 44a10-b2 with Strauss (1983) 55.
4. This question is raised at the very beginning of the heptalogy by Implicit
contrast between the condemned Socrates and the wounded Theaetetus, whom Eucl!des deems kalos k'agatlws (Tht. 142b7). Compare
Euthyphro's initial uncertainty about whether Socrates is pursuing or
meeting an indictment (]futhphr. 2a)-an uncertainty hat Is borne out
by the accusatory tone of Socrates' defense speech in the Apology.
5. One should also note that "the yearly theoria to Delos which delayed
the execution of Socrates must have taken place in Thargel!on, the
month of the Delian Apollo" (Thesleff [1982)26 n. 24). On the practice
offeeding and keeping the phannakoi in the Prutanelon, see Ar., Eq.
1405, together with the schollast on Eq. 1136. Socrates' blrthdate Is
recorded at D!ogenes Laetius 2.44. This evidence is cited in Jane
Harrison's useful discussion of "The Pharmakos," in Harrison (1955)
95-106. Compare the treatment of the Thargel!a in Moulinier (1952)
94-99 and of purification in Burkert (1985) 75-84. The expulsion of
pharmakoi at the Thargel!a amounted to the removal beyond the
borders of the city of a contaminating poison, pestilence, or sickness,
with the result the old life of the city could begin anew after this
pllrifYing separation. According to Harpocration (cited at Moulinier
[1952) 95 and Harrison [1955) 102). Istros traced the origin of the
Thargel!a to a crime committed against Apollo by an individual named
"Pharmakos. • For a stimulating discussion of Socrates as phannakos
see Derrida (1981) 128-34.
6. Quotations in English from the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman will
be drawn from Benardete 1983), with modifications where appropriate.
Benardete discusses the present ambiguity in his commentary on the
Theaetetus in the volume cited above, I. 99-100.
7. Socrates' prophetic character Is alluded to at Tht. 142c, Euihphr. 3b-c,
Ap. 39c, Crlto 44a-b, and Phd. 84e-85b. Yet his powers of divination
are apparently not flawless: he seems to miss the mark in predicting
that younger and harsher men-men whom he is allegedly restraining-w!ll besiege the Athenians after the execution (Ap. 39c-d). In
particular, neither Plato nor Xenophon fits this mold.
Socrates raises the theme of philosophic prophecy frequently in the
Platonic corpus: compare especially Phdr. 242c with Resp. 505d-506a
and Symp. 21 Od ff. An account of the central importance of this theme
in the Republic may be found in "Sun, Line, and Cave: Philosophical
Imagination and Prophecy." ch. 9 of Howland (1993).
8. Theodorus's comment that the Stranger is more "measured" (mett6teros)
than Socrates suggests It is partially supported by the Stranger's own
�HOWLAND
51
reluctance to act in a way that is axenon kai agrion, "unbecoming a
stranger and savage" (Soph. 216b8, 217e6-7). Perhaps the fullest proof
of the Stranger's philosophical moderation lies in his measured criticism of Socrates in the Statesman (see below).
Socrates is arguably meant to appear under the penultimate cut of
the dialogue's first diaeresis of the sophist, in which the erotic and
gift-giving branch of private persuasion is ranged against the wageearning branch (Soph. 222d-e; cf. Tht. 187c), and among the moneylosing practitioners of reristic discourse in the final cut of the fifth
diaeresis (Soph. 225d; cf. Tht. 195c). And the Stranger seems finally to
have captured Socrates in the sixth diaeresis (226b-23lb), and in the
dialogue's seventh and last definition of the sophist as an ignorant and
ironic imitator of Virtue "who in private and with brief speeches
compels his interlocutor to contradict himself' (Soph. 268b3-5). (In
numbering the diaereses of the sophist I have followed Sayre [1969].)
9. Cf. Pol. 268cl 0, where the Stranger states that the goal of the inquiry
is to show forth the statesman "pure and alone" (katharon monon).
10. This is why (in spite of his later claim that diaeresis must honor all of
the arts on an equal basis [Soph. 227b.] the Stranger says that the
angler is one of the "trivial things" (tOn phaulOn) in comparison with
the "greater things" (ton mek:lzoniin) among which he numbers the
sophist (Soph. 218d8, e3). The sophist is represented as a wild beast
(Soph. 218d3, 226a7, 235al0) and a fugitive who seeks out dark
regions (Soph. 254a4-6), while the philosopher inhabits the brilliant
region of the divine (Soph. 254a8-bl).
11. An especially useful discussion of bifurcatory diaeresis may be found
in Miller (1980) 16-33.
12. Cf. Sayre (1969) 151 fl. Scodel observes that in the sixth diaeresis
"[Socrates] is denied the ability to distinguish like from like" (Scodel
[1987] 39).
13. Insofar as Socrates' sophistry is connected with his ignorance of the
method of diaeresis, the criticism contained in the sixth diaeresis is
deficient also in that the Stranger fails to define the method that
Socrates lacks. As Scodel notes, the division oflike from unlike is a
part of the art of seperation "which remains completely undefined so
that we can only speculate about its contents" (Scodel [1987] 38).
Consider also Scodel's comment on Soph. 226a6-8: "If the principle of
grasping a dejlniendum 'with both hands' or sides of a division is not
limited arbitrarily to species ... the result will be that the dejlniendum
can be located properly only after a comprehensive division of reality"
(Scodel [1987] 39).
14. Tht. 150e2, 15lc4-7. Consider in this connection the recommendations of "Protagoras" concerning how Socrates could get his interlocutors to blame themselves, and not him, for their own perplexity (Tht.
�52
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
168a). The harshness of Socrates engenders Is evident also in the
warning of Anytus in the Meno (94e-95a) and his successful prosecution. Cf. also Socrates' reference to harshness at Ap. 39d2.
15. Rosen is half right in suggesting that the statesman constitutes the
Stranger's recantation of the refutation of Socrates he presents in the
Sophist (Plato's Sophist, 28, 308). Rosen's suggestion is modified by
Dorter, who asserts that the statesman "is not a recantation in the
sense of a rejection" (Dorter [1987] 106 n. 5). Dorter argues that the
Stranger's eventual abandonment of bifurcatory diaeresis in the
Statesman Is consistent with his employment of this method as an
instrument of Socratic pedagogy. A similar argument is presented by
Miller, who maintatos that blfurcatory diaeresis "overcomes" itself
once It has served its purpose as "an initial help in attuning us to
kinds" (Miller (1980) 79; cf. 16-21. 30-33, and 74 ff.). Both of these
studies help to show that the Stranger has a Socratic sense of due
measure with regard to the concrete requirements of philosophic
pedagogy. The present paper, however, argues further that in the
Statesman the Stranger condemns Socrates in accordance with the
standard of due measure Itself.
16. The fate of Socrates is discussed in Kopff (1977). Kopff finds a
historical parallel to the ending of the Clouds in the fifth-century attack
on the Pythagoreans of Croton, who were trapped and burned in their
house.
17. As Aristophanes underscores by abundant reference to dogs and
chickens, Socrates ignores that wWch elevates human beings above
animals (Nub. 3, 226, 491, 660-67, 810, 847-51, 1427-31). The bonds
of affection and frlendsWp are absent from the Socratic universe:
Socrates Is a harsh master to his students, whose condition resembles
that of captive, ill-treated beasts (Nub. 184-86). After studytng with
Socrates, Pheidippides defends his violent treatment of Ws father by
arguing that humans differ from beasts only In that they Write decrees
(Nub. 1429).
Nussbaum (1980) connects the Stranger's description of the purification of seemtog-wisdom at Soph. 230b. with Arlstophanes' characterization of Socratic practice in the Clouds, and she contrasts this
practice with the traditional, paternal kind of education described by
the Stranger at Soph. 229e-230a (Nussbaum [1980] 43, 74; cf. 81,
where she states that Aristophanes attacks Socrates for "Ws lack of a
positive program to replace what he has criticized").
18. Compare Pol. 279a ff., 309a-c, and 311a-c with Ar., Lys. 568-86.
Lyslstrata's bold plan to end the war by seizing the Acropolis and
withholding sex from the men calls for a striking combination of
andreia and sophrosunii. While she is a clever and ambitions thinker
who like Socrates deprives herself of sleep in order to think her big
thoughts (Lys. 26-27, Nub 420; cf. Plato, Symp. 220c-d), Lyslstrata
�HOWlAND
53
subordinates her "manly" ambition to the "womanly" goals of peace,
domesticity, and the pleasures of the body. She realizes the political
goals of both Artstophanes and the Stranger in that she causes the
armor-making of Hephaestus to serve the weaving of Athena (cf. Pol.
274c, 311b-c).
19, Diaeresis: Consider Socrates' injunction to Strepsiades at Nub. 740-42
("Cut open your thought finely and think about your troubles by little
bits, dividing and examining the correctly [orthos diatron kai skopon]").
Mathematical measurep1ent: Socrates spends his time engaging in
astronomy and geometiy and in such activities as devising methods
to measure the jumps of fleas and the anus of the goat. (Nub. 144-173
with the reference to a compass [dlabeten] at 178). 1be quasi-mathematical character of bifurcatory diaeresis emerges at Pol. 262b, when
the Stranger advises Young Socrates to employ the principle of halving
or "cutting through the middle." Cf. Darter's claim that "the method of
division [by bisection] makes use only of relative measure" [Dorter
[1987] 112), but consider also Miller's observation that "the notion of
halving involves more than the mere quantitative equality of extensions" insofar as "halving entails finding contrartes" (Miller [1980]
20-22 with 126 n. 14). Big and small: compare Socrates' equal interest
in minute vermin and the heavenly bodies with the Stranger's comment that diaeresis gives equal honor to the louse-catcher (I) and the
general (Soph. 227b; cf. Pol. 226d)-a distinctly apolitical perspective
that pays no heed to measurement according to "the mean, the fitting,
the opportune, and the needful" in human life (Pol. 284e6-8). Socrates'
tmpression that the Stranger "looks down upon" (kathoran) human
beings (Soph. 216b3) may be compared to with Strepsiades' impression
that Socrates, who first appears suspended in a basket, "looks down
upon" (hyperphronein) or "despises" the gods (Nub. 226, cf. 1400). Men
and antmals: on Socrates see above, note 17. The Stranger's falls
adequately to distinguish men from beasts in the first thtrd of the
statesman (see below).
Plato's Socrates, on the other hand, clatms to be exclustvely
concerned with human virture (Ap. 30a-b), suggests to the Athenian
judges that he alone lives a life fit for a human being rather than an
animal (Ap. 38a with 30e-31a), is especially interested in disputes that
cannot be settled by the techniques of relative measurement (Euthphr.
7b-d), and explicitly dissociates himself from the pursuits attributed
to him by Artstophanes (Ap. 19c, 23d). Cf. the story Socrates tells at
Phd. 96a-99e about how he became aware of the inadequacy of
exclustvely mathematical and physical explanation ofhuman phenomena. Socrates' tongue-in-cheek account in the 7heaetetus of how the
true philosopher "flies, as Pindar puts it, 'deep down under the earth'
and geometriclzes the planes, 'and above heaven' engaging in astronomy" (Tht. 173e5-6) both flatters Theodorus and underscores the
�54
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
difference between his own activity and that of his Aristophanean
counterpart (cf. Nub. 171-173, 187-194). It worth noting that the
theoretical man described by socrates, unlike Socrates htmself, cannot
tell whether his neighbor is "a human being or some different nursling"
(Tht 174b3).
20. Theodorus associates htmself with the Stranger by posing as a
merchant of his teachings (Pol. 257a3-5; cf. Soph. 223c-224d). Socrates makes it clear in the first tine of the dialogue, however, that the
conversations of the Thii!aetetus and the Sophist have been worthwhile
prtmartly because they have provided an opportunity for gnorisis,
"getting to know" In the sense of "becoming familiar with" other souls
(Pol. 257al-2; cf. the reference to anagnorisis at 258a3). His criticis~TI
of Theodorus (which Scodel also understands to be directed to the
Stranger: Scodel [1987] 44 with n. 38) thus suggests a clistinction
between the Stranger's methoclical ii!plstemii of souls and what Griswold, in a stmilar context, has called Socratic "gnosis." See Griswold
(1986) 261 n. 23: "I would use 'gnosis' because Socrates, following the
Delphic oracle, speaks of the need 'gignoskein' himself (not
'epistasthai').
Miller observes that Socrates' mention of anagtwrisis recalls the
test of kinship between Odysseus and Penelope and Odysseus and
Laertes in the Odyssli!y (Miller [1980] 6). These probable allusions are
prepared by Socrates' earlier association of the Stranger with
Odysseus, both when he encounters the Cyclops while shielded by
anonymity and when he enters his own home disguised as a beggar
(Soph. 216a-b; cf. Homer, Od. 9.269-71 and 17.485-87). Plato's philosophical employment of the Odyssean subtext of homecoming thus
supports the prececling interpretation of the opening tines of the
Statesman. (The tmportance of this subtext for the heptalogy as a whole
is indtrectly suggested by Alrivie [1971].)
21. MU!er (1980) 32.
22. The Stranger htmself underscores this omission when he imagines
that Young Socrates' separation of human beings from beasts might
be disputed by "some other animal that possesses phroniisis," and that
the statesman will have to defend his claim to rule against those of
thousands of other herd-nurturers (pol. 263d3-4. 268b-c).
23. The pairing of men with pigs on the shorter road recalls Glaucon's
"city of pigs" (Resp. 372d), whose inhabitants are distinguished by
inhuman deficiencies of eros and thumos.
24. See Griswold (1989) 148-49, Benardete (1963) 200 If. Miller notes that
man's uniqueness poses a special problem for bifurcatory cliaeresis,
for there is no positive contrary corresponding to human intelligence
in some other class (MU!er [1980] 32).
�HOWLAND
55
25. According to Benardete, "the Stranger mathematizes poeby: he employs a dianoetic analysis in a region we believe to be the preserve of
eikasia....The likeness and unlikeness of an image is not the otherness
and the sameness of a magnitude, and hence an image's relation to
what is imaged eludes a method that is most at home with magnitudes
and numbers." Cf. his discussion of man as •dziion simply," whose
"nature in its artfulness can imitate or discover lhe likeness to himself
in any kind" (Benardete [1963[ 200, 217). The myth of the reversed
cosmos indicates that Ol)l' very survival depends upon this polymorphism, which finds its first expression in the indispensable technai
associated with Prometheus, Hephaestus, Athena, and the gods and
goddesses of agriculture (Pol. 247b-c).
26. The palinode of the Phaedrus is Socrates recantation of his first,
shameful speech (Phdr. 257a). Similarly, the Stranger allows diaeresis
to disgrace itself by failing to show forth the statesman (and, by
implication, the human herd) "pure and alone" (katharon nwnon: Pol.
268cl0), so that shames in the face of its impure and base results
becomes the motive for the subsequent mythical ascent he recommends (Pol. 268d2-3; the myth will allow for an ascent ep' akron: Pol.
268el).
27. Cf. Griswold (1986) 65 ff. On the prophetic character of the myth, cf.
Miller's comment the "the Stranger seems to give up self-accountable
analysis for the posture of the inspired seer" (Miller [1980] 36). Only a
god could know everything that is asserted about the cosmos in the
Stranger's myth.
28. Cf. Griswold (!989) !55: "It seems that the mean must change relative
to the context. The 'anangkaia ousid (238d8) is not an Idea or Form,
or even an eidos in the Eleatic Stranger's sense. What counts as the
'mean' will depend on the situation; it will be what is timely, suitable,
appropriate for the occasion. And in this sense the mean may be said
to 'become.'" Rosen notes that whereas "phronesls sees individual case
as it is, "diaeresis, like nonws, gathers together many individual cases
under a common stamp" (Rosen [! 979] 69; cf. Pol 258c4-6)
29. Phroneslsis the powerbywhich the cosmos steers itself in the current
cycle (Pol. 269d1). The parts of the cosmos must imitate the whole in
ordertng their own movement "in exactly the same way [houtO de kata
t'auta] ...by a similar conduct [honwias agi'iges]" Pol. 274 a5-b1; cf.
274d6). Yet the phronesls of the cosmos evidently differs from that of
human beings. While the cosmos strtves in ordertng itself to adhere
precisely to the instructions of the demiurge (Pol 273b1-3), humans
possess various technical skills (Pol. 274c-d) but lack precise instructions of a comprehensive sort. Phronesls must consequently be acquired empirically, and in particular "gathered" through inquiry.
30. Cf. Griswold (1989) 151, and Rosen (1979) 79: "we may fmd it easy
enough to conclude that in the absence of memory, experience, Eros
�56
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and work, there can be no philosophy." In the Apology, Socrates
implicitly compares himself to heros, dia1TID11eS, and mules, all ofwhich
are generated from the Intercourse of different species (Clay [1972]).
Such mixed beings could not exist In the reversed cycle of the cosmos,
since generation Is then asexual (PoL 217a-b; cf. Benardete [1963]
1970.
31. Here agaln Plato seems to have borrowed from Arlstophanes. Consider
the attempt In the Plutus of Penla, "poverty" or "need" (as opposed to
ptocheia or abject beggary), to prove to men "that I alone am the cause
of all good things fur you, and that you live through me" (Plut. 468-470).
Central to her argument is the clalm that "If wealth [Plutus] could see
again and distributed himself equally, no one among human beings
would pursue either technl! or sophia" (Plu. 510-512), with the result
that human life would be miserable. One should also note that In the
Symposiwn Eros Is sald by Socrates to be the offspring of Penla and
Poros (Symp. 203b-c).
32. Cf. Rosen (1979) 83. The myth of the reversed cosmos even seems to
soften traditional paideusis Insofar as it rules out the possibility of
strife between the gods and divine hostility towards humans, In fact,
the myth adheres to two fundamental theological principles that
Socrates sets forib I the Republic in the course of reforming the
traditional stories about the Olympians and their progenitors: that
gods are "not the cause of all things, but of the good things," and that
"they are neither wizards who transform themselves, nor do they
mislead us by lies In speech or In deed" (Resp. 380c8-9, 383a3-5). The
Stranger teaches that the most divine things remaln always the same,
that gods do not oppose themselves or one another In speech or in
deed, and that "all beautiful things" come to the cosmos from Its divine
composer, whereas It owes to the disorder Intrinsic to Its corporeal
element "everything that comes to be harsh and unjust In heaven" (Pol
269d5-6, 269e7-270al, 273b6-cl).
33. As a prophetic power that Informs him when It is necessary to keep
silence or refraln from action, Socrates' datmonion provides purely
negative or defensive guidance (see Ap. 31 c-d and Tht. 151 a with Phdr.
242-c, Ale. I 103a, Theag. 128d, Euthd. 272e, Resp. 496C). Insofar as
Socrates Is cared for by his own private da!monlon, his situation
resembles that which would be enjoyed by the sole living member of a
particular species during the reversed cycle. On the appropriateness
of the weaving of wool garments as a political analogy, see Benardete
(1963) 221, and Griswold (1989) 152: "Woolens are necessary when
nature is most hostile, in bitter wlnter.... Political science is the art of
defending the citizens from a fundamentally hostile nature." Griswold
reasonably concludes that phroniisis is essentially conservative and
defensive: "It is the knowledge of what to do and when In order to keep
the polis safe" (Griswold [1989] 152).
�HOWlAND
57
Leisurely philosophical ioquily would have no political consequences in the reversed cycle, nor would the concept of the opportune
or critical moment (ho kairos) seem to be applicable during that era.
In spite of the contrast he sees between the tempo of philosophical
discourse and the press of political business (Tht. 172c ff.), Socrates
is ultimately forced to acknowledge the lack of leisure imposed upon
him as a consequence ofhis own speeches (Ap 19a, 24a. 37a). On these
issues consider the iosights ofBenardete (1980) I. 129-30.
34. Socrates' paradoxical combioation of self-sufficient toughness and
sociability, together with many of the ambigUities connected with him,
are contaioed ioAlcibiades' image of him as a satyr (Symp. 215a ff.).
35. Socratic phUosophiziog is also closely associated with strippiog io the
Clouds (Nub. 177-79,497-98,719,856-59, ll03, 1498), io which the
removal of clothiog underscores in particular Socrates' reduction of
human beiogs to animals. Compare the metaphorical significance of
the theme of strippiog io Book 5 of the Republic. On the role of nomos
io the fabrication of the soul, consider the Stranger's paradoxical
comment that citizens must be "nurtured through las [dia nom5n] to
grow accordiog to nature [kata phusin]" so as best to weave together
the "warp" of andreia with the "woof' of soplrrosWle (Pol310a2).
36. The Stranger says that the latter imbalance concerns "the greatest
thiogs." and attributes to It "the most hateful sickness of all for cities"
(Pol. 307d7-8: cf. 307e-308a). At PoL 301e7-3lla2, he states that "the
single and whole work of royal weaviog" Is "never to allow moderate
characters to stand apart from the manly, but by tampiog them down
together by means of shared opiolons and honors and dishonors and
reputations [doxals] ... to entrust to these io common the offices of rule
in cities ...
The potential from human savagery Is just below the surface io the
myth of the reversed cosmos, particularly in the three myths to which
the Stranger alludes io his preamble (PoL 268e-269c): the stories about
Atreus and Thyestes, earth -born men, and life in the Age of Cronos.
Vidal-Naquet comments on the brute force associated with earth-born
generations, discusses at length the ambiguous mixture of peace and
savagery (iocludiog cannibalism) associated with the Age of Cronos,
and aptly notes that "Plato did not have to mention those strange
'shepherds,' Atreus and Thyestes. nor was e obliged to recall the
miracle !hat had taken place io favor of the organizer of a cannibalistic
feast" (Vidal-Naquet [1978] 136). The Stranger says that upon the
withdrawal of their divioe caretakers such beasts as were "harsh io
their natures" became "savage" (Pol. 274b6-7}, and we can assume that
the same was true of highly spirited human beiogs. Cf. the Stranger's
comment that the manly nature who is untamed by the political are
of weaviog will "iocline toward some kiod of bestial nature" (PoL
309e2-3).
�58
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
37. Pol. 300c2; cf. 294a, 301d-e, 303b. Dueso (1992) has shown that at
Pol. 299b-d the Stranger Intends to defend Athenian democracy
against the consequences of Socratic InqUiry. The reference to adolesch!aat Pol299b7 should be compared with Soph225d10 and 7ht.
195c2. Cf. Griswold's argument that according to the Statesman
"pol!tlkii episteme and the Virtues will best flourish in the context of a
democracy ruled by law• (Griswold [1989] 162), together with the
related analysis of Crosson (1963).
Secondary Works Cited
Alrlvie, J.-J. 1971. "Les prologues du 7heetete et du Parrnen!de," Revue
de Metaphystque et de Morale 76: 6-23.
Benardete, S. 1983. 7he Being of the Beautt:fiJl: Plato's Theaetetus,
Sophist, and Statesman. Chicago, 1983.
- - . 1963. "Eidos and Diaeresis In Plato's statesman," PhUologus 107:
193C226.
Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion. Trans. John Raffan. Cambridge,
Mass .. 1985. 75-84.
Clay, D. 1972. "Socrates' Mulishness and Heroism,· Phronests 17: 53-60.
Crosson, F. 1963. "Plato's Statesman: Unity and Pluralism,· New Scholasticism 37: 28-43.
Cropsey, J. 1986. "The Dramatic End of Plato's Socrates,• Interpretation
14: 155-75.
Derrlda, J. 1981. "Plato's Pharmacy," In Dissemination, trans. Barbara
Johnson (Chicago, 1981): 63-171.
Dorter, K. 1987. "Justice and Method in the Statesman, •InJustice, Law,
and Method in Plato and Aristotle, ed. Spiro Panagiotou. Edmonton,
1987: 105-22.
Dueso, J. 1992. "Pol!tico (299b-d) y Ia condena de Socrates." Paper
delivered at the Third Symposium Platonicum, August 1992, In Bristol,
England.
Griswold, C. 1986. Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus. New Haven,
1986.
- - . 1989. "Politike Episteme In Plato's Statesman," In Essays in
Anclent Greek Philosophy ill, ed. John Anton and Anthony Preuss
(Albany, 1989).
Harrison, J. 1955. Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion, 3rd. ed.
New York, 1955. (Original ed. 1922).
Howland, J. 1991. "Re-Reading Plato: The Problem of Platonic Chronology," PhoeniX45.3: 189-214.
- - . 1993. Plato's Republic: The Odyssey ofPhUosophy. New York. 1993.
�HOWLAND
59
Klein, J. 1977. Plato's Trilogy: Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman. Chicago, 1977.
Kopff, E. 1977. "Nubes 1493 ff: Was Socrates Murdered?" Greek, Roman
and Byzantine Studies 18: 113-22.
Miller, M. 1980. ThePhUosopherinPlato'sStatesman. The Hague, 1980.
Moullnier, L. 1952. Le pur et l'tmpur dans la pensee des Grecs d'Hornere
aArtstote. Paris, 1952.
Nussbaum, M. 1980. "Aristophanes and Socrates on Learning Practical
Wisdom," ln Artstophanes: Essays in Interpretation, Yale Classical
Studies 26: 43-97.
Rosen, S. 1983. Plato's Sophist: 'TheDramaofOriginalandimage. New
Haven, 1983.
---. 1979. "Plato's Myth of the Reversed Cosmos," RevrewofMe/aphYslcs
33: 59-85.
Sayre, K. 1969. Plato's Analytic Method. Chicago, 1969.
Scodel, H. 1987. Diaerests and Myth in Plato's Statesman. Goettingen,
1987.
Strauss, L. 1983. "Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crtto," ln Strauss,
Studies in Platonic Political PhUosophy (Chicago 1983), 38-66.
Thesleff, H. 1982. Studies in Platonic Chronology. Helsinki, 1982.
Vidal-Naquet, P. 1978. "Plato's Myth of the Statesman, the Ambiguities
of the Golden Age and of History," Jownal of Hellenic Studies 98:
132-41.
�60
'IHE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
�The Myth of
the Reversed Cosmos
in Contemporary Physics
Pierre Kerszberg
In the celebrated collection of essays that he was offered on the
occasion of his seventieth birthday, Einstein discusses a certain
number of criticisms leveled against the theory of relativity and its
interpretation in a particularly sharp manner. His reply to a famous
contribution by Kuri Giidel is certainly one of the most interesting in
this series of original arguments. For in this reply, Einstein confesses
that Giidel's insight forces him to think again about the problem that
most seriously disturbed him at the time of establishing the theory of
general relativity; he admits that he then failed to resolve the problem
completely.
This problem is the following (Einstein 1949, p.687). A and B are
two sufficiently close world-events, separated by point 0 at which the
light-cone is issued. The world-line BA is time-like, that is, it is a path
along which, from the standpoint of relativity physics, it is possible to
have a chain of events causally related to one another (fig.!). Now,
Einstein asks, would it make any sense to constrain
•A
I
I
I
I
I
I
0
Figure 1
I
I
I
I
1 Jl
physical action even further than just requiring it to lie within the
light-cone? In particular, is there any justification for demanding that
the world-line be provided with an arrow, constraining B to be before
0 and A afier 0, against the inverse possibility that A be before 0 and
�62
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
B after 0? There would be no need for explicitly making such demand
if physics was still Newionian, for in this physics any arbitrary pair of
evenis has an intrinsic, absolute temporal order. But in the special
theory of relativity, the light-cone structure emerges on the basis of
facts of velocity (namely, the constant velocity of light in all inertial
frames of reference), not of time alone. Therefore, the theory by itself
cannot answer the question of temporal connectibility: Is it actually
asymmetrical in this theory? Whatever answer might be given to this
question, it would give time a status that cannot easily be related to
the already acquired concepts of relativity physics. One such concept
is space. The special theory was first constructed on the basis that
there appears to be simply no way of determining by experimental
means that space is isotropic (symmetrical) with respect to the velocity
of light (see for instance Goldberg 1984, pp.104ff). Einstein stipulated
such symmetry in order to obtain a meaningful definition of simultaneity. Could we proceed to the inverse stipulation of asymmetry in the
case of time, or should we look for empirical evidence to support it?
Special relativity is silent on this issue. Does the general theory of
relativity contribute to the answer? According to Einstein, there will
be essentially two types of answer that bear upon whether or not such
asymmetry makes physical sense at all. (i) In the operational sense of
the theory of relativity, which already formed the basis for the denial
of absolute simultaneity at a distance, the test of temporal asymmetry
depends on the possibility of sending a light signal passing through
or in the neighbourhood of 0; if it so happened that the signal could
travel from B to A but not from A to B, then, as Einstein writes, "there
exisis no free choice for the direction of the arrow." (ii) By contrast,
the asymmetry makes no physical sense if there exisis a series of
evenis that can be connected by time-like world-lines such that (a)
each event of the series can be said to comply with a temporal sequence
in the sense of (i); (b) the series is globally closed in itself. For in the
latter case, Einstein goes on to say, "the distinction earlier/later is
abandoned for world-poinis which lie far apart in a cosmological
I
/
,
I
io
Figure2
I
\
\
\
'-
�KERSZBERG
63
sense" (p.688). F1nally, Einstein comments, it would be "Interesting to
weigh whether these [cosmological solutions] are not to be excluded
on physical grounds," assuming that the sole physical basis for
ascertaining asymmetry remains the propagation of a light signal.
In his own paper for the Einstein volume, GOdel (1949) had
discovered just such a solution. (For a general discussion, see
Horwitch 1987, pp.ll1-28.) This Is a homogeneous universe obeying
the laws of general relativity, In which the local times of the observers
who move with galaxies cannot be fitted together into one universal
temporal order. In this model, it is theoretically possible to travel into
any region of the past or future and back again.
In passing from physical sense to physical nonsense in his
examination of temporal connectibility, Einstein asks us to believe
that the enigma of asymmetry arises In conjunction with the transition
from a local to a global system. From this point of view, the question
of whether time Is asymmetrical in the theory of relativity Is supposed
to be reducible to questions of the kind: What are the conditions
required to make such a transition from the local to the global? What
Is It that must be postulated for preserving physical sense throughout?
The essence of Godel's metric of space-time is that the aggregate of
local past/future distinctions associated with the observation ofllghtrays does not automatically constitute a global past/future distinction. But the failure to obtain such a distinction Is independent of
something like a crucial experiment that would be proposed to decide
In favor of or against asymmetry. Thus, It would be certainly absurd
to try to tell experimentally (for Instance by monitoring a light-signal
over very large spatia-temporal intervals) when, as the separation
between two events grows larger. event A as "after" (or "effect," in the
language of light-signals) turns into "before" (or "cause") of event B.
Given this predicament, Einstein seems to be of the opinion that the
absence of an earlier/later distinction at the global scale, which makes
no sense, occurs only as a special case to be discarded without
touching upon the foundations of the theory, a violation of the
otherwise accepted asymmetry as a general case.
On the other hand, GOdel believes that the breakdown does make
sense theoretically, precisely because only a practical impossibility is
available. His calculations showed that the velocity required in order
to make a complete circuit In time In his model must be at least 1/-./2
that of light, which he found to be virtually forever beyond technological means. From this the theoretical conclusion follows: "it cannot be
excluded a priori, on the ground of[ this] argument, that the space-time
structure of the real world is of the type described" (GOdel 1949,
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'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
p.561). Now, one would like to think that the more standard models
of the relativistic universe, in which there is a globally distinguished
direction for the arrow of time, are independent of practical restrictions
of that sort. This, however, is not quite the case. indeed, Giidel argues,
in those models where an absolute time function can be defined, the
actual existence of an objective duration depends on the determination of the mean motion of matter in each region of the universe. Yet,
only approximations to this concept can be obtained, and moreover
the particular configuration of the universe at any time remains
contingent (p.562). Thus, asymmetry as a general case could be
dropped altogether.
There is a substantial historical and conceptual background behind both Einstein's and Giidel's arguments. In trying to excavate it,
the broader significance of the time-reversible nature of the Jaws of
modern mathematical physics will emerge. I shall take Einstein at his
word and look at the premises of general relativity of a most general
character. They reflect just how much the theory was built on a
problem that was not completely solved.
1. Time andfreedom
To begin with Einstein's position: Do we have sufficient reason to
accept as the source of evidence for the general (local) case the
propagation of a fastest possible signal? As it turns out, it is not at all
certain that temporal priority could ever be derivable from tests of
causal connectlbility such as the sending of a signal. How is the
sending of a signal between two events to verilY the Jaw of causality,
which, as general law, tells us that certain classes of events can be
connected by using a certain general rule? The very knowledge that
such an event is causally related to such other event already requires
some knowledge of the spatiotemporal features of the events, if only
to pick them out (Griinbaum 1973, pp.190-1; Sklar 1985, p.253].
Einstein seems to imagine some kind of "pre-temporal" situation in
which observers know supposedly nothing at the outset as to which
of the two events precedes the other. But this situation does not
support the argument in favor of asymmetry, because it ignores that
observers are then allowed too much freedom Their very choice of a
pair of events conditions the subsequent belief that the directedness
of the arrow of time could not but be fixed in a certain way. Arguably,
the consideration of when a past event is converted into a future event
was ruled out precisely because of this pre-determination. The relationship of observers to an already constituted world that is there
before them cannot be ignored, since it is precisely this "before" that
�KERSZBERG
65
Informs them on the minimum of spatiotemporal properties needed In
order to relate events of this world to one another.
To be sure, Einstein is not unaware that such an argument from
the pre-temporal to the temporal will not quite exhaust the question
of the direction of time's arrow in the theory of general relativity.
Indeed, there is something more in this part of Einstein's reply. He
explains that what is essential to the phenomenon of the one-sidedness
of time can be brought out by way of an analogy: "the sending of a
signal is, in the sense of thermodynamics, an irreversible process, a
process which is connected with the growth of entropy (whereas,
according to our present knowledge. all elementary processes are
reversible)." The reference to thermodynamics reveals what Einstein
actually has in mind when trying to secure the asymmetry of time In
every part of the universe. For thermodynamics offers another basis
to solve the problem of how to link the local to the global. The global
direction of time can be established entropically inasmuch as it is
subjected to statistical data; the elementary (local) processes remain
reversible because they remain well below the threshold at which
statistical data become significant. Now, what is it that Einstein
actually wants when he requests that such a threshold be abolished
in some future theory. so that entropy could be directly inspected even
in the case of a pair of events? Is it in this way that his imagined
pre-temporal situation will become the sought-for proof In favor of
asymmetry as a general case? As long as causality was not identified
with the growth of entropy, It could readily be confused with temporal
priority itself; but now, the argumentls Intended to derive the temporal
properties of events from a wholly "a-temporal" situation. To be sure,
the knowledge required to establish the entropic features of a pair of
events would be again the same as the knowledge needed for Classes
of events. But this would now be harmless, since what we want to
prove, i.e., some statement about the direction of time, Is not preempted by premises which concern entropic states. However, If the
sending of a signal is subjected to such Irreversibility, It would seem
that the new situation Is completely deprived of any means of making
the point. For by contrast with the previous situation, the observer
loses a minimum of control. Not enough.freedom Is allowed, because
the sending of a signal from A to B is not even a possibility to be
discarded by experiment. It could be ruled out of existence only by
virtue of the law of causality Itself, which is now a law about entroplc
states, not about the direction of the arrow of time. In conceding to
the world that it is already there before them, the observers can only
establish certain ways of verifYing properties which are not purely
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
temporal; these temporal properties are manifestations of some other,
necessarily "deeper" feature of the world.
This fundamental inadequacy of our understanding of time for the
postulation of its directedness prevents Einstein from formulating a
demonstration of impossibility. A demonstration of impossibility was
the core of the theory of special relativity, in which faster-than-light
particles were ruled out of existence by virtue of the principle of
relativity. In the case of the direction of the arrow of time, a demonstration of impossibility'Is needed in order for the freedom of action of
observers to be fixed within the practical limits of their possible
actions. Einstein's opinion that the puzzle is not solved may be
expressed by opposing two types of observers' relation to the world: (i)
actively intervening in the course of events that are qualified as purely
temporal; (li) being dragged passively by the course of events that are
not purely temporal. When Einstein argues that the earlier/later
distinction is lost in the cosmological solutions in which the series of
events is globally closed, his reference to thermodynamics testifies to
his referring to sense (ii). That is why it is questionable whether, on
Einstein's own terms, the postulated asynnnetry should ever be lost.
In Giidel's solution, a traveler who follows Ws time-like world-line
never meets a point at which the direction assigned to time is reversed.
Rather, Ws world-line is always oriented toward a locally definable
future; in this solution, the problem of temporal priority is thus
supposed to be already solved at the local scale. It is only in a
non-orientable space-time, which Giidel's is not, that it should be
possible to change a forward light-cone at a point into a backward
light-cone without modifying the timelikeness of the vector. The case
discussed by Einstein is one in wWch the fact that the future may be
present in the past, or even act upon it, does not modify the distinction
earlier/later, because the possible overlap past/future.is not sufficiently constraining to determine any change in the past. For a change
to occur, some active intervention on the part of the observer is
required. But the threshold at which such action has any detectable
effect cannot be fixed unless we know what freedom the observers
have.
Giidel's aim is precisely to show that a well-defined type of action
is necessary for the paradox to occur. He writes that if someone were
to travel into the past of those very places where he has himself lived,
"he would find a person who would be himself at some earlier period
of his life. Now he could do something to this person which, by his
memory, he knows has not happened to him" (p.56l). Thus, the action
required in order for the paradox to arise is a contingency that implies
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67
an actually living person capable of memory, not just a physical
apparatus capable of recording a certain number of data according to
a pre-determined sequence. More recently, Hawking and Ellis have
developed GOdel's argument in a more radical way. They justify the
anathema of closed time-like curves by claiming that "the existence of
such curves would seem to lead to the possibility oflogical paradoxes:
for, one could imagine that with a suitable rocketship one could travel
round such a curve and, arriving back before one's departure, one
could prevent oneself from setting out in the first place. Of course there
is a contradiction only if one assumes a simple notion of free will; but
this is not something which can be dropped lightly since the whole of
our philosophy of science is based on the assumption that one is free
to perform any experiment" (1973, p.l89). They seem to think of the
ruling out of closed time-like curves as definitive; that Is, in our
context, their argument works as the demonstration of Impossibility
that was vainly sought for by Einstein. Now, the freedom to perform
any experiment anywhere at anytime cannot possibly reflect the doing
of an ordinary living observer, and yet Hawking and Ellis assume what
they call a "simple" notion of free will. The observer's freedom of action,
together with its contingencies, is now radicalized to the point of
allowing him to wipe out the very possibility of memory. There is no
doubt that more than an ordinary notion of free will is necessary before
the desire to perform an action against his own capacities to memorize
can be imputed to an observer. From the point of view of the formally
universal requirements of physical laws, the freedom to perform any
experiment is restricted to the repeatahill.ty of similar experiments.
But as repetition of the same, experimentation takes place in a world
which can, as a matter of fact, be dead. In trying to harmonize such
formally universal requirements and the materially particular requirements of free action, what Hawking and Ellis's argument actually
emphasizes (even if they don't use a consistent notion of living
freedom) is that a world without at least a trace of living memory
cannot meaningfully be "there" in the first place.
2. Time and action
Historically speaking, modem physics emerged in the seventeenth
century from what was then thought to be a successful demonstration
of impossibility against reversed action. The physical problem bequeathed by the Copernican argument in favor of the earth's rotation
was that the earth should be conceived as a natural clock, wWle in
Greek cosmology tWs function was fulfilled by the uniform revolution
of the stars. (Aristotle made the point that since a circumference has
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
no definite beginning, middle, or end, the movement of rotation of the
stars "Is stationary and motionless in one sense, and moves continuously In another"-Physics 265b, p.401.) Now, If the time-reversible
character of the latter revolution can be accepted without difficulty, a
problem arises in the case of the earth's rotation precisely because of
the earth's "corruptibility" and contingency. In particular, the phenomena having a direct incidence on ordinary life are not reversible.
Thus Galileo could do little more than mock the suggestion, which
according to his records \vas made in his own days, that "after a short
time the mountains, sinking downward with the rotation of the
terrestrial globe, would get into such a position that whereas a little
earlier one would have had to climb steeply to their peaks, a few hours
later one would have to stoop and descend in order to get there" (1967,
p.330). Could the continuouslyforwardflowoftime built in the earth's
clock be responsible for such reversed action? Galileo thwarts this fear
by using the concept of homogeneous/isotropic space and the concomitant equivalence of up and down. Once this new concept of space
is accepted, it does not matter whether the earth as clock moves
backwards or forwards.
This example illustrates how, when conjoined with Euclidean
space, the time-reversible character of the earth-bound laws of modem physics saves this physics from collapsing in the face of evidence
borrowed from ordtnary life. Why, then, should this same character
become a problem in the context of global relativity physics? Special
relativity had already destroyed the objectivity of simultaneity at a
distance, that is, the notion of a same instant at two different points.
Why would it not also criticize the notion of a unique direction of time.
that Is, the objective sequence of different tnstants at a point? As it
turns out, the special theory does not really have the means to do so.
By objectivity is meantspatio-temporal coincidences; the theory allows
for a direct, non-obstructed access to these coincidences only (Sklar
1985, pp.268-88). But both general relatMty and classical thermodynamics
are based on a union of space and time which is supposed to absorb
the directional properties of time.
Classical thermodynamics lent itself to the first, and probably also
the most accomplished, attempt to reconcile the universal (absolute)
form of the laws of nature and the particular (contingent) content of
the material universe. Consider the conflict that results when the form
of the Newtonian laws of motion (which claim no preferred direction
of time for individual particles) is confronted with the actual existence
of large aggregates of particles as described by the laws of thermodynamics.
Potncare (1893) formulated the following theorem: Any mechanical
�KERSZBERG
69
system of motions possessing finite energy confined to a finite volume
will return infinitely often to a state infinitesimally close to any past
state. Such a violation of the monotonic behavior of the universe as
predicted by the second Jaw of thermodynamics would be extremely
improbable, because the recurrence time for a system turns out to be
fantastically large. However, if the system referred to in Poincare's
theorem can be identified with the whole universe, time travel in
relativity physics would appear to be a special case of a more general
situation, in which not just observers but the universe itself returns
to its own past. In an attempt to interpret this result, which pre-dated
relativity physics, Boltzmann wrote these famous lines with a view to
rejecting the assumption that the universe is at present in a very
improbable state:
One can think of the world as a mechanical system of an enormously large number of constituents, and of an immensely long
period of time, so that the dimensions of that part containing our
own "fixed stars• are minute compared to the extension of the
universe; and times that we call eons are likewise mioute compared
to such a period. Then in the universe, which is in thermal
equilibrium throughout and therefore dead, there will occur here
and there relatively small regions of the same size as our galaxy (we
call them single worlds) which, during the relatively short time of
eons, fluctuate noticeably from thermal equilibrium, and indeed the
state probability in such cases will be equally likely to increase or
decrease. For the universe, the two directions of time are indistinguishable, just as in space there is no up and down. However, just
as at a pariicular place on the earth's surface we call "down• the
direction toward the center of the earth, so will a living beiog in a
particular time interval of such a single world distinguish the
direction of time toward the less probable state from the opposite
direction (the former toward the past, the latter toward the future).
(1964, pp.446-47)
The perfect overlap between the form of the laws (that +t is
indistinguishable from -t, just as up and down are equivalent) and
their content is achieved as a result of the universe being globally dead,
that is, in steady state thermal equilibrium. By virtue of its enormous
dimensions in both space and time compared with any local system,
the universe is globally deprived of memory.
Through its application to such a global system as the entire
universe, relativity physics has moved in the direction of the other
interpretation, lending support to the view that the whole universe is
a very improbable state. in special relativity the universe does not
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
seem to lose a memory of Its past. The young universe can always be
present to any reference frame, since time will run more slowly on
faster-moving bodies and tn more tntense gravitational fields. In
relativistic cosmology, the theory of a dynamic (expanding) universe
has been developed tn such a way that all physical action, Irrespective
of the particular reference frame, will recombine In a past which,
however remote, can always be assigned. A metric for the universe
(the so-called Robertson-Walker metric) which will not constantly
change by virtue of the expansion (or any other large-scale dynamic
behavior of the universe) Is found in such a way that Its most general
form Is compatible with the equations of motion (Friedmann's equations) and the natural hypotheses of homogeneity and Isotropy:
where R Is the radius of curvature of the universe, and K defines the
geometry. Clearly enough, the global geometric structure can be fixed
only if all events are already synchronized in some way. That Is, the
geometry fixes the increase or decrease of the coordinate distance
between two events if and only If these are located on a surface of
contemporary events. A principle of causality governs the behavior of
all world-lines In accordance with this requirement: this is the Weyl
principle, which stipulates that at any potnt of space-time all worldlines form a bundle of divergtng geodesics from a common potnt In the
past. All light-cones of all observers thus tend to refocus In some sort
of super light-cone Issued from an event at the remotest past; as a
potnt of absolute coincidence, this event fixes the natural synchrony
of all clocks In the universe.
·
Wbat Is the status of such a world surface of contemporary events
that can tnflate or deflate in accordance with some specifiable physical
parameters (such as matter density)? In special relativity, the relation
of simultaneity Is not transitive: If Pi is simultaneous with P2 relative
to an Inertial system A, and P2 simultaneous with Ps relative to an
Inertial system B, Pi cannot be simultaneous with Ps relative to any
of these tnertial systems. If, in the notion of "deterrntned reality," we
want to include the temporal relation, then it seems inevitable that we
should also relativize this notion of determined reality in some way
(see the discussion In Sklar 1985, pp.289-304). But the prtnciple of
causality tn relativistic cosmology bears the stamp of an interesting
retreat before the far-reaching Implications of this relativity. In order
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71
to preserve the possibility of an absolute (unchangeable) metric for
dynamic solutions, a kind of transitivity at the global scale is retrieved,
and thus a rather classical sense of determined reality reappears at
that scale. However, in order for this transitivity to remain physically
mearringful in the relativistic context, the follOWing fundamental
hypothesis ofspecial relativity must also be preserved: the spatlo-temporal
intervals relative to an inertial system are only functions of the
intervals of the same events relative to another inertial system and the
relative motion of these twO systems. This is nothing other than the
hypothesis of space-time homogeneity. Before this hypothesis could
be adopted as the basis of our best kinematics of space-time (special
relativity), physicists faced the following alternative: (I) reject the
pre-relativistic concept ofsimultanelty for non-coincident events; (II)
adopt some version of the "compensatory" theories designed by Lorentz, in which the impossibility to observe the effects of some
postulated reality such as the ether was ascribed to "secondary''
effects, independent of the reference frame. Global transitivity seems
to compel us to fall back on a compensatory theory of a unique kind:
the observed motion of the galaxies is only an appearance which
masks a deeper, yet unobservable reality, namely, an "ether" in motion
(represented by the function R(t) in the Robertson-Walker metric) with
respect to which galaxies are "at rest."
On balance, then, the relationship between classical and relativity
physics can be reconstructed something like this. The Einstein-Glide!
debate forced us to ask: What Is the temporal structure of the world
which corresponds to our picking out an event (or pair of events) from
among any series of events, and to what extent is this structure
dependent on whether or not the world in which we actually live is
already constituted?Three cases present themselves. (i) Newton: if one
event Is picked out, a space can be assigned to It, all the points of
which are contemporary with the event; (II) Special relativity: this is
possible only if the inertial reference frame is speCified; there exists a
set of events simultaneous with the one picked out relative to this
frame only; (iii) General Relativity: it could be wholly impossible to
foliate space-time into successive surfaces of contemporary events
even relative to one observer; this would be the case if the space-time
did contain closed time-like curves. The return to transitivity in
standard relativistic models of the universe is a response to this threat.
A Cauchy surface on a space-time allows for the definition of a global
time function f which assigns to each event a pair of real numbers (x,y)
such that f(y) Is larger than f(x) each time a signal can propagate from
x toy. In order for a space-time to have such a surface, It is sufficient
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that any time-like continuous world-line crosses it only once. If the
initial condition of the world can be specified on that surfuce, its whole
past and Its whole future can be specified too, if at least the laws of
nature are deterministic on the large scale.
3. Two times, two worlds
From the foregoing comparison between special relativity and
standard relativistic cosmology, it appears that the latter Is formally
a compensatory theory; this pre-relativistic feature is the price to pay
for ruling out closed time-like curves. Nowadays, however, physicists
agree that this standard form of cosmological model may be itself
inadequate to represent the very early stages of the universe's existence. Recent work in theoretical physics has focused on the initial
condition being the beginning of the world itself, not just an arbitrarily
selected surface of contemporary events (see Penrose 1989). The
direction for the time's arrow could be fixed if the universe were
conceived as having started In a state of thermal equllibrium which
still corresponded to a very low total entropy. The argument is that
the then small size of the universe placed a very low ceiling on the
maximum entropy it could have; at the big bang the universe was not
in a state of maximum entropy though it was in thermal equilibrium.
AB the universe expands very rapidly in the early stages of its evolution, the expansion rate exceeds the rate at which the system is able
to evolve back to a state of equilibrium, in obedience to the second law
of thermodynamics. AB the rate of expansion slows, however, the rate
at which the universe approaches thermal equilibrium once more
exceeds the expansion rate. In the terms used In reference to
Boltzmann: the size of the universe at the beginning is so small that
It may start In thermal equilibrium (a dead state). and yet, since Its
later evolution (expansion) Is completely determined by the initial
state, It Is capable of retaining the memory of Its past. The loss of
memory begins only well after expansion has set in, as evidenced by
the occurrence of horizon effects (the speed of expansion may ultimately exceed the speed of light). However, again by virtue of the
Poincare theorem, the universe must finally go back to Its initial state,
at least If It is a closed system such that the expansion may not
continue indefinitely. The peculiar mystery of the Initial state, which
Is a death state combined with further evolution, Is particularly
Intolerable when one investigates what happens when the universe
begins to contract. Supposing that the universe has then reached its
maximum entropy, this entropy will get progressively smaller as the
universe contracts. It must be admitted that, If the directional prop-
�KERSZBERG
73
erties of time are grounded in entropic states, the direction of time will
be reversed in the contraction era. But the events surrounding the
turnaround are fraught with a paradox, in relation to both physical
events and living beings.
Penrose has described the absurdities of this situation for physical
events: "What does the light do when it starts going the wrong way?
...Willlight rays diverge from a source prior to the turnaround, and
then miraculously reconverge on some point after the turnaround?"
(1986, p.41). Penrose uses the expressions "prior" and "after," as if the
premise concerning one cosmic time (against which the sequence of
events is organized) were absolutely untouchable. However, if the
universe had reached thermic death at the end of the expansion era,
the conflict between the two worlds would be even deeper, because we
would have to account for two sequences of events which are not
necessarily symmetrical to one another. Penrose overlooks this completely when he goes on to consider the paradoxical phenomena in
connection with living creatures. He uncritically supposes that some
creatures would live one part of their life in the expansion era, and
another part after the turnaround. With these two distinct, yet symmetrical populations, we have the following paradox. The "contraction
people," as he calls them, "will remember things that happened in
what, from our perspective, Is their future. If they were to be told things
that had happened in what we would regard as their past, ...what
would then prevent them from choosing to do something different?"
(pp.41-42). For instance, imagine information put by us in a container
that would last through to the contraction period; the contraction
people could then use it to do something about their future. On this
account, we could even go one step further and conceive that, in the
normal expanding universe, in deciding to do something freely, we, as
it were, only remember the future. But the premise of the whole
argument was that entropy determines the arrow of time, that is, this
direction is caused by some physical action relative to very large
aggregates of particles. How come we should now find it puzzling that
the freedom of choice for a characteristically small number of living
creatures will interfere with an otherwise deterministic universe?
The beings living in two worlds with inverse time direction are
somewhat analogous to Maxwell's demon, who could supposedly use
intelligence to influence the statistical distribution of velocities in two
different parts of a sealed box containing gas in equilibrium. Through
operation of a trap door placed in the hands of a diabolical creature,
the temperature of the two halves would become unequal with no
expenditure of energy. In 1929, Szilard was able to prove that no
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
violation of the second law of thermodynamics is involved here,
because the work to be performed in order to discriminate between
the fast and the slow particles always outweighs the work that can be
performed by exploiting the temperature difference created by the
demonic activity. That is, intelligence is not synonymous with absolute
freedom to do anything; it is itself a significant part of the natural
stream of phenomena. Why could we not argue, then, that in the case
of Penrose's contraction people, the cost of implementing the strategy
of informing these people of their future will exceed the possibilities
of doing anything about it?
The above-mentioned absurdities have prompted Penrose to reject
standard cosmological theol}' altogether. But he Is not willing to alter
anything in the premise that time should keep the same direction up
till the "end." He believes that the premise Is warranted by means of
his hypothesis of "gravitational entropy." In the initial singularity,
such gravitational entropy was zero, that is, the gravitational part of
the entropy (space-time structure) was not thermalized at all (1989,
pp.328-45). But gravitational entropy would start to build up continuously as the universe expands, until a final singularity which would
be highly inhomogeneous and anisotropic. In other words, Penrose
claims to have accounted for the unique direction of time throughout
the evolution of the universe, independently of any possible contraction era. Just like Einstein, he hopes that a forthcoming theol}' will
do the job of consolidating what is at present a speculation only; this
theol}' is quantum gravity. This similarity In Einstein and Penrose's
positions cannot be mere chance. They are both using a hypothesis
to be consolidated by a future theol}'. instead of posing it as an
independent justification to be Investigated on its own merits. The
strategy seems to be the price that physical science has to pay for
including living consciousness within the stream of nature. We are
therefore justified in trying to oppose a purely metaphysically
grounded argument about the very meaning of such inclusion.
In fact, GOdel already did something like this when he justified the
philosophical background of his model with a closed time-like curve.
The model turns out to be a representation of a philosophical position
about time. He claims that special relativity in Its original meaning,
undistorted by cosmological constraints, tallies with Kant's remark
that the vel}' perception of change presupposes the particular constitution of human sensibility, namely, time as pure form of intuition;
time constitutes the necessary "screen" through which phenomena
are given to us. Any form of cognition which is not constrained by this
"screen" would also be deprived of the perception of change as a global
�KERSZBERG
75
property of the world. GOdel argues that beings co-extensive with the
Minkowskl space-time of special relativity, in which time is absorbed
In the space-time continuum, are living this non-specifically human
life referred to by Kant as an Jrrepresentable sensibility (Giidel 1949,
p.557n). But on the other hand, Giidel goes on to point out, "the
concept of existence ... cannot be relativized without destroying its
meaning completely" (p.558n). Is this not what Kant seems to be doing
when he speaks of putative beings with other forms of cognition?
Giidel's model forces us to ask the following question: Are the intuitive
world (In which a "simple" notion of free will is assumed) and the
relativistic world two different worlds, or do they both derive from a
unique world? In the former case, the kind of intuition prevailing in
the relativistic world would be simply irrepresentable, and the
paradoxes of time travel would simply reflect the irreducibility of the
constructed world of relativistic cosmology to human sensibility. In
the latter case, the paradoxes discussed by both Giidel and Penrose
occur because the intuitive world In which we actually live could never
be done away with: It is this world which, however obscure it may still
be, continues to fix the very meaning of existence in the first place.
4. nvo times, but only one world
Penrose has Investigated a case of "objective" reduplication of the
world, without taking Into account some of the natural limitations of
life and their subjective foundation in existence. Following Giidel. we
shall take the word '1dealism" to mean a manner of representing the
world that includes the non-relativizability of existence; and we shall
ask whether there is ultimately an idealistic sense in which we could
think of the reduplication of the world. Our clue is thatit is not possible
to derive the subjective perception of such objective states as entropy
(I.e., entropy states as the "cause" of our sensing the moving on of
time) by bestowing an immediately cosmic significance upon human
subjectivity and free will. The inclusion of the potentialities of free
human subjectivity in the natural world, whether of immediate intuition or of constructed theory, does not allow us to separate these
potentialities from that which Is universally given, as If they could be
temporarily suspended and then re-activated-for example, during
the examination of the fictional case of time travel. If, however, the
fictional observer cannot be dispensed with In the elaboration of
"normal" physical theory, then both worlds (intuited and constructed)
must be stretched In tandem beyond their respective ltmits. This
requires an exercise of reasoning that takes us outside both "natural"
and "relativistic" life. In our present context, this implies that a
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1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
contracting universe is still worth Investigating, even if we accept the
conclusion of physics that such life involves thermodynamic contradictions.
Interestingly enough, Plato presents In the Statesman such an
exercise of rational thought, when he deals with various ancient
legends in which the question Is "how the sun and the stars rose In
the west and set In the east" (269a). The point Is to reflect on the
general principle common to these various ways of thinking about the
reversed cosmos.
According to these legends, the present configuration of the heavens is the result of such a reversal following a divine action. The world
Is something mechanical Inasmuch as it participates in bodily nature;
Plato seems to view it as a sort of spinning top. Circular motion has
been Imparted by the divine being to the body of the universe, because
this motion Is what differs least from the motion of a body poised on
a single point; the latter is the only motion that contains in itself the
very principle of motion. The actually existing universe is, as far as
embodiment permits, the closest possible resemblance to the principle
of motion. But such closeness Is not a continuous gradation from the
less to the more. Rather, the world is the product of a logic ofless and
more. This is made evident by the retrograde motions of the planets,
which are Irregular in appearance only, not in reality (Laws 821 b822c). The world Is thus a stage of reciprocal action of opposites, not
a continuous gradation to the model of perfection, which explains that
divine action Itself is subjected to constraints. First, as a principle of
motion, the divine being would contradict itself If, of its own accord,
It were to change the direction of the motion of the universe; secondly,
since motion In its own being is one, there cannot be two principles
of motion affecting each other, as if two Gods were to oppose one
another. The only remaining hypothesis Is that the mechanical world
Is something like a spring tightened by the divine being, but "there is
a time, on the completion of a certain cycle" (269c), when, left to its
own devices, it begins to revolve in the opposite direction under the
action of its own impulsion. As long as It is guided by the divine power,
the world "receives life" from it (270a), but as a living creature It
exhausts Itself, and, once the maximal concentration of forces has
been reached, It declines toward a state of no motion. Plato assumes
that the direction of revolution defines the direction of time, but he
obtains a much higher degree of asymmetry between the two worlds
than In any of the contemporary speculations. For what is not
indifferent to the direction of time is the age of those who live in this
world (270d): all beings have this In common that, whether they grow
�KERSZBERG
77
older or younger, they are bound to die (270e), but of course in the
case of those who grow younger, it means stmply disappeartng from
the face of the earth after reachtng the stage of a newly born child. The
question is now (27lc): Given that the reversal must take place after
some time in both worlds (+t and -t), to which ofthe two worlds do we
belong now? The clue is provided by the fact that the people of the
reversed cosmos have no memory at all, even though they were born
old (272a); they let themselves live, as it were, because the earth gives
them spontaneously an abundance of fruits, without farming. This is
a time-reversed world in which, however, there appear none of the
paradoxes generally associated with it Oike the many fragments of
broken glass that spontaneously rush together to form an ordinary
glass). Such a paradox-free world is achieved by taking into consideration the absence of memory among the people in the reversed world;
in fact, by virtue of what we have called above the irrepresentable
sensibility of people having no (or another) perception of change, It Is
enough to postulate the absence of communication between the two
worlds. As it turns out, we are told tn due course that this stage of
spontaneous generation is the stage "in which God superintended the
whole revolution of the universe" (27lc). Plato goes on to speculate
that a sudden shock, like a mighty earthquake (273a). preceded the
return to the world in which we live now. But as the world becomes
master of itself, and God lets it go, It is also tncumbent on its parts to
grow and generate of themselves (again, as far as they can). Ultimately,
we have the followtng asymmetry between the two worlds. In the
reversed world, inert matter generates, so that people can be viewed
as earth-born creatures (27lb). But in our world, the principle oflife
cannot be other than life itself. What differentiates the two worlds is
that, in the case of the reversed revolution, the mere flow of time affects
inert matter, and this is sufficient to explaln the course of events; whereas
tn our world (273c) the action oftime is only responsible for the tnexorable
growtng offorgetfulness, so thatftnallywe can only attend to the universal
rutn of the world as a whole and tn all of its parts.
Even though Plato's argument is completely independent of physIcal theory, it remains quite relevant to our context because it develops
the tmplications of what is probably the highest thtnkable degree of
tnteraction between mind and body, free action and embodiment
(270e). It does so without relytng on a future physical theory which
would mitigate the natural deficiency of our present knowledge: Plato
argues that the mythical character of the argument makes up for the
absence of a "satisfactory reporter of the desires and thoughts of those
times" (272d). When the changed direction of time is understood to
�78
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
affect both the nature and the very possibility of representation, it
makes no sense any more to speculate on the possible encounter of
an observer with himself at different times of life. In particular,
imputing to the "contraction people" the desire to do something about
their own future, when they take cognizance of it by some means,
assumes the existence of a universal and unchangeable means of
communication extending to both worlds. Plato warns us that when,
after the turnaround, all things changed, they could only imitate the
condition of the whole t.\niverse, which In this Instance is consistent
with an lrrepresentable mode of conception and generation (274a).
The pure passage of time can thus only explain a reversed world, In
which nothing motivates the need for superintendence of things by
people (what we call "science"): not only do they have no memory, but
they have certainly no reason to change their destiny since their food
Is growing spontaneously.
From this point of view, Godel's argument about the practical limits
preventing an observer from visiting his own past earns a valid
speculative foundation. But what does mythical speculation have to
do with contemporary cosmology? The myth is a particular type of
historical discourse, while we would like to think of our cosmological
theory as a perfectly rational way of making up for the deficiency of
sensible representation. In historical discourse, the actions of the
actors are reconstituted from the consequences that these actions
gave rise to; freedom is ascribed to the actors only In reference to a
forward-looking project that reached, or failed to reach, our own
present. Inasmuch as this project "speaks" to us In some way, that is,
insofar as it makes sense at all, we must be able to transpose ourselves
Into the past situation; historical understanding requires a minimum
of such fictive participation in order to be meaningful. Thus, it is
certainly not the exclusive privilege of "another" world, for Instance a
world In which the direction of time Is reversed, to require fictive
participation In order to lend Itself to a minimum of Intelligibility; this
requirement Is proper to all understanding dealing with time. My own
past existence becomes other, enriched by a future which was then
nothing. To be sure, the universe which is described and explained In
cosmological theory Is wholly constructed, so that it does not really
have an intuitive plausibility In terms of situations that could be lived.
Why, then, should we refuse that, In the case of time travel as with all
other Imaginable situations, judgment can result only from the consequences of certain actual actions? Time travel may still be compatible with our best theories of relativistic cosmology, but instead of
throwing light on the ultimate origin of physical action, It reveals once
�KERSZBERG
79
more how and why this origin remains occulted by the massive
evidence of our own lives.
* * * *"'
References
Aristotle. The Physics. Vol. 2. Trans. P. Wicksteed and F. Comford.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.
Boltzmann, L. {1964). Lectufes on Gas Theory {1896-98). Trans. S. Brush.
Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Einstein, A. {1949). "Remarks to the Essays Appearing In this Collective
Volume." In P. SchUpp, ed., Albert Einstein: Phdosopher-Bcientist.
LaSalle, IL: Open Court, pp. 663-88.
Gallleo, G. {1967). Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
{1632). Trans. S. Drake. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
GMel, K. {1949). "A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity
Theory and Ideallstic Philosophy. • In P. Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein:
Phaosopher-sctentist. LaSalle, IL.: Open Court, pp. 567-662)
Goldberg, S. (1984). Understanding Relativity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Grunbaum, A {1973). PhaosophicalProbtems of Space and Time. 2nd ed.
Dordrecht: Reidel.
Hawking, S., and G. F. R Ellis {1973). The Large-scale structure of
Space-Ttme. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horwitch, P. {1987). Asymmetries in Ttme. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
Penrose, R {1986). "Big Bangs, Black Holes and 'Time's Arrow.'" In The.
Nature ofTtme, ed. R Flood and M. Lockwood. Oxford: Blackwell.
Penrose, R {1989). The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers,
Minds, and the Laws of Physics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Plato. The statesman. Trans. B. Jowett. Vol. 3. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1885.
Sklar, L. (1985). Phdosophy and Space-Ttme Physics. Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press.
Szilard, L. (1929). "On the Reduction of Entropy of a Thermodynamic
System Caused by Intelligent Beings.· Zeitschrift.fiir Physik 53, p.840.
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVlEW
�Nietzsche, Solitude,
and Truthfulness
I
Gregory Schalliol
In 1886, after completing Beyond Good and Evil early in the year,
Nietzsche composed prefaces for new editions of five earlier works. In
the first-for Hwnan, AU Too Hwnan-he reviews his life and proposes
the following self-diagnosis:
And in fact I myself do not believe that anyone has ever before looked
into the world with an equally profound degree of suspicion [tiefen
Verdachte] ... and anyone who could divine something of the consequences that lie in that profound suspiciousness (tlefen Verdachte],
something of the fears and frosts of the isolation to which that
unconditional dispartty ofviEw condemns him who is infected with
It, will also understand how often, in an effort to recover from
myself, as it were to induce a temporary self-forgetting, I have
sought shelter in this or that-in some piece of admiration oremnlly
or scientiftcallty or frivolity or stupidity; and why, where I could not
find what I needed, I had artificially to enforce, falsify and invent a
suitable fiction for myself...What I again and again needed mostfor
my cure and self-restoration, however, was the belief that I was not
thus isolated, not alone in seeing as I dld ... 1
The "suitable fictions" he so needed as antidotes to his "profound
suspiciousness," he confesses, were first his admiration of
Schopenhauer and Wagner, and then the very "free spirits" for whom
that book was originally written in 1878-free spirits invented "as
compensation for the friends I lacked.''2 Nietzsche thus admits his
early inability to endure the solitude born of exiraordinary suspiciousness, and when total isolation threatened, the need to invent companions. He justifies this self-deception as "cunning in self-preservation,"
which allowed him to survive "the luxury of my truthfulness
(Wahrhaftigkeitl.'' 3 And after reminding us that life lives on deception,
as his case presumably has proven, he Immediately assures us that
he now sees actual free spirits coming Into being and proposes to
accelerate their genesis by describing their paths. The psychological
evolution described in what follows4 is clearly autobiographical. The
�82
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
core of this evolution is the "great liberation" which occurs after the
soul has encountered "a sudden terror and mistrust (Argwohn] ofwhat
Is loved" In one's youthful obedience. The soul matures when It
comprehends the aim of that liberation as the necessary prerequisite
for self-mastety. Nietzsche sees himselfbecoming one of the free spirits
he had to Invent eight years earlier, and his writing serves to encourage
the growth of such spirits. What he described in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra with the image of the ''Three Metamorphoses"5 is retold
here as direct autobiography.
But this celebration of Imminent psychic health raises many questions. On the surface, It suggests that Nietzsche has overcome his
solitude by his catching sight of and encouraging future "free spirits"
like himself. Schopenhauer and Wagner will soon be replaced by more
worthy companions. But since Nietzsche clearly describes himself as
one of these nascent free spirits, this proclamation also suggests the
conquest of his solitude by becoming a free spirit himselfwho no longer
needs companions. In the former case, Nietzsche's health depends on
his effective Interaction with the human community. He is the political
activist who sets out to transform the real world In order to secure a
healthy community for himself and others. But In the latter case,
Nietzsche's health depends on effective interaction with himself alone.
He Is the solitsry wise man who transforms himself In order to find
nourishment In seclusion. Which of these Is Nietzsche? Moreover,
what sense can be made of a "truthfulness" which sanctions
self-deception In psychic therapy? These are the questions I propose
to examine In what follows, for they will force us to consider the
philosopher's relationship to the human community and to truthfulness.
I begin with Nietzsche's self-professed "truthfulness." This was
presumably the result of his "profound suspiciousness" which, like
the ideal of scientific lnqulty he inherited, demanded that all convictions "descend to the modestyofhypotheses."6 Suspiciousness of such
severity not only threatens evety conviction, including those concernIng friendships; It also Inevitably questions Its own value. As he had
suggested In The Birth of Tragedy, the ultimate outcome of Socratic
questioning Is that logic finally "bites Its own tail."7 The questioner Is
forced by his own profound suspicion to include himself In the
questioning. But when suspicion questions the legitimacy of suspicion, It generates Its opposite, for the question Itself presupposes that
questioning is not under suspicion. Moreover, given the apparent
utility of Ignorance In so many situations, the unqualified goodness of
searching for truth-the consequence of suspicion-Is not self-evident.
�SCHALLIOL
83
Science thus exposes Itself as mere faith-indeed, as that ancient
Platonic and Christian faith that "truth Is divine."8
Suspiciousness of such depth thus seems to subvert itself. It
exposes Itself as a servant of the unsuspicious-the Irrationalthereby refuting the apparent Platonic-Socratic suggestion that reason rightly rules the soul. This ultimately Irrational quest for rationalIty-what Nietzsche came to call "the will to truth"9-was a puzzling
phenomenon. On the one hand, Its self-subversiveness suggested Its
unreliability as permanent psychic nourishment; 10 on the other, Its
endurance In Nietzsche and the European civilization he inherited
suggested a certain utility.ll In the second preface he wrote in 1886
-this one for a new edition of The Birth ofTI-agedy-Nietzsche called
this "frightful and dangerous" matter "the problem of science itself,"
which he had already formulated In that work sixteen years earlier. 12
He recognized even then, he says, that "the problem of science cannot
be recognized in the context of science."13 Only by looking at science
from another perspective-first art, then Ufe-can one hope to judge
Its worth, for science subverts itself when It engages In honest
self-evaluation.
Indeed, Nietzsche had already ventured a judgment of science from
the perspective of "life" in that early work. Socratic rationalism, he
suggested, may well have distracted the human willfor centuries from
losing its "lustfor life ."1 4 Thls salubrity of the will to truth Is a recurring
theme In Nietzsche's later writtngs.I 5 But the will to truth also risks
being "a concealed will to death" 16-the latest version of the "ascetic
Ideal" which seems destined to destroy Its carriers but may infect and
thereby exterminate everyone else In the process. 17 To avoid the latter
possibility, one must recognize the pursuit of truth for what it really
Is. Once this Is accomplished, one lives more "truthfully" than one had
previously under the illusion of the will to truth. Hence, Nietzsche can
say that Zarathustra Is "more truthful than any other thinker" and
that Zarathustra's doctrine alone "posits truthfulness as the highest
vlrtue.•Is In this way he acknowledges how "even we seekers after
knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians" still honor truth;
this Is "to what extent we, too, are still plous.•I9
Truth thereby becomes an ambiguous term. Nietzsche Is more
"truthful" because he recognizes the inherent contradiction In the
search for "truth" pursued by others. His Insight bespeaks a superior
psyche capable not just of articulating a world, but of comprehending
Its own articulation of the world as part of the whole. The possession
of this greater self-knowledge would presumably benefit this psyche's
efforts to care for Itself. If the pursuit of truth serves the Irrational,
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TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
then psychic health would seem to require that the irrational obtatn
Its due. Without this vigilance, the pursuit of truth could destroy Its
hosts, for the unconscious drive to ascertatn what is other than oneself
might paradoxically force the investigator to conceive of himself as
Insignificant. Self-debasement of this kind, however, contradicts and
may thereby destroy the self-preservation or -cultivation which
Nietzsche takes to be the trademark of the Irrational ground oflife. 20
If that original impulse of life Is weak, it Is unable to rise above this
trap, becoming what Nietzsche called the "modern" soul, which "says
Yes and No In the same breath"21 and needs deception In order to
sustain the contradiction. But if the original instinct Is strong, it will
rescue Itself from the trap and learn to pursue truth not from the
perspective of science, but from the perspective of life. This Insight
liberates Nietzsche, for this evidence of his superior constitution
encourages him to venerate himself, diminishing his need for external
Idols, whether actual or Imaginary. He becomes the consciously
self-affirming soul which did not previously recognize Itself in Its
various operations. 22 Nietzsche no longer needs worthy companions
to stimulate him to life, for he has discovered he Is worthy of himself.
With this liberation, the "profound suspiciousness" which led
Nietzsche to this Insight Is transformed into a profound gratitude
working in the service of conscious self-promotion. 23 Pronouncing
itself healthy, this liberated psyche recognizes that the cosmology it
has just outgrown was sick, so it begins the experiment of comprehending the cosmos in a completely different-perhaps opposite-way
than it had been conceived earlier. Because unhealthy cosmology had
forced the individual to debase himself in the effort to apprehend an
external realUy, a healthy cosmology would have to glorify the individual In the comprehension of reality. This soul thereby creates a
metaphyslc,24 transforming philosophy Into the production of an
exuberant artist glori(ying himself. 25 Science Is no longer somber but
"gay," for instead of debasing himself in the investigation of the whole,
the investigator confirms himself in everything. 26 Moreover, truth
becomes whatever he can incorporate Into this metaphysic which
reflects his health. The suspiciousness which once drew Nietzsche
toward despair now exercises Itselfjoyfully as it destroys the hypocritIcal metaphysics of self-debasement in the act of "revaluating all
values" for the honest metaphysics of self-veneration.
But Nietzsche's new "truth," like any good therapy, is not universally applicable. It is true for his kind of soul-the soul whose
instinctual strength prevented It from acquiescing in the self-destructive
trap of the will to truth. But it is not "true"-indeed, it Is probably even
�SCHALLIOL
85
deadly-for the soul whose Instinctual weakness prescribed the will
to truth as desperate medication to stave off Its Inevitable self-destruction.27
Nietzsche's "revaluation of values" is necessary because the liberation
which convinces him of the heterogeneity of the human species takes
place In an egalitarian age which has long ago abolished all but one
universal therapy for the perverted egoism of"last men." He must find
a salutary diet for his aristocratic health, and that requires the
exposure of the prevailing morality and the reconstruction of a new
•
one.
Yet this new suspicious/ grateful soul, which dares to ask "'Can aU
values not be turned round?"'28 strikes us as lacking suspicion toward
itself. Therein lies the supposedly healthy self-deception of the liberated Oberrnensch. who no longer wants "to see everything naked"29
and recognizes "not to indulge In psychology and curiosity In the wrong
place."30 As Nietzsche said with respect to his own past: life "wants
deception, It Uves on deception. "31 The higher man "knows" he can
remain healthy only as long as he does not really question the health
of his own Instinct, because he is now convinced that such self-doubt
-at least in himself-is ultimately only a passing stage to self-glorification.
Wherever he turns, he sees only a radical egoism, even In the attempts
to curtail or doubt that egoism. The soul which truly venerates itself
exploits everything that Is "other" for its own benefit, so It must
conceive of life as "essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of
what Is alien and weaker."32 Lacking all self-suspicion, this soul, like
a healthy aristocracy, "accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of
untold human beings who,for its sake, must be reduced and lowered
to Incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments."33 Nietzsche's
overcoming of his self-doubt becomes self-detfication.
What sense does it make to speak of"health" for such a soul? Where
is the "truthfulness" of one who no longer doubts himself? These
categories still make sense, I suggest, If one considers whether
Nietzsche has attained a successful medical evaluation of himself. As
with any medical diagnosis, Its truth must be determined by the
success of the prescribed treatment. Nietzsche prescribes for himself
the "revaluation of all values"-the comprehensive reconception of
human life based upon the radical selfishness he sees as the essence
of his health. If he can carry it out-If he can Uueit-then one can say
that Nietzsche has made a true diagnosis, for the ultimate standard
for truth here is life, not logical consistency. To be sure, reason and
logic are still Important Instruments which can serve this healthy
psyche by helping it articulate a cosmology consistent with itself. If
someone ''with opposite intentions and modes of Interpretation" from
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
traditional ones Is able to explain the whole as will to power,34 he
thereby strengthens the suspicion that the cosmos is "in all eternity
chaos"35 which Is receptive to his radically egoistic drive to appropriate
It intellectually for his own glorification. Nietzsche's view of himself
and the cosmos as will to power Is "true" as long as he can sustain his
belief in them. But to sustain this belief. he uses reason to articulate
a new cosmos which at least superficially confirms his insight.
To this extent Nietzsche's thought is personal psychiatry. He dares
to heal himself, for first sUspiciousness, then pride, prevent him from
trusting any other physician. Yet while he seems to be focused on
himself as his primary object, he publishes his therapy for all to read,
with frequent suggestions that he hopes to Influence others. 36 Surely
It Is one thing to tend to one's own psychic health and quite another
to try to change the world. However, a suspicious soul will not rest
content with medical treatment carried out only in its head. It will, I
suggest, demand to see Itself confirmed In concrete life, for otherwise
It would still suspect that it might be living a dream. But since
Nietzsche's healthy living opposes the foundations of modern European civilization, he would see his health confirmed only If European
civilization crumbles as he lives, that Is, only If egalitarian society
would give way to an "order of rank" consistent with his view of healthy
life. In Nietzsche's case, therefore, personal psychiatry naturally leads
to political revolution by the demands of truthfulness. To refrain from
testing his therapy would be psychiatric pretense. To carry out the
test risks the transformation of the human world.
This explains. I suggest, why someone so devoted to his private
well-being was equally devoted to the publication of his self-analysis.
It also explains why the author of so self-absorbed an autobiography
as Ecce Homo could also call himself "the man of calamity" whose
truths would explode the culture of his day, for "it is only with me that
the earth knows great politics. "37 Moreover, it explains how the central
concepts of "eternal recurrence" and "will to power" are depicted In
Nietzsche's writings both as personal psychological tests for a true free
spirit and as political weapons for clearing away obstacles to the new,
great health. 38 The instruments he has used for his personal therapy
will, if they are trustworthy, confirm his health when employed on
others, for an essential part of his self-evaluation is that the weak
Instincts opposing htm are themselves sick and on the verge of
collapse. His writings will provide the catalyst:
A pessimistic way of thinking and doctrine-an ecstatic nihilism
-can under certain circumstances be indispensable precisely for
the philosopher-as a powerful pressure and hammer with which
�SCHALLIOL
87
he breaks and removes degenerate and dying races In order to make
way for a new order of life or to implant in what is degenerate and
wants to die a longing for the end... 39
This means that the confirmation which Nietzsche seeks through
the community is hardly the companionship of like souls, but rather
the service their subjugation or demise can provide in confirming
himself. The whole of European civilization becomes the laboratory
subject of his grand experiment. If his revaluation of values succeeds
In concrete reality, his relative health is confirmed, for he will have
shown not only that he could think himself the center of the whole,
but also that life permits him to be the center. At the same time,
however, his success would confirm neither a universal truth nor a
utopia. If life "permits" him to be its center, then life has no abiding
structure independent of a will which creates its center. The health of
Nietzsche's radical egoism will depend on his confirmation that there
is no opposing ''world" which will resist his will. Perhaps the best way
to test this hypothesis is to attempt a revolution which tries to
implement the opposite of the status quo. 40 If the same cosmos
permits opposite orders, then there is some evidence to suggest that,
in fact, the whole is "in all eternity chaos" and that "my" will is
supreme.
According to this analysis, Nietzsche's ultimate psychic health lies
In the solitude of a god toying with the universe. His frequent references to multiple "free spirits," "new philosophers," and "immoralists"
make sense from a psychiatric perspective as uses of the royal we
through which Nietzsche stimulates his own psychological evolution.
They make sense from a political perspective only if they are recruitment devices for semi-sympathetic soldiers Nietzsche needs to implement his experiment, promising an aristocracy while his own radical
egoism demands a monarchy. 41 Likewise, passages which suggest his
concern for the fate of the human species42 more likely show his
concern for his own fate, even though they, too, could serve to
persuade aristocratic humanists to join his revolutionary guard.
Nietzsche is the lone warrior whose health will ultimately be confirmed
if the world accedes to his experiment. This marriage of personal
solitude and confident political efficacy is particularly evident in Ecce
Horrw, written shortly before his collapse. There Nietzsche explains
how proper it is that none of his contemporaries understands him,
even though these same ideas will soon produce an unprecedented
upheaval of contemporary culture.43 It is precisely these often perplexing juxtapositions of solitude and social conscience, or scientific
�88
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
modesty and self-deification, which make sense once we see that
Nietzsche is testing the health of radical egoism.
But must suspiciousness-and its outcome, truthfulnes&-inevitably lead to profound solitude of this kind? If it must, the consummate
philosopher is condemned to isolation. What of those who clalm to
practice truthfulness but refrain from or stop short of self-deification?
Nietzsche, I suspect, would say such men delude themselves. But does
it not make sense to ask at the vety beginning whether Nietzsche's
trademark-his profound suspiciousnes&-is not already a symptom
of an incurable disease? Suspiciousness already presupposes a particular "self' alienated from a usually hostile "other" and which
thereby presumes that this selfs well-being comes at the expense of
the other. Even though Nietzsche clalms to analyze himselfwisely, he
does so from the tainted perspective of a self which is already confidently opposed to the world. In this respect, his examination resembles the mistake he warned of concerning the evaluation of science
from the perspective of science.44 Even if science or suspiciousness
can only be evaluated from a more primordial perspective called "life,"
there Is no more primordial perspective from which to evaluate life,
for that Is the inarticulate ground of all evaluation. Life's Immediate
appearance In a human being Is instinct, so Nietzsche's conception of
Instinct-first as self-preservation, then as self-cultivation-is his
conception of life. But that Is not a determination he has articulated
from a more primordial standpoint, for there is no ji.Jrther standpoint.
It Is the immediate understanding of life one would expect from life
which has already articulated itself into a particular "self' opposed to
a hostile "world," i.e., Into a radically egoistic cosmology. Even when
such a self cialms not to know Itself and to be dutifully carrying out
experiments of self-d!scovety, the mere willingness to risk "the sacrifice of untold human beings" In such an experiment betrays an already
confident egoism. This Is why the seemingly extraordinaty transformation of Nietzsche's profound suspiciousness into the universal
gratitude of "amor jatt'4 5 is, In the end, so easy. Both psychological
Inclinations stem from a radically egoistic cosmology in which a
particular "self' is opposed to a homogenous "world." In the one case,
the world is uniformly hostile; in the other, uniformly nutritious.46
If this is true, then Nietzsche never truly examines life, for he cannot
know whether his powerful egoism is a paradigm or a perversion of its
inarticulate origin. But if the origin is inarticulate, he can reverse the
technique of traditional medical treatment. Rather than modiJY!ng the
constitution of the patient to conform to the pre-given order of the
encompassing cosmos, Nietzsche reconstructs the cosmos in order to
�SCHALLIOL
89
have it conform to the pre-given constitution of the patient. Whether
he himself is a perversion or a paradigm of life thus never comes into
question; it is enough that he is alive. 47 His truthfulness thus rests
on a primordial ignorance-a paradoxical will to truth which spurns
self-evaluation precisely because it has reasonably concluded that
self-evaluation is impossible. Lacking self-evaluation, this particular
self lives by becoming the author of the cosmos, and its truthfulness
is ultimately tested by whether it succeeds In its attempt to live the
life of God. We cannot help wondering, however, how wise this wise
ignorance Is which tries to confirm the possibility of radical egoism
when Its very confirmation would make it unintelligible. Nietzsche's
veneration of himselfwould reach its consummation only if the cosmos
proves to be pure chaos and he can become God for a time. Whatever
proud mastery this might demonstrate in the face of other human
beings, it must ultimately demonstrate insignificance In the face of an
eternally and chaotically changing cosmos which ultimately consumes
all of its children. 48 Nor can one learn much from or relish one's
experiments If one knows he carmot even live to see their results, as
Nietzsche knew.49 The life Nietzsche proposes requires a seemingly
incredible marriage of discursive sobriety and Inarticulate forgetfulness-a consciousness which both knows and forgets that It is
perpetually deceiving Itself. It is surely open to debate whether
Nietzsche was successful in actually living such a live with success.
Nonetheless, as Nietzsche himself demonstrates, this is a possible
articulation of life.
The purely personal foundation of Nietzsche's thought, however,
permits us to consider an alternative "truthfulness" which Is worthy
of that name but does not entail self-deification and thereby utter
solitude. If there Is ultimately no perspective from which we can
discern the character of life other than life, which by definition is
Inarticulate, then one can ask from one's own lnnnediate understandIng of life whether life Is not something other than mere will to power.
One can imagine, for example, a soul characterized by wonde,ao rather
than suspicion or gratitude. 'Wonder," like these Nletzschean alternatives, might imply an articulation of life into an individual psyche as
"self' opposed to everything else as ''world." But whereas suspicion
and gratitude already imply a confidence in the specific character of
this separation, wonder does not. This self, unlike Nietzsche's, might
be uneasy with Its articulated role in the cosmos, as reflected perhaps
In Its perpetual willingness to reconsider its own legitimacy. 51 It may,
for example, be uncertain about its detachment from everything else
which has been separated from It as "other." It may also not know
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with confidence where domination, servitude, or some other response
to the "other" is appropriate. This uncertainty may stem not just from
the restlessness It feels from betog unable to articulate Its origin, but
also from an inkling that life may not be a monistic force, but perhaps
a composition of heterogeneous forces, among which one discerns,
say, a will to power and a will to death. Wonder might well become
either suspiciousness or gratitude, presumtog that one's Immediate
understanding of life might change as one lives it. Nietzsche, In other
words, Is an eternal possibility In such a soul.
The truthfulness of a soul marked by wonder, however, would be
exemplified not in Its confident daring to confirm Its own detachment
from the world, but in Its reluctsnce to conclude that it must be so
detached or that otherness Is homogenous and so calls for a uniform
response from the self. Therein lies the possibility of friendship with
or willing subservience to another-possibilities precluded from
Nietzsche's radically detached self. This self, in all truthfulness, could
respond to otherness by trying to nourish a parity between self and
other, by acknowledging Its humility to the face of the other, or even
by extinguishing Itself In favor of the other. But because It, too, finds
Itself detached from all others, any community It pursues will never
have the confident stability of an unconscious community which was
never articulated into separated egos. Moreover, since this self still
questions how heterogenous the world might be, It will not just ask
whether what looks like selflessness might not be concealed egoism;
It will also ask whether what looks like self-deification may not be a
concealed will to death-a self ultimately seeking to dissolve Itself In
chaos through Its attempt to replace God.
A true Nietzschean would surely respond that all of this Is already
a symptom of the will to power. Self-consciousness, by Its very nature,
is an egoistic act, and the selfs attempt to distinguish "hostile,"
"beneficial," and "neutral" strains in the cosmos Is Itself also a sign at
least of self-preservation, If not self-cultivation. I would not deny that
these things are true-to a point. Self-consciousness is Intelligible only
through the distinction, and hence "self-preservation," of the self from
what Is other. Wonder, like Nietzschean suspiciousness and thankfulness, Is relatively egoistic when compared to articulations of life In
which an unconscious community emerges as a self distinguished
from Its world. But apart from such a possibility, which also constitutes an alternative to Nietzsche, I propose that there can be an
intelligible articulation of life in which a particular self Is separated
from the world but which is not merely a confirmation of radical
egoism. Such a self, for example, could consciously extinguish Itself.
�SCHALLIOL
91
A radically egoistic self could not. Conscious suicide for Nietzsche is
impossible, for as he is so fond of pototing out, the soui conscious of
its egoistic supremacy transforms everything else toto nourishment
for its own growth. 52 But one could Imagine a soul characterized by
wonder reaching the conscious conclusion that it was a perversion of
the whole and hence would extinguish itself. Moreover, a soui defined
by wonder might articulate otherness not to venerate itself, but
perhaps to venerate itself along with others or to venerate another
above itself. Indeed, the Jlldividuation of self Is a necessary prerequisite not just for radical egoism, but also for conscious friendship and
devotion to another. But all of these are possibilities, I suggest,
because each reflects a possible articulation of the toarilculate origin
Nietzsche called life.
If articulation is a product of life, then the attempt to learn how to
live life properly by first articuiating it is illusory. As I suggested above
concerntog Nietzsche, the only way to test one's understanding of life
under these circumstances would be to try to live it. The suggestion
that one couid judge one's own understandtog of life by comparing it
to that of another will not help, for the willingness even to entertain
the authority of another, as Nietzsche's case makes plain, is already
a reflection of one's understanding oflife. 53 His refusal to acknowledge
any authority for his own life other than himself has its antipodes in
the unconscious community in which one member never questions
the obedience or the authority of another. But somewhere between
these extremes is an understanding of life from which both of these
others are visible, though not clearly thereby accessible-a place
where solitude and community both lure a self uncertain of its very
self-articulation. Recognition in the reverse directions, however,
seems less likely. The unconscious member of a community will find
an Isolated self pitiful. The radical egoist, who cannot see any other
strand oflife through the monotonous darkness (or brightness) of will
to power, will denounce all entertainment ofheterogenous possibilities
as hypocrisy. Yet despite all of Nietzsche's claims about the difficulty
of solitude, the homogenous cosmology behtod it suggests a simple
and uniform life once the difficult initiation is over. An understanding
oflife which lies suspended somewhere between the will to power and
the will to death, on the other hand, may present a much harder task
-a task requiring the greatest struggle to avoid permanently succumbing to one of Its two equally necessary but equally inadequate
monistic intoxications. From this perspective, might not even
Nietzsche appear to be undisciplined?-Or lazy?-Maybe a hedonist
In disguise? To live this other life well, one might say, is "to be schooled
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
92
In the abridgment of ambition,"54 as long as it is understood that this
"schooling" Is no mere training of the Intellect. To claim authorsWp of
the dualism which fires this life is to fall into Nietzsche's Intoxicating
monism. Rather than abridged, ambition is there deified. To abdicate
authorship of it, on the other hand, is to tiy to retrieve the intoxicating
monism of innocence. Rather than abridged, ambition Is there extinguished. Each of these alternatives might be a life which we could say
one might live "truthfully," If we only acknowledge thereby that it is
one of the possible ways· in which life actually articulates itself. But
Its relative blindness to the other possibilities banishes it, I would say,
from philosophy.
*****
Notes:
I. HA Preface§ l. Citations from Nietzsche's published works In this paper
are coded by title abbreviation and corresponding book and/or section
abbreviation and/or number. The title abbreviations are: (Bl:J The Birth
of'Iragedy, (UM) Untimely Meditations, (HA) Hwnan,All-Too-Human, (D)
Daybreak, (GS) The Gay Science, (Z) ThUB spoke ZarathUBtra, (BGE)
Beyond Good and Evil, (GM) On the Genealogy ofMorals, (C11(] The Case
ojWagner, (I1) Twilight of the Idols, (A) The Antichrist, (EH) Ecce Ho111D,
(NC11() Nietzsche Contra Wagner. I generally follow Kaufroann's translations of BT, GS, Z, BGE, CW, TI, A, EH, and NCW, and Hollingsdale's
translations of VM, HA, and D. Citations from the unpublished frag-
ments are my translations, indicated byWwith the division, notebook,
and fragment number as they appear In Nietzsche Werke (1967 II.) and
are reprinted In Siimt!iche Werke (1980).
2. HA Preface § 2.
3. HA Preface § l.
4. HA Preface § § 3-8.
5. z. 1.1.
6. GS§344.
7. BT§ 15.
8. GS§344.
9. ZII.12.
10.BGE§ l.
1l.BGE§24.
12.BT Preface § 2.
13. Cp. D Preface§ 3.
14. BT§ 15.
�SCHALLIOL
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
93
Cf. GS § 110; Zll.l2; BGE § 24.
GS§ 344.
GMIII § 14,25,27.
EH "Destiny" § 3.
GS§ 344.
GS § 110.
CWEptlogue.
TWs Is the ultimate meanlng of the subtitle for the autobiograpWcal
Ecce Homo--''How One Becomes What One Is." Cf. EH "Clever"§ 9.
23. This gratitude Is most evident throughout EH and Is the natural
consequence of someone who has learned "to crave nothing more
fervently" than the eternal recurrence of all thlngs (GS § 341).
24. GS§347.
25. Zll.l2; BGE§ 211; WVll 38(13); GS § 347. The unpublished fragment
cited here is particularly il!umlnating, given its position ln this notebook next to the famous fragment which was published at the end of
The Will to Power. The three notes Vll 38(11)-38(13) suggest the logical
connections between solitude, the will to power, and "noble" philosophy.
26. GS§ 324
27. BGE §§ 30,43. For the portrayal of the will to truth as desperate
medication, see GM ill.
28. HA Preface § 3.
29. GS Preface § 4.
30. BGE § 270.
31. HA Preface § 1.
32. BGE § 259.
33. BGE § 258.
34. BGE§22.
35. GS § 109.
36. Recall the ambiguity between solitude and community ln the first
quotation of the paper.
37. EH "Destiny"§ 1.
38. For the former, cf. GS § 341 and Z lli.2. For the latter, see especially
WVII25(227), 26(376), 35(82).
39. wvn 35(82).
40. In this regard, the wordlng of BGE § 22-the first explicit "prose"
account of the will to power in Nietzsche's published works after Its
"poetic" lntroductlon ln z-ls very Ulumlnating.
41. Cp. Rosen (1989).
42. Especially ln GM I and Ill.
43. EH"Books" § 1, "Destiny" §1.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
94
44. BT Preface § 2.
45. EH "Clever" § I 0.
46. Seen in this way, Nietzsche embodies the repudiation of what he
exposed as "the faith in opposite values" which made all previous
metaphysics dogmatic. Cf. BGE § 2.
4 7. Cf. HA Preface § 1.
48. As Rosen (1989) points out (p.198), Nietzsche cannot himself avoid
the nihilism he imputes to his adversaries.
49. Cf. A Preface; EH "Books" § I.
50. Cp. Plato, Theaetetus 155d2-4.
51. Consider Socrates' observation that he continues to wonder whether
he Is a beast or not (Phaeclrus 230a).
52. Hence, as Nietzsche makes clear In GM, the last men are committing
suicide unconsciously.
53. Therein lies, I suspect, the significance Socrates sees In one's preference for conversation (dialegesthai) or display (epideixasthai) when
speaking to others. See, for example, Gorgias 447a-c and Prol:agoras
336a-d.
54. Lachterman (1989), p. vii.
WORKS CITED:
Kaufinann, Walter, ed. & trans. Basic Wrttings of Nietzsche. New York:
Modern Library, 1966.
_ _ _ _ _ _ .The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Press, 1954.
Lachterman, David R. The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity.
New York and London: Routledge, 1989.
Nietzsche, Frtedrich. Daybreak. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
-=-:--:-:c:-:--·· The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Katifinann. New
York: Vintage Books, 1974.
--::---::--:-.,..---· Hwnan. All Too Human. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
--=--:--:::-c:::· Silmtliche Werke (Kritische Studienausgabe). Edited by
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter,
1980.
---:-::-:---:--· Werke(Kritlsche Gesamtausgabe). Edited by Giorgio Colli
and Mazzino Montlnari. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1967 II.
Rosen, Stanley. "Nietzsche's Revolution." In The Ancients and the Modems:
Rethinking Modernity. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
�From Rationalism to Historicism:
The Devolution
of Cartesiap Subjectivity
Carl Page
Cartesian rationalism and Enlightenment conceptions of reasonwith their universality, foundationalism, immediacy, and absolutism
are commonly taken to be opposed to late modern and post-modern
historicist interpretations of human understanding, interpretations
that emphasize contingency, finitude, mediacy, and the impossibility
of closure. The contradictions, however,lie only on the surface. As the
flower contradicts the bud (to recall an Hegelian image), so too does
historicism contradict the rationalism that precedes it. They are in
fact dialectical siblings, far too perfectly opposed to one another not
to be related. My aim in what follows is to show the matrix from which
they both spring, and thus to establish the meaning of their deep
consanguinity.'
I
At first sight, no two dispositions could seem more different than
the hyper-rationalism of Descartes, who seeks to render the motions
of his mind perfectly transparent and impervious to the effects of
history, versus the hyperpragmatism ofhistoricist thinkers who would
reduce their minds to vortices in an historical flux. 2 It could be said,
following a lead Descartes himself provides in the youthful notebook
entries marked O!ympica, that Cartesian philosophy has an Olympian
spirit.s As a genus, ali Olympian philosophies aspire to actual transcendence of mortal parochiality and subservience. Descartes is
therefore a paradigmatic Olympian. Yet Olympian aspirations do not
all have to be funded by the same source. Part of what I want to show
is the continuity between Descartes's rebellious, titanic desire to take
the Olympian heights and the equally titanic and hubristic assertion
that the heights are unpossessible in principle and therefore the
unworthy or foolish objects of mortal aspiration and endeavor.
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'!HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Descartes's own supreme confidence In a nouum organum, a new
Instrument for the realization of universal and primmy science, now
seems hopeless to his historicist descendants, but the reconception
of rationali1y on which it was based has, despite the disillusionment,
remained In place, having followed a devolution that spells out In the
medium of history an Intrinsic instabili1y at the heart of Descartes's
origlnalinstauration. The most recent and ultimate outcome of tbat
primal disequilibrium is contempormy historicist philosophy.
Several outward signs of the inner, dialectical relationship maybe
observed.
Both Carteslanlsm and historicism are revolutionmy. Just as
Descartes seeks a radically new beginning for all responsible thought,
so too does philosophical historicism define the essence of all responsible thinking In accord with its own axioms. This Is more than
renovating the edifice of philosophy; it Is an attempt to build It anew.
Philosophy's non-historicist past must either go or be transformed
completely because itls mistaken about reason's perfection, i.e., about
tbe best mode of reason's operation. Likewise, scholasticism was to
be replaced by free-thinking, authori1y and prejudice by lucidi1y and
self-possession. Both historicism and Cartesianlsm are deflationmy,
exclusive, and aggressive, and botb presume that a mistaken philosophical ethos renders all its possible fruits corrupt.
While relying In their revolutionmy mode on being doctrines of
reason's self-knowledge, In their more specific character they are
doctrines ofreason's epistemic self-assurance. Cartesianism sets Itself
the task of showing how representational contents of the mind construed as modifications of a stream of consciousness can count as
genuine knowledge, historicism that opinions generated within a
contingent historical process of tradition can do the same. As doctrines of reason's self-assurance both visibly labor at tbe question of
justif'ylng objectivi1y, at getting beyond whatever Is merely idiosyncratic in the circle of subjective ideas. That circle Is in tbe one case
bounded by the ego cogitans and in the other by received opinion in
the human communi1y at large, the latter being an example as it is
now said of lntersubjectivi1y.
Their revolutionmy zeal follows from the combination of having
identified a fragili1y in reason's adequacy and claiming to possess the
perfect instrument or attitude for dealing with it. In the latter respect,
historicists are more anxious about assuring themselves and their
fellows of their philosophical virtue than Descartes ever was. The
problem of reason's self-assurance is dealt with In the same general
way. Having given an account of what constitutes reason's operation,
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97
both go on to make procedural recommendations for overcoming or
compensating for reason's constitutional infirmities. Thus Descartes
promulgates a method, historicists discuss canons of hermeneutics
and the structure of practical rationality as they vouchsafe theoretical
ends. In both cases a technique, an artful procedure is being put
forward as the necessary supplement to ensure reason's perfect
operation.
These are outward signs that Cartesianism and philosophical
historicism belong to the same Gestalt des Bew!jf3tseins, the same
"configuration of consciousness." The remainder of my essay speaks
in more detail to the character and historical trace of this shared,
underlying configuration.
II
Auroral modems were impressed anewwith the rational seductions
of the mathematical. Enthusiasm on this score amounts to a renaissance of the pagan delight In theoria and esteem of the liberal (as
contrasted with mechanical or banauslc) arts. Even more Impressive
was the cognitive power unleashed by the reinterpretation of mathematical understandtog in symbolic rather than eidetic, schematic
rather than eikonic, terms. This generated a noetically much wilder
sort of enthusiasm, stimulated by the joys of constructive mastery and
a vision of completeness.4
The urge to Cartesian mastery is an urge to total rational autonomy
that calls not only for a reconstruction of all one's opinions from the
ground up, but also for a repudiation of all one's preceptors as well.
Tutelage is a compromise, whether It be to nature as the given or to
the possibly good habits toculcated by family, by teachers, and by
tradition. On this basis, modern philosophy becomes a story of the
intellect militant, an imperialism of the mind convinced that the way
to Its perfection lies through an exquisite self-sufficiency-a convenient ideal, stoce It starts out in such solitude and alienation. As
Leibnlz insightfully observed, Descartes had the vanity of wishing to
be a solipsist. Yet this ideal of human reason's self-sufficiency Is not
confined to Descartes's single, meditating self. Likewise, the lntersubjective community of philosophical historicists would for the sake of
their hermetic self-satisfaction throw any philosophy hintiog at Olympian aspiration into the abyss where all devils belong. The call for
solidarity, as if it were the highest philosophical virtue, is Cartesian
solipsism In intersubjective drag.
Descartes's philosophical justification of his mathematically inspired rationalism Is, by consensus, inadequate. Dissatisfaction with
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Cartesian dualism is but one rather superficial sign, related to which
are more specific doctrinal problems about the status of Imagination
In Descartes's overall account. 5 Another sign Is the contemporary
w!lllngness to forego certainty altogether as a noetic standard, thus
protecting all understanding from the Cartesian Anxiety of supposing
that if certainty cannot definitively be established, allis lost to chaotic
Ignorance. a Perhaps histoty's judgment on the score of Descartes's
philosophical adequacy would not especially disturb him, since It has
also cast a definitive vote against Aristotelian physics-the practical
result he hoped to effect with his Meditations. Either way, the philosophical problems of justification left over from the postulation of
symbolic mathematics as a paradigm for theorizing haunt Descartes's
sober confidence In the control that he trusts hlmselfto be capable of
exercising over his own Imagination. Descartes cannot guarantee the
identity of Eudoxus ("sound-minded" or "renowned") with Polyander
("evetyman"), as the consummation of their mutual search for truth
(The Search for Truth, II 400 ff.). 7 That Descartes himself was well
possessed of noetic sophrosyne cannot be disputed. The question is:
why self-control, rather than rapture? What justifies the autonomous,
model-theoretic operation of reason as a way of epistemic knowing?
Such was the question Kant posed as a critique of pure reason.
It is sometimes thought that, in comparison with Kant's sophisticated demand for self-criticism, Descartes's rationalism either neglected the issue or naively left it up to some dubious theology. In fact,
Descartes perfectly well appreciated the sort of question on which Kant
based his whole undertaking. In the eighth rule of the Regulae,
Descartes talks of"lnvestigating evetytruth for the knowledge ofwhich
human reason is adequate" (I 30) and revealing "what is human
knowledge and what is Its scope" (I 31).
If there Is any Immediate difference with Kant, it is a difference in
tone. For Descartes, the critical enquity ls a crowning survey of
reason'snative domain rather than a determination ofboundaries that
reason is by nature prone to transgress. He is optimistic: "It should
not be regarded as an arduous or even difficult task to define the limits
of the mental powers we are conscious of possessing ... Nor is it an
immeasurable task to seek to encompass In thought evetytblng in the
universe, with a view to learning In what way particular things may
be susceptible of investigation by the human mind" (Regulae, I 31).
Kant on the other hand pessimistically describes critique as "a call to
reason to undertake anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely
self-knowledge" (A xi). 8 It is difficult, according to Kant. because
reason as he Interprets it is constantly prone to seek more than noetic
�PAGE
99
sobriety permits, is constantly prone to lose itselfin SchwiirmereL The
critique of pure reason is an attempt rationally to deduce tbe noetic
moderation Descartes possessed by nature, deployed wltb tact, and
only partially managed to account for in philosophical speech.
Such differences of tone aside, tbe deep agreement between Kant
and Descartes on the nature of human reason is nonetheless evident,
botb In tbe project of determining In advance reason's general Illness
for knowledge and in tbe furiher projective hope tbat the domain of
rationally certifiable knowledge may also be completely surveyed In
advance. "Nothing In aprloriknowledge can be ascribed to objects save
what the thinking subject derives from Itself. .. pure reason .. .ls a quite
separate self-subsistent unity, In which ... every member exists for
every other ... consequently, metaphysics .. .is capable of aqulrlng exhaustive knowledge of Its entire field" (B xxiii). A more straightforward
statement of the hypostasis of theoretical reason could hardly be
Imagined. Pure reason Is a system with Its very own architecture (B
860); tbe knowledge It makes posssible is open to methodical and
complete survey. Kant thus interprets, alongwltb modems before and
since, the theorizing mind as an independent source of cognitive
content-knowledge from out of pure reason. Moreover, by being
reason's own possessions and constructions, the conditions for such
representations are entirely available to reason's self-analysis. This Is
tbe use Kant makes of the lwnen natw-ale. There are no shadows In
the transcendental domain, save the possible exception of that dark
and to us "hidden root" that the transcendental synthesis has in
imaglnation.9 The possibility of complete critique follows from the
homogeneity of tbe aprlori domain.
The aftlliation between Kant's image of pure, autonomous, self-crttical
reason and Descartes's mathematical paradigm may be discerned in
Kant's analysis of modem science's cognitive success. A century after
Newton published his Philosophiae Natw-aUs PrincipiaMathematica In
1687 (ever since an epitome) Kant published the second, B-edition of
his Krlitk der reinen Vemunft. He Introduces it by asking why metaphysics or First Philosophy (which, for him, includes ontology, cosmology, psychology, and theology), unlike logic, mathematics, and
now physics or Second Philosophy, has not yet found its way to the
secure path of science. He proposes to repair the deficiency by
re-construlng metaphysics In light of the conditions that make tbe
established sciences possible. Paramount amongst those conditions
Kant identifies conceptual domination of the given through the aprlort
projection of rational order, as opposed to passive reception of what-
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ever unsystematic clues nature might deign to furnish. In the controlled experiments of Galileo, Torrlcelli, and Stahl. he writes:
a light broke In upon all students of nature. They learned that reason
has Insight only Into that which It produces after a plan [Entww:Jl of
its own, and that it must not allow itself to be kept, as It were, In
nature's leading-strings, but must Itself show the way with principles
of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give
answers to questions of reason's own detennlnlng. (B x!il)
The Kantian notion of a plan or project (Entwur.Jl of reason Is the
proximate progenitor of theory In the modern sense, that is, of theory
as a rational construct or model. It Is also one of the ancestors of all
our contemporary philosophical talk of frameworks, conceptual
schemes, and hermeneutics. What distinctively marks Kant's picture
Is the presupposition that knowledge is gained in proportion to how
well nature answers to laws of reason's own Independent devising.
Thatls, reason decides in advance what could be the rational structure
of the world, and then nature answers yes or no.
This really Is, as Kant proclaims, a Copernican revolution. It
amounts to radically relocating the source of the order characteristically revealed by theoretical knowledge. All theoretical understanding
depends on a trans-empirical moment for the conversion of the
empirical and the merely general into eplsternic cognition. That moment Is traditionally described In terms of the universality, necessity,
and primacy that mark the first principles (archai) or causes (aitiaq of
the things themselves. Such order as successful science may reveal
thus derives from the link between phenomena and their real causes,
a link which reason may discern with varying degrees of perspicuity.
According to Kant's conception on the other hand, all possible forms
of system, order, and structure belong first and In advance to reason.
In a word, Kant's word, all order belongs to reason apriorL On this
alternative, science's systematic or universal character originally derives not from things but from possibilities legislated entirely by
self-contained, independently operating human reason. The world of
experience does not announce a cosmos to whose structure human
reason reaches out. Instead It announces a disarray of discrete points
of Information that can and must be mastered with the aid of our
rational templates. Such laws as nature then appears to follow are not
so many clues to the actuality of her primary causes but so many
schemes for organizing our apprehension of their ontic effects.
On the basis of what starts out as an observation about the origins
of objectivity in the positive natural sciences and Is later worked out
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In detail as the structure of eplstemic objectivity In general, Kant
proposes that "we must therefore make trial whether we may not have
more success In the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects
must conform to our knowledge" (B xvl). The hypothetical analogy Is
the cornerstone of his critique. Supposing an analogous function of
the intellect at the level of what he calls "experience" (Erjahrung), Kant
undertakes to dissect the framework that Is created, not by self-conscious
theoretical production but by the subconscious, or what Kant calls
the spontaneous, world-constituting activity ofVerstand This dissection Is to lay bare Its entire cogoltive potential and therewith the limits
of specifically human knowledge. This can be thought of as an analysis
of the deep structure of the ego cogltans: "I have to do with nothing
save reason itself and its pure thinking; and to obtain complete
knowledge of these, there Is no need to go far afield, since I come upon
them within my own self' (A xlv).
So set up, the critique of theoretical reason Is two-tiered. It is
committed, first, to analysing the logic of knowing, and thence to
demonstrating both the exhaustiveness and necessity of that logic.
The structural analysis of objectivity Is not Itself the critique but
merely an instrument of the philosophical account of reason which
shows that theorizing must occur and can only occur In accord with
that particular apparatus. In the Critique of Pure Reason, those
demonstrations are to be effected through the Transcendental Deduction and the Transcendental Dialectic respectively. Thus, Kant seeks
thoroughly to rehabilitate reason's natural, metaphysical urges to
transcend what Verstandmakes noetically possible.
Although Descartes constantly remarks on the prudence of setting
our hopes In manifest accord with our often Infirm powers, Kant's
systematic humiliation of reason's natural pretensions Introduces a
strongly deflationary element into the modern picture of theorizing
reason. To be sure, Kant tries to hold on to the justifiability of
contentful universal knowledge-how are synthetic aprlortjudgments
possible?-wWle yet abandoning the Olympian moment, the knowledge of things In themselves. This abandonment Is captured In his
Image of "the territory of pure understanding":
It is the land of truth-enchanting name-surrounded by a wide and
stormy ocean, the native home of Illusion, where many a fog bank and
many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther
shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty
hopes, and engaging Wm in enterprtses which he can never abandon
and yet Is unable to carry to completion. Before we venture on this
sea... It will be well to begin by casting a glance on the map of the land
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which we are about to leave, and to enquire, first, whether we cannot
in any case be satisfied With what it contains. (B 294)
Kant's fear-mongering here Is rhetorically continuous with
Descartes's Invocation of an Evil Demon, yet with the difference that
Kant proposes no retrieval ofwhat lies beyond the immanent structure
of human understanding. He calls It land, but the map is really a map
of the Inner logic of a radically temporalized ego cogiians. Kant's
exhortation at the end of the passage anticipates all subsequent forms
of pragmatic, historicist admonishing to make do With the level of
cognitive achievement supposedly vouchsafed by finite, human powers alone. His warnings against speculative metaphysics may be
correlated with historicism's abuse of all philosophy that has an
Olympian spirit, and In giving up the Olympian moment Kant sets the
stage for the historicization and relativization of all possible transcendental structure. As Nietzsche so wisely prophesied: '1f Kant ever
should begin to exercise any wide Influence we shall be aware of it In
the form of a gnawing and disintegrating scepticism and relativlsm.'>IO
The heart of Kant's transcendental strategy is the hope of being
able to discern In the spontaneous, apriori construction of experience,
parameters that stabilize the possibility of universal and primary
knowledge. Kant's own metaphysics of experience, however, is but one
interpretation of this stabilizing structure. Gadamer's phenomenology
of tradition and Roriy's version of the conversation of mankind, for
example, are others. Read abstractly, an analysis of the conditions for
the possibility of knowledge could as well describe some ancient
endeavors as well as modem ones. The real change is written into the
notion of knowledge itself, whose order now in principle belongs to
reason construed as a self-contained entity with its own substructure,
rather than to the realities which it is reason's whole, derivative
essence to work at revealing.
As it happens, Kant's critique has been found as philosophically
wanting as Descartes's meditations. Outwardly, the rejection has
likewise been expressed as a dissatisfaction with dualism, In Kant's
case the dualism of noumena and phenomena. Inwardly, misgivings
have arisen on two fronts. First, they have been occasioned by worries
about the apparent parochiality of both the logic and the conceptions
of space and temporality on which Kant bases the contentful aspects
of his transcendental argumentation. Second, the Inferences of the
Transcendental Deduction and the Transcendental Dialectic have not
been entirely convincing. Kant has been criticized, therefore, not so
much for supposing an implausible and undefended analogy between
metaphysics and positive science, between First Philosophy and all
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103
that Is later than first, as for falling to notice that the constitution of
positive objectivity might well occur in more than one way, thus
determining quite different worlds (though with the same old surface
Irritations of the organism as ever). From this train of thought follow
books like Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking and all the
fascination with the possible incommensurability of Kuhnlan paradigms.
The metaphysics of human experience seems less and less to be
governed by laws whose necessity can be guaranteed. illtimately,
philosophical historicism comes to suspect that autonomous human
reason possesses no universals, tacitly or otherwise, that it can
responsibly call its own-a not unreasonable conjecture, ifindeed time
is the form of all possible representation (B 50). Both transcendental
idealism and historicism, however, suppose that rational order, such
as it be, nonetheless derives In the first place from productive or
spontaneous human ingenuity.
The transcendental turn entrenches the hypostasis of theorizing
reason. By seeking a systematic account of all that could possibly
belong to reason apriori, the critical philosophy Is the Cartesian
paradigm applied to the question of reason's self-knowledge. What
Kant calls his Copernican revolution, the move already evident in the
gesture of Cartesian mastery, whereby the human mind controls all
the possibilities of order, is both so rationally satisfYing and so visibly
successful that modern philosophy is still exploring the paradise it
builds, the island of mortal truth. It does so in the shadow of a general
philosophical responsibility to questions of justification which remain
in place Irrespective of attempts to redefine their specific meanings.
To stay on the island of truth, to be assured of knowledge, philosophical thought must discover the rules for the direction of its mind, its
regulae ad directionem ingeniL On this point, Kant refines Cartesian
method into architectonic, setting up the task of discerning the tacit,
objectivity-conferring parameters of reason's operation.
III
In the philosophy of this century, the stabilizing parameters of
reason's spontaneous and Inventive activity have been sought less in
the metaphysically perplexing inwardness of the single, Cartesian
subject or the phantasmagoric depths of the transcendental ego as in
the outward, trans-individual, ordered realities oflanguage and world.
Both language and world stand for well-structured domains that
belong to us in familiar ways; they are domains of lntersubjectivity.
Whether they be analyzed phenomenologically, fundsmental-ontologically,
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1HE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
or analytically, their place at or near the center of contemporary
philosophy follows from their being such promising examples of
immanently accessible frameworks, apparently capable of disciplining
otherwise idiosyncratic constructions. Wittgenstein and Husser!
nicely lllustrate the more recent form of modem philosophy's congenltallmmanentism.
The linguistic tum is not of course all Wlttgensteln's fault. To trace,
In the cases of Frege and Russell, the Inner links between their
conceptions of mathematics on the one hand, and philosophy as the
logical analysis of!anguage (the means of representation) on the other,
would supply an important supplement to my account of modern
philosophy's early debt to Its mathematical paradigm. For present
purposes, however, Wlttgensteln's philosophical value as a representative of the linguistic tum Is twofold. First, he brooded over the
relation between the tum and philosophy's self-understanding, passIng on to his followers the fruitful, if Incomplete, Image of philosophy
as therapy or witch-doctoring (a function that Socrates was not above
engaging). Second, he pushed the question of!ogical form's origin. The
essentially Kantlan project of the Tractatus was a critique of reason,
based on the claim to have unearthed the ultimate logical structure
of all possible representation. Later, Wlttgenstein became dissatisfied
with his formal analysis and sought the parameters of representation
In the givens of ordinary linguistic behavior. The mysteriousness of
Tractarlan objects was left behind in favor of the salience of what is
observably done with words.
As he ponders the operational contexts of meaningful language use,
Wlttgensteln conceives objectivi1y In terms of his famous "languagegames." A language-game is the context governing the posslblli1y and
lntelllgiblli1y of linguistic transactions. The basic conceptual advantage of referring to them Is to get away from the picture of language
as a mentalistic template, possessed as a whole and in advance by
evety competent speaker. At this point, hope of discovering the unique
transcendental apparatus, the hope that led him to boast in the
Introduction to the Tractatus that he had found "on all essential
points, the final solution of the problems," has been abandoned and
Wittgensteln becomes a proto-historicist. Language-games happen to
be relatively local, while the most comprehensive context for all
linguistic activi1y Is called a Lebensform. What generates either
Lebensjonn or language-game remains undiscussed, indeed undlscussable: "what has to be accepted, the given, Is-so one could say
-fonns ofUje." 11
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105
On this view (reminiscent of Collingwood). the structure of human
understanding is adrift at the roots. There is no more reason to
construe or pursue experience according to one game or form of life
as opposed to any other. The realization of games and forms is at best
a matter of history, at worst a matter of whtm. Wittgenstein htmself,
however, is, like all defenders of retail sanity and interim stability,
optimistic: "ordinary language is all right." Yet phllosophy cannot step
outside of those ordinary bounds. 'The results of phllosophy are the
uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps
that the understanding has got by running its head up against the
limits oflanguage" (PI § 119). Reason must learn to see how chtmerical
is the hope of making final sense of the pageant offates and decisions
written into its language-games. In a radical obversion of the experience of wonder, Wittgenstein's attempt to make do with intertm
stability leads to the declaration: "since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain" (PI §126). Others wonder, though, that
anything lies open to view at all.
The transition from the early to the late Wittgenstein is a microcosm
of late modem philosophy in general. In following his path from
transcendental confidence to chastened pragmatism, Wittgenstein
illustrates the same movement that runs in its broadest sweep from
Descartes and Kant to Gadamer and Roriy. The modem motif, formal
transcendentalism to historicist relativization, repeats Itself in
Husser!, a thinker whose Cartesian pedigree is as clear and distinct
as these things can be. Nonetheless, by the time Husser! arrives at
the notion of the Lebenswelt that appears in the work just before his
death, he finds htmself treading on historicist ground.
There has been much discussion of how history comes to figure as
a fundamental probleminHusserl's later philosophy, notwithstanding
the inconclusiveness of his few and late texts on the Lebenswelt and
its historicity.12 Two things, however, are clear.
First, Husser! accepted historicity as a prtmordial phenomenon
that constituted even the matrix of philosophical reflection. 'We must
engross ourselves in historical considerations if we are to be able to
understand ourselves as philosophers and understand what philosophy is to become through us."l 3 The theoretical ground of this
procedural directive had already been articulated in the Cartesian
Meditations: "the ego constitutes himself for htmself in, so to speak,
the unity of a 'history."'14
Second, Husser! was not by temperament inclined to convert the
acknowledgment of historicity into a doctrine of radical historicistic
finitude: "for the sake of time we must not sacrifice eternity." He
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TifE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
affirmed the possibility of an absolute moment, a moment of "perfect
Insight" (CES 71), "a critical over-view which brings to light, behind
the 'historical facts' of documented philosophical theories and their
apparent oppositions and parallels, a meaningful, final harmony''
(CES 73). Hegelian as it sounds at first, Husser! prefers to emphasize
the meantngfulness of trying to transcend the historical matrix over
actually doing so. Hence, he views philosophy as an "Infinite task"
(CES 72), though an Infinite task whose telos remains perfectly
Intelligible and entirely worthy of struggling to realize. His Englishspeaking counterpart in this respect was Peirce.
The problem bequeathed by the tandem conviction of historicity's
primordiality and philosophy's atemporal ideals is whether its two
parts can really constitute a unity. Husser! only began on such a
question, but his path from the hope of establishtng presuppositionless, i.e., perfectly clear, science to the perplexities of historical
relativlzation is a matter of observable record and makes my present
point. The phenomenological technique of "bracketing" or the epoche
is yet another version of the hypostasis of theoretical reason as well
as a self-conscious return, of course, to rational autonomy tn its strict
Cartesian form. Husserl's gambit is to do as much philosophical
analysis as possible within the structure of the immanently accessible
contents of consciousness, while not yet confronting the questions of
justification head on. As the origins of sophisticated eidetic structures
are chased down within the stream of internal time-consciousness to
the level of the Lebenswelt, they start to look less like atemporal
universals and more like the sedimentations of historical activity.
Husserl's ultimate problem is that an egocogitans bounded essentially
by temporality runs the risk of having the sedimentations withtn Its
consciousness reduced to noetic mud.
That both Husser! and Wittgenstein followed the logic of this
devolution testifies less to error than to philosophical conscientiousness. They followed with great consistency the implications of presuming order to be an Immanent possession of human consciousness. In
this regard, both have therefore contributed to the acute critical
awareness that marks the recent, self-conscious phase of philosophical historicism. Contemporary historicists have in various ways
latched onto language-games, forms of life, and the Lebenswelt in
order to help make sense of tnterim stability. History as the accumulation of cognitive practise becomes the court of appeal for justifYing
the rational procedures by which opinions are elaborated and evaluated. Cartesian universalism has disappeared, yet the assumption
that cognitive order arises originally from the projections of human
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107
Inventiveness remains, embodied In the hope of trying to discover
objectivity somewhere In the stories of Ingenuity's often unconscious
exercise.
History In this sense Is the last resort for Cartesian subjectivity
because the measure of certainty or the constructive mind's
self-transparence reaches a limit there. As a forum for the realization
of human Imagination, history remains certain to the extent that we
can know exactly what we have done. This Is more plausible In the
domain that is the history of our thoughts than It Is In the domain
that Is the Wstory of our deeds. Yet, to see with the same lucidity
beyond the traces of our noetic Ingenuity, to see beyond to why it
works, to what it might mean, to how it might be good, requires a level
of insight historicism declares Impossible.
IV
Descartes's original legacy was twofold: an Image of reason's potency and an ideal for its perfection. The devolution of Cartesian
subjectivity Is a tale of disillusionment with the latter, played out on
the stage of the former, a stsge contemporary philosophy has not yet
quit. Methodically achievable, ordered Insight Into all that is possible
to know has been given up as the vision of reason's telos, but human
reason as an independent, self-ruling, Inventive source of all possible
noetic order Is the abiding Cartesian legacy, a legacy that the success
of symbolic mathematics and the physics based on it gives no lnunediate reason to suspect of counterfeit.
Reason's primary mode is busyness in the work-shop of its own
bright ideas, figuring out possibilities. Those constructions are, in
turn, supposed to be fully Intelligible in themselves. Moreover, the
activity producing them Is held to be governed by laws, Intrinsic to
reason, yet no less legitimate as guides to knowledge of what is. This
amounts to a hypostatic self-involution that both frees the mind and
sets the task of supplementing its free-play with assurances as to the
possibility of cognitive achievement. Descartes's own confidence In his
sound-mindedness and ability to get outside the circle of his virtuosity
did not pass on to his epigones. Yet, so compelled have they been by
the Image of autonomous reason, they have remained within that
circle, terrorized by hyperbolic doubt and cleaving to the preferred
Immanence of consciousness's subjective clarity before itself. The Evil
Demon that so Interfered with Descartes's meditating mind has now
been reincarnated as radical historicity. It is the power that Interferes
with contemporary minds, differentiating them so completely as to
make any universal remainder impossible. But historicity in this sense
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is a ghost too, like "!he phantoms and empty images which appear at
night in !he uncertain glimmer of a weak light" (The Search for Tiuth,
u 408).
At its most significant level, Cartesian subjectivity involves no
mysterious substances, no metaphysical commitments except !he
reality of self-conscious human souls seeking understanding. It is a
self-effected abstraction and a wholly understandable one. All lheoretical stances must be abstract because reflection is not life, and all
lheoretical stances are understandable as attempts to see !he good of
lhings, life included, whole and clear. Cartesian subjectivity is a
lheoretical stance distinguished by the emphasis it places on !he
clarity characteristic of symbolic mathematics, an emphasis !hat
readily, !hough not necessarily, generates !he hypostasis of theorizing
and !he ideal of complete rational autonomy.
This emphasis is intrinsically unstable, for !he clarity of even the
symbolic domain is not a perfect guide to fully justified knowledge, not
even to malhematics, let alone metaphysics. Malhematical clarity has
origins necessarily obscure to !he symbolic imagination or, in other
words, less is available to certification by !he lwnen naturale !han
modem philosophers have been prone to fancy. The imperiousness of
clarity in !he sense of exact identification as a standard for knowledge
is reflected in various attempts, driven by a sense of !he lacuna just
mentioned, to reduce all definitions in malhematics to convention and
all axiomatics to purely formal systems. But no such reduction can
be total. This factis very nicely revealed by !he limitative results of !he
GOdel incompleteness proofs and !he Lowenheim-Skolem lheorem.
There is no formalization of !he satisfaction relation. The interpretation of structure is not effected by more structure.
The misplaced hope of somehow managing a complete reduction to
what !he mind can exactly specify inevitably leads to deforming !he
critical question of justification towards letting a phenomenology of
rational procedure suffice. Hence all !he contemporary discussion of
rationality, so often at !he expense of trulh. But !his is to neglect !he
question of how warrants are warrants of knowledge, of why being
rational guarantees noetic success. Whatever else it does, Kantian
critique at least reveals !he philosophical sense and necessity of such
questions. Nolhing practical hinges on !heir neglect, but !hey are an
intrinsic part of !hat "most difficult of all reason's tasks, namely
self-knowledge" (A xi).
Descartes was a pWlosophical hero in the eternal battle against !he
twin evils of self-satisfied dogmatism and skeptical despair. For !hat
he is to be honored. Unfortunately, the establishment of Cartesian
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109
subjectivity sets us up for philosophical paranoia, for being tempted
to set aside nous and to seek perfect reasonableness in the exactitude
with which we can certify the contents of our minds as Its contents.
There Is rationality within the circle of ideas to be sure; it simply Is
not whole. The attempt to make It do for the whole ofbelng reasonable
becomes canonized in the Kantian project of critique, but this strategy
soon begins to fall apart under the creeping realization that purely
autonomous human reason operates by no parameters that can
responsibly be regardedfas at once proper to It yet, at the same time,
universal. Once Ingenuity cleverly undoes the supposed necessity of
Cartesian method and the Kantian transcendental apparatus, It Is not
long before it begins to seem that there Is no choice but to make do
with the less than methodical ways by which we happen to rule our
minds, with the less than necessary history that has shaped up our
ability to construe experience.
Historicists take the devolution of Cartesian subjectivity to be a
revelation of reason's wholesale and Inevitable Inadequacy to first
principles. On the other hand, those whom Socrates called the "friends
of the forms" take that same history to be a reductio ad abswdwn of
the original hypostasis whereby thinking became a kind of self-Involved
making. According to the Socratic-Platonic view, once we take serious
aim at giving a lngos there is a sense In which our minds are no longer
our own.
,., * * * *
Notes
l. Those familiar with David Lachterman's work will recognize that my
proposed topic elaborates one of the themes raised by "Descartes and
the Philosophy of History," IndependentJownal ofPhllosophy 4 (1983);
31-46
2. Although historicism has several distinguishable meanings, for the
purposes of this essay I confine myself to the specifically philosophical
form that has emerged in the last few decades or so. Philosophical
historicists include Hans-Georg Gadamer, Richard Rorty, Michel
Foucault, and Alasdair Macintyre. Quentin Skinner, Charles Taylor,
Hilary Putnam, Bernard Williams, and Joseph Margolis might also be
mentioned as favoring kindred views. For a careful account of
historicism's several senses, see chapter one, "From the Logic of
History to the Historicity of Reason," in my Philosophical Historlctsm
and the Betrayal of First Philosophy (Penn State Press, forthcoming).
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
3. A selection of Descartes's Olympica are avallable in John Cottingham,
Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Th.e Philosophical Writings of
Descartes, 2 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversUy Press, I985), pp.
4-5. The Olympica ostensibly have a rhapsodic, enthusiastic quality.
For an account of their rationalist subtext see Richard Kennington,
"Descartes' 'Olympica,"' SocialResearch28 (I961): I7I-204.
4. The relationship between modernity and philosophical interpretations
of mathematical understanding is a large and fascinating story to
which I have barely alluded here. Indispensable texts for the study of
this question include: Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing? tr. W. B.
Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch (Lanham: University Press of America,
I985 [1967]); Edmund Husser!, Th.e Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomerwlogy: An Introduction to Phenomenological
Philosophy, tr. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
I970); Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra, tr. Eva Brann (Cambridge: MIT Press, I968), and Jacob Klein:
Lecture and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman
(Annapolis: St. John's College Press, I985); David Lachterman, The
Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity (New York: Routledge,
I989).
5. Dennis L. Sepper, "Descartes and the Eclipse of the Imagination,"
Journal of the History ofPhUosophy 27 (1989), 379-403, and "Imagination, Phantasms, and the Making of Hobbesian and Cartesian Science,"
TheMonlst71 (1988): 526-47; W:ronique F6ti, "The Cartesian Imagination," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (1986), 63I-42;
Stanley Rosen, "A Central Ambiguity in Descartes," in Th.e Ancients
and Modems: Rethinking Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
I989), pp. 22-36.
6. The phrase "Cartesian Anxiety" was coined by Richard Bernsteta in
Beyond Objectivism and Relativism Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, I983).
7. Rene Descartes, Th.e Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I985).
8. Im1nanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New
York: St. Martin's Press, I965).
9. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 4th edition,
enlarged, tr. Richard Taft (Bloomtogton: Indiana University Press,
I990).
I 0. Friederich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator" in Untimely Meditations, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
I983), p. 140.
II. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition, tr. G.
E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, I958), p. 226. Henceforth PI.
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111
12. An extensive literature includes: David Carr, Interpreting Husser!:
CriticalandComparativeStudies [The Hague: Martlnus Nijhoff, 1987),
and Phenomerwlogy and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl's
Transcendental Phenomerwlogy (Evanston: Northwestern Universi1y
Press, 1974); Hwa Wol Jung, "'The Life-World, Historici1y, and Truth:
Reflections on Leo Strauss's encounter With Heidegger and Husser!,"
Jownal of the Brttish Society for Pherwmology no. 1, 9 (1978), 11-25;
James Morrison, "Husserl's 'Crisis': Reflections on the Relationship of
Philosophy and History," Philosophy and Phenomerwlogical Research
37 (1976-77); Hehnut Wagner, "Husser! and Historicism," Social Research39 (1972): 696-719; Paul Janssen, Geschichteundi..ebenswelt;
einBeitrag zar Dtskussion von Husserls Spiitwerk (Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1970); LudWig Langrebe, Phiirwmenologie iind Geschichte
(Giltersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1968), several essays from which are translated in The Pherwmerwlogy of Edmund Husser!, ed. Don Welton
(Ithaca: Cornell Universi1y Press, 1981); Paul Rlcoeur, Husser!: An
Analysis of His Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern Universi1y
Press, 1967); Aron GurWitsch, "'The Last Work of Edmund Husser!,"
Philosophy andPherwmerwlogicalResearch 16 (1955): 380-99.
13. Edmund Husser!, The Crtsis ofEuropean Sciences and Transcendental
Pherwmerwlogy: An Introduction to Phenomerwlogical Philosophy, tr.
David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern Universi1y Press, 1970), p. 391.
Henceforth CES.
14. Edmund Husser!, Cartesian Meditations, tr. Dorion Cairns ('Ibe
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 75.
15. Edmund Husser!, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," In Husser!:
Shorter Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston (Notre
Dame: Universi1y of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 193.
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Hegel on Time
I
Eva T. H. Brann
This note is written in memory of David Lachterman, who was an
alumnus-using the term in its fullest significance-of St. John's
College, Class of 1965, when I was a young tutor. He was In my classes
only In his junior year: In a preceptorial entitled 'The Fragments of
Parmenides and Heraclitus," and In the mathematics tutorial, where
texts are studied that would continue to preoccupy David, texts
pertaining to early modem mathematics and physics. Over his four
years In .Annapolis, we did, however, see each other continually and
for various purposes. He was editor of the student journal I advised,
we read together, and we discussed his annual essays. We continued
this friendship sporadically but persistently over all the places where
he spent his life.
An Inquiry into so crucial a question as that of time In Hegel's
system would have been welcomed by him, whether or not It told him
anything new. And he would have liked the fact that it was meant to
help students.
This paper on time in Hegel's texts Is conceived in three paris. •
I. I will begin with an exposition of the paragraphs on time in
Hegel's Philosophy ofNature (<Jl 257-61). The exposition Is meant to be
helpful to a reader new to this text. The first and central paragraph Is
very difficult; In fact Heidegger Intimates that It might have no
"demonstrable sense" (Being and Time <Jl 82a). Of course, no Hegelian
meaning is ever demonstrable. It can be followed out in thought as it
unrolls, but in a dialectical rather than a demonstrative mode. What
I mean Is that we can allow the concepts In question to develop their
Implications, but that when we participate In this spontaneous motion
we are not driving home an argumentative conclusion in which some
propositions entail others.
• I want to thank my colleague Peter Kalkavage for his cUscerning aitique of this paper.
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'!HE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
Consequently an exposition of a stretch of Hegelian dialectic will
employ less argument and more quotation, paraphrase, and illustration. In the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, of which the
Philosophy of Nature Is the second, middle part (1830, with later
additions from lecture notes by Hegel and students), Hegel usually
begins with a succtoct and purely conceptual text, which is then
sometimes expanded In Remarks and Additions. The best an explatoer
can do Is to choose key sentences, resay them to various ways, and
finally find an illustrative figure. It follows that the explanation might
be longer than Its text, though somewhat easier. But It will also be a
ktod of degradation of Hegel's endeavor, for It will re-present the
concept In figural garb, Imaginable schemata, and Intuitions, and
such representations (Vorstelhmgen, Enc. <J[ 3) are mis-representations. They are not what Hegel means, and the reader should see them
only to un-see, to think them. Representational thinking Is falsifYing
even in our case, the case of Nature, where the Idea, the cosmos of
thought, appears "as totultion" (AnschaUU11g, Enc. <J[ 244; last paragraph of the Logic). For Nature Is still the Concept, and to be intuition
Is not the same as to be intuited. Concepts are always to be conceived
(Koyre, p. 280).
Thne, It will turn out, Is a kind of intuiting, todeed the matrix of
all intuiting, but it is not therefore to be Intuited, that Is, looked at,
rather than thought out. The moving pictures that Hegel himself
suggests to Illustrate the emerging determinations of thought are only
concessions to our ordinarily representational minds, and our real
effort must be, as I said, to make these sensuous fixities evanesce,
leaving their conceptual life behind.
Nonetheless, in the realm of Nature concepts are somewhat more
legitimately Intuited than In Logic; at least the recovery of the concept
from the figure Is less wrenching. The broad reason is that In Nature.
the Idea gets away from itself and sets itself up for betog "looked at"
-an-geschaut
There is something very unclear In what I have just said. How do
we deal with the claim that to Nature the Idea is Intuition? When the
Idea of Logic turns itself into Nature, who Is left over to think Nature?
Of course, we, the readers, are left over. In studying the science of
logic and the philosophy of nature we ourselves are not, In that respect,
Concept and Nature but we are recapitulating their development. We
are asked to watch from the outside the birth of our thought, our world
and ourselves. Hence each moment of the development Is an autonomous activity and also our thinking. In the case of Nature, this dual
character means that we think about Nature conceptually while
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ll5
participating In Nature's lntuitivily. Thus we can at once think time
and illustrate that thought with our temporal experiences, both
physical and psychological.
There Is a less approachable difficulty, beyond the present exposition In scope: the turn of Logic to Nature. Through this turn thought
becomes spatial, and on the plausibility of the transition depends the
answer to the question of questions: How can thought contact the
extended world? If Hegel's transition is properly dialectical the great
mystery of the Idea become Nature, of the Incarnation, is solved. If,
on the other hand, the transition Is an abrupt leap Into a new realm,
from thought to non-thought, the old quandary stands. Hegel himself
seems to Intimate that there Is such a leap, that the Idea does not just
pas&-thoughtfully-into Life, but resolve&-willfully-to release Itself
freely out of Itself as Nature, Its image or "counterfeit" (Wiederschein,
Enc. 'JI 244; F1ndiay, p. 270). If the transition is indeed abrupt. then
· we have a problem that will show up mostlmmediately In the Hegelian
genesis of time: If nature Is abruptly the other of thought, where does
its conceptual motion come from? In particular how will utter otherness, Space, generate the primeval self, Time? But more of this below.
II. The second part of the paper will consist of a brief Inquiry Into
the reason why, within the System (the account of the developing
concept), time first appears In Nature, that is, In the Philosophy of
Nature, andwhereelseitmlghtbeexpectedtoappear-iniheEncyclopedia
or out of it. In particular I shall argue that Hegel's natural time, a
narrowly abstract concept, is not different from the much grander
Time of the last chapter, called "Absolute Knowledge," of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In an anticipatory word: Natural time, or Negativity
in Extension, is identifiable with phenomenological Time, or Spirit in
the World.
III. In the third part I shall, ftoally, attempt a brief critique of two
readings of Hegel's passage on time that are given in two books: Martin
Heidegger's Being and Time (1927, 'JI 82) and Alexandre Kojeve's
Introduction to a Reading ofHegel(Eighth Lecture, 1938-39). Heidegger
criticises Hegel as standing in the "vulgar" tradition that interprets
time as an aggregate of nows. Kojeve praises Hegel because his
primary temporal phase is the future. I shall argue that, to begin with,
Hegel does not understand time from the aspect of its phases at all,
but that, if any phase is primary, it is the past of psychological time
set out in the Philosophy ofMind ('ll 450 ff.)
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
I. Time in Nature
Logic presents the development of the Idea, or the concept-world,
In Itself, in Its own element, in thought. Nature is the same Idea in the
form of Its own Other, or Other-being (Anderssein). It is the idea as a
negative of itself(<][ 24 7). As David Lachterman puts It, the Idea "begins
[its career in the sciences of the real] by exfoliating Itself into external
Nature" (p. 154).
There seem to be tw:o moments in the Otherness of Nature. First
it is simply thought negated, non-thought. And then, more determinately, it is externality, outsideness. The Idea outside Itself Is not
another Idea negatively signed, the non-A of the A, but a true Other.
For just as the Idea in Itself expresses its self-involvement in conceptuality, so this Idea for itself-the Idea in a confronting modeexpresses its alienation from Itself as self-externality. But the Idea that
is external to Itself is in itself external; it has a new feature: spatiality.
<][ 254. The common name for abstract self-externality is Space.
Hence the Philosophy ofNature begins with space. Ideal or mere space
Is the first determination of nature as "the abstract generality of its
being outside Itself," its "immediate indifference." As such Space is
continuous; no parts are missing and none are discernible; thought
has no foothold yet. What is being conceptualized is the traditional
understanding of space as "parts outside parts," or continuous extension.
What is all-important here is that space precedes time in thought.
Space is the absolutely least mediated (which means least thoughtdeveloped) appearance of nature. Hence space antecedes both world
and soul. It is neither a receptacle for matter (Tlmaeus) nor a form of
human sensibility (Critique of Pure Reason), but a dialectical beginning: thought gone outside Itself as the thought of outsideness. (In
Hegel's earliest philosophy of nature, Jena 1803-4, time precedes
space, Harris, p.244. The Jena systems are not taken into account
here.)
<][ 255. Space has internal differences, indifferent, qualityless
differences-the three directional dimensions. They remain in space
and are intrinsically indistinguishable from it, and from each other.
<][ 256. But it develops also qualitative differences, its own negation,
the same dimensions as generative of volume. The negation of space
is a point. For the point is not space, not extended or continuous. Yet
as the negation of space It remains spatial. Thus It cancels Itself and
In getting away from itself it becomes a line. A line is the extensivity
or spatiality of the point. And thus on to the ideal volume, a delimited
part of space (<][ 25 7).
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117
******
Now enters time. Time is once and for all a dialectical second. It Is
the negation of space and therefore forever space-related. Or, more
purely, more conceptually, spoken: Time is the first mediation of
outsideness.
In view of the Importance of the dialectical order, !tis useful to set
out the dialectical framework of the Philosophy of Natw'e. It Is, of
course, a major triad of moments: Mechanics, Physics, Organics.
Mechanics, the moment in which time appears, is nature as implicit.
Here externality Is merely ideal; nature Is apart or asunder without
any explicit unity ofform. Here space develops time, and both together
place. At this stage arise motion and then matter. (Note, once again,
the order.) The eventuation of matter Is the dialectical passage into
reality, and It Is somewhat like that of Concept to Nature: "inconceivable for [undialectical] understanding" ('l[ 261). In any case, It Is
outside my present scope.
'l[ 257. The point that, as related to space, developed into volume
also appears as Itself indifferent, that Is, unrelated to the quiescent
next-to-one-anotherness of space. It marks Itself off: 'Thus posited for
Itself, Itis time" (die Zeit). Note well: not a point of time, but Time itself,
not a now in time, but a principle of time. That the point Is "posited"
''for Itself means only that, In the usual dialectical movement, It
becomes thought-determined (or mediated) as an other. But because
the point negates the indifference ofspace in the sphere of self-externality,
It leaves space, In Its inert side-by-sideness by the way. Thus arises
time as distinct from space, as the other of space.
'l[ 257, Addition. Space Is mere quantity: All Its parts, even the
termini, subsist-have only relative being-on the same footing. That
Is its defect. Its negativity Is Ineffective since It keeps falling indifferently apart: ''Time is precisely the existence of tWs .perpetual
self-cancellation." Here "difference has stepped out of space"; the
point has actuality. Whereas In space, which is externality through
and through, difference is always attached to the other, time Is the
"negation of negation," the "self-relating negation." It negates the
indifferent negations of space and therefore becomes actually distinct
from space. Space Is "paralysed"; time is difference In Its living unrest.
These are the dialectical terms regarding time In nature. What is
meant?
Let us recall briellywhatnegativity is. It Is the Inner life of concepts,
their motion, through which concepts determine themselves by reachIng beyond themselves to their negative. What makes dialectic selfgenerating Is that conceptual thought spontaneously out-thinks Itself,
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
goes beyond itself. Indeed, the German word for concept says as much,
for Begrijffirst meant "periphety," and an encirclement determines
inside and outside almost simultaneously.
Hegel says clearly that space itself goes outside itself to make the
transition to time; the transition is not made subjectively by us. That
transition is logically primeval in the sense that it has occurred in
thought before we came on the scene. We must therefore think the
beginning of our habitation before even in thought it has developed
subjective thinking. We··must think through space to time, not from
its outside but from its inside. Hegel's formula for this development
from space to time as we follow it is that "the truth of space is time."
Truth for us is what is not immediately known but has been thought
through; truth in the concept itself is what it eventually returns to
after having been driven by its own life beyond itself. in thinking space
through in its own terms we must refrain from "pictorial thtnklng,"
from representing a model of space to which we then also add the
dimension of time: "Philosophy fights against this 'also."' But I think
we cannot help using some representation.
Imagine then, the life of a point In space. It rejects the indifferent
difference that It possessed as a part of the paralytic continuum and
raises itself out of space. For it Insists on its own qualitative negativity
and so It overcomes or negates Its indifferent spatiality. I propose that
the meantng for us of this formal event Is: Space develops glimmers
of consciousness. For us to thtnk of space means to represent to
ourselves a wide field In which, willy-nilly, some location holds our
attention. But our attention wanders, from this point here to that point
there. 'Time is spacing" (Derrida, p.43). By that "here-there-there"
space calls forth time. It Is, one might say, the space-point's capability
of being attended to. Space attended-to generates, or more radically,
is time. This representation of the relation of time to space is humanly
plausible, I think. But what happens when we are out of the picture,
when there Is no one to do the attending? I thtnk we must, by hook
or crook, picture the same situation minus the observer. Now space
localizes Itself, points pick themselves out 'and up: "Time lifts up
space," as Derrida puts It (p.43); relever, "tore-lift," Is his translation
of Hegelian aujheben,literally "to lift up," as well as "to save" and "to
cancel." Space, although it is the other of thought, is enough of a
relative to thought to wish to come to life, to differentiate itself. And
space actively differentiated Is certatnly unthinkable without time, if
time is understood as the differentiation of difference, or variability in
extension.
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119
But how to grasp the notion that this activated space is time? Well
what else would It be? Whence would time be added? Time Is nothing
but space beginning to come alive, becoming self-conscious as it goes
forth on the road of recollecting Itself out ofits alienation from thought.
Wby space becomes time through its points, why time is to be
conceived as the punctuation of space, was one question. Another
might be: Which point is time? This point, that point, any and all
points? Hegel says in a general singular: "Negativity, as point, relates
itself to space" (<Jl257). Eventually time must, no doubt, acquire "the
points of time," the nows. But, I think, the general point of space In
which time originates is not a now or a here, not a here-and-now. It
Is the abstract principle of time. Hence even the picture without
persons was misleading: Even in Its own terms, space Is not yet
punctuated but has only developed to the point of being capable of
punctuality; it is in principle punctual.
<Jl 258. Space sprawls while time is "the negative unity of
self-externality." Space, whose parts are each outside its indistinguishable other, has developed an opposing unifying principle. Wbat,
next, Is meant by unified different difference In the most abstract,
formal sense? It Is becoming, In which being and Its own not-being
are transiently at one. In becoming, differences are ever self-canceling.
Here we are asked to recognize the formal identity of time and
becoming. This becoming is not, however, the mere logical category of
Becoming, the unity of Being and Nothing (Logic <Jl 88). Becoming In
externality Is directly intuited: angeschaut. looked at. Here we are
certainly asked to think of time in a Kantian mode, from the point of
view of a cognizing subject: Time is adumbrated as becoming in the
Intuitional mode of representation, of Vorstelhmg (Philosophy ofMind
<Jl 446 If.). Time, one might say, Is the as yet unfulfilled condition of
having something placed innnedlately before us, an unfilled form of
sensibility.
<Jl 258 Remark. As Hegel puts it, "Time, like space, is a pure form
of sense or intuition," "the non-sensuous sensuous." But whereas
space Is confronted as an object, time is abstract subjectivity, in
principle the same as pure self-consciousness. It Is the I, I, I, the
monotonous continuum of mere self-awareness. Because of the abstractness, time is, for all its punctuality,like space, continuous. Thus
begins, so to speak, the corning-to ofNature-rightaway,ln the second
dialectical phase.
How did we get from time as becoming-in-space to time as
self-consciousness? Their formal principle is identical, that of double
negativity or self-negation. But this identification can also be made
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Intuitive by an exercise of abstraction: Take from self-awareness all
that is diversified and inward and you are left with something pure
and external. One might call that product of negative intuiting an
external subjectiv11y. As Hegel puts It: "pure being-witbln-self as sheer
coming-out-of-self."
It Is useful to point out here that the human subject is, in fact,
described in terms identical to the "external subject," time, namely in
the Aesthetics (Third Part, Third Section, Second Chapter, lc, p. 277).
The subjective inwardness of a listener-the topic is music-Is there
charged with doing exactly what the point did in nature: It "eradicates
the indifferent side-by-sidedness of the spatial and draws its continuity together into a point of time." In this psychic context that point is
the now. Later In the chapter (2a, p. 283) time is the negative
externality; "as canceled asunderness, [it Is[ the punctual, and as
negative activity [I tis] the canceling of this point of time for another ..."
Here, in the psychic realm, Hegel Insists on two simultaneous
negations: The point eradicates the indifference of extended space by
concentrating It into a time-point. But It also negates Itself as this now
in favor of the next now. In nature, however, the flux of nows Is
derivative from the first negating activity.
The danger in trying to get at time through abstractive intuition is
the false representation of time as a container in which things come
to pass and to pass away. Not so: "Time Itself is the becoming, ... the
actually existent abstraction." The real that fills time Is, of course, in
a sense distinct from time but it is also identical. For like time It lives
in the element of self-externality. It is limited, and so negated by an
other: 'The abstraction of this externality and unrest of its contradiction is time Itself."
Note that whereas In<][ 257 the self-negativity or thought-likeness
of time was emphasized, In the Remark on <][ 258, Its still strong
space-likeness is brought out.
Here, by way of contrast, Hegel enters the eternal Concept or Idea,
which is outside the power of time. Or rather, it Is beyond the restless
Imperfection of time. The Concept has this relation to time: It Is totally
what time Is prevented from being by Its birth In externality-negative
through and through, having completely brought all determinations
within. The Concept is neither an abstraction from time nor "out of'
time. Indeed !tis "out of' nothing but totally Inside Itself. Noris It after
time as a futurity.
Eternity and Nature are more extendedly considered in <][ 247,
Addition. The most illuminating sentence says that Nature Is essentially related to a Ftrst, and that First is the Idea or concept-world. For
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121
Nature Is the Idea in the form of the Other. Hence Nature Is not
eternal-temporal as a Standing Now, though It Is temporally Infinite,
and It is not eternal-uncreated for it has its own "before."
'I[ 258, Addition. Hegel reiterates that time is not a something or a
power, but only the "abstraction of destruction." It is not because they
are In time that things perish; time is their perishableness. He gives
an Ironic account ofthe now: It has a tremendous right-that of being
nothing individual. But of course it Is not universal either. It "struts"
momentarily and "falls Into dust. "The universal of the now is duration.
In duration the now-process is canceled, and what Is universal, that
Is, identical in all the nows, prevails. But this extended status is only
relative. If everything stood still, even our imaginations, there would
be no time. However, things are finite and do change. The reference
to our representational faculty, Intuitive mind, will reveal its significance In Part II of the paper.
Hegel returns to eternity. Eternity Is not the universal now of
duration but absolute Presence. It is not duration in extension but,
so to speak, duration "reflected Into self' or self-collected, when all
process has come to completion and Its phases are fully present.
Two beings are out of time: the best and the worst. The worst is
relatively out of time. It endures. Such is space and the now, universal
duration itself, for these are too abstract to live. Such also Is Inorganic
nature and static ari, like the pyramids. The best is out of time In
truth: the Idea, Spirit. These transcend time because they are themselves the Idea-the First-of time. In the world the truly alive, an
Achilles, an Alexander, die: only the mediocre endure.
In this Addition Hegel chooses to speak of time as destruction, as
Chronos devouring his children. But it is the destructiveness of life,
negativity at work. It is therefore identical with fruition. To pass away
In time Is to have lived out the Concept.
'I[ 259. Hegel finally comes to the phases of time, which are the
dimensions of present, future, past. He connects them formally to the
moments of becoming. They are "the becoming of externality as such,"
meaning that we are to conceive how externality, being what It is,
becomes temporal, namely in terms of becoming. Recall that In formal
Becoming, Being passes over-logically-into Nothing (and Nothing
reciprocally into Being). Hegel deliberately determines at first only the
Now and leaves the other phases for the Addendum.
In this passing Into each other the different moments vanish "into
a singularity," and this is the Now. It is exclusive of these moments
and yet continuous with them; Indeed it is nothing but their vanishing
Into each other. What this means Is that Becoming, In being tempo-
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ralized, or better, externalized, begins by collapsing its two logical
moments into one: the Now both is and is not; it is separably formed
yet belongs to the universal Now. It is a singularity because it is an
individual differentiated from Its universal, but an unstable one
because of its evanescent, dual nature.
<[ 259, Remark. This Now has affirmative being insofar as it is
distinguished from the negative moments of past and future. In
nature, ''where time is a Now," the other two dimensions do not
properly exist. Insofar as they do, they are space, for space is negated
time, as conversely, time was negated space. In other words, time gone
and time to come In nature mean having left or having not yet arrived
somewhere. We are coming close to the concept of place and motion.
It is only for the soul, for the subjective representational mind referred
to above, that the dimensions exist in their difference: In remembrance
and in expectation.
Hegel now launches Into an attack on mathematics similar to the
one in the Preface to the Phenomenology ofSpirit. The point is to show
why time, the moving externality, has no extensive science, though
space, the paralyzed externality, does. The reason is, of course,
precisely that space has three-dimensional configurations which hold
still. Time, when similarly paralyzed by the understanding, is reduced
to the repeating unit, to arithmetic.
<[ 259, Addition. The other two dimensions arise when the unity of
becoming is seen under two opposite aspects. Ifbelng is the foundation
and non-being secondary, we have passing-away, or rather "passedaway," "in Hades," Past. The past has been actual, as history or nature,
but It is posited under the category of non-being. For the Future the
reverse holds: "Non-being is the first determinant while being Is later,
though of course not In time." From this point of view the present as
middle term Is the Indifferent unity of the preponderant moments of
past and future: It Is, because the past is not, and It Is not, because
the future is. The present Is an indtfferent unity because In It neither
being nor non-being is the determinant, and it Is a negative unity
because it lives by the no-longer and not-yet of the other phases.
The determination of the phases completes the positing of the
content of the concept of time for Intuition, namely as real becoming,
or becoming-In-externality.
********
Space was what is often called the thesis of the mechanical triad,
and time the antithesis. The reunion of both, their synthesis, finally
yields what the point rising out of space had only adumbrated: The
�123
BRANN
here-and-now, space-time, or Place-and right away, with only a
momentary lag, Motion and then Matter, the real filling of space.
'll 260. The dialectical moments so far are these: Space in its
indifferent asunderness was the concept of Otherness in itself or
Implicitly. Time was its truth, the same concept thoughtjoritself. Now
time collapses back Into space because the unity of the negated point
does not hold. For as becoming it is constituted of opposing moments
that cancel each other. The point cannot maintain Its exclusive
negativity and finds ltselfback in space, so to speak. But tWs returned
point is now posited, that is, thought through and made explicit. It is
at once in and for itself. It is a point that much the richer in
determinations or, as Hegel says, concrete. This concrete space-time
point Is Place (Ort).
'll 260, Addition. The exposition of the concept of duration as nearchangeless time already presaged the collapse. For time, In the
absence of change, Is not concentrated somewhere in space but is
indifferently everywhere and nowhere, and that indifference Is just
space. The point becomes, as we saw, universal. It Is always but also
everywhere Now.
'll 261. Place Is the slngularlzation or individualization of the
durational universal. Place Is the posited identity of space and time.
If you think it through, to be now is to be here and to be here is to be
now. But this Identity is also contradictory: Insofar as place Is a
singular here It is so only as a spatial now. Hence the spatiality of
Place is indifferent, and external to it: "Place is simply the universal
Here" (Addition). Any particular place negates itself and might as well
be another place. ''This vanishing and self-regeneration of space in
time and time in space .. .ls Motion." Humanly understood, the intuiting
mind turns every point of attention into a place, but no abstract place
offers a way to hold the attention, so that the indifferent here is
immediately turned into a passing now. Place Is the reciprocal relation
of space and time, and that is just what motion is: Now here, Now
there.
'll 261, Addition. The essence of motion is "to be the Immediate unity
of Space and Time," such that time now has real existence In a space
truly differentiated by it. In motion, time and space first become
actual; this means that what they are in concept and what they are
in appearance coincide. In motion we first legitimately intuit the time
and space we have previously only conceived. Nature is beginning to
be animate: ''Time is the purely formal soul of Nature .. ,"
********
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Here ends the exposition of time in nature. If time, as the abstract
principle of life in space, is the formal soul of Nature, we might expect
It to reappear in the subjective soul of Mind. And so It does.
II. Time in Soul and World
The next project after the exposition of time In nature Is to figure
out whether the time that occurs in other contexts-either within the
System developed in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences or
without, especially in the Phenomenology of Spirit-is the same as or
different from the time of Nature. The question arises because on the
face of It they certainly sound different: "Time [is] the negative unity
of self-externality" (Philosophy ofNature)-''Time ... Is the existent Concept itself' (Phenomenology ofSpiri(j. I will argue that time is one and
the same in all of Hegel's thematic passages, though the dialectical
stages are different. The possible value ofthis inquiry cannot, however,
be in the claim itself, which is apt to meet little resistance, but it is
merely in the descriptive comparison offered.
Where does time appear In the Encyclopedia? Not in its first part,
the Science ofLogic. For there the Concept is developed as it is In itself,
immediately. That is not to say that the Logic is not full of mediation.
Indeed, it belongs to the course of the dialectical development to unfold
every conceptual simplicity, to interpose thought between every category and itself, to make its truth explicit. But throughout the Logic the
Concept that is being drawn out stays nevertheless entirely in its own
element, the ideational realm. No thought of anything other than
thought is at horne here. Since time develops from space, and space
is the Other of thought, it stands to reason that time should not appear
in the Logic. Its ideal prototype, however, does appear: Becoming. And
it appears roughly in the Logic just where time enters in Nature-In
the very first dialectical triad. (In fact, Becoming in Logic Is its triad's
third stage, whereas time in Nature is the second stage of its triad.
However, Hegel calls time the truth of space, and the moment of truth
is usually the third.)
It is a useful thought-exercise to consider, staying within speculative philosophy, what might be the alternatives to Hegel's development. (By staying within speculative philosophy I mean to exclude
views like Heidegger's, where human temporal existence rather than
ideal being stands at the beginning of the philosophical analysis.)
The chief dialectical alternative would seem to be to put Otherness
right within the idea-world as an arche, a ruling principle. Then time
becomes a mere epiphenomenon of change in the phenomenal world,
which change is the reflection of the activity of Otherness in the ideal
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125
world. This Platonic way, set out in the Sophist, has the following chief
consequence. Since Otherness I~ not one idea alongside the others,
but is by its nature dispersed through them all (254 If., 258d), it has
no dialectical progression to be mirrored in the phenomenal world; it
has no history. Consequently phenomenal time, natural or human, is
non-directed and unhistorical There is neither the bad infmity of
mathematical linear time, nor good infinity, the fulfillment of time in
history by the negation of every finitude. When Otherness is an arche
in the ideal world, there willbe no rational temporality either progressive
or just linear-only cyclical returns. That is one way to see why it is
importsnt that Time as a principle of Otherness be absent from the
Logic.
We have seen that time makes its appearance in the very first triad
of the Philosophy of Nature; it is Hegel's main thematic passage on
time, for here time begins. It appears right after space. The secondness
of time is its second most important feature: Time is space, while space
is the alienated concept, non-thought. The most importsnt feature is
that time is the first appearance of negativity in Nature, the first
glimmer oflife-in-the-world. So Nature is, abnost from the beginning,
temporal, dialectically alive, though in a spiritless way. Hence it can
work itself up to organic nature, to the living body ready to receive its
cognizing soul.
The third part of the System set out in the Encyclopedia is the
Philosophy of Mind (better, Spirit: Geist). In Nature, the Concept had
reached its perfected external objectivity (<Jl 381). Now Spirit comes
into being as the truth of Nature; Nature is the presupposition which
has disappeared into Spirit. In Spirit the Concept outside itself as
Nature returns for a reunion with itself. Spirit appears first as simple
immaterial nature: the Soul ('![ 388). One might say that it is a first
subjectivity, still close to nature. In Hegelian dialectic .the major
junctures always connect and separate what is closest and farthest.
Thus the subjective soul is most opposite to animate nature and yet
very close to it.
When does time enter the sphere of subjectivity? If we search, in
a perfectly mechanical way, for the dialectical analogue to Nature we
find a disquisition on the soul in its physical alterations and on the
natural ages of man ("Anthropology: the Natural Soul: Physical Alter·
ations," '![ 396). In the next phase, "The Feeling Soul,"we find not time
but an apology for its absence: Time arises with recollection, and
recollection requires self-consciousness. For without a consciousness
of self, the individual is a deep featureless mine, a treasury in which
memories "are stored without existing" ('![ 403).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Time comes Into its own as subjective human time with the
development of "recollection." The German word is, felicitously,
Erirmerung, "lnwardization" (<J[ 452). We are still within "Subjective
Spirit," the first moment of the triad comprising the Philosophy of
Spfrtt.
Here Is how time, the external subjectivity of nature, becomes
Inwardly, mentally, subjective: Memory swallows, so to speak, original
intuitions, that is, sense Impressions, with their space and time
attached. We remember'objects and events as somewhere and somewhen. How we hold natural time within is a problem treated most
notably by Augustine and Husser! (Confessions, Bk. XI, Chs. xxvl! ff.:
The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Section Two). It
is a problem that Hegel does not broach.
The attachment of the internalized intuition to external space and
time is, in any case, only a passing moment. The time- and spacebound picture, the photographic Impression, is only a brief first step
(<j[ 455).
"Intelligence" is Hegel's name for cognizing Spirit. Here we might
adopt one usual translation for Spirit-Mind-which happens to be
most applicable for this stage, the stage of representational cognition.
Intelligence Imposes its own space and time. Or, better, in absorbing
Intuitions it attends to them, recollects them, and in so attending, it
becomes their place, their space-and-time. The pictures of memory
adopt the subject's time, and their existence is In it, whatever their
external time may have been. Succinctly: the attending intelligence is
the Inner space and time of intuitions (<J[ 453).
Consequently the Intuitions of memory become contextless and
Isolated. The original intuitions were bound to natural time and place,
but their memory can be formed anywhere at any time. Moreover,
intelligence can forget, relegate wholly to the past, what it deems
unworthy and also fix In memory what It chooses for survival. Of
course, It pays for the Imperishableness of its memory-intuitions by
a loss of clarity and freshness. The time of intelligence, Hegel observes,
is the opposite of natural time in this. that the richness of original
Intuitions abbreviates their external time for the subject, while the
richness of Images expands their Internal time.
Recollection ("lnwardization") proper occurs when a picture is
referred to an intuition, such that several particular intuitions are
subsumed under one picture as a sort of universal. This reference
permits intelligence to recognize feelings and Intuitions "as already its
own" (<J[ 454). Here arises the Now and the Past for a subject. For. cued
by an externally present Intuition, the recollected Intuition is confirmed
�BRANN
127
as having had existence. And the synthesis of this intuition recollected
as exlslentwith the present internal image is a re-presen111.tion properan inner presence reconfirmed as existent, an internal presence.
Of course, each such recognition also confirms the depth, the dark
pit, where the past lives ('li 454). Recall that in natural time the
temporal phases remain formal and do not reach existence ('li 259,
Remark). That existence has now been supplied to the past through
the recollection of the subject.
It can hardly be said that subjective time has been either essentially
defined or dialectically dertved. At best we can say that in the System
it makes its appearance just where it should.
Hegel does distinguish subjective time from external time by one
word: !tis universal. Instead of the abstract linearity and particularity,
the ever-collapstng here-and-now to which natural time tends, the
time of the mtnd holds its moments together. Each tnternalized
intuition is, as a picture, liberated from its temporal particularity and
able to serve as a universal, a recollectible reference. Perhaps we might
say-though Hegel does not-that subjective time is representational
mind, the power to bring and keep memory pictures before itself as
quondam intuition.
The dialectical connection with natural time would be as follows.
In the Philosophy of Nature time was expounded as "a pure form of
sense or tn tuition ('li 258)." It is the most rudimentary case of a selfthe self-distinguished potnt-confronting an external object. Thus it
is recognizably the primitive prototype of the intuition that starts mtnd
on the way to cognitive representation. That later tntuition has,
tnstead of ideal externality, a space-time that is sense-ffiled.
For tn the Philosophy of Mind intelligence begtns by deftntng the
immediate contents of its feelings as outside itself and projecting them
into external space and time, the two forms tn which the mind becomes
intuitive (anschauend). In mere intuition we are outside of ourselves
in the two forms of asunderness ('li 450). It is the "tnwardization" of
these forms that yields, as was said, recollection ('li 451). In capturing
Nature, the Spirit internalizes time and negates the externality that
space-born time could not escape in nature.
The passage in the Aesthetics (p. 277) cited above corroborates the
connection, though it reverses the order of exposition. There inwardness, as the prospective subjective unity, the active negation of
indifferent next-to-one-another subsistence, Is for a moment abstractly empty, merely marking itself off from the object. But it
immediately cancels this abstract confrontation to produce itself as a
true subjective unity. Then come the crucial sentences: ''The same
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1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
ideal negative activity In its realm of externality is time." ''I is in time
and time is the being of the subject itself."
Dialectically, time has appeared as an abstract form in Nature, and
has been differentiated into objective and subjective time in Subjective
Mind. There remains the dialectic third (Logic 'li 163), the individualization of time. We might expect to find it in Objective Mind or Spirit
proper. And so we will, as History ('li 548-49). In history subjective
mind enters the world; it becomes world-mind, and its time worldtime, explicit but not merely extended, in the intuitable world but not
merely external. However, the exposition is spare.
We find more in Reason in History ('The Progression of World
History"): "It is in accordance with the Concept of Spirit, that the
development of history falls into time" (p. 153). For the connection that
events which we see as positive have to non-being, to the possibility
that their opposite might be-that is time. Time is the abstractly
sensual, which means that it is both for thought and for intuition. So
both conceivable and visible change are time. Change in nature Is a
-sometimes cyclical-monotony; change in Spirit is always a progress
since the Concept itself develops. But the higher figures of the Spirit
are produced by the reworking of the lower figures, which then cease
to exit. It is through time that this conceptual sequence appears.
"World-history is thus in general the display or exposition (Auslegung)
of the Spirit in time, as In space Nature displays itself' (p. 154).
It might seem that Hegel has here forgotten that the same negating
form of sense was already active in Nature (cf. Kojeve, p. 133). What
Is missing in Nature, though, is the part of memory that makes the
science of History possible. Nature Is capable of repetition
(Wiederholung) but not of recollection. In that sense time leaves space
behind.
I think that the stasis of nature in which the individual changes,
but never the species, would have been maintained by Hegel even In
the face of an established theory of evolution, since he regards long
duration as equivalent to stasis ('li 258, Addition; but see Findlay, p.
274; Kojeve, p. 146).
And as time was the subjective mind in Its phase so Time is the
Spirit tn its phase. Time and thought are the same negativity: 'Thne
is the corrosiveness of the negative, but Spirit is itself in the same case
-it too dissolves all determinate content" (p. 178).
The book tn which this Identification of Time and Spirit Is made tn
all its grandeur, most starkly and insistently, is the Phenomenology of
Spirit. The reader meets it first in a passage quoted above from the
Preface: "As for time .. .it is the existing Concept itself' ('li 46). Here it
�BRANN
129
Irrupts into the text out of context, so that a certain commentator, to
whom nescience Is second nature, takes It for a witticism.
The fuller, climactic passage comes from the last chapter, "Absolute Knowledge":
Time Is the concept Itself that Is there and which presents Itself to
consciousness as empty Intuition. For this reason Spirit necessarily
appears In Time, and It appears In Time just as long as it has not
grasped Its pure Concepr. that is, has not annulled Time. ('l[ 801}
Let me turn aside for a moment to the question: Why does time
make Its grandest appearance In a book that Is not strictly speaking
Inside the System that sets forth the development of the Concept? The
answer lies In the project of the Phenomenology, which is to tell the
story of the Concept from the point ofview of advancing consciousness
recollecting the moments of the Concept (Hyppolite, p. 7; Verene, p.
3). Now this recollection (Er-Innernng), mentioned on the last page of
the Phenomenology, Is a version, raised to the second power, of the
category familiar from the Phiiosophy ofMind, the one that generated
the past as an Intuitable phase of time. Within the System, as set out
In the Encyclopedia, time is sparsely and formally treated at the
beginning of the major phases and then goes underground. It is
absorbed into events as a merely formal motor of change. At the end
of the Phenomenology time Is again brought back to light and spoken
of humanly and dramatically. It Is not conceptually developed-"Time
is the Concept that is there" is not a dialectical exposition-but Instead
It is retrospectively presented. In this book the Concept itself and its
Intuitable motor, Time, is recollected, so that time Is viewed from Its
own beyond, from a point where all is Past. This grand Recollection is
an exaltation of the smaller recollective moment In the Phiiosophy of
Mind when human time came Into being. In short: In the Phenomenology time gains grandeur from the fact that it is thought as fulfilled
and thus ended, and it regains humanity from the fact that it is all
past, all for our Recollection.
It remains to state briefly what is said of time In "Absolute
Knowledge" and to show how even this Time Is formally and really
identical with the time of the System. Spirit, as the Concept-in-theworld, as self seeking itself in Nature, Is by its very meaning there,
outside In space, Intuitable: "It is [to begin with] the outer, Intuited,
pure Selfwhich is not grasped by the Self, the merely Intuited Concept"
('ll 801, adjoining the quotation above). Therefore Spirit is formally
identical with Time, "the Concept that Is there." Or, speaking figuratively, Spirit must appear In time. For recall that time was from way
�1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
130
back reflexive negativity at work on its own externality-dialectic
active in the element of otherness. Even at the end Hegel does not
forget that time, no matter how rich its determinations have become,
is, to begin with, pure intuited concept (<Jl80l).
Time must come to an end, namely when its negating activity has
mastered its own alienation: When the Concept "grasps itself it sets
aside its time-form." Time is therefore the destiny of the unfulfilled
Spirit, not as a destination before but as a direction within-toward
that complete self-recognition which is Science (<JI80l).
Here, too, Time is the "I=I" that it already was, abstractly and
rudimentarily, in Nature (Enc. <JI258, Remark). For "I=I" is the formula
of self-reflection (Pherwmenology <Jl803), which for the time-point was
called self-related negativity. This movement, whether of the abstract
point or the concrete Self, always means that a thought that has
denied itself has gone on to recognize itself in the denial. It follows that
such a self-superseding thought "has to be expressed as Time."
The burden of the last two pages of the Phenomenology (<Jl 807 -8)
regarding Time is this: The externallzation of the Spirit into an
intuitable Time-Self, its emptying itself into Time, is a self-negation.
Hence just as negating time conquered its space, so negating Spirit
now conquers its Time. Thus Spirit redeems the "sacrifice" implied in
its externalization, its Incarnation.
********
Is the Time of the Phenomenology the time of the Encyclopedia?
Heidegger answers this question incidentally but sufficiently during
his critique of Hegel's concept of time (Being and Time <Jl82b, p. 435).
Spirit can appear in time (or as Time) only on the basis of what
Heidegger considers an empty formalism: the identity of the formal
structure of Spirit and Time as negation of negation. That formalism,
recall, defmed time from its origin as the self-relating negativity of the
spatial point (Enc. <Jl257, Addition). Heidegger scorns the abstractness
of the conceptualization. But it Is this vety abstractness that allows
time toremaln self-identical through Its whole development. Moreover,
though abstract, the determination Is not empty. Negation of negation,
doubled negation, or self-related negativity-these are all terms for a
completed cycle of thought, a small token of achieved selfhood.
********
To recapitulate. Hegel views time under three formal aspects:
l. As dialectic motor: Under the aspect ofits dialectical activity
time is negated negation;
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131
2. As abstract Concept: Under the aspect of its formal determination It Is Intuited Becoming;
3. As eternal Idea: Under the aspect of its annulment, Itis absolute
Presence (Enc. 'l[ 258, Addition).
It Is also useful to tabulate the four contexts in which time Is
developed:
0. In Logic as abstract Becoming;
1. In Nature as externalized becoming;
2. In Subjective Mindras Internalized Intuition;
3. In Objective Spirlt as the Concept in the world.
Are these the aspects and contexts of one and the same Time?
Absolutely. It Is In the very nature of time as a force of negation that
it must appear differently In different phases. For It Is Itself change,
and Is changeless only under the aspect of eternity. Since It Is neither
receptacle, nor flux, nor substrate, nor measure, nor any other
accompaniment of events, since it Is nothing more or less than the
finitude, the Incomplete determinacy of things-for their temporality
Is their objective determination (Enc. 'l[ 258, Additlon)-tlme will
perforce participate In their variability. Indeed It is their variability.
And so it must appear under as many different guises as there are
categortes of change.
III. The Phases Emphasized by Heldegger and Kqjeve.
In accordance with their different agendas in reading Hegel,
Heidegger and Kojeve insist on different phases of time as prtmary in
the texts. The one brings forward, with disapproval, theNow; the other,
with approval, the Future. I shall trY to show why neither of these
emphases does Hegel justice.
A. The Now Is, according to Heldegger's exposition In Being and
Time ('ll 82a), the ground of Hegel's interpretation of time. Heidegger
Is eager to show that Hegel remains entirely within the "vulgar"
tradition started by Aristotle, In which time is understood as a linear
series ofleveled-out Nows.
To make this point, Heldegger seizes on the central understanding
of time as the negation of negation, particularly on its moment of origin
out of space, when the point negates the Indifference of space and
elevates itself Into time (Enc. 'l[ 257). Insofar as this argument has any
demonstrable sense, Heidegger says, It must mean that each point
posits Itself as a Now-Here, Now-Here, and so on.
Similarly his Interpretations of Hegel's second view of time as
Intuited becoming (Enc. 'll 258) Is that It reveals time as understood
prtmartly from the Now. For "becoming" means transition from being
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to nothing and from nothing to being. And "intuited" means notthought-out, simply presented to view. But the being of time Is the
Now, and the Now as always no longer Now can just as well be
conceived as non-being. So when these concepts are intuited In
extended nature, the two opposite moments of becoming appear
equally as Nows, and their extended succession as a mere Now-series.
At least that is what Heldegger seems to mean insofar as his argument
has any demonstrable sense.
Heldegger concludes by reinforcing his point from the passages
where Hegel speaks of the "enormous right of the Now" and where he
also refers to time as the "abstraction of consuming" (Enc. <J[ 258,
Addition). This last Is the "most radical formula for the vulgar experience of time." (See also Reason in History, p. 178, on devouring and
corroding time.)"
In rebuttal: Regarding the space-negating point, I have tried to
show that it does not jump out as a "here-and-now'' In the first
Instance, for it becomes a Now-here only afterwards, when it returns
Into space as place. The first dialectical motion yields only a phaseless
punctuality, a standing out from space that Is the mere possibility of
attracting attention.
Regarding "Intuited becoming," Heidegger begs the question, for
his exposition asswnes that the Now Is the being of time. What Hegel
actually says Is merely that time is the being which, insofar as it is, is
not and Insofar as It Is not, Is (Enc. <J[ 258). And that Is, formally,
Becoming. His analysis of temporal becoming is In fact such that the
Now is only the indifferent unity of non-being and being, the moment
of intuited becoming In which neither the one nor the other predominates. Heidegger has confused the phenomenal now with this dialectical moment. The dialectical Now is by no means primary. Moreover,
becoming cannot really be Intuited until there is reality, thatls, matter.
Up to that point It Is only the form of lntuitability. But once the real
enters, time vanishes Into things: 'Things themselves are the temporal" (Enc. <J[ 258, Addition). So there is not a trace of a linear Now-series
In the text. In fact, Hegel makes it clear that the point of time is not,
as are the points of space, amenable to homogenized serialization and
to meaningful quantification.
Regarding Hegel's ironic reference to the "enormous right" of the
Now that "struts Its stuff'' (spreizt sich auJl, he Is saying precisely that
the Now always bites the dust; it has no being.
In fact, Hegel does not, I have argued, originally construct time
from Its phases at all. He prepares them through primary Becoming,
which contains rudiments of past, present, future. But even on this
�BRANN
133
formal level the Now is secondary, for it is only the indifferent unity of
that Becoming, called coming-to-be, in which Being is the (logical)
starting point upon which Nothing supervenes with the reverse Becoming, called passing-away, in which Nothing (logically) precedes
Being. He does say that in Nature time is Now, but that phrase Is
merely meant to underscore the fact that the phases of time, past,
present, future, do not exist before there is subjective mind.
Finally, regarding the ''vulgar" notion of time as a devourer, It Is,
of course, only a figure for Spirit's eating out of the substance of the
world, its progressive resorption of Otherness. Hence the difference
between Hegel and Heidegger is surely not one between vulgarity and
originality. It concerns rather the relation of Spirit to Time and
Existence (Dasein). Heidegger says, correcting Hegel: "'Spirit' does not
first fall into time but exists as the primordial temporalizing of temporality" ('ll 83b, p. 436). (Hegel. it happens, had not said of Spirit that
it "falls" into time, but had used that phrase of the development of
history, Reason in History, p. 153.) For Hegel the Concept passes out
into Nature and then, through or as time, starts its slow return journey
-whose later stages it travels as Spirit-from being-there (Dasein) in
the world to being back with itself, canceling and also keeping Its
worldly existence in order to enter a new existence, a new world
(Phenomenology, last page). For Heidegger, on the other hand, not
thought but human existence is primary, and it comes to an end but
not to a consummation; for him the final negation is not a fulfillment.
That is the crux of their difference.
Derrida {1982) mounts a fundamental critique of Heidegger's
representation of Hegel's understanding of time as vulgar.
B. The Future is the primary phase of time in the Phenomenology
according to Kojeve in his Introduction to the Reading ojHegel (Eighth
Lecture; he was evidently inspired by Koyre's account of the Jena
systems, p.28l). Historical time, the time of most interest to Hegel, "is
characterized by the primacy of the Future." In pre-Hegelian philosophy, Kojeve claims, time was directed from the past through the
present to the future; this is, I think, false for Christians like Augustine. For Hegel the order is Future to Past to Present (p. 134).
Kojeve comes to this conclusion because he interprets time from
the point of view of the chapter "Lordship and Bondage" in the
Phenomenology (N A). There Desire is the dialectical motor, and Desire
causes action "in terms of what does not (yet) exist-that is, in terms
of the future." The Desire of this chapter is the desire for social
Recognition, and this desire engenders History. When it is satisfied
Time and History cease, as does the Future.
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
134
The Present, Kojeve adds, Is the real, spatial moment. Desire Is
related to It negatively, since it is the locus of Its dissatisfaction. The
Past, having been equally negatively formed, determines the quality
of the Present (pp. 135-36).
Kojeve's emphasis on the future Is not so much false in the letter
as somewhat off the spirit of Hegel's texts.
To begin with, Hegel himself does not emphasize the future. We
would not expect him to. For one thing, the dialectic motion is not
primarily drawn on from 8.head by the future satisfaction of desire. It
Is rather driven from within by the self-assertive pressures of implicitness. But even if each concept-moment Is to be thought of as big with
being-to-come, this being is not future-being, but the Concept Itself,
whose moments are emerging from ideality Into existence. The Concept is a timeless plan; when it enters into existence it is merely
repossessing the world, not goading it on. Secondly, it Is only the past
of which there Is phenomenological or historical knowledge. The
science of the Concept in existence (=Time) is History. The science of
the Concept not yet or no longer In existence Is Logic. There is no place
for a Hegelian futurology. And third, from the point ofview of"Absolute
Knowledge" the future has been entirely resorbed; what is left Is only
Recollection of the past figures of the Spirit.
Broadly speaking, It is the Marxism ofKojeve's interpretation that
induces him to put the future forward. For, like Heidegger, he wishes
to emphasize human finitude, whereas Hegel thinks that knowledge
can be absolute and infinite, in the sense of all-inclusive. Now to a
dissatisfied finite being, the temporal future Is the only locus of hope.
But to the Infinite Spirit, the completed and recollected Past Is the
prelude to the Absolute Present and Presence.
*****
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33-39. Presses Universitalres de France, 1990.
"What is The Good' of Plato's Republic. • in Essays on Plato's Republic,
edited, with a preface, by D. R. Lachterman. 139-71. Annapolis: St.
John's College Press, 1990.
"Laying Down the Law: The Theoiog!co-Pol!tical Matrix of Spinoza's Physics. • In Leo strauss's Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. by
Alan Udoff, 123-53. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publlshers, 1991.
"Die ewige Wiederkehr der Griechen: Nietzsche and the Homeric Question.· In Nietzsche und die antike Phtlnsophle, ed. by Daniel W. Conway
and RudolfRehn, 13-35. Trier: WissenschaftllcherVerlag, 1992.
"Nietzsche und das antike Denken: Eine Bibl!ographie. • With Theodor
Lindken and Rudolf Rehn, in Nietzsche und die antike Philosophle, ed.
by Daniel W. Conway und Rudolf Rehn, 225-58. Trier:
Wissenschaftllcher Verlag, 1992.
Journal Articles
"The Physics ofSpinoza's Ethics.· TheSouthwestemJownal ofPhUosophy,
8:3 (1977). 71-111.
"Response to Michael Kosak's Lecture The Formalization of Hegel's
Logic." In Hegel.Studten. Beihaft·Hegel Tage Chantilly, 1971. Bonn:
1978, 139-41.
"Response to Prof. Dieter Henrich: 'Hegel's Log!k der Reflection.'" In
Hegel·Studten. Bethaft·Hegel Tage Chantilly, 1971. Bonn: Bouvier
Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1978, 325-28.
"Vico, Doria e Ia geometrta sintetica, • Bollettlnodel Centro dl stud! Vichiant,
10 (1980),10·35 Un Italian). Trans. by B. Arcangel!.
"Descartes and the Philosophy of History. • Independent Jownal ofPhilosophy, 4 (1983), 31-46.
"Hegel and the Formaltzation of Logic. • Graduate Faculty Philosophy
Jownal 12:1-2 (1987), 153-235.
?"Between Physts and Physics: Leibniz's Restitutions to Nature. • Graduate
Faculty Philosophy Jownal, 13:1 (1988·89), [forth]
"Did Aristotle 'Develop'? Reflections on Werner Jdger's Thesis. • Revue de
Phtlnsophle Anclenne, 8: 1 (1990), 3-40.
"Kant: The Faculty of Desire.· Graduate Faculty Philosophy Jownal, 13:2
(1990). 181-211.
"Maimonidean Studies 1950-1986: A Bibllography. • Maimonidean Studies
1 (1990), 197-216.
?"Contemporary JeWish Philosophy in America: A Survey. • Religious
studies Review (forth, 1991).
�DOMINO
139
"Die ewige Wiederkehr der Griechen: Nietzsche and the Homeric Question.· International Studies in Philosophy, 23:2 (1991), 83-101.
"Strauss Read from France. • The Review of Politics (Special Issue on Leo
Strauss) 53:1 (1991), 224-45.
"Mathematical Construction, Symbolic Cognition and the Infinite Intellect: Reflections on Maimon and Maimonides. • Jownal of the History
ofPhaosophy 30:4 (Oct. 1992), 497-522.
?"Max Scheler and Contemporary Moral Philosophy." To be published in
Philosophy and Theology or Phaosophy Today.
?"The Role of Mathematics in Vico's New Science." New Vtco Studies 7
[forth]
?"Conflict and Accommodation between Jews in Israel." Ed. Charles S.
Liebman. Studies in American Jewish Literature [forth]
Translations
Max Scheler, SelectedPhilosophtcalEssays. Traoslated, with totroduction
and notes. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973; paperback
edition, 1980. xli + 359.
"The World of Physics and the 'Natural' World,· by Jacob Klein. The st.
John'sReview33 (1981), 22-34; reprinted to Jacob Klein: Lectures and
Essays. Ed. by Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman. Anoapolis:
St. John's College Press, 1985. 1-34.
"Beauty and Freedom: Schiller's Struggle with Kant's Aesthetics, • by
Dieter Henrich. In Essays in Kant's Aesthetics, ed. by Ted Cohen and
Paul Guyer, 237-57. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
"F1chte's Original Insight; by Dieter Henrich. Contemporruy German
PhUosophy 2 (1983), 15-53.
•"The Christian Origto of Modern Science,· by Alexandre Kojeve. The st.
John's Review 35:1 (1984), 22-26.
"Sptooza and Euclidean Arithmetic: The Example of the Fourth Proportional," by Alexandre Matheron. Spinoza and the Sciences, eds. Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1986, 125-50.
"The Homerlc Simile and the Begtoning of Philosophy; by Kurt Rlezler.
The st. John's Review 37:2-3 (1987), 71-79.
Book Reviews
Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages: The Doctrine ofPartes Orationis
oftheModistae, by G. K. Burslll-Hall.ReviewofMetophystcs26 (1972),
352-54.
Aristotle's Man: Speculations upon Aristotelian Anthropology, by Stephen
Clark. Archiv.filrGeschtchteder Philosophie60:2 (1978), 209-13.
Benedict de Sptnoza. by H. E. Allison. The Review of Metaphysics 32:3
(1979), 531-32.
�140
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Der jnnge Leibniz I, by K. Moll. The Review of Metaphysics 33:2 (1979),
438-39.
Emotion, Thought and Therapy, by Jerome Neu. The Review ofMetaphysics
32:4 (1979), 763-65.
Histortsches Worterbuch der Philosophie, Bde. 1-4, ed. by Joachim Ritter
and Karlliied Griinder. Archiv fi1r Geschichte der Philosophie 61:2
(1979), 196-205.
Plato's TrUogy: "Theaetetus, The Sophist, and The statesman," by Jacob
Klein. Nous 13:1 (1979), 106-12.
Spinozas allgemeine Ontologie, by Konrad Hecker. The Review of Meta-
physics33:1 (1979), 177-78.
Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, by Bernard Williams. studla
Cartesiana 2 (1981), 195-201.
The History ofSkeptfcism.fromErasmus to Spinoza, by Richard H. Popkin.
The Review of Metaphysics 34 (1981), 155-58.
The Radical Spinoza, by Paul Wlenpahl. Review ofMetaphysics 35 (1982),
476-79.
Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meanin9, Vol. l, by G. P. Baker and P.
Hacker. Philosophy and Rhetoric 15 (1982), 212-14.
Platon et l'Idealisme AUemande, by Jean-Louis Viellard-Baron. Clio 12:4
(1983), 389-95.
Plato's Philosophy of History, by Daniel A. Dombrowski. International
Studies in Philosophy. 16: I (1984), 84-86.
Vico and Marx: A.fftnities and Contrasts, ed. Giorgio Tagliacozzo. New VICO
Studies 2 (1984), 114-18.
Max Scheler. Person and Se!f'Value, ed. M. Flings. Canadian Philosophical
Reviews 8:5 (1988), 190-93.
The Discouse ofModernism, by Timothy J. Reiss. Philosophy and Rhetoric
21:1 (1988), 69-72.
Artstote et la question du monde: Essai sur le contexte cosmologique et
anthropologique de !'ontologie, by Rem! Brague. The Review of Metaphysics 43:2 (1989), 387-90.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidority, by Richard Rorty. Clto 18:4 (1989),
391-99.
Plato, Derrida, and Writing, by Jasper Nee!. Philosophy and Rhetoric 22:4
(1989), 310-13.
Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed. by Sander L. Gilman,
Carole Blair, and DavidJ. Parent. Philosophy andRhetoric23: 4 (1990),
325-28.
Histortsches Worterbuch der Phaosophie, Bde. 5-6, ed. by Joachim Ritter
and Karlfiied Grilnder. ArchivfilrGeschichteder Philosophie72 (1990),
86-90.
�DOMINO
141
Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. by Eric L. Ormsby. Review of
Metaphysics 44:1 (1990). 157-60.
What Reason Demands, by Rudiger Bit1ner. 'The Review of Metaphysics
44:2 (1990), 403-6.
?Historisches Worterbuch der PhilosopWe, Bde. VII, by JoacWm Ritter,
ed. Archlv fiir Geschichte der Philosophte [forth].
?Interpreting Malmonides. Studies In Methodology, Metaphysics, and
Moral Philosophy by Marvin Fox. Review of Metaphysics [forth].
?Platonic Plely: Philosophy and Ritual in Fourth-Century Athens, by
Michael L. Morgan. Ancient Philosophy [forth].
Key
• = probably correct, but unable to verifY
? = probably does not exist I've check all the issues of the journal in
question for 1988 to the present. The entry also does not exist on any
of the dozen databases consulted.
Compiled by Brian Domino
�142
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
���
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Schmidt, Richard
Sachs, Joe
Lachterman, David R.
Conway, Daniel W.
Howland, Jacob
Kerszberg, Pierre
Schalliol, Gregory
Page, Carl
Domino, Brian
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLII, number three (1994)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cwy Stickney
Jolm VanDoren
Robert B. WilliamSon
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Gjergjt Bojaxhi
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 for
three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes appear semiannually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays, stories,
poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the
Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
Back issues are available, at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College
Bookstore.
© 1994 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction In whole or
In part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Prtntlng
Marcia Baldwin and The St John's College Print Shop
�This is the last issue to be published under the editorship ofElliott
Zuckerman. The new editor of the Review is Pamela Kraus, also
a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
�Contents
1 . . . . . Telling Lies
Eva T.H. Brann
17 ..... A Biological Theme in Aristotle's Ethics
Jolm White
45 . . . . . Where Is Greece?
Radoslav Datchev
65 ..... Two Poems by Sandra Hoben
67 ..... Book Review:
Two New Books by Alumni
Eva T.H. Brann
75 ..... One Man's Meter
Elliott Zuckerman
93 . . . . . Results of Crosswords
Numbers Five and Six
97 . . . . . Crossword Number Seven:
"Let's Be Liberal"
EZRA
��Telling Lies
I
Eva T. H. Brann
The first lecture of the school year Is, by an old tradition. dedicated to
that portion of the college new to this Friday-night ritual, the freslunen
among us. Yesterday, Thursday night, you participated In the first of
many seminars where you yourselves do all the talking. Tonight you
are present at the onlyweekiy event where someone else gets to speak
to you, a dean or a tutor or a visitor. One thing stays the same. Whether
you are speaking or listening, you are Intended to hear and to judge.
Although you may have allowed the talk of the world to persuade you
that "being judgmental" Is a social sin, judgments are what you are
Intended to render- on the words of others, though above all on your
own.
For example, this lecture Is entitled "Telling Lies." "What," you are
Intended to ask yourselves, "Is she up to?" Is she going to start us off
here by giving lessons In lying? Or, what Is worse, by preaching
honesty to us, good people all? If she Is so preoccupied with telling
lies, that's perhaps what she does.
And In fact I have already engaged In false speech. That "old"
tradition of dedicating this opening lecture to you, the freshmen - I
made It up myself and It Is only three years old. To recognize this and
similar lies you have to know some facts, and to judge their seriousness you have to have some appreciation of rhetoric.
For the bravado of rhetorical overstatement seems to be a species
of the so-called white lie. Perhaps such a colorless lie Is better than a
blazingly scarlet one, perhaps it Is not. You will spend time In the
language tutorial distinguishing and analyzing the rhetorical deceptions of!anguage and formingjudgments about them. To top It off, for
your last seminar, not only of your freshman year but again of your
senior year, you will read a dialogue by Plato, the Phaedrus, In which
questions of love, rhetoric, and truth are Intertwined. Unfortunately,
the knowledge that initiates you Into judging speech cannily can also
be construed as lessons In lying - an uneasy fact to which I shall
return.
But I have put the cart before the horse. Before you can judge
whether an utterance Is a lie, you have to be able to discern what It
means: meaning first, then judgment. For example, what does 'Telling
Lies" mean? Does It mean "what sort of a topic Is Telling Lies' for an
This was the Dean's opening lecture for the academic year 1993-94.
�2
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
opening lecture? or does it mean "uttering untruths," as in "She stands
up there and keeps telling lies"? Or does it mean "revealing," as in
"Achilles' lies are always telling lies, since they tell us a lot about him"?
In order to establish possible meanings you have to know some
grammar. You have to know that "telling" can be a gerund, and then
"telling lies" is a subject to be talked about, or a participle, and then
"telling lies" is something a speaker does. Or "telling" can be an
adjective modifying "li~," and then "telling lies" are lies that tell you
something. 'Telliog lies" is in fact a pun, and puns exploit the
squlrminess of language, while gr.ammar nails down the choices. You
will be studying a great deal of grammar In your language tutorial. (If
that prospect does not delight you, do but consider that grammar is
etymologically connected to glamour, a most telliog relation.)
There is one more study that completes the traditional trio making
up the art of language. Besides grammatical regularity and rhetorical
effect you will also be studying logical validity. I shall return to the
relation oflogic to lying later.
All three studies are intended to make you canny and witting
hearers and speakers, able to discern meaning imd judge truth, to
have your wits about you. You will need these skills here, becauseyou
have joined a community that engages in a very peculiar activity. We
ask after truth. We ask whether the books we read contain something
true, and we ask on occasion not only what truth herself might be,
but also what the truth is, independently of books. I will say something
later about the reasons why It is unusual for a college to admit these
questions after truth and what the conditions are that make them
possible.
Whatever the conditions, let me point out one consequence of trying
to live In a truth-seeking community. Members of such a community
should probably try not to tell lies. It Is conceivable that there might
be one who earnestly seeks the truth for himself while determinedly
telling lies to others. But such a person is probably a loner, not a friend
among friends.
Let me give you two reasons that may be new to you why members
In any intimate community, such as ours, should be truthful with
each other.
We are able to tell lies because we who speak are encased in a
cocoon, in our opaque body. Some people think that they can see
through others and that others are transparent to them, but where
they think they see through our exterior as through a pane of glass
they are in truth apt to be looking into a mirror. There are no certain
somatic signs oflylng. The nervous reaction to being suspected Is not
�BRANN
3
discernibly different from that of being guilty. Consequently even lie
detectors are known to be unreliable. The human carapace Is really
Impenetrable.
Now when people live as closely together as you will on this campus,
a certain decent distance is essential to comfort. You will not want to
observe each other too penetratingly. But a bodily presence that hides
a lie draws attention, and a face suspected of being a fa~ade Invites
searching curiosity. Telljng lies In close quarters Is a temptation to
breached privacy and to sorry Involvements. Under these circumstances there Is no harm that Is not compounded by lies.
The same mortal sheath that hides thoughts can be used to express
them. I say "can be used" because every adult expression is part
performance. A small, close,lively community acts at its best like those .
revolving stone-polishing cylinders that take off the rough edges and
bring out the natural markings of a piece of rock. Those markings
represent the personal rhetoric, the gestures and the diction, that a
community of learning brings out in people. It is a curious fact that
adult nature has to be brought out by polishing.
Consequently there Is nothing straightforward about uttering which literally means "outerlng" -your meaning. Some of you may
think that spontaneity and sincerity are natural and therefore easy
and that controlled expression is hypocrisy, an elderly vice. I think
Intended spontaneity is a self-contradiction, and sincerity is a sappy
virtue, the virtue of Insisting on being always one's - possibly
reprehensible- self. And Isn't it a strange fact that people indulging
in natural expression tend to look dramatic and self-dramatizing to
their neighbors?
So I think I need to say something in favor of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy
derives from the Greek work for actor, hypokritiis. It Is a necessary
part of adult conduct because it prevents something worse. Hamlet
urges his adulterous mother to "assume a virtue, If you have it not"
(III. iv, 158). She Is to make a pretense of purity so that it might turn
Into truth. There Is a stage of badness beyond being bad, and it is not
caring how one looks. Hypocrisy. they say,ls the compliment vice pays
to virtue.
There is another similar word that brings out my point. The word
"person" comes from the Latin persona. an actor's mask. A person is
a being behind a mask, a self-made fa~ade through which come
utterances. The lower animals at least do not seem to have such
masks, because they have no conduct, only behavior. Perhaps one
should say that they are masks, masks through which nature expresses herself. But we have masks, and we conduct ourselves. I mean
�4
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that there can always be at least a brief check between our impulse
and our expression. Horner uses a wonderfully apt figure: ''What word
has escaped the barrier of your teeth!" one person will say to another,
implying that the words should have been held back. We can maintain
silence, and we can shape our speech and its expressive accompaniments. In fact we cannot do otherwise, for all human conduct is a kind
of self-presentation, and being natural is a great feat. (A sociological
classic on this subject is, Erving Goffrnan's 'The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life [1959[.) ·
Suppose I am right in intimating that learning to be oneself, to be
a person in a community, is an arduous work of mask-making,
requiring much biting back of words, some white lying, and continual
attempts to find expression that Will do justice to one's meaning. Then
to derail these efforts at sculpting one's own expressive persona by the
strong jolt of a crude lie would be a clime against your own developing
personality, particularly when you have looked someone in the eye
and sworn that what is about to come out of your mouth is the truth.
In Robert Bolt's play about Thomas More, A Man for aU Seasons,
Thomas says:
When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his
own hands. Like water. (He cups his hands.) And if he opens his
fingers then- he needn't hope to find himself again. (Act Two)
So these are my two arguments - I don't think they are preachments - against outright intended lying. Telling such lies prevents
intimacy and wrecks self-formation.
There are plenty of authors who disagree with me in both directions.
Kant, whom you will read in your junior year, will condemn every kind
of lie, from the whitest social lie to the heroic lie told to protect an
innocent life. For lying, he says, is "the obliteration of one's dignity as
a human being" ('The Metaphysical Principles ofVirtue, 429). He thinks
so because he thinks that the Will to communicate our thought is part
of what it means to be a person, and thus to misuse speech is to
abrogate our personality, to undo the intention of our own rational
will, which must be to utter truth.
There are, on the other hand, authors who advocate lying like hen.
Machiavelli advises his prince to be like a fox and to deceive when it
is to his interest ('The Prince, Ch. XVIII). Rousseau blithely confesses
that he often lied from embarrassment just to keep the conversation
going. In fact, he does talk a suspicious Jot about lying, in his Reveries
of a Solitary Walker (Fourth Walk), a book we don't read. Nietzsche
inveighs against veracity as the impossibly naive Wish to come clean,
�BRANN
5
to expose oneself, and he praises the bracing tonic of a falseness
perpetrated without guilt (The Will to Power, 377 -78).
For my part, I am not entirely persuaded by Kant's absolutism and
more than a little repelled by the others' equivocations.
There is, happily, an author who seems to me to speak sweet
reason, and that is Thomas Aquinas, who treats of lying in a book of
which you will read parts next year, the Swnma Theologica (II, 2, ques.
110, art. 4 ff.). He gives various useful classifications of lies and
concludes that not ail lies are mortal sins, sins that ental! damnation.
Lies that injure God and your neighbor are mortal, but lies told with
no intention contrary to charity, are not. This judgment leaves room
for white lies and seems to me pretty good for practical purposes.
(Practical lying is treated by Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public
and Private Life [1978[.)
But it was not really my purpose to talk about the practice of lying,
either whether to do it or how to go about it. What! want us to consider
is the theory of!ying: What are the conditions of human nature and
the world that make lying possible?
It seems to me that the inquiry Into telling lies is particularly
appropriate to a school devoted to the truth. You will discover in the
next four years that the most convenient access to the house of truth
is often through the back door. The assumption in the back-door
approach is that truth precedes falsity, that it is the original positive.
Our language seems to imply the priority of truth, since we speak of
untruths but not of unlies or unerrors. Yet, your reading will often
take the back-to-frontway: In Homer and Tolstoy, War precedes Peace.
In Dante and Milton, Hell comes before Heaven, and Satan, the lord
of lies, comes before God, the fountain of truth. In Plato, error
explicates knowledge. And In Aristotle, art elucidates nature.
Before I proceed to lies, I want to pause a moment to reinforce the
claim that in this school we seek truth. Of course that is not the only,
or even the first, Interest we have. We also acquire skills and learn
arguments and even gather some facts. But we do have a remarkable
hypothesis. We ask ourselves and each other: "Is what I am reading
true? Should I let it enter my life or must I fend it off?" Here are two
special conditions that support our search for truth. One is that we
are not ashamed to be discovered in error. When I say ''we," I mean
we - tutors along with students. We go so far as to regard the
recognition of ignorance in ourselves as a high achievement. The other
condition is that we admit no institutional truth, no authoritative
dogma. If we had the truth, we would not need to inquire about it.
�6
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
This hypothesis of ours is peculiar and hard to defend. At most
academic Institutions the professors deny It and take precautions
against it; they bracket the question of truth and set it aside. They
have good reasons: They think many old books by now have historical
Interest only, treating by-gone problems and providing "Irrelevant"
answers. They think it is a sort of Intellectual tactlessness to get too
close to students' lives In the classroom, and they distrust the
authority such Inquiries, might give the professor who directs them.
They think there Is no fried public meaning In texts, that the meaning
Is construed anew by each reador, and often they also think that a
question after the truth Is In principle nonsense, because truth Is a
private or senseless notion.
All of you will be corning to grips with some of these notions right
in the seminar. For example, you will be tempted to say that a
proposition is "true for me," if not for another, and then you will have
to consider whether the word "true" can be used In that way. Meanwhile we will ask you to act provisionally on our hypothesis that truth
may be pursued, to be shamelessly open to the pursuit, to trust your
tutors as fellow learners, to work at discovering the meaning of a book,
and to treat authors as fellow human beings who raise questions you
can care about. In short, we will ask you to engage In what Francis
Bacon calls "the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making and wooing
oflt" ("OfTruth'1.
By way of beginning the inquiry Into telling lies as a prelude to
searching for truth, I want to add a classification of lies to those given
by Thomas Aquinas: Some lies are subjective, others are objective.
The subjective lie is the one Kant defines and proscribes so absolutely: willful, intentional falsehood. Your straight basic liars intend
to tell lies and know they are doing it. But there is also the objective
lie, an unintentional falsehood, a failed willingness to tell the truth.
Being willing to tell the truth but failing at It is usually called being in
error. At this point I might be accused of the rhetorical trick of
metonymy, a figure of speech In which the speaker confuses species
and genus. For here the genus seems to be the False and the species
seem to be the Ue and the Error. An error Is not really a kind of lie,
but one of two parallel species of the False, the Unwitting and the
Witting Falsehood. Errors are all the unintended misses of targeted
truth: mistakes, rnls-speakings, misjudgments, rnlsperceptions.
Now there will be a man, the guardian angel or perhaps the goblin
of your first year, Socrates, who will claim that Ignorance, and
therefore error, is the genuine or "true lie" in the soul (RepubUc 382b).
He is helped in saying so by the fact that in Greek the word for error
�BRANN
7
and lie is the same. It Is pseudos, which you know, for instance, in
the word pseud-onym, a false name. But he also really does mean to
identity lie and error, and his thinking is roughly like this: He will try
to persuade you that effective virtue is a kind of knowledge. If he is
right. then it is at least likely that ignorance Is a kind of vice, and that
the particular ignorance manifested In error is not far from the vice of
lying. After having studied some logic in the sophomore year you will
be able to show diagrammatically that these consequences are not
logical entallments butjust thought-possibilities.
If you find reason to accept them, then there is no truly unwilling
falsehood; our errors become our responsibilities, and we are charged
with exorcising the unwitting lie in the soul. This Ignorant lie Is what
I call the objective lie.
Socrates has something to say not only about the untold lie hidden
in the soul but also about the outward telling oflies. There is a dialogue
we don't read, called the Lesser Hippias, so called because it is the
shorter of two dialogues featuring a sophist called Hlppias. Sophists
figure in many of the Platonic dialogues, above all In the dialogues
called 'Theaetetus and Sophist, In which Plato deals respectively with
error and the possibility oflying. I can tell you that no book has affected
me more than the Sophist.
A sophist is the most fascinating creature In the world, and Plato
Is never through with htm. The sophist has a name that begins with
the word for "wise," sophos, and ends In -ist, a suffix that denotes an
Imitator and an operator. For Plato ordinary sophists are wise guys,
smart and dumb at once, by profession evasive, tricky, and deceitful,
though sometimes in person endearingly naive. The sophist extraordinaire Is Socrates himself, a canny wise man, whose mode is Irony,
a wily sort of self-deprecation that Aristotle does not hesitate to classit'y
among the lying deviations from truth (Nicomn.cheanEthics II, vii, 12).
Now In the dialogue Socrates carries on with Hippias, two characters that will soon be very familiar to you come on the scene: Achilles
and Odysseus. Hlppias, who can quote Homer, cites passages to show
that Achilles is a true and simple fellow, who tells Odysseus that he
hates lies worse than hell (IUadiX, 312). Odysseus, on the other hand,
Is a habitual teller of lies. The two men differ as truth-teller differs
from liar. Now comes Socrates to prove that Achilles sometimes tells
lies. For example, he informs Odysseus that he will leave Troy so that
"on the third day he would come to fertile Phthia," his home - and
yet he makes no move at all to go. Hlppias objects that Achilles tells
untruths unwittingly, while Odysseus lies by design. Socrates then
tricks Hlpplas into admitting that it is the person with the more
�'!HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
8
capable soul, the one who knows exactly what he Is doing, who Is best,
and that therefore the voluntary liar Is better than the unwitting teller
of falsehoods. The claim that the true lie Is a kind of guilty Ignorance
Is here complemented by the not altogether playful assertion that the
truer and more genutoe person Is the liar who knows the truth and
determines not to utter it. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, agrees with
Socrates' estimation of Odysseus, for she declares her love and loyalty
to him as a cunntog knave and a witting liar (Odyssey XIII, 287 ff.).
Not only, I conclude, i~ the silent lie In the soul to be held against
us as a weakness because it betokens a culpable Ignorance, but the
utterance of a lie confirms our strength, because It presupposes
knowledge of truth. As Nietzsche puts It: 'The recognition of reality...
has been greatest exactly among liars" (Will to Power 378). More
generally, anyone who grants the possibility of!ytog reveals a commitment to the existence of truth.
With subjective and objective lies established, let me now list the
rubrics of conditions that make the telling of a lie possible. I will read
them off before explaining them:
·
I. Will
II. Knowledge
III. Negation
N . Necessity
V. Freedom
I. First, then, for a lie to be told there has to be the will. This Is the
main condition for the pure subjective lie. Perhaps will Is too strong a
word, since much lie-telling results not so much from strong choice
as from a weak willingness. In the lingo of this decade: We give
ourselves permission. Sometimes lytog Is even a mere default position
of the will. But one way or another the capacity for choice, for letting
the words escape from the barrier of our teeth, is involved. What the
human willis, and how the will comes not to will, are a long story for
another night.
Of course, as I have said, the exterior has to cooperate: The body
has to be opaque and the world obtuse. If every lie caused our noses
to grow proportionately, or If a spade when falsely called a shovel
protested loudly, we would In time lose the will to lie.
II. Second, for a lie to be told there has to be, as I have Intimated,
knowledge. As Socrates shows, a liar has to know the truth, all sorts
of truth. but particularly the truth about words. Otherwise the uttered
lie may be a false lie, an unwitting truth. uttering unwitting truth Is
just what happens to Achilies, when he says that on the third day he
will come to Phthia but stays In Troy. He does not know the truth of
the name of his all-too-attainable home. The knowledge of such truth
�BRANN
9
is called "etymology," and etymos Is a Greek term for word-truth.
Socrates has such knowledge. For In prison two nights before his
execution he dreams that a beautiful woman quotes Achilles' words
to him (Crito44b), and he clearly knows what "coming to Phthia" must
mean. It means death, for Phthia means "Land of the Dead," from the
verb phthinein, to destroy (H. Frisk, Griechisches Etymologtsches
Woerterbuch II, 1015).
You have to know both what is the case and what you are saying
to tell a proper lie. They say there are no atheists In the foxholes of
war, and there are surely few relativists among the true tellers oflles.
Consequently, as I have said, this condition for lying Is an odd cause
for cheer: Every telling of a lie Is a reaffirmation of the possibility of
truth.
III. The third and central of my five conditions for telling lies Is a
human capacity, which Is an Incapacity as well. I will call it the power
of blind negation.
In the dialogue the Sophist that I mentioned before, the main
speaker (not Socrates) says:
To believe or to say the thlngs that are not~ that Is, it seems, the
lie arising in the mind and in words. (260c)
More than two millennia later Captain Gulliver Is, in the course of
his travels, set ashore by his crew of mutineers in a land governed by
noble horses who call themselves Houyhnhnms. The land also harbors
some savage, repulsive two-legged ape-like creatures, theYahoos, with
whom the horses identifY Gulliver, calling him their "gentle Yahoo."
Gulliver tries to give his equine master an account of the mores of the
European Yahoos, but the noble horse Is hard put t<i comprehend the
Yahoo custom of telling lies, which is, Gulliver notes, "so perfectly
understood, and so universally practiced among humari creatures."
The noble horse calls it "saying the thing which is not," to him a most
self-defeating use of speech.
By this testimony, we may begin to define lying as saying the thing
which is not. So, of course, Is speaking in error, as Socrates had
already Intimated In the dialogue on error that precedes the Sophist,
the Titeaetehts (199d; see also Aristotle, Metaphysics 10llb27.)
In fact, in logic the two falsehoods are indistinguishable. For logic
abstracts from what Is called the pragmatic aspect of speech, the
internal intention and the social use. I might put it this way. In the
full human context, lies have something Infernal about them; they are
under Satan, the prince of lies and of denial. In the bright and
weightless realm oflogic, denial is a mere squiggle or "curl"('-')-just
a symbolic operator. It Is defined by a table of so-called truth-values.
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TiiE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
("Value" In logic as In life denotes an arbitrary as opposed to an
intrinsic worib.) If a proposition, little p, is assigned !be truib-value
T, then squiggle-p (·-vp) is F, false, and conversely. T and Fare mere
symbols; T has no prtmacy over F and imparts no particular significance to a proposition. (While It is !be case !bat logicians ibink about
what truib is, they do not feel equally obligated to ibink about what
is true, !bough it may be finally tmpossible to separate the iwo
questions.)
Now in real life people do not talk "propositionally"very often, except
in courts of law, under cross-examination: "Is it or is It not the case
!bat your mother told you someibing significant? Just answer yes or
no, please." In ordinary speech !be negative does not stand outside an
Impregnable proposition but Invades it and is deeply implicated in it.
Traditional logic does In fact recognize iwo additional possibilities for
the position of !be negation. Textbooks on logic seem quite unamazed
by these possibilities, which !bey bliibely declare to be equivalent (e.g.
I. M. Cop!, Introduction to Logic, p. 223), though iboughtfullogiclans
have had ibeir preferences. In what follows, S stands for the subject,
capital P for !be predicate of a proposition. We can say:
l. S (is not) P. Here !be proposition itself. internally, is said to have
the "quality" of being negative or positive: Achilles is-not a liar. Some
auibors maintain that ibis form alone Is correct because logical quality
belongs strictly to the copula connecting !be subject and !be predicate
(Marltaln, FormoiLogic, p. 110). I ibink that view is too restrictive.
2. S is (not P). Whether !be speaker Is telling !be truth or a lie, this
form posits a "!bing !bat is not": Achilles is a non-liar. It therefore
supports the doctrine of lies adopted by the Sophist and the
Houybnhnms.
3. Not (S is P), i.e . .v p. The negative is outside the proposition: It
is not !be case !bat Achilles is a liar. This is how the modern logic
called propositional places !be negative, !bough !be !bought goes back
to !be Stoics and to Abelard (W. and M. Kneale, The Development of
Logic, p. 210). Here the whole proposition is externally negated.
Thereallifedifferencesamongibethreeformsareremarkablewhen
!be logical bones are fleshed out wiib meaning. For while the negative
!bat has got Inside !be sentence wreaks havoc ibere wiib meaning,
!be denial of !be whole proposition leaves it intact, as putting a
negative sign before a number leaves It Its absolute value. Look at the
example of the truibful Achilles, !be unwitting liar.
Early on, In !be first book of !be Iliad (352). we see him wiibdrawn
from his friends, weeping on !be shore and calling his mother.
"Moiber," he says, addressing her plainly and Intimately; "Moiber, you
�BRANN
ll
bore me to be short-lived"; the Greek word is minnnthindos- minutelived. The son states it, and the mother confirms it: Achilles will die
soon. Now listen to a later episode. In the ninth book (410) Achilles
tells Odysseus, who has come to talk him into returning to the battle,
that his mother - she is now grandly "the goddess, silver-footed
Thetis"- has said that he has a choice of two fates. He can go home
and forego fame or stay and die soon gloriously. Unless mother and
son have been talking behind our backs, Achilles is engaging in sheer
hopeful invention, attributing it to his divine mother. And fmally, in a
still later passage in the sixteenth book (51) he answers the concerned
and suspecting question of his friend Patroclus, whether his mother
had told him something from Zeus: "Neither do 1 care about any oracle
that I know nor has my mistress mother [as he now calls her formally
and coolly] told me anything from Zeus." This answer betokens what
we like to call "going into full denial." Note the progressluenegation of
the truth. At first Achilles admits the hard fact: I and my mother both
know 1 shall die young. The second version is: My mother has told me
that! have a choice of fates. Here Achilles begins to say "the thing that
is not": SIs not-P. For he does not deny that his mother has been in
communication with him, but he undoes and denies her message. And
third he says: It is not the case that my mother has told me a thing.
Now he is denying the whole proposition: not (S is P). This is not
altering the message and saying the thing that is not. This is a more
radical lie, that of denying blindly that anything whatever has been
said. Such is the progress and the pathos of Achilles' peculiarly telling
lies, lies that reveal the young warrior's fear of facing death.
Let me step back for a moment. It seems to me that we can think
more than we can say. The papers you write this year will probably
demonstrate that fact. We can also say more than we think. Some of
your colleagues in seminar will seem to you to give examples of that
fact. Moreover, while the world contains more things than we can
enumerate, it is also true that we can say what corresponds to no
thought and no thing. We can speak without meaning. The word can
become footloose.
One good example of a word rattling around by itself is the
pseudo-name by which Odysseus introduces himself to the Cyclops,
No-One (Outis, IX, 364-412). The poor monster literally does not know
what he is saying when,· having been brutally blinded by Odysseus,
he calls on his neighbors for help. Who has hurt you, they ask, and
he answers "No One." Nor do they know what they are saying when
they go off shouting something to the effect: "Well, if no one has hurt
you, you must be sick. Go see a doctor." For in conditional contexts
�12
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the form otitis turns Into me tis, which means again "No one," but it
also sounds like metis, which means "cunning, craftiness": "Cunning
has done you in, go see a doctor" - that Is what the Cyclopean
neighbors truly but unwittingly say.
But particularly to my point are the words no and not and the
prefixes Wl and non. The first philosopher, Parmenides, said that
"neither could you know that which Is not (for it is impossible), nor
could you say It" (Diels Fragment 2). I think he holds too nobly simple
a view of speech. I agree that It Is not possible to think what Is not.
The intellect is Incapable of the p.ure negative. When it tries to think
not or non or unIt always finds Itself attending to something different
or other rather than to nothing. For example, Un-rest is not No Rest
but Motion, and Non-being Is not Nothing but something Different or
Other. I think that In perception too there is never nothing but only
difference. Even the Imagination cannot practice negation effectively.
For an Image of the Imagination may be nullified, as a stamp is
canceled so that Its value Is gone- yet its face, though smudged, Is
not obliterated. In the imagination and In visual thinking- which is
what we mostly do- negated being nearly always has a positive look.
Denial produces a murky or perhaps a monstrous shape, but never a
nonentity.
In speech alone can we say the negative and for a moment really
mean nothing. It is, I think, this potent Incapacity that makes lying
possible. So let me sketch out for you how telling lies seems to me to
come about as a product of negating speech and defective will.
There is a crucial moment- for Achilles it comes last, but often it
is first- when we say a blind and ignoble no to the truth, when we
will to tell the lie. The proposition that we know to be true remains
untouched but we determine In our hearts to reject it, ignorantly and
uncircumstantially: "Not (SIs P)." The hero decides to mamtain: "It is
not the case, Patroclus, that my mother confirmed my pending death"
-without thought for the consequence to the Interior of the sentence.
We say no and think nothing constructive, only "I shall not tell the
truth whatever follows." Our two strange negative capacities for
exercising an Infirm will and for uttering an unmeaning word come
briefly but momentously together.
In the second and third moment the negation Invades the sentence
and begins to generate meaning. Perhaps it first attaches itself to the
copula so as to disjoin subject from predicate: Achilles and his death
are not to be conjoined In speech. But eventually the negation ends
up attacking the predicate Itself; S Is not-P: My mother told me not
what you all think, Odysseus, but something else, that my death is
�BRANN
13
still my choice. That "not" when stuck to the predicate no longer
betokens pure blinding negative non-truth, but signals an alternative
to the truth, a positive invention; the lie goes out of control and
becomes baroque. Here cross the activities of telling lies and telling
tales. Both tell the thing that is not.
Let me conclude this section on lies and negating language by
reminding us that except for the willing, all I said holds also for error:
Lies differ from errors only in beginning wilfully and then sliding out
of control, while errors begin inadvertently and then settle in. I cannot
resist adding that telling lies is also close in form to asking questions.
A lie is in fact a kind of inverse question. For a question is a directed
receptivity, a shaped expectation of a truth as yet unknown. And a lie
is a directed rejection, a determined negation, of a truth already
known. Since we are a school for questioning, lies, the diametric
opposite of questions, would seem to be, on occasion, a proper
preoccupation for us.
N. I would phrase the fourth condition of lytng, necessity, in this
way: We can lie because we must lie. I am thinking not ofthe subjective
pseudo-necessity of lying from fear or need, but of unavoidable
objective lytng. If human speech is to be efficacious it must accommodate itself to a world about which it is, as I have already intimated,
simply not possible to speak with total truth.
Let me quote an author of the junior year with whom I maintain a
-necessarily one-sided but cordial-friendship, Jane Austen. She
says:
Seldom, vecy seldom does complete truth belong to any humao
disclosure; seldom cao it happen that something is not a little
disguised or a little mistaken. (Erruna, Ch. 49)
It is an ever-rewarded effort to try to tell the truth, but to tell the
whole truth is beyond our cognitive abilities and to tell nothing but
the truth is outside of our linguistic equipment. Anyone made to swear
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is being
asked to stretch it.
We cannot utter exactly what It is we think because the qualil'ying
internal histocy behind evecy thought is enormous. It cannot be put
in finite words. Similarly we cannot tell all that we perceive, because
the world's space Is indefinitely extended and infinitesimally detailed,
and In addition every spatial point has behind it an infinite history in
time.
The case is not entirely hopeless and offers no excuse for not trying.
Our cognitive constitution, our capacity for speech, and the external
world all do seem to be to some degree geared to each other. OL
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
attention highlights parts of the world that seem to be meaningful
wholes. The parts of speech seem to fit the behavior of the world, and
the words oflanguage seem to be able to collect items scattered widely
In space. Sometimes many things can be said "In a word." The
constitutional limitation on our truth-telling, our necessary objective
lying, is therefore also an incitement to subjective truthfulness, to the
effort to do what we can with such telltog speech as we have.
V. There Is, finally, fl fifth condition, freedom, the condition for
telling true lies of a marvelous sort. Here Is an activity in which the
reckless will, the footloose word, and the feckless world Intersect. This
activity produces the freely willed lie called fiction (feigning wonderful
worlds in words) or poetry (making splendid fabrics out of words).
The notion that fiction and poetry are a kind of lie is attributed to
Socrates, and you will hear him say so when you read the dialogue
called the Republic (Bk. II). Yet it was not a philosopher who first
published this slander, but a poet, Hesiod, Homer's younger rival, for
whom we have no time in the program. He takes seriously what Homer
takes lightly: the aboriginal birth of the gods and the daily work of
men. This peasants' Homer tells how the Muses spoke to him, a
shepherd of the wilderness, and said:
We know how to tell many lies that are similar to true words, and
agato, when we wish, we can utter true things. ('Theogony 27-28)
These are wonderful lines because they introduce a distinction into
the truths that are opposed to lies. There are what I will call worldtruths, alethea, and there are word-truths, etyma, the term I mentioned before, the one that goes into the word etymology. Hesiod's
Muses tell lies that are stmilar to true words. These are the free lies I
am talking about: words freely chosen to tell lies that are true to the
world of words. How Is it possible that such liberated lies should
acquire the force of a peculiar and special truth? The answer is to a
strange capacity we share with the world, the power of entertatotog
certato half-existences called images. But like the will, the tmagination
Is a mystery for another night.
I am nearing the end, and your turn to express your judgments of
my lecture tn your questions for me Is about to come. Let me, on the
way out, return once more to the second hero of this lecture, Odysseus.
When he is about to become the teller and poet of his own travels, he
Introduces and reveals himself in this fashion to the Phaeacians, who
will be the first folk to hear his odyssey:
I am Odysseus Laertides; I am the preoccupation of mankind for all
my deceits ... But I dwell in lucid (eudeie[os) Ithaca (IX, 19-21).
�BRANN
15
Telling false lies and telling true lies, telling lies from necessity and
for pleasure, Odysseus attains the sunlit clarity of the home he loves.
Not, I think, the worst way to home In on truth!
But there is a better way still, Socrates' way: the unwillingness to
tolerate the unwitting, untold lie In the soul, and the wit and wisdom
to transmute the unavoidable lying of any utterance li:tto the telling
lies that reveal truth.
�16
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�A Biological Theme
in Aristotle's Ethics
I
John White
Before we look at Aristotle's discussion of virtue- before we can look
at any discussion of virtue - we have to look at an inquiry about
virtue. The first inquiry about virtue begins this way:
Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue can be taught, or is it
acquired by practice, not teaching? Or if neither by practice nor by
learning, does it come to mankind by nature or in some other way?
The dialogue Meno begins with that question. Socrates never
answers it. Socrates doesn't even take the question seriously. The
content of the question is serious, but beneath the words is an attitude
which is not serious. Meno's attitude is not the openness of seeking,
but is in fact the opposite: "answering" and the closedness of habit.
By ignoring Meno's question, Socrates shows that he has no respect
for questions as such. When Meno asks Socrates a question (75d),
Socrates says that there are two ways to respond. If he thought the
question was argumentative, he would say "Prove me wrong." If he
thought the question was genuine, he would try to answer it. Socrates
begins to make us self-conscious, aware of the attitudes that underlie
our questions.
Socrates also makes us self-conscious and critical about answers.
Meno (76d-e) likes the definition of color in terms of "effluences" and
"pores" (cf. Phaedo96e). But Meno here submits to a style of answering
(a "tragic style," 76e) because he is used to the words; he has no
insight. The occasion of this superficiality in Meno is Gorgias and his
ability to answer questions. Gorgias has given Meno a habit of
answering "fearlessly and magnificently'' because Gorgias lets anyone
ask him questions, and he is never at a loss. It has been a long time
since anyone asked him anything new (Gorgias 448a). Because of this
habit, Meno's opening question is not serious as a question.
We can see naivete and lack of seriousness in the attitude behind
Meno's question when we learn that he is not prepared for Socrates'
answer, "1 don't know." Meno is baffled by it. He cannot take it
John White is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was first given
at the College in Santa Fe, in Februruy, 1990.
�18
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
seriously because he cannot take seriously the ignorance that seeking
implies. Attitudes collide in this dialogue (and in Gorgias too). There
is no disagreement about substance between Socrates and Meno.
What is at stake in the collision is seriousness. Which is more serious:
answering or asking?
In this struggle between question and answer, Meno will "lose." He
loses not because he is wrong but because the attitude behind his
questions makes him unprepared for what now happens, after
Socrates' admission oflgnorance. When Socrates said "I don't know,"
Meno thought that Socrates was admitting failure. But Socrates'
ignorance was for himself the occasion to ask a question. Meno has
never heard a question like the one Socrates now asks and he does
not know what to do with it. The question Socrates asks, "What is
virtue?" is Socrates' own discovery, and it makes him "like nothing in
the ancient or modem world" (Symposium). He discovers the question
"What is?"
"What is?" is a universal question and can be asked about anything
(Meno74b). But even though the question can apply to anything, it is
not a success when we ask it about a technical matter, seeking the
answer of an expert. Ignorance about technical things is ordinary. But
If the question is asked about what we think we already know,
something we know just by living in the human world, then the
question has enormous power. For example, I think I knowwhat virtue
is, and Socrates must be using trickery. But If I know, why don't I
know that I know? Why am I not even more knowledgeable about my
own possession of knowledge than I am about its content? And If
Socrates is right and I don't knowwhat virtue is, something even worse
and more embarrassing has happened: I don't know that I don't know.
My real ignorance is not about virtue; my ignorance is about my own
self and what I know. The absence of that knowledge is now painfully
present to me.
Socrates completes this riddle of self-knowledge with the slave boy.
When the slave boy thinks he knows, Socrates shows him that he
doesn't; when the slave boy thinks he doesn't know, Socrates shows
him that he does. Whether or not I know what virtue is, I am ignorant
about myself. We become self-conscious and aware of ourselves in a
new and baffling way. Socrates tells a myth of reminiscence (8lb;
Phaedo 73a ff.) along with the slave-boy play. The myth says that the
soul is immortal. Originally it knew all things, but it has forgotten
them. Learning Is recollecting. Whether the myth is true or false,
whether learning turns out to be teaching or recollecting, I have
learned things- haven't I?- so why don't I know the answer to this
�WHITE
19
question about learning? Whether the myth is true or false "objectively," itis still true. The myth turns knowledge and ignorance upside
down.
Meno sees the slave-boy play and agrees that an inquiry about
virtue is possible. But then he returns to his opening question (How
does virtue come to us?). The "forgetting" part of the myth is no longer
mythical. Maybe the slave-boy episode "proves" recollecting; maybe
not. But forgetting is right there in front of us. Forgetting is deeper
and truer than remembering; it is the unknown basis of human
self-knowledge. Even if someone "proves objectively" that learning is
not recollecting, the shock of recognition we feel at forgetfulness ignorance not about things but about ourselves - would not be
overcome. No "objective" proof or knowledge can deal with this problem. To be human is to be forgetful.
The changes brought about by Socrates' question and the myth
cannot be reversed or ignored. There is no return to the situation
before this question was asked. For example, although Meno (or Polus
or Callic!es) may eventually discover arguments to prove the truth of
his belief about virtue or justice, his belief would no longer be a belief
but the conclusion of an argument. After his proof he might think that
he is back where he was before Socrates intruded, since only the form
of his belief has changed while the content has not. But mere change
of form brings other changes with it, because the change in form is a
change in one's self-understanding. Knowledge goes inside and invades the privacy of a person. Since people's beliefs are disappearing
as beliefs, Socrates' question makes people fear that they are "disappearing" somehow. For example, when Polus talks to Socrates in the
Gorgias, what he discovers about himself is not just that Socrates is
somehow stronger than he is, but that Polus is unknown to Polus.
Polus has within himself beliefs that are different from what he thinks
he believes. Polus discovers that he is unknown to himself, and the
person he believed himself to be begins to disappear.
One becomes aware of one's self as !tis by itself, as "numb in tongue
and soul" (SOb). One's ordinary"social" or "political" self fades into the
background. Naivete and worldliness begin to change places. Now we
are not in the position to judge the relative merit of answers. The
question has somehow begun to "measure" us or do something to us.
Asking is more important and serious than answering; what looked
like a form of activity is a form of passivity. Being numb is waking up.
Ignorance is interesting and deep; silence is eloquent.
Socrates' question reveals naivete or superficiality in people, rather
than mere mistakes. But being naive is worse than being wrong in
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Athens (and in freshman seminar, as most of us discover to our
discomfort; we have opinions that aren't even good enough to be
wrong). We are shown to be frivolous and superficial because we are
full of "opinions" In an uncritical, naive way. We weren't aware that
we could understand all our opinions as "answers to questions." We
are shown something that is "prior" to our opinions: Since an opinion
is an answer, surely the question is prior? Our opinions are seen to
be "answers" to questions that we are no longer aware of having been
asked. We have forgotten how these opinions became part of us. We
have forgotten a state of ourselves prior to "answers" and opinions, a
pre-existent state behind the self we are aware of. Our naive selfawareness Is an astounding kind of forgetting. We have become what
we are, in our ordinary and everyday understanding of human life and
human beings, by this forgetting. Only forgetfulness makes us appear
transparent to ourselves, whereas a few minutes conversation with
Socrates might tum all this upside down. The "what is" question rules
all of this.
The "what is" question Is prior to any discussion because It reveals
"presuppositions" that underlie discussion. There can be no discussion without this new kind of Inquiry. Moreover, besides being prior
to any discussion about anything, the ''what is" question appears to
be the question- a question that must not only be asked first, it must
also be answered before any other questions can even be asked.
Answers to other questions presuppose an answer to this question.
Other questions, Insofar as they are questions, presuppose this
question.
So, on the one hand, how could this question conceal anything?
"What" could be hidden by asking "what Is"? Nothing that Is a "what"
could be concealed by this question. Thatis, nothing that can be asked
about can be hidden by the question. And on the other hand, how
could there be any other question that does not conceal this question
within Itself simply by being a question? That Is, how could there be
a question that has no ''what," that Is not "about" anything? This
question Is the question. So, In fact, actually and beneath the surface,
this question Is the only question one hears, If one listens seriously to
questions as questions.
I began with Meno because It is presentln the NichomacheanEthics
in many ways - questions from Meno are sometimes repeated,
sometimes even parodied. The most obvious difference between the
attitudes of the two books Is that Aristotle's Ethics shows respect for
"answers" as such (e.g., he says the young can gain from listening to the
opinions of elders even when they can't argue for them or explain them).
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If Aristotle wishes to praise habit- even to go so far as to talk of
something like a "habit of thinking" (Meta. 993b 15) -we want to be
sure that he understands Socrates' question. We have to acknowledge
the force of Socrates' question. There is no return to the uncritical
acceptance of habit, unless one can believe in self-conscious naivete.
Socrates has discovered the question and a new, disorienting seriousness. The Platonic dialogues, by their very form, enshrine questions
and the seriousness of an unappeasable longing.
On the other hand, Aristotle seems to respect the form of an answer.
Aristotle certainly appears as if he has all the answers. And if he
doesn't have the answer, or tf he usually has two or three possible
answers, at least the form of seriousness that underlies "answering"
might come to light. Aristotle is in pari a return to Gorgias, in style
and content.
But if Aristotle is going to do anything "new" - and a return to a
prior position is new if the return is not naive and uncritical- he has
to show how inquiry has presuppositions that could not be discovered
by asking "what is." Inquiry must have presuppositions that cannot
be discovered by asking questions. If an inquiry and the "what is"
question can discover all presuppositions (even their own), then
inquiry can always be deepened and it has no limits. Aristotle has to
show that there are presuppositions that are concealed by asking this
question. He will do so.
Presuppositions
When we attend to the content of what we are saying, we assume
things on the level of "It goes without saying," things obviously true
but not explicitly stated. We do not say all that we mean. We can say
all that we mean only by attending to the form of what we say. A
particular form of saying, "argument" or "proof," is a standard by
means of which these hidden steps come to light as gaps. The search
for presuppositions looks for logical steps that have been skipped. And
the "obvious but hidden things, " things at the edges or borders of our
attention, once discovered and explicitly stated, are no longer "obviously true" [and true because obvious). They cannot be taken for
granted; they have to be argued for. Once a belief has been questioned,
the question takes root. Beliefs can never again "go without saying"
(RepubUc539b-c). And when these beliefs have been stated and argued
over, It doesn't matter if the argument Is successful or not. If you can
prove the belief, the belief is no longer held as a belief but as a
conclusion; if you can't prove the belief, it remains suspended in the
field of explicit attention. You might then decide to call it an axiom or
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
postulate, but these names mean only "the assumed part of a system
of proofs." The form of the belief has changed; Its form Is now
determined by its role in a system of proofs.
TWs kind of presupposition, an unexpressed or hidden content, is
brought to light by a ''what is" question and the reflection it Involves.
The presuppositions we discover are things necessary if we want to
prove something, If we want to be able to think it rather than feel it or
sense it or point to it. This search turns all beliefs into propositions
- conclusions or axioms of a system of arguments.
Within any proof system, there can be many proofs of the same
theorem; no proof is unique. (Even if there Is only one proof, Its
attachment to the theorem Is not unique.) A proof can show only the
truth of a proposition about an object, Its possibility or Its thinkability.
Logical presuppositions reveal how the truth of a proposition Is
possible. In the search for presuppositions we might uncover the
"being" of something in the sense of "being-true." But odd as this
sounds, this kind of being and this kind of inquhy are not what we
need.
To put the claim In Its boldest form: the search for logical presuppositions assumes that we are looking for the truth. But we are not
lookingforthe truth. Philosophy as the search for truth Is not what we
need. Aristotle says:
As for being in the sense of being true ... falsity and truth are not in
things, but in thought- for example, it Is not the good by itself that
Is true, nor the bad by Itself that is false. As for simple things and
that whatness of them, not even in thought Is there truth and falsity
of them... We must leave aside being in the sense of being true ... ;
it does not make clear any nature of being as existing outside.
(Metaphysics 1028a2)
Odd as it may sound, the kind oflnqulry that seeks the truth cannot
uncover the light kind of presupposition. There Is another group of
presuppositions -not of the "truth" or "possibility" of an object, but
presuppositions oflts actuality. Thatls, what things are presupposed
If something Is to be perceived as well as thought, to be "meant" by
speech/thinking as well as to be "present" to perception (to be present
as "particular" for perception as well as "universal" for thought or
speech-De Anima 417b20)? To be a tode tt. a ''this-there"? (See
Husser!, Ideas #14.) What are the presuppositions if something Is to
"be there" rather than "be true"?
If we want to search for "a nature of being as existing outside," we
need a new understanding of whatness and a new way to think it.
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Thinking about actuality Is different than thinking about possibility,
even though the actuality of something does not differ from Its
possibility in any determinate way (i.e .• a determinate difference is a
something, a "what"). For Aristotle, the difference in the kinds of
thinking appears In the difference between mathematics and physics.
Knowledge In physics, to be actual knowledge of the actual, has to
grasp the difference between actuality and potentiality.
We need to compare IJlathematical and physical thinking about a
thing. in one sense we are far from the Ethics. But if we tmderstand
the different ways mathematics and physics think of their objects, we
might be able to understand the ethical difference between the old and
the young- the young are good at mathematics and abstractions but
are not good at ethics (also physics and biology - "concretions,"
specifications).
The mathematical way of understanding the being-there of a thing
(tode tt) begins this way:
If the place of each body Is what primarily contains it, it would be
a boundary; so ... the place of each body is Its form or shape, by
which [It] is bounded ... But Insofar as place Is regarded as the
Interval of the magnitude, It would be the matter of a body... , and
this Is what is contained or limited by the form ... Now such are
matter and the indefinite ... (209b2)
If we think about a thing mathematically, we speak of a border or
edge as the limit of the thing. A thing, a "this-there," is "there" within
its borders, Its limits. We understand the spatiality, the being-there,
of a thing as the limit oflts extension, as the "outside of what is Inside"
a thing. Shape is the fundamental idea. For mathematics, the "being
as existing outside" -borders and edges as part of the outside - is
not part of what a thing is. Mathematical objects exist only in their
definitions, their explicit content. The definitions have to be "clear and
distinct" because they are the beginnings of a proof (rather than an
action; Physics 200a24).
But if we think of a thing physically, the place of a thing is neither
its form nor its matter, because they don't exist apart from the thing,
while the place of the thing can exist separately (209b22). So the way
that physics understands a thing's place, the thing In its existence, is
as the "boundary of that which contains" (212a20). For physics, "If a
thing ls somewhere, ... both the thing Itself is something and also
something else is outside of It (209b33). We do not want "clear and
distinct" ideas here. We need ideas with messy edges- a thing and
also something else outside It - In order ·~o make clear "being as
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TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
existing outside." We need ideas that have a "beyond" as part of them.
For physics the place of a thing is not the same as its shape. Now the
boundary of a thing does not belong to it but to its surroundings; it is
the limit as belonging to the outside.
Now "the limit of what contains and what is contained coincide.
Both are limits [the same limit in fact] but not of the same thing. The
one is the form of the thing; the other is the place of the containing
body" (2llbl3). For mathematics the limit belongs to the inside as the
limit of extension, of the non-dynamic occupation of space. But for
physics the limit or border beloJJ.gs to the outside because it is the
outside which contains the motion of the thing. For mathematics, the
border is the "outside ofwhat is inside"; for physics, place is the "inside
of what is outside" a thing, the container of motion, for only then is
location actuaL and physics thinks about things as actualities.
The difference between shape and place, potentiality and actuality,
does not exist for mathematics. Since "no interval exists [between] the
body which is enclosed by the border" and the border (2llb7), there
is no quantitative, mathematical difference between the mathematical
and physical understanding of the being-there. There is nothing for
mathematics to think about. Mathematics can't think about the
difference between itself and physics, so mathematics can't understand itself. (But physics can.) For example, in a tank of water the
cubic foot in the middle has boundaries geometrically, but this
boundary cannot belong to what physically contains the cubic foot,
because the contained and the container are continuous. If the parts
were separate but in contact, as they would be if a cube of ice sat on
a table, the cube would have a place. Aristotle says that the first
example, the water, is potential place; the second is actual place. Place
makes clear these dynamic relations of containment:
The locomotion of physical bodies and simple bodies ... makes it
clear not only that a place is something, but also that it has some
power. For each of these bodies travels to its own place, some of
them up and others down ... Now such directions ... do not exist only
relative to us ... By nature ... each of these [sets of directions] is
distinct; for the up direction Is ...where fire or a light object travels....
as if these directions differed not only In position but In power.
Mathematical objects ... are not In a place, and with respect to
position it is [only] relative to us that they have a right and a left;
so the position of [mathematical objects] has no nature but is only
conceived [by the soul]. (Physics 208b9)
Mathematical objects have right/left, etc.. only by convention,
whereas physical elements have these distinctions "Inside" them-
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selves, as principles of their motion or of their rest: up/down is not
only true about the motion of fire and earth as described from the
outside, it is also true for them on the inside. And in cases of rest, an
ashtray is on the table while a balloon is nnderthe ceiling- a dynamic
relation to what contains it.
There is a further stage to the analysis of the being-there of
something. There is also a sense in which elemental bodies (like
mathematical shapes) have the directions only by convention. Elements such as fire or earth are never fully "there" in their place
because they are at rest by constraint or they are part of a whole. But
for living things the situation is different: "Above and below belong to
all living things, plants as well as animals". Sometimes the difference
is in function only, sometimes in shape as well" (285al5). The study
of actual things, beings, is itself most actual when we look at living
beings and the way in which they are "there":
Above and below, right and left, front and back, are not to be looked
for in all bodies alike, but only in those which, because living
[besouled]. contain within themselves a principle of motion; for in
no part of an inanimate object [without soul] can we trace the
principle of its motion. Some do not move at all, whereas others,
though they move, do not move in every direction alike. Fire, for
instance, moves upward only, earth to the center. It is in relation
to ourselves that we speak of above and below or right and left in
these objects. But in the objects themselves we detect no difference.
[That is, the "body" of fire or earth is mere extension, whose parts
differ only in geometrtc location. The parts of an organic body differ
in function, so the spatial relation of the parts to each other is
imporiant.]
This is a pari of biology, for in living creatures it is obvious that
some have all these features - right and left and so forth - and
others some, whereas plants have only above and below. Each of
the three pairs Is In the nature of a principle. These three-dimensional differences may reasonably be supposed to be possessed by
all reasonably complete [teleios] bodies. Their nature as principles
may be defined with reference to motions ... Growth is from above,
locomotion from the right, the motion which follows sensation
[appetite] from in front (since the meaning of"front"ls that towards
which sensations are directed). (On the Heavens 284bl4-285a26)
"Being as existing outside" is present in a new way: the three
dimensions of space are not merely true about a "complete" organic
body; they are also true for it. A living, sensing body has all three sets
of oppositions always significantly true about its spatial presence
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
wherever it Is- e.g., it can never be "up" nor can it move "up" in the
way fire does because an animal's position Is not indifferent to
right/left, etc., as Is the position of fire. This means that space Is
organized as being "around" the living body (and. thereby space and
place start to become "environment"). In animals, back/front,
right/left, up/down are three sets of spatial opposites related to and
radiating from a "Here," an origin (arche). In an animal, to exist, to
be-there, is to be "Here",(Progress. 707a7).
The new distinction of front/back, which allows all three sets of
oppositions to be actually distinct and which unifies them in a "Here,"
depends on sensation and the way that the animal exists in the world
In order to sense things. The physical presence of an animal, given In
sensation for the one doing the sensing, Is not the relation of "place"
or "a thing and also something else outside," but a new relation that
contains and goes beyond them.
In sensation. the spatial relations are changed, but the change is
subtle. Since "sensation consists In being moved and acted upon" (De
Anirria 416b32), physical presence and contact (having the same
border or limit) Is necessary (touch is the primary sense, 413b9), so
one might think that "place" is sufficient. In fact, in touch the physical
contact and the sensation seem to be the same thing (unlike vision,
where I see things at a distance). While the physical contact in
touching is mutual (my hand Is in the same kind of contact with the
table as the table Is with my hand), the sensation rejects the mutuality
of physical contact: I sense the table and It does not sense me. The
word "external" in the context of "sensation of external objects" (and
the meaning of "being as existing outside") cannot be the kind of
externality that objects have In the Physics, where objects are external
to each other mutually and dynamically in the relation called "place."
The sensed body is external because it Is sensed. In sensation, even
In touch, my body is not present as a body (which it surely is and has
to be for the possibility of sensation). Rather, In sensing the table, my
body "mediates" between me and the table. My body is the transparent
medium of my presence (Parva Naturalia 436b8): "the faculty of
sensation has no actual but only potential existence" (De Anirria
417a2). When I sense something, I do not sense the thing directly
(without my body as a medium), nor do I sense the medium directly
- I do not sense my hand touching the table. When I see something,
my body Is not present as a visible object. My body Is present in vision
as a "point of view." The "Here" of my body is present in sensation as
a perspective; "Here" becomes a "from over Here." I see something from
a perspective (from over Here), and I am aware of this perspective (my
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Here) as one actual out ofmany possible perspectives. The perspective,
the "from over Here," is what makes vision a sensation rather than a
thought. The perspective is the "particularity" of sensation (De Anima
417b20). Sensation senses particulars, but not because particulars
are what Is "really there."The.particulars that are present in sensation
are "the one actuality out of many possibilities"- a One out of Many,
a One against the background of a Many. This "One out of Many" is
present In sensation as th.e perspective, the "from over Here" (existing
outside the "Here," a difference that Is not mere otherness), the "One
actual out of Many possibles."
In addition, when one analyzes the spatial existence of the animal
body, the form of an animal is not "shape" in the mathematical sense,
because organic bodies are not geometric forms, are not an arrangement of surfaces in space to be reduced to an arrangement of elemental
particles (Driesch, Science and Philosophy of the Organism, p.8).
Organic bodies have "non-homogenous parts" such as face or hand or
foot (Parts of Animals 640b20). These parts are united (and distinguished) by their functioning, and they do not exist independently of
the whole. Because these parts are not quantitative parts, an organic
body is not the sum of its parts. Because the parts are unified by their
functioning together with each other, the spatial relation (and distinction) of the parts to each other is essential to what their whole is. The
three spatial dimensions are most clearly present and articulated in
human beings because humans are "most in accordance with nature"
(706al9). 'The principles 'up' and 'front' are in humans mostin accord
with nature and most differentiated." (In four-footed animals, "up" and
"front" are not differentiated. Humans and birds have the differentiation [706a26;706bl2].)
Organic form Is expressed by the functional relations of the parts
to each other reciprocally. But there is also a function for the whole
(Parts 645bl5). Thereby a living body is related to space in a new way.
The being-there of an active animal is not grasped by "place" nor by
the "from over Here" of sensation. The active body is located and
spatially unilled only as "Here" in this new sense, as the origin (arch£)
ofits actions, and the surrounding space has afunctional organization
with respect to the living body; right/left, up/down, front/backthree sets of opposites related to and radiating from a "Here" which,
as a beginning of action, is also a "Now." We live in anticipation of a
future.
Because "form" takes on this new, functional meaning for organic
bodies, functions and motions take on a new significance. Not only is
the organic whole different from its elemental matters and "homage-
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
nous parts" (where the whole is the sum of the parts); the living being
is even opposed to its own matter, its physical nature (and this means
that elemental nature is not "natural" in the ruling sense):
Loss of power is contrary to nature. All instances of loss of power
are contrary to nature, e.g., old age and decay, and the reason for
them is probably that the whole structure of an aniroal is composed
of elements whose proper places are different; none of its parts is
occupying its proper plitce. (On the Heavens 288b5)
Because organic forms are ultimately built from elemental matters
(like fire and earth), they consist of contraries, motions in opposite
dtrections. There is no special "elemental matter" for organic forms,
so their form insofar as it is organic is not a static "shape." Organic
form is an achievement.
Wbat is it that holds frre and earth together [in a living body] when
they tend to move in opposite directions? [Their bodies] will be tom
apart, unless there is something to prevent it... (De Anima 416a5)
Form is not something an animal has so much as it is something
an anhnal does to keep from being tom apart. The animal body
demands effort and action from within for the motions which produce
and sustain it. The adult organic form is produced by growth. Once
grown, the living body is not in a state of rest, because the living body
is always being "tom apart." The state of rest (no growth) is another
set of form-producing motions (DeAnima416blO). Rest involves the
metabolic replacement of cells which age and decay, the healing of
cuts and fighting of disease (259b9). A part lost in a struggle may
regenerate. If regeneration is not possible, the anhnal might compensate for the loss by the functional reorganization of the remaining parts.
The animal cannot save the whole as a sum of parts, but it might be
able to save the whole as a function.
We are in a realm of "ideas with messy edges," where we wish to
see something as well as think it. Mathematical thinking, with its
"clear and distinct" definitions, cannot grasp actual beings, rather
than possibilities, because the distinction between potentiality and
actuality doesn't exist for mathematical thinking. The distinction is
"there" only if we are "there" as the relation of perceiving and speaking.
We should not seek a defioition of everything, but should also perceive
an object by means of an analogy. As that which is awake is to that
which is asleep -let "actuality" sign!Jy the first term of such relations
and "potentiality" signify the second. (Metaphysics 1048a34)
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These beings are "there" if we are there as the relation of perceiving
and speaking. The perception or knowledge of these living beings Is
actual only If we are already "internally related" to the object. This Is
odd language. I will try again.
The actuality of a thing Is different from its possibility (and the
difference Is not a mathematical difference) If the thing is in-between
what Is eternally necessary and what is accidental, chance - most
clearly If the thing Is a living, mortal being. The "in-between" Is
perceived as an in-between thing (living but mortal) only if the knower
Is of the same kind. The knower is internally related to, while also
distinct from, the thing known. This sameness of knower and known
Is a relation deeper than knowing, if knowing is the knowing of
whatness, because this sameness Is not the logical identity of A=A.
This sameness makes the relation of knowing possible as an actuality.
Knowing is now possible as an actual knowing of the actual. Perception
is recognition (Ethics ll39al0). A look at the study ofbiologywill make
this clearer.
A condition for understanding biology, a presupposition whereby
we do not "see" something unless we are internally related to It, where
perception Is recognition, Is indicated by Aristotle in the following line
of thought. There are two kinds of works of nature: those which come
Into being and perish, and those which do not perish. The Imperishable are divine, but we have few opportunities to study them because
there Is little evidence available to our senses. We have better information about mortal things because we live among them. Our knowledge of mortal beings is greater "because they are nearer to us and
more akin to our nature," and that is compensation for the relative
Inferiority of the object. Knowledge about mortal things Is one we get
from the "tnside" as It were, betng mortal ourselves. Knowledge of
mortal beings is not available to someone outside the mortal situation,
to someone who is not "there." The prime mover does not contemplate
the world nor does he know other beings. In his "thinking of thinking,"
animals are not "there" for him.
The more usual pre-conditions for understanding biology come up
in the more ordinary discussions. When people discuss a science of
animal life (paraphrasing and re-arranging Parts 639b20 ff. and
Physics l98b10ff.), they divide into two parties. One group wants to
talk about a creating god or demiurge behind the being of animals.
The other group wants to talk about matter and chance combination.
Biology turns into theology or physics. It looks as if biology must begin
with one of these two presuppositions, for they are the only possible
presuppositions here.
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But, according to Aristotle, either presupposition makes the actual
subject disappear, Life may be more "thinkable" with either presupposition, and the science of biology may be more understandable as
a science, but neither "life" nor "biological knowledge Is any more
actual. If we look at the world "objectively" and see only the parts that
are Immortal, parts whose mere possibility means actuality, the
eternal actualities of matter or god, we would not be able to see animals
or plants a tall, the living/ dying beings, the beings whose "being-there"
is a set of motions, a function, a doing. We can "see" this in-between
possibility (between necessity ami chance) in all things that grow:
When we say that nourishment is necessruy, we mean "necessary"
in neither of the former modes, but we mean that, without nourishment, no animal can be. This is "conditional necessity" or "hypothetical necessity." (Parts ofAnimals 642a8)
"Hypothetical necessity" -another idea that is unclear and indistinct, that appears to combine opposites. But it does make the
actuality of a living being more understandable.
For example ,look at the rabbit. There is no "transcendental deduction" of a rabbit; lt is not "necessary." A rabbit does not have to be the
way it is: there are many kinds of animal life. A rabbit's kind of life is
conditional or hypothetical; it has to be "given." But, on the other
hand, there is a kind of necessity to the rabbit. If there are going to be
rabbits, they"make sense" in a particular way. For example, !fi try to
"improve" a rabbit by adding a better weapon - by giving it fangs I see that, for the actual possession of such large teeth by a rabbit, I
have to make another change: the jaw has to be larger. If the jaw is
larger, then the neck has to be stronger and heavier. If the neck is
heavier, then the front limbs have to be stronger to support the larger
mass. With a heavier head and neck and front limbs, the rabbit won't
be able to hop; it will need a new way to move. And it needs a new way
to nourish Itself; the rabbit is no longer an efficient eater of grass. If
its nourishment changes, chemical changes will be necessary- a new
set of digestive enzymes, a new Immune system that recognizes the
new parts as "same" rather than "other," and so on. So there is a
necessity that follows the "hypothetical" glvenness of any one function
and animals are eternal "in the manner which is open to them."
Of the things which are, some are eternal and divine, others admit
of being and now-being... Being is better than non-being, and living
than not living. These are the causes on account of which the
generation of animals takes place, because since the nature of a
class of this sort is unable to be eternal, that which comes into being
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is eternal in the manner that is open to it. Now it is impossible for
it to be so numerically, since "the being" of things is to be found in
the particular, and if it really were so, then it would be eternal; it
is, however, open to it to be so specifically [in eidos]. That is why
there is always a class of men, animals and plants. (Generation of
Animals 731 b25)
Animals as a whole are not necessary. Because there are many
species and many ways ofliving, no particular way is necessary. But
there is a necessity in the unity of the parts because of the relation "if
this particular way of eating, then this particular way of walking." All
of these hypothetical statements have attached to them an "in order
to survive." There is no other ground of necessity here. The rabbit is
not "necessary," but this particular group of properties and weapons
and organs "makes sense" under the conditions oflife, if the rabbit is
going to survive, if its own survival is an issue to it. There is no way
to imagine an improved version of an animal. Although animals are
not perfect or divine, somehow they are "at an end." There is no good
for them that is beyond them. There is only life, "this" kind of life. All
animals are intelligible in this way: whale, shark, hawk, cockroach,
horse, tiger, bower-bird - even such pieces of apparent whimsy as
the fringed lizard and the ostrich (a parody of a human face with its
eyelashes and almost-binocular eyes; Its tiny wings; its legs which
bend the wrong way- Prog. Animals 714al8). It looks like a parody
of human form because both humans and birds have "top distinct
from front" (706a26).
Nature makes nothing without purpose but always with a view to
what is best for each thing within the bounds of possibility,
preserviog the particular essence (to tt. en einai) of each. (Frog. of
Animals 708a11)
In the theoretical sciences we begin with "what always is" and
Necessity [Parts 639b23-640a4). But in the knowledge of nature, the
sciences of the actual. we cannot begin with what always is. If we
begin with "what always is," the implicit temporality ofthe statement
would misrepresent living nature. Aristotle says that in natural science we do not begin with "what is" but "what will be' (Parts 639b23).
In the sciences of the actual, of living things which become and are
themselves, we have to begin with a beginning, with "what wiU be" or
what is going to be, a goal or project, a future, an actual possibility,
an aiming. Life is something that is never simply possessed but is
always the object and product of our continual effort, always the
future, because of mortality. Life always has the real possibility of
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
being "torn apart." This Is why biology and science of nature cannot
study "abstractions" (64lbll). Nature makes things for a purpose,
things that have a future built Into their present because they have
mortality built ln. The existence of these things Is not merely an "is."
If we are to have a science of biology, "what Is" needs temporal
qualifications because the present of living beings is not a simple "is."
Because we must begin with ''what will be" In the study ofliving beings,
their present Is the past of that future, a ''what was to be," to ti en
einaL
The reason why earlier thinkers did not arrive at this method of
procedure was that in their time there was no notion of to ti
en einai
and no way of dividing/deftotng betng. (Parts 642a26)
In ethics also the future Is built Into the present - a possibility
opened up by life Itself - In two important ways. In choice: what
distinguishes choice (proaires!s) from behavior that Is voluntary (atres!s)? Animals and children have voluntary behavior, an idea that Is
needed in biology as the complement and completion of "form."
Pro-aires!sls the future thatls builtinto decisions made In the present.
A decision is always made in the present, but moral virtue and
character allow us to pre-make our choices, to choose the kind of
choosing we will do, to put an atres!s before the atres!s, a pro-aires!s,
to begin with the beginning of actions (the beginning as the archei. to
make present choices the "past ofaji.Jture." This possibility- of deeds
needing both a beginning and an origin, arche - is groWlded by the
other crncial idea of ethics, habit, hexis (which comes from the future
tense of echo).
To say that "Perception is recognition" means that the outer, what
Is seen, Is the expression of the Inner and cannot be seen or understood without the looker, looking at the outside, Inwardly being the
same as the observed, having a "key'' or lexicon to decipher or translate
the outer as a sign of the Inner. This means that when we look at an
animal, we are looking at Form. not geometric shape, and the motions
that we see are not motions but actions, behavior. This kind oflooking
Is as actual, as real, as the animal we see because looking also Is an
action of a living being, not the "objective" observations of "consciousness." When I go to the Washington zoo and look at the hippopotamus
or the giraffes or Mark, the kodiak bear, I become aware of my own
looking. To look at these antmals you have to sit down and give yourself
a long time. As you watch them move around, you feel your inner pace
changing, slowing down. And the animal begins to appear. The animal
has been "there" as a shape, but now It begins to "be there" as a form,
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a functional whole, a being-there that Is for Itself a Here, a center. Its
motions begin to appear as behavior emanating from a center, as
action with an origin (archii). The animal and the seeing come Into
being along with each other and for each other. They are equally
present to each other. Looking Is a kind of attunement.
Of these two Ideas, form and action, form Is the one that Is usually
emphasized In biology - especially prominent In the readings and
dissections of Freshman laboratocy. But the idea of action Is equally
Important because It completes the biological understanding of form.
Form only appears as something expressed by actions. A form Is a
functional whole, actual when functioning. A hand severed from the
body is no longer a hand.
Action, choice, appetite, voluntary behavior- these are biological
ideas that are taken over and completed In the first half of Aristotle's
Ethics, the part about moral virtue. If these ideas belong to both biology
and ethics, then ethics is able to understand moral virtues on their
own terms and not tum them into intellectual virtues. Aristotle's
Ethics, in its ablllty to understand moral virtue, knows that the
problem of virtue is not to make us "act rationally,'' but rather almost
the opposite: How can the intellect become part of human virtue
without undermining moral virtue even while attempting to support
It (Magna Moralia 1182al5; cf. Republic 365a5). Intellect is a danger
because it destroys the innocence necessacy for moral virtue by
encouraging the self-consciousness that drives inqulcy. The danger
represented by the Intellect Is countered and overcome by the most
extraordinacy and deep thing about human beings: forgetting. The
Meno discovers and wonders at this forgetting. Aristotle's Ethics uses
forgetting In the form of habit to let self-consciousness and the intellect
disappear into the background.
Now we will look at the first part of the Ethics, moral virtue and Its
aesthetic/religious climax In "greatness of soul." Moral virtue culminates In this virtue because moral virtue begins with the problem of
the relation of virtue and self-consciousness in the desire for honor.
In Book I (1095bl5), Aristotle says that men of action agree that the
practical human good Is honor. But the desire for honor reveals the
difficulty of being virtuous and knowing that you are virtuous at the
same time.
Honor seems too superficial [to be the practical good for man, even
though men of action pursue it] ... slnce It appears to depend on
those who confer it rather than those upon whom it is conferred ... Men's motive in pursuing honor seems to be to assure
themselves of their own merit; they desire to be honored on the
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ground of virtue. (!095b25) Tbose ...who covet being honored by
good men [rather than powerful men], and by persons who know
them, do so from a desire to confum their own opinion of themselves; so these like honor because they are assured of their worth
by their confidence in the judgment of those who assert it.
(1159a20)
In ethics as well as biology there is also a privileged state for
observation, a mature state, in which seeing and being seen are most
actual. The young cannot understand the science of ethics, nor are
they capable of ethical action- they cannot see or be seen here. Only
the mature human Is capable of understanding and performing action,
behavior that springs from character.
Animals and the young are not capable of ethical action; their
behavior is only ''voluntary," a biological character. Their behavior
does not spring from a fixed disposition, from character. They live in
a "Now" of acting, and thereby they are closer to the internal and
external conditions of doing. They are not yet separated and isolated
from the conditions. Proairesis, the way a mature being chooses, is
not made simply in the Now; It is made before the moment of decision,
never simultaneously with it. It endures into the present moment
because of training and habit, and It allows us to have character.
Animals and the young do not have character. Their lives aren't
temporally integrated; the "before" (and "after") are not part of the deed
for them. "Action" and "character" are the two ideas we need In order
to enter ethics. These notions (and "choice") are not simple. We will
look at their roots and growth briefly.
The young are good at mathematics. (There are youthful prodigies
In mathematics, music, and chess, sciences that are "abstract.") But
"mathematical speeches have no ethos (custom, habit),. since they do
not involve any choice [proairesis]. For they do not have 'that for the
sake of which'" (Rhetoric 1417al9). In mathematics there are no
decisions that involve the separation or opposition of means and ends.
There is no ambiguity or tension (a possibility opened up by the
opposition of form and matter in biological form). All decisions and
actions within mathematics are determined by knowledge of the
object. There is no need for a choice which can be justified only by the
character of the subject.
A human understanding of human beings begins when we recognize ambiguity and tension. We first meet this tension in our
youth, the tension between thinking and feeling. The young excel
in mathematical thinking; in action, the young are led by their
feelings. The difference between these two faculties, thinking and
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feeling, characterizes young people. Mathematics and rhetoric (usually
in the form of music) are their possibilities. Morally, the young are
capable of startling amounts of generosity and terri1YJng amounts of
self-righteousness. Youth is a time of either/or: something is either
precise or imprecise, thinking or feeling, right or wrong.
The young are wrong. But I want to qualify this. Their mistake is
not a "logical" mistake. Their mistakes shows vitality, the presence of
a particular form of life, youthfulness. If we look at a ''youthful"
question about thinking and feeling and say, ''You'll grow out of It" or
"Just do It; don't dither about it so much," we would be making
another kind of mistake, the mistake of being old. Age tends toward
Impatience and coldness. Tension withers because feeling withers
(their friends often are useful to them rather than pleasing 1156a25). An impatient intellectuality gets stronger. Habit begins to
suffocate nature.
This youthful mistake is just the first form of the human problem
- relation of emotions and intellect, nobility and justice. This ambiguity, first present in youth, continues. There are many ambiguities
or tensions in the Ethics. Choice is the fullest expression of this tension
and unity. Choice, proairesis, Is "either thought related to desire or
desire related tp thought; and man, as an origin of action (archei, is a
Wtion of desire and inteUect" (1139b3). Moral virtue is a habit of
choosing, a Wtion of desire and principle- "if choice is something
serious" (1139a24).
The answers for which Aristotle is famous or notorious are very
often a paired set of two answers (thoughtful desire or appetitive
thought, the actuality of a potential, hypothetical necessity, etc.).
Sometimes they seem to be merely lwo opposites just stuck together.
With these answers, one sometimes feels that one is just hearing the
question again (Is motion an actuality or a potentiality? What is it in
its self-same simplicity?) What is good about this kind of answer, even
though it can't be separated from its context like a mathematical
theorem, is that it tries for visibility as well as thinkability. Such an
answer is really and obviously connected to the question; the answer
doesn't destroy the question. The answer is often only the "mature"
form of the question, where a question in its maturity is the answer
in its freshness.
The "paired set" of answers that holds together the science of ethics
appears when "the good for man" is first investigated. When Aristotle
asks "What is the good for man?" he gives two answers. The good for
man Is both "Happiness" and "the function of man, which is doing
virtuous acts." Despite ''virtuous action" being the explicit content of
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the book, it is not the most Interesting and serious question of the
book, which Is, what Is the relation of these two answers?
"Happiness" as the goal of human action makes sense as a theory
of human actions when one looks at the variety of human actions and
tries to fmd a common goal. But it Is too general to be practically
useful; It cannot be "aimed at"; there is no goal for striving, no future,
In it. The other answer, "the function of man, doing virtuous acts," is
very practical and can c~rtainly be a goal for aiming and striving, but
It Jacks the confident self-consciousness that goes with happiness.
Aristotle says that the two answers are related by ''visibility" or
explicitness (1097b24; cf. 1107a28): Doing vtrtuous acts is an explication or specification ofhappiness. This, "specification, actualization,
application, becoming visible," is the center of moral virtue and the
key to understanding choice as the relation of thinking and feeling.
On the one hand, ethical action is the specifYing of the general rule,
where the general rule gets applied. On the other hand, ethical action
is where very specific doings and happenings get generalized, get a
general and universal character- where "this act" becomes a "noble
act" and where "this person" gets character. Character gives our
actions a universally recognizable quality, and we are able to appear.
Action
So we will look at action and habit briefly. Then we will look at the
climax of moral virtue In "Greatness of Soul."
An action is not merely doing something. That kind of doing is best
exemplified by making. In making (producing an object by labor or
craft) the end of the doing lies outside of the doing. The maker doesn't
appear in the thing made- at least he doesn't appear as a doer with
character; he appears as skillful or clumsy.
Actions allow me to appear as a doer, as having character, as being
a source of the shape of the doings. The soul must actively appear in
Its actions; it must not disappear as it disappears into the object of
labor or of knowledge. The moral good as giving a shape to doings is
"something to aim at" in my actions rather than something to know.
If the vtrtuous action Is given by a rule specifYing what to do, then
vtrtue is actual as virtue when the rule is followed because it is a rule.
The character that would appear would be a person who Is a rule-follower,
someone with a compulsive personality disorder. If I want to become
just actually- not merely "do the just thing," mere behavior - I do
not want to go to someone who knows what justice is and is able to
tell me the correct thing to do. Because he is able to do that, my action
would not have an "aiming." My action would be mere doing and would
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not point beyond Itself. If I myself want to become just, I want to see
someone who is aiming at justice. He Is the only one useful to me
because I want to see his aiming, his action. Aiming presents the
person and the goal, character and virtue, as distinct and yet related.
Aiming presents the universal and the specific at the same time, so I
can look at an action and separate the Important from the unimportant parts- the just part from the merely specific parts of the action.
This separating is the Part of the doing that makes it mine. With the
separating, I come on stage pointing: "There, that is what's just or
noble to me." We want to see In actions their aiming rather than their
"knowledge of the whatness" of justice so we can see the hidden part
of an action, the pro part of pro-oiresis. Aiming is both the specifYing
of the general and the generalizing of the specific.
Virtues, as objects of"aiming," are one pole of the relation of aiming.
Virtues themselves have a certain relational structure. They are not
simple positive presences. They are a mean between two extremes, a
not-this and not-that, a doubled negation. This structure, a mean and
extremes, is a necessary feature of an object of choice qua choice, i.e.,
as something aimed at. If I look at a portion of food, I might observe
Its properties and weigh it- i.e., treat it as an object of knowledge.
Butlfl am to choose or reject it, it must be either just right, too much,
or too little. It is Imprecise mathematically but is something appealing
to me. The mathematical value of the mean can change, if I go on a
diet. What formerly appeared to me as "just right" now appears as "too
much." But the mean/ extremes structure ls still there. It Is a universal
structure of object of choice.
Practical wisdom first appears to us as paired sets of opposites
without a mean, a large dose of the kind of answer that Aristotle often
gives. These generalities often make sense as a reflection about human
action, but there Is little hope of using them as a guide to action. When
I was growing up, my grandmother would watch me do something and
say "Haste 111akes waste." Then she would watch me again and say "A
stitch in time saves nine." I should not be "Penny wise and pound
foolish." However, I should remember that "A penny saved is a penny
earned." This aspect of growing up Is maddening and hilarious- was
she trying to help me or drive me crazy? Eventually, a way of doing
things begins to appear, almostofltself-amean, a waythatls "mine."
There Is no way that Is "the" way (universal) nor Is there a way that Is
"merely mine" (specific), but there Is "my way" ofbelng temperate, "my
way" of doing the general goals. The mean and the "mine" of character,
the universal and the specific, come into being at the same time.
The goal of training Is not mere behavior but a stage where the
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
boredom and the struggle recede into the background because of
habit, allowing for a new possibility, action and character.
Choice is a more certain sign of character than is action (Ethics
llllb4). While a choice is made before the moment of doing and
choice is made possible by ptior training, choice is more visible after
the moment of doing, when someone reflects on what they did and
shows regret or satisfaction. Afterwards they claim the action as their
own or reject it; they ('how whether or not they meant it (rather,
whether they now intend to mean it). We have all received apologies
along the lines of ''I'm sorry, if you were offended. But! had a bad day,
too much to drink," etc. You are seeing the choice made again, but
not under the pressure of ctrcumstances. As the qualifications to the
apology pile up, the deed and its circumstances as a whole are being
chosen tight now. The pro part of the pro-airesis appears in thought
about the deed afterwards. This thinking takes place at the edge of
the moment of action. It is the transition from the general to the
particular (and also the reverse). The present moment, the moment of
doing, is the past of a future. It is a reflective affirmation of what we
approved of in advance, in deliberation. Before the deed, the object of
choice or voluntatiness is too general, a mere rule, and it needs
specifYing, shaping. After the deed, the deed by itself was far too
specific (was the sneeze part of the deed or not? the color of my shirt?)
so the "factual" doing needs shaping, a separation of the important
from the unimportant. I as a doer need to be sorted in the same way,
Important from unimportant. Choice does this; it both chooses and
recognizes (as Its own- ''Yes, that's what I meant") the shape of the
action. Without those two kinds of shaping and specifYing, there are
no actions. There is only behavior, mere voluntary happenings without
shape. Proairesis allows me to "make an appearance" in the world as
a doer, a source and origin of action. Without character. deeds have
a beginning- a unique place in the series that is physical time- but
they have no otigin (arche).
The climax of moral virtue is a virtue called "Greatness of Soul."
What this person sees in his aiming is not so much a mean between
two extremes but the distinction between the important and the
unimportant, the great and the petty. He has a reflective and poetic
grasp of deeds. This man is the climax of the imprecise side ofvtrtue,
for we know that he is idle and slow to act, but we don't know what
he does, only that it is great.
Aesthetically and religiously, however, he is very precise. He has a
deep voice and walks slowly. He likes beautiful and useless things.
(He himself is beautiful and useless for the most part.) He is worth the
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greatest of external goods, honor- the kind of honor we offer to the
gods as a tribute. He Is moderately pleased with honor from "serious"
people, but no honor Is adequate. He does not care much even about
honor. It is "small" to him because he Is aware of the greatoess of his
own soul and its worth. Human life itself is not too "serious" to him.
In this he approaches the insight given later In the book, that "it is
absurd to think that political knowledge or prudence Is the most
serious kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the best thing in
the universe" (ll4la20j. He has insight about limits and transcendence. To understand Wm as a limit- that he is worth th~ greatest
honor but he doesn't pursue honor; that honor is small to him, but
he deigns to accept It from serious people despite its inadequacy we have to remind ourselves of the difficulties moral virtue and
self-consciousness have with each other.
In Book I (and again in Book VIII) Aristotle said that although men
of action pursue honor, honor is superficial. Honor is superficial
because It has a hidden part, a choice hidden underneath the surface
choice ofhonor. "Men's motive In pursuing honor seems to be to assure
themselves of their own virtue." Men pursue honor because of a
weakness or difficulty with self-consciousness, self-knowledge.
Later in Book I (llOlblO), Aristotle distinguishes honor from
praise. When we praise just men, we approve of their actions. But
when we praise the gods, it is absurd that they be measured by our
standards, but this Is what approval is. So when dealing with the gods
(or godlike people), we give them honor. Honor here Is not an occasion
for self-knowledge in the one honored, but In the one doing the
honoring. Honor is a recognition of our own incapacity to recognize
the worth of the virtuous soul. The man of greatoess of soul, In his
self-knowledge and his worth, his grasp of the limits of honor, and as
a occasion for our self-knowledge, Is godlike. He is an aesthetic and
religious climax.
When Hobbes looks at ancient thought, he doesn't think that It was
''wrong." Hobbes doesn't even ta:ke It seriously. The ancients don't
understand the problems deeply enough. They are superficial because
they are "uncritical" - naive - about thinking. The mind can't be
objective or find truth without some preliminary critical work.
First, ancient thought uncritically and naively believes that we can
begin to think without understanding language first and without
getting true defmitions. Words in their daily use appear to have their
meanings "simply there," as the diagrams of Euclid are simply there,
open to vision with nothing hidden, nothing in;tplicit, ,noth.lng. prec
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
40
supposed. But this is a deception. Words are not simple presences.
Words do have a natural core of meaning, but they also have an overlay
of the accidental, an historical accretion of evaluative judgments
(which often can be traced back to Artstotle). Hobbes gives an analysis
of the word "tyranny" as an example. The natural part of a word's
meaning has to be separated from the historical part before we can
think without hidden prejudice.
Second, the other source ofthe,anclent's naivete and superficiality
was their religion.
There is almost nothing that has a name that has not been esteemed
by the Gentiles as a god ...The Gentiles make images and statues so
that we might stand in fear of various objects of devotion: [the
Gentiles have worshipped rivers, trees, mountains,] men, women,
birds, crocodiles, snakes and onions ...
Ancient religious thought concerns poetic fancies, mere "figures of
honor." A plurality of gods Is needed to express their love of comparing
and competing. Even the Prime Mover in Artstotle's Metaphysics is
"prime" rather than "only." He is the chief or first mover rather than
a god beyond comparing. The hidden presence of polytheistic religion
makes Artstotle's philosophy an unsystematic doctrine of separate
essences or actualities or substances. The only thing that is striking
about his thought is his use of "insignificant speech" and self-contradictory defmltions. Aristotle fools no one who can listen deeply to
speech and hear what is being said. (Hobbes is a great translator, able
to hear beneath the surface of words.)
The Bible, whether true or false, makes it possible for us to be
"deep," serious and rational in a way that was not possible for the
ancients. Monotheism is not truer than polytheism. Monotheism is
more rational than polytheism because It allows us to be more serious
and rational.
Both ways of being uncritical make ancient thinkers naive. This
naivete shows up as an inability to see through the deceptions of honor
and its poetry, the mists with which honor hides and decorates the
ordinary, the natural. Honor decorates and hides nature and natural
justice at every opportunity. Hobbes exposes honor continually. For
example, even laughter is unmasked as being a kind ofhonor, "sudden
glory." Aristotle's Ethics Is impossible because it tries to hold together
honor (nobility) and justice.
The particular book that Hobbes takes as a standard- to show us
a new sense of seriousness, a way to see the world and people not
hidden by honor -Is Job. There the world is filled with figures of power
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and pride: lioness, raven, wild horse, ox, vulture, and leviathan. The
strangest being on God's list is the ostrich. It doesn't even care for its
eggs. God says it is the silliest animal. But the ostrich, despite its lack
of seriousness, rises up and outruns the horse, that figure of pride
and courage in war. I look at the animals and I see that I am not the
most serious thing in the universe, but I do belong in it- I do belong
to that series of beauty and power, where power is justified by Its
serious beauty. But then I look at the ostrich. It is almost insulting.
It Is In bad taste, an aesthetic mistake, to put the ostrich on this list.
The other way in which Job turns against ancient standards and
makes them look naive and not serious is its ending. If the ancient
pagans had written Job, they would not have written that short,
annoying ending, where Job gets everylhing back and gets a new
family. They would not have allowed such a spiteful, mocking turn of
the religious against the aesthetic. They would not have allowed such
a short ending to overbalance the long beauty of Job's suffering. The
disproportion of the length and content of the ending is as if, at the
end of Oedipus at Colonus, Apollo would come on stage and say, "On
second thought, never mind." Oedipus would have been furious. This
book should end with Job repenting. His suffering is justified aesthetically because he suffered beautifully, fearlessly, and magnificently.
Job would have greatness of soul and belong In the world with
leviathan and the crocodile and the hawk and Oedipus.
But the book doesn't end there, nor did God end creation before
the ostrich. Not only does Job get a replacement family, he loves them.
How can he love them so simply? It is disloyal to his first family and
his own suffering at their loss. If Job forgets his own suffering and its
magnificence - if he does not respect his own suffering - how can
we take him seriously? Ifwe can, Job is something stranger and deeper
than Oedipus.
Endings
There Is no one way for me to end these thoughts. I have two
endings. One is "philosophic." The other is an aesthetic and religious
image.
First, the philosophic ending. Suppose that Hobbes is wrong about
Aristotle. Suppose that Aristotle i1> right about actuality and that
speech, when It tries to talk about fundamental things, is at best a
kind of pointing or aiming. Suppose that circular and self-contradictory words are designed to bring out this pointing, that they are not
"insignificant speech," as Hobbes claims, but speech transcending its
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
limits. Suppose that Hobbes's criticism is the thought of a prosaic
man, one who clings to the ordinary because of fear and a lack of
vitality, one who admires the orderly but slavish East (and Egypt) over
the disorderly freedom of Greece.
Even if all that were true, thtngs that cannot be clearly said, things
that can only be pointed at, tend to disappear in the course of time;
and we are not even aware of their disappearance. We repeatAristotle's
definitions. Unlike Euclid's definitions, which do not wear out so
easily, the words become more familiar, more ordinary, the basis of a
"habit of answering fearlessly and magnificently" rather than the
"actualization of knowing."
This wearing out or mortality of words makes us desire something
more than mere knowing from philosophy and its interpreters, something more poetic and aesthetic than mere concepts. What we want is
to regain the freshness or immediacy that was there in the original
pointing. We want the aiming, the striving, the pointing from the
philosopher. What we need from philosophy is not so much "knowledge of what is" as the recovery of that lost sense of being, of actuality,
that drove the inquiry before there were answers, the actuality of the
attitude behind the knowledge that knows the world. But philosophy
must resist this wish to be uplifting. Poetic talk about seriousness and
pointing can have an empty depth, an intensity without content. This
depth is not distinguishable from superficiality. Philosophy must
beware of the desire to be exciting.
The most important look at choosing and the effort to understand
it is in Exodus (18). Jethro visits the children of Israel at their camp
in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt. Jethro is the priest of
another religion or sect (a priest ofMidian; he is Moses' father-in-law).
Before the escape, God said that He intended to bring Israel out of
Egypt in order to prove to them he was their god and also, at the same
time, to prove to Pharaoh that he was the god. But it is impossible to
do both, especially at the same time. God has to be either the God of
Israel or the god of all. His choice of Israel is a rejection of Pharaoh.
Both Pharaoh and Israel will think that Lord is Israel's god and not
Pharaoh's god, hence not the god. Jethro, being neither Pharaoh nor
Israel, might be in the best position to understand what has happened.
He listens to the story and he does understand. He says, "Now I know
that the Lord is greater than all gods." The story worked somehowGod did do both things at once, to be both "the" god and "this" god.
The particularity of Lord's choice does not undermine his universality.
Jethro somehow understands this. He sees that Lord is the god, the
�WHITE
43
only god who is a god, because He makes choices, not in spite of His
choices. Lord, instead of having the Impassive universality best expressed by a statue, makes choices and performs actions. He is a living
god.
Once Jethro has seen that Lord is the god and has chosen Israel,
how could Jethro not stay with Moses, taking a new family and
religion? But, unlike Job, he can choose to return to his old life. Jethro
offers a sacrifice and goes back to his own country. He goes back to a
mistaken religion and empty ceremonies, back to what is now merely
"his own," one actuality among many possibilities that are false maybe even irrelevant. What can the life he chooses mean to htm?
Although Jethro knows that Lord is the god because of His choice, the
god is not his god. God did not choose him. God did not even reject
him.
A Note on Sources:
Kurt Goldstein, The Organism
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon ofLife
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure ofBehavior,
Sense and Nonsense, The Primacy ofPerception
Erwin Straus, Essays in Phenomenological Psychology
Leo Spitzer, Essays in Historical Semantics
�44
'!HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�I
Where Is Greece?
Radoslav Datchev
EUROPE
A
L
I
s
I
A
B
I mean the question of my title literally. To find Greece on the map is
what I would like to try to do tonight. And I think that this Is worth
talking about, because, it seems to me, It Is not at all clear which map
Is the map to check. Worse, it seems to me that even if we had the
right map, It still wouldn't be clear how to identity Greece on it.
A modern map wUl not do. The Greece that we care about, the
Greece of Homer and Plato, of Sophocles ·and Aristotle, is separated
by an abyss of discontinuity from the Greece that we would find on a
modern map. It has to be an old map: ideally, a contemporary map.
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Now, an old map means Ptolemy. Ptolemy wrote a Geography, and
just as astronomy for the next thirteen centuries meant Ptolemy's
astronomical treatise, geography meant Ptolemy's Geography. For the
next thirteen centuries if anyone wanted to draw a map or to travel
far afield, they turned to Ptolemy. But we would be researching the
maps of Ptolemy in vain. Greece is not one of the thousands of names
on these maps. There is no Greece on Ptolemy's maps.
Ptolemy is all tables, charts, and maps. But there is another
geographer, Strabo, who wrote a voluminous descriptive Geography a
little over a centmy before Ptolemy. Can Strabo help?
Strabo speaks of the Greeks all the time. But according to his book
there are Greeks in Rome and there are Greeks in Spain, and also in
Africa, in Asia Minor, in Phoenicia, even in India. Something seems to
be wrong.
One thing that is certainly wrong is the time. Ptolemy and Strabo
lived in Roman times, five to six centuries after the time of Aeschylus
and Socrates, of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. It seems that
we should turn to Herodotus and Thucydides rather than Ptolemy and
Strabo.
But again there is a difficulty. Without hindsight we simply cannot
extract a map from Herodotus and Thucydides. There is no reasonable
way to draw a map based on identification of places by "further and
above," "notfar from," or "they sailed for three days." We need latitudes
and longitudes to draw a map, and we have no latitudes and longitudes
before Strabo and Ptolemy.
So I have compromised. My map is drawn from Ptolemy and Strabo.
I have done my best, however, to reduce it only to what is explicitly
mentioned in Herodotus and Thucydides.
It is a map of the world. The world is divided into three parts:
Europe, Asia, and Libya. On the fringes is the Ocean, the river,
according to Homer, that encircles the land, but whose existence
Herodotus doubts. In the middle of the land, as its name still indicates,
is the Mediterranean, the sea which the Romans of Ptolemy and
Strabo's time called mare nostnun. our sea, and which the Greeks
before them called simply ecimcma, simply the sea.
And just as the map is a compromise, so is this lecture. It is a
compromise between what Ptolemy says geography should be, and
what Strabo says that it should be. Ptolemy begins his Geography by
saying that geography, being the business of the mathematician,
should represent the whole known world exactly. Strabo begins his
Geography by saying that geography, being the business of the
philosopher, should serve the study of the art of life. So I have tried
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47
to follow Ptolemy's dictum and stick to maps and, possibly, exactness.
But towards the end of the lecture I have taken Strabo seriously, too,
In order to see whether geography may tnrn out to be philosophically
significant.
But first, how do we find Greece on this map of the world?
In no Greek book Is there a hint of an entity, political, economic, or
religious--of an institutional entity of any kind-demarcated and
denoted as "Greece." As a matter of fact, the very word "Greece" occurs
seldom in Greek books.' Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle,
Strabo, all talk instead, almost eJtclusively, about "the Greeks."
We need a criterion, then, to identifY the Greeks, to identifY in this
manner the place where the Greeks lived, and thereupon, perhaps, to
say that this is Greece.
Now the question of who the Greeks are is explicitly addressed in
a famous passage in Herodotus (VIII, 144). The Athenians are speaking
to some Spartan envoys. We cannot submit to the Persians, the
Athenians say, because we are Greeks, we are one in blood and one
In language; the shrines of the gods belong to all of us in common,
and the sacrifices are In common, and there are our common habits
and our common customs.
Blood, language, the shrines of the gods, sacrifices, habits, and
customs. This Is what Herodotus says the Greeks share. Are these the
criteria we need?
We can discard blood, habits, and customs out of hand. For are the
Greeks who build bridges for Xerxes and lead him through the
mountain passes, are these Greeks in the Persian army of the same
blood, habits, and customs as the three hundred Greeks who fight,
all by themselves, several hundred thousand Persians at Thermopylae? We see in Herodotus half the Greeks allied with the Barbarian
Persians against the other half. In Thucydides, too, we see half the
Greeks against the other half eagerly slaughtering one another. We
could see in later times half of them again, with Philip the Macedonian,
subjugate the other half. And still later, we could see half the Greeks
join the Romans against the other half. Needless to say, the halves in
all these Instances do not coincide.
How are we to reconcile this picture of Greeks endlessly killing
Greeks, relentlessly slaughtering and enslaving one another, with the
notion of common blood, habits, and customs? It seems that to
understand the Greeks who were constantly warring against Greeks
as an ethnic unity, as an entity with common upbringing and common
practices, we first need to know who the Greeks are. Blood, habits,
customs, seem to be part of the riddle of where Greece is, not part of
�48
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the solution.
And unfortunately, so are the rest of the criteria suggested by
Herodotus: language, the shrines of the gods, and sacrifices. Shrines,
gods, and sacrifices, or what we would generally and misleadingly call
the religion of the Greeks, are simply phenomena too unstable to
provide a meaningful guide for identifying the Greeks. The Olympian
pantheon included several dozens of gods of several generations.
Different gods were venerated differently and to a different degree in
different paces. A countless number of heroes were honored with
shrines and sacrifices locally. Rivers and trees and winds were venerated. Ancestor worship, always of course local, was central to their
beliefs. The hearth of each house was sacred.
Then again, none of these cults and practices were exclusively
Greek. Greek shrines seldom shunned Barbarians when they brought
appropriate gifts to their divinities. Apollo's Delphi had no qualms
about quietly siding with the Persians when the threat. of being burnt
down became too real. And If their rites were open to the Barbarians,
so were the Greeks open to Barbarian rites. Allen gods and their cults
were routinely adopted, and among these were some of the most widely
venerated. Dionysus and the Bacchae, for Instance, are of Eastern
origin, the Orphic mysteries ofThraclan. Plato's RepubUc, by the way,
begins with the return of Socrates and Glaucon from the festival of a
newly introduced Thracian goddess. Religion, again, is part of the
problem, not of the solution.
And finally, so Is language. We know the neighbors of the Greeks
almost exclusively from Greek sources. Lydians, Carlans, Phryglans,
Scythians, Persians, speak in Herodotus and Thucydides nothing but
Greek. We do know that they had distinct languages. But the degree
to which the Hellenization of thelr habits, upbringing, blood, and
language stems from our sources, or is rather a matter of fact, is in
each case an extremely difficult question.
Indeed, it was a question which the Greeks themselves found very
hard to answer. There is a story in Herodotus about a Macedonlan
king (V, 22). The Macedonians, apparently, spoke a Greek dialect,
participated eagerly in the Greek wars, and sacrificed to the Olympian
gods. They shared, it would seem, language, habits, and gods with the
Greeks. Still, when the king tried to take part once In an Olympic
footrace restricted to Greeks, he was asked to prove that he was not
a Barbarian. And a century and a half later, when Philip, Alexander
the Great's father, threatened to conquer the Greeks (the Greeks, that
Is, who had no doubt about themselves being Greek), Demosthenes,
the Athenian orator, argued at length that Philip was a Barbarian (PhiL
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49
3,31). And Demosthenes had to pay for being wrong with prison, exile,
and eventually his death. He had to pay because Philip and Alexander
settled the question by conquering the arguing sides, both those who
took the Macedonians seriously when they claimed to be Greek, and
those who did not.
Instead of one more or less clearly demarcated language, we see
Greek as numerous dialects blending into one another, not always
mutually comprehensible, gradually merging into Barbarian tongues,
borrowing heavily from them. Language, too, is part of the problem:
knowing who the Greeks are is more likely to help in the examination
of whether a dialect is Greek or not, rather than the other way around.
All along I meant by "Greeks" and "Greece" what in Greek itself is
''EAAT)VES and EMus.
In Homer EAA<is is an alternative name only of the region ruled by
AchU!es (IL II, 683; Od. XI, 496; etc.), and the 'EI.AT]v<s are just one of
the numerous tribes whose leaders besiege Troy. Later 'E!.Ms came to
mean the North of the mainland as a whole and as opposed to the
Peloponnese peninsula as a whole. Still later, 'EI.AT]v<s became the
generic name for all the traditional Dorians. Ionians, Aeolians, and so
on, but why 'EI.AT]v<s came to be the common name, rather than some
other, is obscure. It was already obscure by the time of Herodotus and
Thucydides, who could only derive the name 'EAA<is from a myth about
a legendary descendant of the man who survived the deluge (Her. I,
56; Th. I, 3).
The etymology may be obscure but by the fifth century, by the time
of Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, and Socrates, the name is
employed routinely.
Herodotus, for instance, begins his Histories by saying that he
wants to record the deeds of Greeks and Barbarians. Thucydides
begins the history of the Peloponnesian War by introducing the war
as the greatest turmoil ever to befall the Greeks and even some of the
Barbarians. Both historians speak of the Greeks all the time, without
much ado, In a matter-of-fact kind of way, apparently with no doubt
that their audience would knowwhat they mean. And so do Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. To speak of the Greeks, In short, has
become commonplace.
And here Is an instance of how Aeschylus speaks of the Greeks.
The king in The SuppUants (913-15) scolds the Egyptian herald: You
Barbarians, the king says, you Insolently bother the Greeks, you do
nothing right, you stand upright in nothing. Is the poetry and the
passion of Aeschylus, a veteran of the Persian War himself. overdoing
the opposition Greeks/Barbarians?
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In both Herodotus and Thucydides the Greeks are always very
explicitly meant in opposition to Barbarians. Persians, Egyptians,
Lydians, Scythians do not seem to be names on the same level of
generality as the name "Greeks." They seem to belong to sub-classes
of the class Barbarians, rather like the Athenians and Spartans, or maybe
the Dorians and lonians, who are sub-classes of the class Greeks.
The opposition Greeks/Barbarians seems to signify a division that
goes deeper than geography, a division of the world as a whole, of
nature, of cjJims. Listen to Plato in the RepubUc (470c): Barbarians and
Greeks are enemies by nature, cjJvon, Plato says. Or to the Statesman
(262d). The stranger from Elea is illustrating a dichotomy. He says it
is like dividing the whole human race into two by separating the
Greeks from all other races, which are countless in number and have
no common blood or common language, and giving them the name
Barbarians, as if they were all of one kind. Aristotle is, as usual, even
blunter. He says in the PoUtics (l252b5-9) that among Barbarians
there is no difference between the female and the slavish, because
there is no ruler by nature (cpvcm) among them, and they are all a group
of slaves, male and female. That is why the poets say that the Greeks
should rule the Barbarians, because the Barbarian and the slave are
by nature (cpvcm)one and the same.
cpvan, "by nature," recurs in these passages. The distinction
Greeks/Barbarians is by nature. It is on the level of distinguishing,
say, plants from animals.
It is worth noting also that the usage of "Greeks" and "Barbarians"
becomes common in the years of the Persian conquest of Asia Minor
and the invasion of Europe afterward. The oldest surviving tragedy,
and the only one based not on myth but on experience, The Persians
of Aeschylus, abounds in appreciation of the Greeks and wonder at
the hubris of the Barbarians. And the oldest clearly pejorative use of
"Barbarian" is in Heraclitus (fr. 107), who was a Persian subject all
his life. The rise of Persia, a threatening alien force nearby, apparently
strengthened the sense of unity of the Greeks and presented the
distinction Greek/Barbarian as more than ethnic, as Implying a
judgement of value, good and bad, as well.
Greeks and Greece, then, are first of all a cultural denotation-"cultural" in its most general, broadest, and vaguest sense. "Greeks," as
the Greeks used the word, is not on the level of generality of, say, our
Brazilians, Canadians, or Pakistanis. It is closer to what we mean by
Christian or Muslim, but that would be misleading by implying religion
too strongly. It is closest, perhaps, to whatever it is that we mean when
we speak ofWestern civilization, for instance. But even this would be
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Inadequate. The distinction Greek/Barbarian Is a distinction by nature, <jliJon, a division of the world as a whole, of the cosmos rather
than just the surface of the earth. Plants are different from animals,
gods are different from men, and so too the Greeks are different from
the Barbarians.
Can geography, then, describe a cosmic distinction; {:an It describe
the division of the world as a whole into Greeks and Barbarians?
Well, in a vague way t:pe distinction is also cultural. And culture
does leave tangible remains. Books, for Instance. Then, even though
Jacking criteria to !dentllY the Greeks, we can try to compile a Jist of
the places where, according to the Greek books, the Greeks lived, and
we can put these places on the map. And a picture-a more or less
clear geographical picture-may emerge.
This is what I have done with my map. I have marked some 75
places which seemed to me to have the strongest claim of belonging
on a map of Herodotus' and Thucydides' time. These are the major
participants in the two wars, the Persian and the Peloponnesian. I
have also put on the map the places associated with the authors and
characters of our great books: their home cities, the cities where they
were active, and the cities where they died. I have also marked places
like Cyrene In \'lorth Africa, and Massalia In the Far West, which are
often mentioned as comparable In size to the two largest Greek polels,
Athens, and Syracuse in Sicily. Athens and Syracuse, and perhaps
Cyrene and Massal!a, should have had populations of over 200,000
each, a respectable number even today. I have also put on the map
the chief sources of the main commodities that Greek cities exchanged, grain and slaves, most of them on the Black Sea. Slaves from
these regions, where the stupidest people in the world Jived, according
to Herodotus (N, 46), had very high reputation. I have also marked
Tanais and Emporiae, the cities at the far points, East and West, of
the Greek world. There are reports of cities even further away, on the
Atlantic, for instance, but those are most probably spurious.
And It seems that a very clear picture-geographical pictureemerges. What these places seem to have in common Is that they are
all on the Mediterranean coast. Greece appears to be the Mediterranean coast.
There are exceptions, but very few. And Ignoring for the moment
Sparta, the quintessential land power of Greece, and Boetia and
Thessaly, the picture of Greece as the sea coast, as the littoral, seems
to me compelling.
And we shouldn't find this surprising at all. The Greeks were a sea
people. I don't know of any other people whose epics are so closely
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
linked to the sea. The invading army In the IUad stays on its ships for
ten years, and it is a catalogue of ships. of course, that lists all its
contingents. And Odysseus wanders for ten years at sea, not on land.
Herodotus calls the Barbarians landlubbers. And there is the
famous passage (VIII, 61) where Themistocles proudly says of the
Athenians, who have just lost all their land and all their shrines to the
Persians, that as long as they have two hundred ships they have land
and they have a polis greater than anyone's. There is the story also of
Xenophon's Anabasis (N, 7). An army of Greeks, over ten thousand
strong, was stranded in Barbarian territory, in the heart of Persia.
After an ordeal of many months through a thousand miles of desert
and mountains, having left thousands of def).d behind, Xenophon
suddenly heard the soldiers cry ea.wuoal eawuoal They had seen the
sea. And having seen the sea, they were finally home, right there, on
the Black Sea coast. It becrune a catchphrase. Like "Know yourself,"
which became attached to philosophizing, eawoua! eawoaa! came to
mean that after a long and dangerous journey one was finally home.
I should mention that the Greeks never built roads. There are
incredible instances. Sybaris, a city in the West, founded a colony on
the opposite side of its narrow peninsula. But close interchange
between the two cities did not make them use the convenient valley
that connected them, rather than the sea route around the peninsula,
which was dozens of times longer, more dangerous, and more expensive.
They did not build roads, but ships the Greeks built by the hundred.
Their triaconters and pentaconters were unmatched in the Mediterranean and the Greeks' domination of the seas was taken for granted
by their neighbors until Roman times. And I can't help mentioning
that in the Politics (1256a35) Aristotle lists the five ways of obtaining
a livelihood as farming, animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, and-of
all things-piracy. Some people, Aristotle adds (1256b2), are engaged
in two employments: a farmer may also be a hunter, and a shepherd
also a pirate. Piracy was so trivial that a contract between two cities
has survived, regulating-not outlawing but regulating~piracy.
There is no phenomenon di:;;playing the ties of the Greeks to the
sea in a more powerful way than their colonization. "Colonizat:on" Is
the name given to a huge wave of resettlement, of founding cities along
the Mediterranean coast, which began In the middle of the eighth
century and did not subside for two centuries.
Colonization is well documented. Founding a city was an important
event, important enough to record on stone, and to celebrate and
remember for a long time afterward, On the criterion of memory nnd
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records, no event was comparably important in the first couple of
centuries of Greek history: not wars, not building, not poetry. The
oldest and most abundant dates are the foundation dates of cities.
Herodotus, Thucydides, Strabo abound in information on how and
when cities were founded.
We know today of some seven hundred Greek cities, ten times the
number I have on the map. What I render here as "city" is In Greek
n6Ms, of course. And these n6/.ns were all independent cities. And the
substantial majority of them were founded after 750, in the age of
colonization.
It was a huge wave. By 750 Greeks Inhabited the Southern Aegean
coasts. Two centuries later, by 550, by the time the Persian threat
appeared in the East, the Mediterranean coast was crowded with
Greeks.
Why in the world did the Greeks colonize the coast?
The Greek word for what we call colony is O.notKla, a home that is
away. It was always meant in opposition to lJ.llTp6noMs, the mother-city.
Here is how a mother-city founded a home away.
First, as with everything that really mattered, a god was consulted,
usually Apollo at Delphi. If Apollo was interpreted to promise success,
a leader, called olKwTJ\s, a founder of a home. was appointed or
sometimes chosen. The colonists were usually volunteers. But not
always. Sometimes they would be drafted. In either case they were
people with little or no land in the mother-city. More often than not,
they were only men. and they were young, the sons of landowners
rather than landowners themselves. Numbers were usually in the
hundreds. They knew where they were going. When Apollo was asked,
he was asked about a specific place, a place rumored to offer a good
location. Then they sailed off and they settled.
Settling meant distributing the arable land in the colony fairly,
building temples of the gods, establishing local government, and
building houses, usually in that order. Sometimes additional colonists
might join them. Usually, local women would be heavily relied upon
to insure the procreation of the colony.
Other than marrying local women, relations of the colony with the
native people were limited. With very few exceptions, the Greeks just
didn't bother with regions where they expected to meet resistance.
They chose sparsely populated areas where the native people, even if
they wanted to, could not resist the heavily armed, technologically
superior Greeks, secure on their ships for as long as needed. Settlement in Carthaginian territories was attempted once, for instance. It
met with disaster, however, and Apollo was not tempted again to send
�54
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
colonists there. The Greeks stmply left alone the heavily populated
and armed coasts of Phoenicia, Egypt, and Carthage. AB Thucydides
says, the Greeks never left their home to conquer other people [I, 15).
Colonization, apparently, he did not think of as conquest.
The ties of the colony with the mother-city tended to be symbolic.
As a sign of independence the founder of the colony, the olKtonjs, was
venerated, rather than the mother-city's hero. Even though in war a
colony tended to ally itself with Its mother-city rather than against it,
a generation or so after foundation, with its ethnic mix likely to be
already different, it became a full4ledged polls. In Thucydides, Nicias,
the leader of the Sicilian expedition, argues that amidst alien and
hostile people the Athenians can only survive as a polls; without a
polis they will fail [VI, 23). And we know that when Corinth tried to
meddle in the affairs of Its colony at Corcyra [I, 34), the Corcyraeans
turned to Athens for help. We were not sent out to be the slaves of the
Corinthians, they said, but to be their equals. The Athenians found It
convenient to agree, and so the Peloponnesian War began.
There is something de!YJng belief in Greek colonization. Mlletus, an
Ionian city of perhaps forty thousand, is reported to have sent out
ninety colonies. Even if this is an exaggeration, cities of two to three
thousand people are known to have founded colonies. What made
these tiny independent cities found other independent cities at the
opposite end of the world?
Lack ofland is the answer ofThucydides (I, 15). The pressure of
insufficient territory, says Plato [Leg., 708b). Were the Greeks really,
in the course of a couple of centuries, continuously lacking land,
continuously under the pressure of insufficient territory?
Well, the Greeks were certainly an agricultural society. Selfsufficiency, explicitly meaning food, was the ideal for a polis from
Hesiod to Aristotle. The Greeks lived off the land, and considered
commerce and the trades, as Aristotle says in the PoUtics [l258bl-8),
dishonorable and unnatural. Piracy may have been a natural way to
earn a living, commerce and the trades were not.
But land was not just a means of livelihood and not just a means
of production. In a lengthy discussion of wealth and properly in the
PoUtics (1256al-8b9), Aristotle does not once mention land among the
objects of acquisition and wealth. Properly and wealth meant movable
things to Aristotle--chattel, slaves included, but never land. Land was
something more than property, actually much more. It was where the
bones of ancestors were burled, and the bones of ancestors, as in the
Oedipus at Colonus, were sacred. Numerous gods dwelled in the land.
It constantly gave birth to gods, to rivers and trees. The land was a
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goddess herself, the mother, in Heslod (Th 45), of all gods.
In very few cities was It lawful to buy and sell land. land had strong
ties to the community, to the polis as a whole, stronger indeed than
Its ties to whoever happened to work it. In the rare Instances when It
was lawful to sell land, foreigners were explicitly prohibited from
buying it. And foreigners here means not Barbarians (such a thought
would be a sacrilege) but alien Greeks, Greeks from outside the
community, citizens of o):her poleis, the so-called llETOLKoL, those who
have come home, but are-as the word Implies-not home.
Like the old man Cephalus In the beginning of the RepubUc, these
llETOLKOL, aliens, sometimes lived for generations In a city and sometimes amassed substantial wealth. They still could not marry a citizen,
and they could not own land. Aristotle, a wealthy llETOLKOS' In Athens,
could not own his own school, the Lyceum.
Tied by deep tradition to the land, citizenship was jealously
guarded. There was no naturalization; one had to be born of citizens
to be a citizen. Pericles, the leader of the most permissive of democracies among the Greek poleis, Introduced a law revoking the citizenship of those who had one rather than both parents Athenian. In
enforcement of the law, five thousand llETDLKOL were sold Into slavery
(Plut., Per.).
In this sense, colonization, being acquisition of land, was also
acquisition of sovereignty. The perception of lack of land was also a
search for a stronger hold on one's bond to a city. The perception of
opportunity more than the pressure of circumstances made colonization an unabated wave.
That colonization was perceived as an opportunity rather than an
escape Is strongly suggested by the fact that the Greeks expanded
overseas rather than inland: that they preferred to sail into the unseen
rather than fight their way against the neighboring Barbarians. With
Themistocles, who believed that as long as the Athenians had 200
ships they had land, the Greeks felt certain that the sea would give
them land, somewhere. Inasmuch as they really needed land, they met
the challenge extensively: the thought of trying to increase productivity or perhaps to exploit part of the citizenship, notions economically
as sound as there are, never seems to have occurred to anyone as an
alternative to colonization. Land, in this sense, was a means, not an
end. It was a means to acquiring a city.
I have spent all this time talking about colonization in an effort to
present it as a unique phenomenon, as something pertaining uniquely
to Greeks.
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'IHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In a broad and vague way it can be said that all more or less
homogenous, organized, and dense centers of population have always
tended to expand. In particular, all ancient civilizations, empires,
societies-whatever we may have to call them-did expand. None of
them expanded by sea.
Egypt filled the valley of the Nile and stopped on the borders of the
desert, remaining for the last 5,000 years one of the most densely
populated regions on Earth. The tiny warlords of Sumer in Mesopotamia expanded northward along the Tigris and Euphrates, and so did
the Assyrians and the Babylonians after them. The settlement of
Phoenicians overseas at Carthage remained an Isolated affair, and it
was only after the appearance of huge numbers of Greeks In their seas
that the Carthaginians were provoked into consolidating their position
in the Western Mediterranean.
The very fact that the Greeks found the Mediterranean coast
available for colonization also shows the uniqueness of Greek colonization. Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Carthaglnlans, had remained, essentially, closed within their lands-landlubbers,
essentially.
It Is probable that their environment-long, dented coastline,
countless islands, dearth oflarge fertile valleys-made the Greeks turn
to the sea rather than inland in search ofland. But colonization seems
to suggest that the ties of the Greeks to the sea were deeper than just
being a response to natural limitations. Colonization was the foundtng
of cities, hundreds of independent poleis, not just a movement of
populations. The ties of the Greeks to the sea were motivated politically, religiously, and culturally as much as they were the result of
natural pressure. Their will, rather than nature, seems to have given
the Greeks the direction and limits of their expansion.
But I still have to address the question of the exceptions to the
image of Greece as exclusively the Mediterranean littoral: Sparta; the
home country ofHesiod and Plutarch, Boeotia: and Thessaly, the land
of wealth and horsemanship, where Meno hailed from.
Thebes, the main center of Boeotia, is some thirty miles north of
Athens. North of Boeotia along the Aegean coast Is Thessaly. And still
further north, also along the coast, is Macedonia.
Now tn Greek usage the further north you went, the farther away
you were from culture. "Boeotian" came to mean in Greek, as It has
come to mean in English, too, uncultured, dull and stupid. As to
Thessaly, when Socrates laughs at Meno in the beginning of the
dialogue because the Thessalians have suddenly become wise next to
being famous for horsemanship and wealth, he is belaboring a joke
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57
that was already in the language. And, of course, north ofThessaly
one doesn't even know whether one is in Greece anymore-one Is In
Macedonia.
Boeotia and Thessaly remained for a long time loose and rather
disorganized confederations of tribes rather than poleis. Boeotians
and Thessalians lived In villages, not cities. They had no ships and no
determined governments to oppose the Persians. Spartans and
Athenians and Corinthiai)s had to defend them. They never sent out
colonies. And having said all that, I should mention that Boeotians
lived within twenty miles of the sea, and Thessalians within thirty.
Sparta, the quintessential land power, the unchallenged master of
the land battle, seems to defy the picture of the Greeks as sea people.
The Spartans not only lived inland, they were peculiar In every respect.
The only polis with mandatory education, with state-regulated marriage, with both persistently authoritarian and at the same time stable
government, with restricted access to sacrifices and rites, with prohibition of individual ownership of practically everything, the Spartans
were universally recognized by the Greeks themselves as different.
But curiously both Herodotus and Thucydides speak of "the
Lacedaemonians and their allies" rather than the "Spartans" when
recounting battles. A common expression In Xenophon and Aristotle
as well, "the Lacedaemonians and their allies" appears to be a cliche.
Who are the Lacedaemonians, then, and who are their allies?
Lacedaemonians were the inhabitants of Laconia, the region surrounding Sparta. And It turns out that the cliche Is correct; it turns
out that the Spartans rarely, if ever, went to war as Spartans alone,
as an army of the ten thousand citizens only. They would rather go
into battle taking along the inhabitants of Laconia, the so-called
rr<plmKoL, those who lived around the home. The rr<plmKOL were Greeks
like the Spartans. They had no polis of their own, however, and the
Spartans decided for them who their enemies were.
Laconia, the country of the rr<plmKoL, is actually a sea country, a
long and narrow valley on the Peloponneslan coast. Is there in this
fact a hint that Sparta may not be so detached from the sea as it
appears?
Sparta came to dominate the Peloponnese peninsula after a series
of wars during the seventh century with Argos, the ancient city of
Agamemnon. In the course of these wars the Spartans subjugated
Laconia, and most Importantly they gained control over the three main
openings of the peninsula to the sea, Pylus In the west, the island of
Cythera in the south, and Praslae In the east. In Thucydides those
three are the main objectives of the Athenian offensives, and the
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1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Athenian capture of two of them, Pylus and Cythera, in the first phase
of the war, created panic tn Sparta.
These, and a few other ports in the Northern Peloponnese, were
consistently the "allies" of the expression "the Lacedaemonians and
their allies." Sparta, it turns out, was the land power that it was by
being secured by sea. Needless to say, the Spartans always maintained
control over many ships tn the ports of their allies, and, like the
maritime poleis, sent out dozens of colonies.
And, once again, Sparta, too, is less than twenty miles from the sea.
I am tempted also to note that Sparta's most memorable victories, in
the Persian and in the Peloponnesian Wars, were decisively and [even
if with unmatched heroism) unambiguously lost on land, and won
eventually at sea-when the Persian navy was destroyed first at
Salamis and once again later off the coast of Asia Minor, and when
the Athenians firstlostmore than 200 ships in their Sicilian expedition
and later 171 more ships in the Northern Aegean. Reduced to a
handful of ships, the Athenians capitulated.
Sparta, Boeotia, and Thessaly were socially, politically, and economically an aberration among the Greeks. A fossil of an earlier ethnic
distribution, they preserved a vanishing tradition which was struggling (in the case of Sparta successfully) against new times. To
Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, Boeotia and Thessaly
appeared simply primitive. Sparta, on the other hand, both when they
admired it and when they criticized it, reminded them of the East, of
Persia and Egypt. And this is, probably, how we should see Sparta as
well: as marginally belonging to Greece, or, perhaps better, as belonging to an earlier age of Greece. Notably, there are no Spartans among
the authors of our great books.
There is one last place that I would like to mention: Arcadia, still a
byword for shepherds, peace, and tranquility. Arcadia is in the middle
of the Peloponnese, in the heart of the Greek landmass. In the time of
Herodotus and Thucydides it was inhabited by mountain people, wild,
speaking an incomprehensible tongue, eaters of acorn, Delphi's Pythia
called them (Her. I,66). In all their countless wars, their neighbors,
and Sparta among them, avoided the Arcadians. When they wanted
to fight each other, they circumvented Arcadia. Arcadians lived in the
mountains until the fourth century, when Thebes, having for the first
time in memory defeated the Spartans on land, decided to create in
Arcadia a buffer between itself and the Spartans. The Thebans herded
the mountain people tn the middle of Arcadia and forced them to live
in a big city, and that's what they called it: Megalopolis, the big city.
Polybius, the third Greek historian, was born in Megalopolis a century
�DATCHEV
59
later. But the age of Megalopolis, of Arcadia and big cities inland, was
not the age of Greece anymore. Even though he wrote in Greek,
Polybius wrote about Rome.
It seems, then, that geographically it should be claimed that Greece
Is not just on the Mediterranean coast, but in a very strong sense is
nothing but the coast, nothing but the littoral of the Mediterranean,
which the Greeks called 96.N1aaa, the sea.
We should probably i.qlaglne Greece as seven hundred small islands. Or, perhaps better', as three concentric circles: the sea in the
center, the land, and the ocean-or rather the unknown-outside. On
the Inside of the land, on the coast of the sea, lived the Greeks; inland,
blending Into the unknown, outside, lived Barbarians. It is a simple,
symmetrical picture of a simple and symmetrical world, similar to the
depletion on the shield of Achilles. And It Is a very Platonic picture,
too, and also Aristotelian, of circles and symmetry.
This Is the geographical answer that I have to the question where
is Greece. And for only a few more minutes I would like to say what
this picture suggests to me.
I will begin with a few numbers. A difficult estimate derived from
limited data suggests that In the fifth century there were some seven
to eight million Greeks In the world. This Is seven to eight million
people distributed along a coast over 10,000 miles long. And the
distance between the southwestern end of the Mediterranean and the
northeastern end of the Black Sea is, as the crow flies, well over 3,000
miles, more than the distance between New York and Los Angeles.
Now, these seven to eight million Greeks lived in at least seven
hundred, and possibly many more, independent cities. The average
number for the population of a polis is in the range of. say, less than
10,000. Plato recommends 5,000 households as the optimal number
(Leg .. 740e). The Greeks, then, lived in tiny communities, miles away
from all other Greek communities, isolated from April until October
by long and treacherous sea passages. From October until April, when
navigation was Impossible, they were totally cut off. They lived on
islands surrounded by the sea and Barbarians.
It seems to me an unbelievable picture. What motivated these
people? What sustained them in their tiny isolated communities?
What made them fiercely independent? What made them belong to
some abstract unity of Greeks whom they seldom saw and seldom
heard from?
It seems to me that the uniquely Greek phenomenon of the polis Is
the answer to these questions.
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
micra rr6Ais <jloon <crTlv, Arlstotle says in the Politics (1252b31), each
polis is by nature. And a couple of lines later he repeats and adds: mt
b /ivepwrros <jlucrn rroXLTLKI>v (<\)ov, not only Is the polis by nature, but
man also Is by nature a polis animal (1253a3). A man without a polis,
Aristotle continues, Is either a beast or a god (1253a29).
We should take Aristotle seriously when he claims that each city is
<jluan, by nature. And we should probably refuse to translate rr6Ais.
Like Myos, it does not se,ern translatable.
But we could, perhaps, approach the polis by following the Greek
words. There Is one root that kept recurring among the Greek words
that I had to mention, the root -oLK-, as in oLKos, one's horne. A colony
Is arroLK(a, a horne away; the leader of a colony is an olKcanjs. a founder
of a horne; the resident aliens are f!ETOLKoL, those who are at our horne;
Sparta's subordinate people are the rr<plmKoL, those around the horne.
The dwellings of the gods are olKlm; to inhabit a place is ocK<'w; from
Horner to Thucydides all Greece happens to be called o\Kla. And to live
In a city Is avvmKtw, to share a horne; to be a citizen is awocKos; and
auvocKLa Is synonymous with polis.
This Is what a polis is. It Is home.
There was no distinction In the polis between being a citizen,
rroXl TT)S, and taking pari in politics, as the word still indicates. If a city
had a popular assembly, It was exactly that, the assembly of all
citizens. There was no distinction between being a citizen and being
a soldier. Anyone under stxty procured his own arms and served,
period. I don't know of a record of anyone who ever refused to serve.
Aeschylus served, Sophocles led an army, Thucydides led a navy,
Socrates was famed for his courage In battle. There were no priests In
the cities either. Attending to the gods, taking care of shrines, sacrifices, rites, even discussion of religious dogma, were trivial matters,
open to everyone as a matter of course, or rather as matter of nature,
<J>oon.
The polis had no institutions, in short, that were religious, political,
educational-no Institutions of any kind, no archives and no bureaucracy. Armies were put together as circumstances required. Children
were taught whatever the father's appreciation of tradition suggested.
Religious ceremonies were organized by whoever could afford it.
Legislation was initiated by real or contrived emergencies; there was
no body sitting in sessions, making laws.
The idea of rights of the individual as opposed to the polis would
be a misunderstanding. The notion of criminal prosecution, for Instance, was never born in the polis. As In the trial of Socrates, an
individual had to Initiate a case of supposed violation of the body
�DATCHEV
61
politic. The notion of someone detached from the polis. opposed to it.
independent from It, suggests to Aristotle not individual rights but a
beast or a god.
Even in what we would think as economy, the polis as a home
motivated the citizens. Which Is what the word implies anyway:
otKovof1la is house management. Aristotle says in the Politics (1258bl)
that In obtaining property only taking care of one's home is honorable,
any kind of trade outsid~ the home Is unnatural and disreputable.
Surprisingly perhaps from our point of view, the rich bore almost
exclusively the financial burden of the city. They were required to build
and maintain the ships of the city, to organize Its religious festivals,
to support public building. The poor were maintained at public
expense, and proving need was less Important than proving citizenship In order to quality. Dealing with money, profit, Increasing production, remained matters alien to the polis, and if they nevertheless
occurred, they were the doing of aliens.
If It overgrew Itself, a mother-city simply built a new home, an
lmocKla. And like a true home the polis made one feel Intimately
belonging-cozy, I suppose, may be the right word. In the Crito,
awaiting his execution in prison, Socrates speaks of Athens with a love
that seems to transcend philosophical arguments.
Well, If the polis was home, there were about 700 of them. Geographically they had no center. Geographically the center of Greece
was In the sea. Greece was nothing but periphery geographically,
many homes without a center.
The history of Greece begins with the foundation dates of independent cities. And I don'tknow of any other culture whose written history
begins with anything but a succession of kings.
In Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Persia, in the Mycenaean civilization
before Greece, there always Is a very strong center: a palace or a
temple. To one degree or another this center dominates the lives of
everybody within its reach. Religiously, the center has prerogatives
over the relationship of the community with the divine. In Egypt, in
Sumer, In Assyria, the ruler Is a direct descendant of the gods,
god-like, and all too often god himself. Politically, within the reach of
the center, there are only different levels of the ruler's dependents.
They work his land, they owe him their labor and the food that their
labor grows. They owe him their lives as a matter of course.
Even the little writing that was done In the East was all done In the
palace, on the order of the palace, and for the sake of the palace. No
writers' names survived in the East because there were no writers in
the East, just scribes. The largest collection of writing that has been
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TiiE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
unearthed there, some 20,000 clay tablets, contains Inventories,
ordinances, messages to the gods, and not much else. The collection
was tn the center, of course, in the palace of the Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal.
If the Greek polls had a center at all, it was the lryopa, the place
where the assembly of the people took place. The market-place also.
And from ayopa a verb developed: ltyop<vw, to speak In the assembly,
and generally to speak. No wonder that books could be bought In the
agora. The book of the philosopher Anaxagoras is the oldest book
reported, by Plato in the Apology: Sold cheaply, too.
This apotheosis of the Greeks is leading toward freedom, of course.
Having no political, no religious, no economic, no cultural center of
any kind, feeling at home in their tiny cities, the Greeks discovered
freedom. They are slaves to no one, no one rules them, the Chorus
answers in The Persians (243) when the Persian queen wonders who
the Greeks are. Not tied to the land, if they felt uncomfortable In their
surroundings, they just sailed away and founded a new home for
themselves. Not tied to a divine court and Its rule, they began
questioning the divine, questioning nature itself, proving theorems,
and so on. The fact that the Greeks discovered freedom, I take it, is
all around us.
But freedom is EA<uB<pla In Greek. And <A<ulkpla has also the
disturbing meaning of manumission, of letting a slave go free.
If the Greeks discovered freedom, this Implies that no one was free
before, not even pharaoh, owntng all Egypt. Thinking of philosophy,
mathematics, things like that, we can probably appreciate such an
idea. But If freedom is also necessarily In opposition to slavecy, does
that mean that the Greeks discovered slavecy, too?
I think that it does.
The rise of the polis was typically accompanied by legislation
against debt-bondage. Outlawing debt-bondage was the cornerstone
of Solon's laws, for instance. Debt-bondagewas the practice of offering
oneself, one's own person, as security on a Joan. Default, then, meant
bondage. Debt-bondage remained trivial practice In the East and
contributed substantially to creating populations that were tied to the
land as a group.
The abolition of debt-bondage in the Greek polis enhanced enormously the privilege of being a citizen. It created the unprecedented
phenomenon of poor but free people, for instance. But it had the effect
also of robbing the citizens, more or Jess all of them landowners, of an
easy opportunity to labor Jess than their fields demanded. The solution
was chattel slavecy.
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63
The image of the Greeks as slave-owners should not be exaggerated.
The polls was never anything but a community of small-holders. But
the more a small-holder perceived himself as superior to Barbarians,
and the more he appreciated the superiority of his ships, sword, and
ideas, the more likely he was to own a slave or two.
And not having obedient subjects to build pyramids for it, the polis
kept its projects small. But still, It did have some projects, and since
the citizens were busy discussing public matters in the market-place,
the polis relied more and more on slaves for Its projects. Athens
maintained no standing army, but had a police force of a thousand,
all of them Scythian slaves, replenished as need required. The citizens
abhorred the idea of taxes, and being the government themselves,
taxes no one but aliens. The treasury of a big polis like Athens, then,
had to rely on the production of public mines worked by tens of
thousands of slaves. All record keeping, temple maintenance, harbor
repairs, construction of new walls, was done by slaves.
Enslaving entire populations and conquering other peoples might
not have appealed to the citizens of the polis. But they discovered
chattel slavery, the counting of a few men or women among one's
belongings, and they appreciated it enough to make it trivial.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle take slavery for granted. Aristotle also
takes It to be by nature, <f>uaEL. But there are more disturbing instances.
In his Ways and Means (IV, 13-32), Xenophon proposes that the city
of Athens purchase enough slaves (three per capita, to be exact) and
put them to work in mines so as to ensure free maintenance for all
Athenians. Athenians then, whether merchants or philosophers (V,
3), Xenophon says, would be happier.
There Is also a speech by Lysias (24.6), the orator ridiculed in the
Phaedrus, In which a poor fellow argues In the popular assembly that
he deserves free maintenance, on the grounds that he Is not rich
enough to buy a slave.
How well the discovery of chattel slavery was liked may be judged,
perhaps, by the letter that a few centuries later a minor philosopher,
Libanius, wrote to the Roman authorities (Or. 31.11). He asked for
money, pleading the poverty of the scholars in his school, who could
barely afford, he said, three slaves each.
So when Plato and Aristotle suggest that philosophy requires
leisure, this may be a disturbing thought.
But I don't want to finish on this gloomy note. Both Plato and
Aristotle suggest also that curiosity is the source of philosophy. And
I'd rather finish with an image of curiosity. It is the Image I have of
Heraclitus of Ephesus, one of the first philosophers.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
We know little of Heraclitus. He wrote no books, it seems. He had
no students. He avoided the market-place. He never married. He never
left Ephesus. So what did he do?
Heraclitus is the first philosopher who survived in a number of
fragments-131, most of them complete sentences. And among
Heraclitus' seventy to eighty sentences the names of three contemporaries of his are mentioned, Pythagoras among them. Now how in the
world did Heraclitus ge,t to know of his contemporaries?
The sea was the only medium of communication, of course.
Ephesus was an importsnt city of perhaps thirty thousand. But how
many ships would dock at the self-sufficient Ephesus every year, April
through October? Ten? Maybe twenty? Just possibly thirty? Now, how
many of these ships may have come from another self-sufficient city,
Croton, at the other end of the world, in Italy, a city of hardly more
than twenty thousand, where Pythagoras had established his school?
One every year? One every ten years? One during Heraclitus' entire
lifetime? And could any ofthe sailors, or more likely pirates, could any
of them really have known, or cared about, Pythagoras?
The only way that I can imagine is a Heraclitus obsessed with
curiosity. A Heraclitus talking to every sailor on every ship. Going from
sailor to sailor, instructing them one by one to ask any sailor, in any
port where they might stop, and to ask them, too, to ask other sailors,
so that if any of them happen to come to Ephesus, they might know
something, anything, to tell Heraclitus.
I Imagine Heraclitus sitting on the docks, staring into the distance.
�1 Two Poems by Sandra Hoben
Odysseus and Calypso
He didn't go willingly. He laughed
when she suggested building a raft
and sailing back to Ithaca;
and poured more wine,
stoking the fire, which cast
their shadows on the thick rugs.
He had everything: a goddess,
her fertile island, the sun
coming out of the sea each morning
like a small aruma! searching
for food. The nlghts were endless,
her body stronger than a man's.
Suspending himself above pain and death,
he drank her immortality and looked out
over the sea through her gray eyes.
He stood speechless while she
hacked down her favorite grove,
lashed the logs together then pointed
for him to board and sail alone
across the infinite sea with a few meals
of water and dry bread,
to live out the last painful years
as king of a land that didn't need him,
beside a woman with liver-colored spots
on her hands, her memory fading
like clothes hung so long in the harsh Aegean sun
that she no longer knew his name.
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
66
St. John's College
That's where we should have met,
thirty years ago. The worst
that could have happened! would have rolled away from you
to light a cigarette.
Or beat you at a game of chess.
And though you wouldn't have inhaled,
we could have tried a little dope:
We could have read Marx together
and Hobbes, and while we wouldn't have understood
taxes yet, we could have explored together
the idea of taxes.
Sandra Hoben, a graduate of the College, has published a volume of poetry, Snow
Flowers, with the Westigan Press. These poems are from her latest colfection, Stage
Money, which was a fmalist in this year's Brittingham Prize at the University of
Wisconsin Press. Her poems have appeared earlier in the Review.
�Book Review:
Two New Books by Alumni
I
Eva T. H. Brann
Neal 0. Weiner. The Hannony ojthe Soul: Mental Health and Moral
Virtue Reconsidered. Albany: State University of New York Press.
1993.
Grant P. Wiggins. Assessing Student Peiformance: Exploring
the Purpose and Ltmits of Testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1993.
Yielding to the influence of our context-conscious age, I sometimes
play the game - to my credit be it said, half-heartedly- of trying to
ferret out the facts of authors' biographies from their writings. In the
case of the two books here to be reviewed I think I could have guessed
that they were alumni of St. John's or some similar school (a small
field), even if I had not koown both of them as students.
I am not sure the college can claim credit for the virtues the books
seem to me to have in common, those the Greeks called sophrosyne,
"sound rnindedness," and phronesis, "mindfulness,"- sanity and
thoughtfulness. There is, however, a mode of inquiry they share
that is recognizable as an Intended result of the Program. In both
books the intellectual tradition Is employed to sustain as well as to
subvert the current condition. Both authors move fluently across
the mU!ennia and use their learning to appreciate and to criticize
the present situation. To put it more sharply, both authors appear
on the surface to be attuned to the going pieties In their area of
interest, and both tactfully turn them upside down to effect an
adaptive recovery of old truths.
There is one more rare excellence both books display for which the
college can take little credit - more's the pity. Both are written in
humane, communicative, and vigorous English .
•
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
68
Neal Weiner's Hannony of the Soul offers a "reconstruction" of
ancient virtue for modern life. It seems, as a matter of fact, to fit Into
a current tendency of which Alasda!r Mcintyre (who lectured in
Annapolis some years age) Is a leader. There Is now a trend to recover
antique conceptions of virtue as a counter both to the rule-governed
rationalistic morality of modernity (p. 14) and the groundlessness of
postmodernlty. But Weiner's book Is the least tendentious imaginable.
Though he takes respectful account of current writing, his book is
manifestly the issue of intensely personal experience and reflection.
It Is the vety opposite of an inteHectual exercise in staying current.
Not that it Is unduly personal - It preserves a dignified distance of
tone. The resulting combination of palpable personal conviction and
presentational prudence is one of the attractions of the book.
The mode of inquity Weiner has chosen is expressive of these
characteristics. He presents a strong, even repulsive thesis, "the worst
possible news for the human spirit." He posits it, however, not In the
mode of a thesis but of a hypothesis, a conjecture or likelihood whose
consequences are to be worked on an "as if' basis. The conjecture is
that
human consciousness is a thoroughly natural thing and that we
are mere parts of nature, not as different from the rest of animate
nature as it has flattered us to think. (p. I)
The project then becomes to find a way to reconcile our brute nature
and our human goodness, or, in more conventional terms, to compose
the notorious fact-value opposition. The bridging notion will be the
"harmony of the soul." It is a theoty of human health as psychological
balance, such that even under merely natural conditions, that is to
say, in the absence of any transcendence, "only the best would follow."
One way to put Weiner's aim is this. He wants to test an understanding
that construes human nature as continuous with the whole of nature,
requiring no extrinsic teleology to define its proper goodness. The
naturalistic term for "good" is, of course, "healthy." Weiner wants to
see if he can delineate a sound-mindedness whose picture jibes with
ordinary notions of goodness.
This endeavor Is carried out in three parts of geometrically ascendIng lengths, ''The Body," ''The Soul," and ''The Good."
Physical health is understood as an evolutionary and social adaptation of a functionally integral body to Its tasks. Health Is therefore
relative to situation, but in a given time and place It Is a knowable
entity. "It Is a tattered, empirical Ideal, but autonomous and natural"
(p. 37).
Psychic health Is, again, a vety broadly conceived sort of functional
�BRANN
69
ideal, the soul In a condition of balanced adequacy. I would like to
point out here that it takes some courage these days to use the word
"soul" In a publication expecting to be taken seriously by the philosophical and psychological professions. As Bruno Bettelheim pointed
out a decade ago in Freud and Man's Soul (1983), Freud's English
translators betrayed his humane intentions by systeniatically erasing
the original German references to soul in favor of the more technicalsounding "psyche" or the, more intellectual-sounding "mind." Weiner
Is doing a good deed of terminological recovery in his bold use of the
word soul. Like Freud, Weiner intends to strike a tone of humaneness;
like Freud he intends no overtone of transcendence; like Freud he
evades an essential definition. The Index will send an interested reader
to whole sections and then to "Human Nature" and "Self." I found
nothing explicit.
My guess Is that Weiner would say that it is pure Platonic prejudice
always to demand to know what an entity is before being willing to be
told how It functions well. And I would agree, but with the proviso that
to go along with this book for the practical wisdom it offers is to
reconfigure It from a pure inquiry Into a handbook, an enchiridion in
the antique sense, that is to say, a book prescriptive of conduct. I mean
that not as a criticism but as an admiring observation.
In respect to "soul" Weiner considers first behavior, then motivation. Under the naturalistic hypotheses the central motivational mechanlsm is pleasure, which Is, in certain circumstances, the relief of
pain. Pleasure is presupposed to be harmoniously related to naturally
and socially adaptive behavior. By and large, well-functioning feels
pleasant. We are naturally sound and originally well.
"What then makes an individual sick?" Weiner's answer seems to
me to be at the credal heart, as it is at the literal center, of his work.
Mental sickness Is anxiety.
Anxiety, objectless fear and indeterminately directed worry, is
recognized by Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger as the mark of Cain
branding modernity. Weiner takes his analysis of this illness largely
from Freud, and then proceeds, In the name of moral responsibility,
to stand Freud's concept of the unconscious on its head.
Anxiety Is, more specifically, self-condemnation on a level too deep
for self-conscious recognition. Hence the concept of anxiety requires
an unconscious to which guilt-inducing experiences are relegated or
"repressed." Weiner accords Freud's unconscious the "purgation,
simplification and resurrection" It needs (p. 86). Instead of being
understood as a demon-like alien agency or place within us, that is,
topologically, the unconscious is taken as an evidential fact, phenom-
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
70
enologlcally. It is not placed as a power within the soul but observed
as a
commonplace phenomenon. It can be understood as nothing more
than the familiar but puzzliog mental state called "self-deception."
(p. 88)
Here then Is the bridge between pathology and responsibility. The
Freudian unconscious w:as a moral convenience, a locus of self-serving
Ignorance. Weiner's resurrection ofa harmonious soul returns responsibility for self-knowledge to the.conscious individual. In particular,
all the neurotic or false or dysfunctional pleasures which, being
intended to relieve anxiety. constitute mental illness, become accessible to self-therapy [p. 147).
Once again, Weiner has emphatically sidestepped a foundational
question, this time the question of the existence of self-condemnation
as a deep and determinative human affect (p. 84). Not everyone's
Introspection will yield the same sense of the cause of anxiety. For my
own part, I am convinced that guilt-feelings are the residue of wilfully
unexpiated guilt, and that at some point we are meant to decide either
to rectif'y our post-original sins (mostly stupidities) or to fold them
away in our memory of exhausted facts. Yet also once again, there is
much to be learned by going along, particularly In the last long section
on the Good, where the practical, prescriptive conclusions are drawn.
Weiner now Introduces another and a very sensible hypothesis, that
of"rough decency" as a basic inclination of human nature to compassion. It is not a rational moral principle but a psychological, affective
force, "a part of the original configuration of pleasures (p. 115). This
pre-rational morality (to employ a contradiction In terms) is identified
by Weiner with ancient- Aristotelian- virtue, for like virtue It has
a structure conformable to mental health, as vice has to" illness.
Weiner urges a tum away from rule-ridden legallstic morality and
a return to spontaneous psychological virtue. All that Is needed to
achieve "the union of spontaneity and goodness" [p. 125) that Is true
happiness Is to rid ourselves of anxiety, so that "primitive virtue" that
Is, rough decency, may surface.
The task that then remains Is to establish and to trace out naturalIstic routes first to self-knowledge (with its concomitants. freedom and
conscience) and finally to ethical knowledge. Under the naturalistic
hypotheses, self-knowledge is knowledge of one's own true desires, and
ethical knowledge is not primarily dialectical but persuasive. Weiner is
here preaching what he has all along practiced. The final chapter, in
which these points are made, Is much richer in observation and
analysis than this summary conveys.
�BRANN
71
Anti-foundationallsm Is yet another tendency of the day. Weiner's
approach Is In this spirit In a double sense. He presents as an exercise
In the "as If' mode reflections that tum Into the most earnest practical
- In fact thempeutlc - prescriptions. And he invites us to assume,
without theoretical underpinning, the existence as well as the meaning
of a number of entitles, for example, the soul. primitive virtue, and,
above all, nature. In the context of the Harmony of the Soul nature is
represented most poignantly In the human being by the body, and
the body is a moral presence as desire - as the collection of what
are called the "bodily desires," which Is really the collection of all
desires Insofar as they stem from the natural forces that have made
us. Whoever understands these desires ... is thought to possess a
kind of knowledge worth calling "wisdom." (p. 7)
And this is surely a perfectly sensible, but not at all a necessarily true,
version of human nature, whose glory it may well be that it is fundamentally unharmonious. At any mte, the point is that Weiner evades
all foundational claim-making and argumentation In order to get the
sooner to the coherent and healthful consequences of his hypotheses
and its attendant assumptions. It Is the sound-mindedness of this
enterprise that is its justification.
One last tiril.e it must be said that Weiner has adopted a mode
without joining a trend. What I mean Is that, far from displaying a
postmodem taste for groundlessness, he has simply chosen a fitting
way to communicate the reflective and wise result of a vital personal
experience.
Neal Weiner is Professor of Philosophy at Marlboro College tn
Vermont. He graduated from the Annapolis campus in 1964.
•
Public preoccupation In education used to change with the generations, every quarter century or so. Then every decade brought a new
issue. And now a novel notion agitates the educational establishment
quinquennially. The current obsession is "assessment," and though
the excitement may pass, its Institutional residue Is bound to last quite
a while. Among the hypotheses of the assessment movement are these:
(1) This country needs the kind of education that results in nationally
assessable outcomes. (2) Assessing students improves institutions
from primary school to college. There is a great likelihood that under
the coming assessment regime schools of all degrees will become more
homogenized, but there Is no assurance that they will become better.
A lay person would have thought that to improve education one would
�72
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
first of all address the learning of students. Such approaches are,
however, always small-scale and consequently maladapted to the
Intentions of a regulative bureaucracy. They seem to have receded Into
the background In the current preoccupation with "accountability."
Having read my ill! of the periodical literature on the subject, I
would have expected the worst of a whole book on assessing student
performance. Grant Wiggins's book is, It turns out, a glorious disappointment. He shows how assessment can be a benign and even
necessary element of learning.
The title of the first, introductory, chapter sets the tone. One of its
sections is called "Assessment versus Testing" (my italics). Let me
quote some key sentences:
Assess is a form of the Latin verb assidere, to "sit with." In an
assessment, one "sits with" the learner. It Is something we do with
and for the student, not something we do to the students [p. 14] ....
The assessor tries to ferret out all of what the student knows and
can do by various means [p. 16] .... At the very least, assessment
requtres that we come to know the student In action [p. 17].
Wiggins's chief complaints against testing as the main instrument
of assessment are that tests tailor the task to the tester's need to get
a score and that they are systematically unresponsive to the individual
learner. What Wiggins Is mindful of- and what educational officialdom is unmindful of - Is the educational function of assessment
properly understood as that attentiveness to students' learning which
emphasizes overt production of some sort, that is, daily performance.
Tests subvert this function In a way Wiggins feels entitled to regard
as immoral. The main issue of the Introduction Is therefore the
morality of testing. The reason that tests are dubiously moral is
Kantian. They invariably treat the child as an object; they show it
disrespect,
because a test, by Its design, is an artifice whose audience is an
outsider, whose purpose Is ranking, and whose methods are reductionist and Insensitive. (p. 7)
The Introduction consequently ends with an "Assessment Bill of
Rights" that details the rubrics of respect for students. Its nine articles
can be summarized by saying that assessment should be as humane
In the largest sense as possible. I might go so far as to offer our oral
examinations, especially the senior essay oral as an exemplification
of the ode of assessment Wiggins's Bill of Rights calls for: a worthwhile
common Inquiry In the course of which, under the guidance of models
of excellence, the student gets to take up questions, justit'y answers,
�BRANN
73
and hear contrary opinions. (I must, however, report that Grant has
told me in a private letter that he missed detailed feed-back while he
was a student, and he may well be light. Sometimes our watchful
non-intervention goes over Into simple slackness. )The second chapter
asks: "Assessment of What?' Recalling the horrible example of Meno,
the memorizer, Wiggins delineates a liberal sort of!earhlng that is the
opposite of thoughtless mastery- if there Is such a thing. Thoughtful
mastery Is the object of sound assessment, but It Is evident that there
are dilemmas here, and Wiggins makes them explicit. For example,
liberal learning requires not only skill but also what Wiggins calls
"intellectual character," very nearly what Aristotle would call "Intellectual virtue." Intellectual character includes both discipline and independence. It ought therefore to be assessed in ways that are "enabling,
fatr, and responsive." Wiggins accords such modes of examination In
the title of "Socratic tact." He concludes with nine Postulates of
thoughtful assessment, which include detailed desiderata: Students
should have a chance to justifY their understanding. They should be
presented with good models and feed-back, and be judged by non-arbitrary criteria. They should engage In self-assessment, and be performers and not mere spectators of! earning. They should develop their
individual ''voice," and be assessed through their questions as well as
their answers. They should be encouraged to articulate critically the
limits of the theories they have learned, and have their intellectual
virtue taken Into account.
The remaining six chapters amplifY these ideas through an abundance of conceptual explications, applicable experiences, and imaginative examples.
Assessing Student Perjo1TTI1Jllce Is therefore an eminently practical
book. Grant Wiggins understands what the educational establishments seems to be professionally prevented from apprehending- that
with respect to humane learning, efficiency is the enemy of practicality.
How I wish that this book might gain some influence!
Grant Wiggins is the president of the Center on Learning, Assessment and School Structure (CLASS), a non-profit organization In
Geneseo, New York. He graduated from the Annapolis campus In
1972.
�74
THE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
�I
One Man's Meter
Elliott Zuckerman
Part 1
I spent much of my high-school and college years in the noisy and
uneven trains of the Interborough Rapid Transit System. The full
name, as you have just heard, constitutes a good line of iambic pentameter
with a feminine endtng-the Interborough Rapid TrW!Sit System-but
it was nevertheless known for short as the I R T. Accordtng to an
antiphonal ditty that is now known only by agtng New Yorkers, the I
R Twas, along with its sister subway, the B MT, one of the routes on
which you Could Not Get To Heaven.! The New York City subways did,
however, take you anywhere else that could conceivably be of tnterest.
The borough I commuted from was Brooklyn, where I dwelt tn a
neighborhood called Crown Heights. My streets were just to the west
of the area that has recently been in the news. My neighborhood was
identifiable as the location of Ebbets Field, whose outfield was visible
from the roof of my apartment house, and the Brooklyn Museum, on
whose imposing frieze I first encountered the names and figures of
Socrates, Zoroaster, I..ao-Tse, and Saint Paul.2 Behind the Museum
stretched the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was there, in the appropriate setting of nature controlled and manicured by artifice, that I began
to read poetry. More accurately, I should refer to what! did as intoning
verse--for the poets I recited more or less out loud were Edgar Allan
Poe, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others more noted for what
was glibly called the "music" of their verse than for what was, with
111is was the Homecoming Lecture in Annapolis on October 1, 1994.
1
The B M T, of course, provided the first and famous verse:
Oh you can't get to heaven
On the B MT
FortheB MT
Will be emp TEE...
but at least in my linguistically advanced crowd other verses were composed, the
point of which was that they were pointless.
1-here was no guide to pronunciation, and some of my initial construals have
remained with me. I remember wondering about the chiseled U in HAMMVRABI.
They were all, I realize now, law-givers, prophets, and founders of religions. On the
main building of the nearby Gardens were inscrtbed botanists, some of them
obscure. I kliew foreigners who found it characteristically American to label
buildings in that way, like our preference for written-out road signs instead of the
international symbols, and our invention of the talking T-shirt
�TilE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
76
like glibness, called their "thought." They tended to have three names.
I Intoned another poet, also not of the highest rank, but quieter and
less ornate. Within the Garden there was a particularly pleasant
section that was known until the end of 1941 as Japanese. As part of
the War Effort it was renamed Oriental. It featured an avenue of
flowering cheny trees. I think of It now as having been metrical-which
is to say that the trees were planted equidistantly from one another.
The distances had once ,been measured by the planter and could still
be paced out by the walker. If the rows had been wider apart and
repeated, It would have qualified "san example of the best of all those
groves In which we show our agricultural talents: the orchard. The
orch-yard is a kind of orchestra, and the orchestra was, as you know, the
space where the members of the Greek Chorus danced. When they recited,
the chorus members probably stood apart from one another at equal
Intervals, like the living pillars In Baudelaire's natural temple-articulate
evergreens In a pine-forest, or perhaps columns In a man-made space,
like those, striped In red and white, that support the arches In the Grand
Mosque at Cordoba. Trees and columns and arches: as the language of
art-criticism reminds us, we can look at rhythms as well as hear them.
But when looking we have to keep our eyes open and our heads still.
At the time of my intoning I took the cheny trees In Brooklyn to be
indistinguishable from those that had been the subject, fifty years
earlier, of a famous poem by A. E. Housman. Hot;sman does not
describe his trees; the poem depicts nothing except their color and
something akin to the rhythm of their arrangement. 3 The titleless
stanzas come early In the collection named for an anonymous and almost
featureless Shropshire Lad, and meant, I think, to be spoken by one:
[l]
Loveliest of trees, the cheny now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
5
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
9
And since to look at things In bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cheny hung with snow.
3
Housman's poem is of course very much better than what at the time was the
world's most famous poem about trees, which happens to be in the same meter and
to have the same rhyme-scheme as Housman's, and also starts out with the notion
of loveliness, but goes on to say too much about its tree, for each image contradicts
the others. Some of the worst poems in our language have been inspired by dendrophilia.
I knew the song-setting ofJoyce Kihner's 'Trees," often sung at our piano. I therefore set
Housman's poem to music, without knowing that other poetic and musical teenagers
had also done so. My setting was for tenor and piano.
�ZUCKERMAN
77
Housman devoted most of his scholarly life to producing an edition
in five volumes ofManilius, a Latin author who has never made it into
a list of Great Books. In spite oflong years of careful and presumably
brilliant emendation, Housman described his subject as "a facile and
frivolous poet, the mightiest facet of whose genius was an eminent
aptitude for doing sums in verse." The middle stanza of the poem
before us could easily represent Housman's bid for the same distinction in English. 4 Soon we shall look at the prosody of that stanza.
Meanwhile, I do hope that the meaning of it does not have to be
explained. Just in case the first couplet of the stanza presents a
difficulty, the second couplet says the same things again. The poem
used to be set as a high-school test of reading comprehension. The
question about the middle stanza was "How old is the poet?"
Before we look at metrical details, I should say that I find that the
only question of semantic interpretation lies in the fmal word of the
poem, and even there I may be seeking out ambiguity. Do we take
"snow" as an easy figure for the stuff of white blossoms, or does it refer
literally to snow? When reading the poem aloud I had to choose
between these interpretations-! chose the first-for they require
different patterns of intonation for the final line, and it is impossible
to straddle them. Here are the two interpretations:
(1) Premise: The cherries are in bloom. Second premise:
I have only fifty years left. The conclusion: I'll go look at
them.
(2) Premise: The cherries are in bloom. Second premise:
I have only fifty years left. The conclusion: I'll go look at
the trees in the winter, too.
The second interpretation, with real snow, requires the emphasis on
the final word:
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
But the first interpretation is much the likelier, as well as being the
'1: recently came across a stanza recorded about 1615, probably decades older, in
which Tom o 'Bedlam recites the following madness:
Of thirty bare years have I
twice twenty bin enraged,
& of forty bin
three tymes fi:fteene
in durance soundlie caged ...
The alignment is meant to reflect the view that the verse is a proto-limerick, b,
the third and fourth lines are set as a single third line, the resemblance to Howe
even more stron@y suggests that there is a history of what could be called artthm~.w~.
quatrains in English.
�78
TilE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
less fancy. It Is, in fact, of some Interest that the plainer reading is the
one that takes the ambiguous word .figuratively. But it Is hard to work
up much more Interest in that final word, largely because both
Interpretations rest on an assumption that is psychologically unlikely.
I wonder how many twenty-year-olds who .are expecting a normal
life-span are likely to be seriously worried that they don't have all that
many years left for looking. It is granted that most of the lads in
Housman's Shropshire <tre destined to die young. But in the case of
the cherry-tree watcher I fail to find room for irony in his confidence
that he will enjoy a full sevenf¥ years. If I am missing something
Important about the poem, I hope someone will set me straight, for
the poem ought to mean more than I have mentioned. Not only did the
poet place it second In his collection, but it has since been included
In any number of anthologies.
Meanwhile, if it is only the end of the poem that provides any
ambiguity of meaning, It Is interesting that It is also only there that
the poem reaches-or succumbs to---<:omplete metrical regularity.
Only there do both rhyming lines have four full iambs:
v/c'lv
tv;
About the wo6dlands I will go
T6 se/ th~' ch/nj htkg vXth sn6w.
The entire third stanza would be perfectly regular if it weren't for the
line that begins with the word "fifty," lacking an opening upbeat:
Xnd s{nce t!5'Jo6k !it th{ngs \h b!oo"m
/.v/vlv/
Fifty sprmgs are little room ...
We do leave a little room for that missing upbeat, of course. It Is one
of the truths about rhythm that we can't utter a downbeat without a
preceding upbeat, just as we can't exhale without inhaling first. 5 Still,
It does matter a little whether or not the upbeat Is actually sounded.
That It Is not sounded here places emphasis on the word "fifty," just
as, at the same place in the second stanza, the word "twenty" Is
emphasized. Our other number, "seventy," on the other hand, acquires its distinction from the extra syllable that must unobtrusively
be slipped In, "seven" being our only disyllabic digit. If there is
undeniably a music of numbers. there is also a music of the names of
numbers. Making poetic capital of the equation Twenty plus Fifty
5
1 have eschewed the terms "arsis" and "thesis," which have hopelessly exchanged
meanings at varlous times.
�ZUCKERMAN
79
equals Seventy may rival In Its way the profound judgment, In the
realm of philosophy, that Seven and Five equals Twelve.
What happens at the lines beginning with "twenty" and "fifty" Is not
the same as what happens at the beginning of line five:
Now of my threescore years and ten ...
-I am assuming that "Now" takes an opening stress. But that line
does have Its full quota of '>Yllables. It is just that-as is very often the
case In iambic lines-the' opening iamb (da-dwn) is replaced by a
trochee (da-dum). We are still given the material for saying the iamb
"now of" Any handbook about meter will tell you when an iamb is
replaced by a trochee. What is at the same time never made explicit,
and what I ask you to observe now, Is that the stress remains in the
same place. When one stresses the downbeat of the trochee "now," the
stress occurs right where it would have occurred on the word "of," if
one had chosen to say an iambic "now of"
The lack of clarity in this example Is owing to the fact that one can
also say "now of" or, to put it another way, that the metrical shift Is
not sufficiently clear-cut. When contemplating this weakness, I was
forced back over the rest ofthepoem, and discovered that semantically
the "now" that starts the second stanza uncomfortably repeats the
"now" that ends the first line. Should we suspect the earlier "now" of
being necessary for the salre of the rhyme? And is the second "now"
supposed to be wavering between the temporal and the resumptive?
These doubts serve to show that metrical questions often lead to fresh
questions about content.
In any event, let me switch to another couplet where an opening
iamb has been converted to a trochee, this time unambiguously. Here,
In the same meter (and coincidentally with a similar rhyme) Is a
couplet of Andrew Marvell's:
[2]
My vegetable love should grow
V~stf~ thi:in /mpires and more slow...
We are concerned only with the first halves of the lines. Later we'll
pick up on the secondary stress that amusingly extends the adjective
''vegetable." Right now we are listening to the assertive trochaic
conversion that begins the second line. If the line had opened with the
regular lamb, It could have gone like this:
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
[3]
My vegetable love should grow
v I
1\S vast
1.}
as
I
~mplres ...
When ''as VAST' is changed to ''VASTer" we do not lose any syllables,
and to my sense of rhythm the ''VAST"in "VASTer" is In the same place
as the "VAST' In "as VAST." Since this Is one of my main points, I'll
say It still another way: The ''VASr' of ''VASTer" Is still on the
downbeat, and we breathe or think an unspoken upbeat for It, just as
we did In the Housman poem for "fifty" and "twenty." The only
difference between the defective lines and the line with the reversal is
In the number of syllables between the initial downbeat and the next
stress.
It should be helpful to compare all the lines in question. For the
sake of the timing, in each instance I Include the preceding line:
[4]
(a) And since to look at things in bloom
FiftY' sprfugs are little room ...
(b) My vegetable love should grow
V
/
V I
As vast as Empires,
and more slow ...
(c) My vegetable love should grow
)
\)
\]
!
V:l.ster than :gmpires, and more slow...
(d) Fffty'spdngs ...
As v.ist \is tmplres .. .
V~ster thll.n tmplres .. .
(N6w l>'f
rriy threL.)
Marvell's couplet was not chosen at random. Soon afterward in the
poem there are some famous lines that ask to be compared with
Housman's:
[5]
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest ...
The numbering here is beyond arithmetic; and there is more than
�ZUCKERMAN
81
hyperbole in the unexpected geometric leap.
But we must return once more to the Housman poem, because we
have not yet reached the beginning of it. We started with the final word,
a kind of rhetorical climax, such as it is. But metrically it is the very
opening of the poem that is most memorable. It is, in fact, so arresting
that it sustains the rest of the poem, and carries it right into the
anthologies. Nothing later on matches the musical call-to-attention.
The poem starts out with a metrical conversion of the "vaster than"
or "Now of my" sort. But when we count "loveliest" as trtsyllabic, then
there are not two but three unstressed syllables between the downbeat
and the next stress:
I v v
I
Nowofmythree ...
[6]
L6've-ii'-¥st .\'f tre/s ...
Since the scansion requires that there be only two, we can reduce the
middle syllable to a semivowel:
v
I v
I
[7] LOve-lyest of trees ...
But whether it be a trochee or a dactyl, "loveliest" stands in place of
the lamb asked for by the meter, as the meter might be in the following
line, where I have kept the final sound of "loveliest" but stressed the
syllable:
u
I v
I
[8] Tlie best of trees, the cherry now ...
Move from there to this mis-stressed version-to hear what's happening we must dare to distort:
v
I v
I
[9] Love(l)yest of trees ...
And from there to the correctly stressed but disyllabic
[10]
Lov/(l)y~st &tre/s ...
-which corresponds to "Now of my three", and finally to the poem
Itself:
[ ll] Love-li-est of trees ...
�82
1HE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
Substituting for the standard meter
[12]
ulululul
we have not simply the still usual
[13]
IuuIuIuI
but the remarkable
[141
IuuuIuIuI
Part II
In everything that has been noted so far I have taken for granted
an underlying meter, which was easy to deduce even though the poem
begins Irregularly. Here it is represented on the page-it can be spoken
using "da" for the unstressed and "dum" for the stressed syllables, a
familiar "da-dturi':
[151
uI u I u I uI
ulululul
ulu/u/ul
ulululul
Four lines ofverse with four stresses in each line. Notice that I have
represented the stresses as equidistant on the page-as though
charting an avenue of trees-and suggesting that the soundings of
them should be equidistant In time, Isochronous or Isochronal. I am
representing the meter itself, not any particular rendition of a verse
that is, as we say, In that meter. Even the rendition of the meter in
nonsense-syllables is already a particularization, for those syllables
aren't entirely tuneless. The stresses are the same-though the placement of the short syllables Is not the same-as they are in the couplets
of four-beat nursery rhymes:
[16] One, two, buckle my shoe.
Three, four, knock at the door ...
Or, if you consider those lines not four-beat lines but pairs of two-beat
lines:
[17] Eeny, meeny, miney, mo ... _
Or, If you think we're being Irrelevantly trochaic:
�ZUCKERMAN
83
[18] One, two! One, two! then through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack. ..
Remember that the opening numbers here are meant to be a pair of
iambs, 6 and we're back to Housman's meter. !tis hard to recite nursery
rhymes or comic ballads without showing the isochronality of the
stresses. But the stresses can be spaced similarly evenly in more
solemn verse, even though the performance need not be quite so
Insistent.
Taken alone, without considering the meter of the rest of the poem,
the opening line of Housman's poem could easily be construed as
having five stresses, with an official stress on the third syllable of
"loveliest":
[19] Love-li-est of trees, the cherry now ...
If we provide the line with a sounded opening upbeat, we have a full
and normal iambic pentameter, the staple meter for English poems
that are neither nursery, comic, nor ballad-like:
[20] The loveliest of trees, the cherry now...
In an idle moment I have gone on to stretch the other lines of
Housman's quatrain into pentameter, as in example 21. The expansion of line three-the standing in tears-owes something to the
sadness of Ruth in the Ode to a Nightingale; and in line four I couldn't
help completing for the celibate Housman the tncipient suggestion of
marriage. It Is in anticipation of such desecrations that I chose a
mediocre poem to work on. Yet there really Is no good reason why we
shouldn't perform such experiments on the most sacred passages of
poetry, just as we can profitably tamper with the tunes of Mozart and
Bach, hoping to understand how they work or come closer to spotting
where the mystery lies. Anyway, a well-made melody can easily survive
a temporary dislocation:
[21]
The loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is pendulate with bloom along the bough
And stands In tears about the woodland ride
Wearing a bridle white for Eastertide.
A good deal that Is new emerges simply from the change In meter
Itself. Notice, for example, that with a bit more formality of expression
we would be bordering on the end-stop couplets of the eighteenth
century. Which is to say that now the tendency Is to walt at the end
6
Compare the separate stresses-"one,two,"-in example 16 with the iambic "one·twosn of example 18.
�84
TilE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
of each line-to wait metrically, for what amounts to the beat of a sixth
stress. It is as though the stresses asked to be paired. When there are
four in aline, as in Housman's tetrameter, we can go straight on. When
there are five, the fifth stress expects its silent partner, a sixth. You
may feel that I have exaggerated the defmite counting-out of all this.
But I hope It will at least be granted that each meter has Its own
character.
Partm
That meters have their own character is one of the main points of
this lecture. The other is that once a meter is established, the metrical
stresses in each line have what may be thought of as their established
places. I would like to examine each of these assertions a little further.
For the first, let us return to the established meter of the Housman
poem, which is pictured back in Example 15. But this time, Instead
of expanding into pentameter, let us subtract, starttng with the
omission of the last foot of the even lines:
[22]
uI uI u I uI
ululul
ulululul
ululul
Now we have the most common of ballad meters, most common in
both popular ballads and literary imitations. Housman himself seems
to have preferred this form, a preference not surpristng In a poet who,
when asked about his influences, listed not only the songs of Shakespeare but Heinrich Heine and the Scottish Border Ballads. About this
meter let me call your attention to somethtng so obvious that It Is
seldom registered in the discussion of verse. It Is that we still have the
same lengths-tn musical terms, the same number of measures-as
we had tn the sixteen-foot meter. No doubt there are many ways a
reader or reciter can perform a common ballad. There is one way,
however, that is rhythmically impossible, and that Is to go right on
from the short line to the next without a pause, as in this rendition of
Example 22:
ulululul
u I u I u I (go right on)
ulululul
ululul
There are annoying people who sometimes showup at song fests. After
one phrase of the song seems to them to end, they begin singing the
�85
ZUCKERMAN
next phrase without waiting for the first phrase really to finish, without
waiting the amount of time required by the meter-as though the
musical time was in session only when the tune of the song was
actually being sounded. I think even those people feel compelled to
walt the required foot-length at the end of the second and fourth lines
of the meter In Example 22.
Let's attach the meter to a poem. Though I was tempted by some
rousing ballads-and even by a purple cow-l owe It to you at last to
give you something better. So here's one of the most beautiful lyrics
in the language, Wordsworth on the loss of Lucy:
[23] She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
-Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
.When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
It has some kinship with the Housman poem. There is something
that borders on counting, and, although there are two similes, they
are confined to the middle stanza. The last stanza is iroageless, and it
is one sign of its beauty that when speaking it we want to leave a lot
of space. Space and silence are required by the plainness, and by the
combination of exclamation and understatement:
[24]
But she is in her grave-and ohThe difference-to me-
When contemplating the pauses in the poem, one should distinguish
between those that belong to performance and those that are requi]'ed
by the meter. What, for example, allows us to postpone the last foot of
the next-to-last line?-so much so that a listener might mistake it for the
opening of the final line? And what has happened to the second stress
in the final line, the metrtcal stress on the last syllable of the word
"difference"? Where are the stresses In that poigoantly laconic ending?
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
For now, let us continue with the subtraction from the original four
times four. This time we'll end every line with a rest, and for the
embodiment In a poem we can return to Housman, who, in a famous
Shropshire lament, has lost not one Lucy but a whole crowd of lads
and maidens, all of them nameless:
[25[
With rue my heart Is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
As with most ofthe poems that take me back to the Botanic Garden,
it would be morally useful to analyze the factitiousness of the sentiment. How seriously are we to take the difference between the fate of
the boys and the fate of the girls? But in this lecture I only have to
note the metrically Important fact that we still have sixteen feet per
stanza-that now every line carries a rest. One could easily be driven
to some theory about the evenness or dupleness that we seem to
require In ourverse-meters,justas we do in our dances. But whenever
I delve Into that matter, I rediscover the truths that we walk with two
feet, and that two is an even number.
There's not enough time to ring aU the changes of what happens
when we leave off various measures ofthe original quatrain. So far we
have looked only at 4-4-4-4, 4-3-4-3, and 3-3-3-3-but those combinations do underlie most of the great ballad-like poems in the language, whether by Wordsworth, Blake, Emily Dickinson, or one or two
others. But I can't resist listing one more, the fairly unlikely 3-3-4-3:
[26]
u I u I u I (u ll
u I u I u I (u I)
ulululul
u I u I u I (u ll
.;:
Now put that into measures with a triple beat, whether you want to
call the result anapestic (uul) or dactylic (fuu) or related to that foot
known as the amphibrach, a stressed syllable between two unstressed-ulu-which for me always summons up the vigor of
Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. Here is the new quatrain:
�ZUCKERMAN
~n
87
uluuluulu~l~
u I u u I u u I u (u I ul
uluuluuluulu
u I u u I u u I u (u I u)
We now have a meter in what amounts to six-eighths time-a meter
that tends to be comic. To make it fully so, we'll leave out two shorts
In line three:
[281
uI uuI u uI u
uluuluulu
uluul uluul
uluuluulu
Even though I haven't mentioned a Man from Calcutta or the Countess
Lupescu, I hope you recognize the form, which Is that of the Limerick.
It Is usually laid out on the page like this:
[291
uI u uI uuI u
uluuluulu
uluul
uluul
uluuluulu
But that Is merely a convention to show the rhyme, which could have
remained Internal. There Is really nothing metrically five-like about
the Limerick; as we have just seen, It Is simply a variant of a
fundamental four-times-four, which also hems in most of our favorite
melodies. The same 'scaffolding holds up a poem by Edward Lear, a
· ballad by Jerome Kern, Schiller's Ode to Joy, and Beethoven's Ode to
Joy.
PartN
I promised to return to Marvell's line about his "vegetable love,"
when I said that the meter Informs us that the word "vegetable" has
four syllables with a subsidiary stress on the third. Even If we choose
not to emphasize the secondary stress, the meter still should prevent
a reading of three Isochronous stresses, like this:
[30]
Myv~g(e)table Jo've should grbw...
What's wrong here Is not that there are only three enunciated stresses,
but that they are in the wrong place. They should not be equidistant
�1HE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
88
from one another. but In an Isochronous set of four stresses they
should occupy positions one, three, and four:
[31[
My veget-a-ble love should grow...
1
(2)
3
4
The nature of my assertion will be clearer if we expand to the
ten-syllable line. It Is anyway In the realm of Iambic pentameter that
the controversy usually takes place.
Some years ago an Influential critic of rhetoric and myth wandered
Into the field of prosody and observed that a great many lines of iambic
pentameter have only four enunciated stresses. The observation was,
of course, right. and It happened that he could adduce as examples
the opentng ltnes of the most famous speech In Shakespeare. Here It
is, with that critic's stressing:
[32]
I
I
!
I
To be or not to be: that is the question.
Wh{ther 'tis n6bler in the mfud to su'ffer
I
/
I
I
The shngs and arrows of outrageous fortune ...
In the first ltne one may prefer, for existential reasons, to retain the
metrical stress on the second statement of the infinitlve-''To be or not
to be"-but certainly in the second and third lines there is no spoken
emphasis on "in" and "of." These lines, then, not only have four
stresses each, but those stresses group Into pairs on both sides of a
central unstressed preposition. Let me add to the collection an equally
well-known line of Pope's:
[33]
The proper study of mankind is man.
Although there can be little controversy about how many stresses
there are, there should be greater attention paid to where they are. By
where I do not, of course, mean which syllables, but how those
stressed syUables accord with the stresses of the Wlderlying meter. By
now you should have predicted that I will maintain that the meter
should prevent the performance of four equidistant stresses tn the
pentameter lines. Listen to what I consider the wrong reading of
Example 32-the reading implicitly recommended by the misguided
critic, using four equidistant stresses:
�ZUCKERMAN
89
1
To bt or n6t to be, tM t Is the qu/stion
Whither 'tis n6bier in the mfud to s&'trer
The sJ(ngs and £rrows of outra'geous f6'rtune ...
And even, encouraged by what I hope is an anachronistic pronunciation of the chief word:
The pr6per stt{dy of m£nklnd Is mk..
The stresses should not march as though they were one, two, three,
and four In a four-stressed line, but as though they were at positions
one, two, four, and five of a line that leaves room for the central stress
even when It Is not uttered:
[34[ (a)
To b( or neSt to be (/) that Is the qu(stion.
Whether 'tis n6bler (/) In the rnfnd to stltrer
The srfugs and okrows (/) of outrfgeous fo'rtune ...
(b)
The pr6per stddy (/) of manklhd is mhn.
(c)
I
I
"'
.I
I
The pr6per study of mankind Is man.
The pentameter of Shakespeare and Pope-and Milton and Wordsworth and Keats-normally counts out a single short syllable In each
foot; the meter Is not purely accentual but what is called accentualsyllabic. You will note that reading pentameter lines with four equal
stresses Ignores this fact. Shakespeare and Pope are not Imitating the
meter of Beowulf, nor do they anticipate the sprung rhythms of Gerard
Manley Hopkins.
One final example. This time it is Macbeth, beginning to contemplate the parade of his magnificent despair:
[35]
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
If you choose to stress only the three tomorrows, there are still,
between each pair of stresses. silences that are as strong as stresses.
Indeed, I hear a certain advantage In articulating all five stresses of
the pentameter:
[36]
Tombrrow kd tomdrrow kd tom6rrow...
�1HE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
90
When properly stressed, the little word "and" can be the most weary
of common words. It can also connect worlds of hopelessness. as lt
does here and (say) at the dead center of Wagner's Tristan.
PartV
In speaking this lecture I have used certain nonsense-syllables
when I wanted to conve:\f the meters without the words that embody
them. I didn't always know in advance what syllables I was going to
use. Recently I have found myself suggesting to the next generation
that some linguists ought to do a study of the syllables people use for
such renditions. And while they are at It, they can do the same for the
related renderings of the motifs of music:
ba-ba-ba-bwn
da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dah-dum
La-da-dee-dah-dum-da-dee-dah dee-dun?
Actually there would be at least two branches of that study. one of
vowels, the other of consonants. It Is a rich field, and, so far as I know,
It Is quite untilled. Such studies would Inform us about the nature of
language itself, and about the character of individual languages-not
to mention the tnsight tnto a person's psyche. Is the subject labial or
dental, and what childhood doings determined the preference?
All that the syllables for conveying meter really needed to convey
was stress, and not even degrees of stress but simply whether or not
a syllable is accented. It turns out that the differentiations ofverse are
far simpler than those of prose, where, according to most analyses, we
need four degrees of emphasis In order to convey the significant
contours of syntax and meaning. The merely binary difference between
syllables tn verse-all we need to know is whether the stress Is on or
oJf--can be viewed as representing a selection and stylization of the
more complex elements of ordinary language.
The analogy can be carried through. The poetic foot can be regarded
as a simplified and stylized all-purpose word: each carries only one
main stress, but In the case of the word the placement of that stress
Is harder to specifY. The poetic colon Is comparable In turn to the
phrase, and the poetic line Is the stylized analogue of the sentence.
7These three sets of syllables were sung, respectively, to the opening motif of
Beethoven's Fifth, the opening of Mozart's Fortieth, and the big tune in the second
movement ofTchaikowsky's "Pathetlque."
�ZUCKERMAN
91
And so on to the longer forms, via the stanza of verse and the
paragraph of prose. And tn every comparison the element on the metlical
side is easier to discern and less ambiguous than the prosaic parallel.
More to the point of this lecture, it has been observed that the
stricter isochrony of the stresses of verse is a stylization of the
tendency to equalize the stresses tn our speech. If you have any doubt
of that tendency, then listen to the stress patterns of the responsive
readings in church and SYT~agogue, or at any occasion where a number
of people are asked to recite in chorus not verse but heightened prose.
Or, to take a slightly different turn in this quick comparison ofverse
and heightened prose, consider a formal recitation of this well-known
bit of our prose tradition, which I have suggestively re-aligned:
We hold these truths to be self-evident
That all men are created equal: that
They are endowed by their creator with
Certain unalienable rights; that among these
Are life, and liberty, and the pursuit
Of happiness ...
To get my five and a half lines of rather good blank verse, I may have
had to be a bit Yeatsian in the line containing the "unalienable rights," 8
but otherwise all I did was add a single "and."
If the reading of prose benefits from knowtng the parts of speech
and where the jotnts are, it is a small wonder that the attention to
metlic elements should improve one's performance of verse. Everything artistic seems to me to benefit from having been put into a
roughly suitable Bed that may seem to some to be Procrustean. The
freedom of the dance is derivable from the discipline of rigid and
sometimes awkward exercise. One of the most flexible and emotional
sopranos of our century used the word "straight-jacketing" to describe
the first stage of studying a new role-the phase when she was learntng
exactly what the composer wrote. And we have a wealth of statements
by poets themselves about the importance of the underlying symmetlies--even the underlying monotonies-of verse. T. S. Eliot spoke
famously of the life of verse as a contrast between flux and what he
called Fixity. We can't notice flux without the help of that fixity. And
stnce I have fallen tnto the sententious mode, and wish at least to be
classically sententious, I'll remind you that the river we can't step into
twice is the same river.
But too much attention has been paid this evening to the performer.
&yry thinking a stress on the fifth syllable of "unalienable," and a reversal of the
proper stressing of "among."
·
�92
1HE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
The chief reason for attending to the details of meter should be not
performance but plain knowing. Among performers there may even be
some merit In the common sentiment that attention to the mechanical
might subvert the natural, and that the metronomic can stifle rhythm.
But I believe there is no room at all for that sentiment when It comes to
our more Important business, wWch we engage In not as performers but
as students. As students we leave beWnd the sentimental notion that
dissection means murder, and that "analysis" can kill the "creative." The
attempt to force a phrase Into a pattern, whether It fits or not, is bound
to be revealing. And, as I said earlier, I have yet to find a good poem or
piece of music that doesn't survive such fittings with a newly noticeable
richness. The workable criterion for a poor poem or piece Is that It fails
to withstand the rough treaiment the analysis calls for.
Everything that is rhythmic or melodic or poetic must have an
Ingredient that is rational and logical and subject to some sort of
simple numbering. The word "meter" carries that truth, along with
that other apt word for lines written in feet, the word "numbers" itself.
I recently picked up what turned out to be an Informative book on
the various dances used in the music of Bach. I must say I was
surprised and then puzzled by a sudden caveat in the book's introduction. The authors (there are two of them) say it byway of what they
call" a personal word of advice." I have as much trouble with the word
"personal" there as I have with the advice itself, which is that they
urge their readers "not to Intellectualize rhythm."They go on to explain
that "many problems arise when rhythm is analysed as a thing to be
understood by the mind, rather than as an activity perceived primarily
by the body and only secondarily by the mind." I find myself ballled
by an epistemology that has the so-called body somehow making sense
of tWngs before the so-called mind is brought into play. I am also
annoyed by the easy invocation of the buzz-word "Intellectualize,"
which depends for its pejorative effect upon the just barely justified
foolishness that hovers over the noun "intellectual."
But most of all I am taken aback by the objection that in the course
of analysis "many problems might arise." That analysis should uncover difficulties Is surely something to be welcomed-which is my
way of reminding you that the main reason for lectures given in this
room is to introduce the Question Period. Notice that I called It by what
I believe to be Its proper name: the Question Period, not the Question
andAnswer Period. Perhaps I can re-assert an old tradition by putting
It into a line of iambic pentameter:
It isn't Q and A but just plain Q.
�I
Results of
Crosswords Numbers Five and Six
The winners of the $35 book tokens, redeemable at the St. John's
College Bookstore, Annapolis, are, for #5:
Larry S. Davis, Austin, TX
Peter Norton, Acton, MA
Geoffrey Rommel, Oak Park, IL
for #6:
Nathaniel Cohen, Washington, DC
James Craig, Havre de Grace, MD
Jean Stephens, Annapolis, MD
�94
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Solution to Crossword Number Five
(' ' [Sins] of Omission' ' )
1
A
2
v
3
A 14 p._
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Editor's Note:
When I was editing the solution, it seemed to me that one of the
seven deadly sins appeared twice-as AVARICE and as GREED-while
GLUTTONY was omitted. I consulted "Cassandra," who said that
GREED stood for GLUTTONY. I detect the influence of the British usage
of the adjective "greedy."
�CROSSWORD
95
Solution to Crossword Number Six
C'Porcus")
A c.
3
5
4
6
E: L Cl R I R u E
8
9
10
11
7
p 0 R K p {<..
0 v A A I< A
13
12
J) E" R L p A s 0 N
0 N
1£
2H
w
14
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17
18
p I:: R A I
0
u E
P- E
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24
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26
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11
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Editor's Note:
Porcus"=Pig
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1E
�Crossword Number Seven:
"Let's Be Liberal"
By EZRA
The six solutions without clues share a conunon theme. The puzzle
contains three acronynl.s and an unusual spelling at 24A.
ACROSS
1. Cheerleaders have It according to commanding officer and nurses found in
some mills (11)
8.Anclent enemy departs,
fooled (3)
11. Unending worry? Rebound
with a forward direction (5)
13.To the Romans, Jesus was
among their main rivals (4)
14. Place to wash a brass bass
(4)
15.Curt western lawman Is a
descendent of Muhammad
(6)
17.Bug detected in the colic
(abbreviation and word) (5)
18.Do you know what comes
after pro and con? (4)
19. Fixes radios (4)
21.Even stake on outcome of
bout (abbreviation) (3)
22. Gale blows one end to the
other making French equal
(4)
24. Stitch a Ramadan veil for
variant concubines or
Turkish city (5)
26. Bore coffin (4)
27.Giver of oneself and
Wurllixer? (two words) (10)
29. By virtue of being at heart
the same (3)
30. French well operates the
first half of every other year
(4)
31. Oddly, tonite is still explosive (3)
33. It's a nuisance to take a
half-step back and a halfstep forward (4)
34.Author Bagnold returned
to eat (4)
35. Up to the time that they
returned Illuminated (3)
36.Alien switches sides In femInine ending (4)
38. Cyclone's eye is a nuclear
spiral (3)
39.Prude, grief stricken, Imagined with anticipation
(10)
40. Look with desire at dance
turns (4)
41. Profane rancher backing
stadium (5)
43. Vocals are ... are unusual?
(4)
.
45. Family finds rich cloth
without starting south (3)
48. Tsongas' troubled end or
Reagan's last comeback, either one is an unexpected
obstacle (4)
50. Better to marry than to ...
be a Scottish stream? (4)
51. The Aegean coast Is in a
region I adore (5)
53. Wrinkled mother fell back
in pit (6)
54.Eastern religion lacks
quiet: In the beginning was
the word from a division
problem (4)
55.C m tee (4)
56. Poles are a trap (5)
57.Drag back abandoned,
careworn crone (3)
�97
CROSSWORD
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DOWN
1. Upset dupe with the hollow
stick (5)
2. Foretell WJC era (7)
4. Widespread flare-up of fire
(4)
5. Heard choice word about
mineral (3)
7. Feel splenetic compound of
half sulfur, potassium (4)
8. Final notice: love stung (4)
9. Dull? Trace skull fractures
(10)
lO.Abandoned a Kennedy underneath of sun in Spain
(9)
12. Hope is embraced by the
foremost of willing hearts
(4)
14. In Boston, error makes
copies black (5)
16.Wanderlng players in
street, they are high In Las
Vegas (9)
25. Undisguised pleasure In
contemplating the beautiful but disheveled maid
with soldier's chow (I 0)
26. Early Christian saint suffered pain, bore up (two
words and number) (10)
28. Crank fastener (3)
32. Identify game In which it
becomes you. Just the opposite! (3)
37. Emotional shocks drain energy from destabilized amateurs (6)
39. Quietly transcendental, a
negation (5)
·
42. For example, the last shall
be first In as many generations (4)
44. Without starting up flipped
over (5)
46. Nine Inches missing from
front end of brand-new
ruler (4)
47. In Greece, I bit (4)
49. In re: coast revision - sea
sound out (two words) (2-2)
52. Grp. of physicians wet
nurse (3
Note: A larger version of the Crossword Grid appears on the next page.
�98
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Let's Be Liberal
BY EZRA
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Williamson, Robert B.
Bojaxhi, Gjergji
Sachs, Joe
White, John
Datchev, Radoslav
Hoben, Sandra
EZRA
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLIII, number one (1995)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John VanDoren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Gjergji Bojaxhi
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 for
three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes appear semiannually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays, stories,
poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the
Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404·2800.
Back issues are available. at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College
Bookstore.
©1995 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or
in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
Marcia Baldwin and Th.e St. John's College Print Shop
�With this issue begins Forewords, containing the editor's notes
and comments, to appear occasionally.
�Contents
Forewords
John Keats' Bicentennial
Essays and Lectures
1 . . . . . Dyn:;tmical Chaos:
Som'e Implications of a Recent Discovery
Curtis Wilson
21 . . . . . Tragic Pleasure
Joe Sachs
39 . . . . . Faustian Phenomena:
Goethe on Plants, Animals,
and Modern Biologists
John F. Cornell
59 ..... 'I Have Become a Problem to Myself':
Augustine's Theory of Will
and the Notion of Human Inwardness
Lester Strong
Book Reviews
71 ..... T.S. Eliot: The Varieties of
Metaphysical Poetry
Cordell D. K. Yee
85 . . . . . Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy
Eva T. H. Brann
91 ..... Jorge H. -Aigla: Karate Do and Zen
James Carey
95 ..... Jacob Howland: The Republic
Carl Page
Crossword Contest
100 ..... Solution to Crossword Number 7
"Let's Be Liberal" by EZRA
�1
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�I
FOREWORDS
John Keats
1795- 1821
As we note the birth of John Keats we inevitably remember his death. IDs
robust gifts, both personal and poetic, destined him for extraordinary
achievement, but the frailty of his physical constitution guaranteed that
we would never know the full reach of his potential. Even those who have
faulted his character in some respects-one thinks of Matthew
Arnold-have acknowledged overrtding virtues to which his letters attest,
letters which T. S. Eliot has called "the most notable and most important
ever wrttten by any English poet." In poetry, from the earliest his aims
were high-he took Milton and Shakespeare as his teachers-and his
assimilation and progress was swift and sure. By the time of his death,
at age 25, if he had not mastered the long, heroic poem, or found a
successful dramatic mode, he had written a heady body ofwork, including
odes that are among the greatest in the English language: "Ode to a
Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Ode to Psyche," and 'To Autumn."
Ambitious, and gifted, and cruelly short-lived, on the one hand he is
sometimes apotheosized, along with others of his generation, as a luminary in the typical mythology of Romanticism; on the other hand, he is
sometimes delivered into the pathos of his biography. These are ways of
disappearance to which he would not willingly succumb. Ufe is not, he
wrote, "a vale oftears," but "a vale of Soul-making." The making of Keats'
soul required the making of poems. It has been said that he alone among
the poets of his era sought "to escape from self-expression into Shakespearean impersonality." Thus we best honor Keats where we least find
him-in his poems.
The time of his birth and of his last days, the time most like a recurring
paradox he thought upon, the time of the writing of the great ode to that
time, autumn was Keats' season. The ode 'To Autumn" contains no "Cold
pastoral," but is a meditation upon nature's fullness. Fruition and death,
twin fuces of life, are poised in their togetherness and held beautifully
before us. There is no moment of disillusion, nor is there any "irritable
reaching after fact & reason." There is hardly any movement in this
intensely replete, serene poem. Partly for this reason, even some who
know that poems are not statements think that this poem, though "nearly
perfect," has "little to say." But on the matter of the poem, Keats has
captured the essentials both in substance and tone. Poet, nature, and
poem are one.
�\
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�Dynamical Chaos:
Some Implications of a
Recent Discovery
Curtis Wilson
lVIy subject is a peculiar behavior of dytmmical systems that has come
to be recognized only during the last thiriyyears, In i975 James Yorke
christened this behavior chaos~pethaps a misnomer. Chaos is a
dteek word that has no plural. Since Besiod it has meant the nether
abyss, the first state of the utilverse, or tdtal disorder. 1'he dynamical
behavior that James Yorke called chaos is order and apparent randoitihess lhtertwined.
A dynamimtl system is~ what? How abtlut this? It is a set of entities
that lhterad so as to undergo a development The erttities could be
plartets or billiard balls: maybe cardiac muscle fibers or neurons: maybe
even bidders on the New York stock Exchartge: but let that go. In my
illustratltms, the components will be chunks of matter, unbesouled.
1'o umlerstand why dynamical chaos was recognized only recently
takes a bit of mathematical i:mckgrourtd. Mathematically, dynamical
systems are represented by dliferent:it.il equations, Differential equa"
lions are distinguished by containing instantaneous rates of change,
velocities, say, ot accelerations. Now empirically you cannot measure
an l!tstantaneous rate of chartge, but only chart!Jes over firtite intervals
of time, A differential equation, therefore, is a hypothesis. 'I'll veri:ly the
hypothesis you must first solve the equation, or l!ttegrat& it. 1'hat
means, you must somehow eliminate the rate or rates of change, artd
obtaltl the value of the dependent vatiable~whkh is what you ru-e
interested in~as a function of the Independent variable, which is
usually time. 1'hus you will have a relation you cart cheek empirically.
Procedures ftJr solving a good many differential equations were
Wtlrked outin the seventeenth and eighteenth Cetlturies. 1'he solutions
turn 011 what Is called the ftmdamental theorem of the calculus,
disMvered by Newton and Leibniz. 1'he procedures, like the differential
equatitJns, assume that time is ctlntinuous.
Not all dlffere11tial equations are thus soluble "analytically," as we
say. it may be impossible to disentangle the dependent variable from
its rate of change: or, if there is more than one dependent variable, to
Cuflis Wllsort is Tutor ffimetltus at St. John's
Ca11~g~.
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
disentangle these variables from one another. Then you can't arrive
at a formula giving each variable as a function of the time.
All linear differential equations are soluble. In these equations, the
dependent variables and their rates of change occur only to the first
power, and don't multiply one another. An equation in just two
variables occurring only to the first power can be graphed as a straight
line; hence the name linear.
But there are nonlinear. differential equations, in which some of the
dependent variables, or their rates of change, are raised to powers, or
multiply one another. Some of these equations are analytically insoluble.
In fact most dynamical systems in the world can be modeled
accurately only by nonlinear differential equations, most of which are
insoluble. It is dynamical systems modeled by such differential equations, nonlinear and insoluble, that exhibit the behavior that James
Yorke called chaos. Here a small change in the independent variable
can produce a sudden large change in a dependent variable. Such
phenomena, we're told, flourish in nature; for instance, in the dripping
of a faucet.
How can insoluble differential equations be studied? The chief way
is by what is called numerical integration. This differs from the
analytical integration I previously spoke of, which relies on the fundamental theorem of the calculus. In numerical integration the independent variable is not varied continuously; instead, it is increased
by finite jumps. Starting with certain initial values of the variables,
numerical integration assumes that the initial rate of change remains
constant for some small, finite interval, say a second, and on that
assumption computes the values of all the variables at the end of the
second. Then with the new values it goes on to compute the values of
all the variables at the end of the second interval. And so on. The
procedure is not strictly accurate. But if the intervals are made small
enough, it can give a good idea of what is going on; it can even, in
many cases, be made to yield predictions as accurate as the observations.
The first large-scale numerical integration ever performed was carried
out in 1758, to compute the return date of Halley's Comet. It took six
months' work by three people, morning, noon, and night. Their final
prediction was a month off, and even then they were lucky, because their
computation contained some partially compensating errors.
Recognition of the chaos named by James Yorke came only in the
decades since 1960, with the development of high-speed electronic
computers that could carry out numerical integrations no one had
previously thought practical.
�WILSON
3
I am going to now illustrate this kind of dynamical chaos, and to
talk about some of its characteristics. My interest in this subject arose
because for some years I have been pursuing the question of how
planetary astronomy became a precise predictive science, and since
1980 it has become apparent that planetary astronomy involves
James Yorke's chaos.
This chaos limits predictibilty. Philosophers, I suspect, should
learn about it. New perspectives open up if we recognize how widespread it is. More on this later.
I begin with the simple pendulum. It consists of a heavy bob,
suspended by a weightless, inextensible thread-mathematical physicists love to invoke such things. If we draw the bob aside and let it go,
it oscillates back and forth. Let me derive its equation of motion and
show it to be nonlinear (Figure 1).
We measure e, the departure of the thread from the vertical, in
radians, defined as arc-length divided by radius. So the arc-length will
be given by the radius-arm, or length of the thread, here 1, times e. In
the science of dynamics as founded by Galilee and Newton, we are
interested in accelerations, that Is, rates of change of velocity; velocity
itself being a rate of change of position. Acceleration is thus a rate of
change of a rate of change. In our case, we are interested in the
acceleration of the bob, hence of its position as measured by the arc 1•e.
But 1 is a constant; so the acceleration we are Interested In is 1 times
the acceleration of e, which I write as theta with two over-dots, 1i.
The reason the bob accelerates Is that it Is pulled downward by
gravity. The acceleration of gravity at a given spot on the Earth is a
constant, which we call g. But the bob cannot go straight down, with
the acceleration g, because it is suspended by the thread. To find how
much of g accelerates the bob along its path, we "resolve" g into
components, one in line with the thread-this component merely tenses
the thread-and the other component at right angles, along the path
(Figure 2). The latter component is g • sin e. Our equation is then:
C\·8"C\
v=TSlTiv,
Figure 1 ·
Figure 2
,.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
where, remember, the double over"dot means acceleration, radians
per second per second.
I say that this equation is nonlinear. Sine 9 is given by an infinite
sertes-I will not prove this, please take it on faith:
• • •
If only the first term were present, we would have a linear equation.
But there are higher powers, going on forever.
Now it turns out that this nonlinear equation is soluble. I Will not
wnte down the solution, which is somewhat complicated. It implies
that the pendulum is not isochronous: Wider-angled sWings take a
little longer. Galileo, gazing at the suspended lamps tn the Cathedral
of Pisa, guessed the pendulum was isochronous, and wanted so much
to believe this, that he never made the simple expertments that would
have shown this assumption false.
Of course, the simple pendulum is apgroXimately isochronous, for
small-angled sWings, Suppose that 9 is 6, about 1/10 of a radian. In
the sertes expansion for the sine, if the first term is 11 10, the second
term iS 1/6000. We can choose to ignore it, along with all the higlier
terms. That is called lineariZing the equation, Mathematical physicists
have been doing it for nearly three hundred years, in order to obtain
neat, soluble equations. The hope is always that the linearized equations give good enough approximations, And so they do, When the
system iS close enough to a stable equilibrium.
Suppose, then, we limit our simple pendulum to swings of 6° or
less. The effects of nonlinearity Will be present, but tiny. And now let
us introduce a perturbation, When the word perturbation is used, we
mean that there is some motion we can regard as fundamental, anti
some other tiisturbtng motion that is superimposed. The Earth's
motion is controlled primarily by the gravitational action of the sun,
but it is perturbed detect<lbiy by the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn,
and so on.
Suppose the point of suspension of our pendulum is put into a
small osdliation, tn the very plane in which we first set the bilb to
oscillating. We couiti use a crank mechanism for this. Let the arnpli"
tude of this perturbing motion be a sm<111 fraction of the length of the
pendulum. Let the pertod of the forcing motion be one we can vary:
call itT. And suppose we set T to be somewhere neat the period of our
�WILSON
5
linearized simple pendulum, whith I shall call T0 • To is given by a
fonnula some of you have learned, 2it times the square root of 1 over g.
The equation of motion for the new set~up, which I Will not Write
down, is not soluble analytically: it Will not yield a formula for a as a
function of time. But a numerical integration can be carried out. John
Miles ofUCSD did this in 1984, 1 to determine the position of the bob
ench time the perturbing motion reaches the righthand end of its
range. starllilg from below To. he increused the period T of the
perturbing motion. At a' certaln point, the motion of the bob, in Its
original direction of motion, which I Will call the x~direction, became
unstable. But meanwhile there were two possible motions that were
stable~motitms that included a sideways Mmponent, a y~component.
The motion of the bob made a gradual transition to one or the other
bf these stable motions.
When T=0.9924T0 , the position of the bob each time the perturbing
motion comes to the righthund limit of its excursion moves irt this
figure (Figure 4). You probably wunt to ktiow what the whole motion
of the bob is. It is in a slowly rotating ellipse With slowly Varying axes.
But let me focus solely on the position of the bob et~ch time the
perturbing motion reaches the righthand end of its runge. tfTis 1.0 i 50
T0 , our point moves in u doubled curve (Figure 5): whut is called a
bljllteatlnrt hM occurred. A small quuntitutive change has produced n
sharp quulitative chlillge. td the period be inctensed so that T is
1.02131'0 (Figure 6): unother bifurcation has occurred. A cascade of
futther bifurcations occurs, as 't is intreased. When we teach 1' =
L0225Tb (Figure 7). the figure appears smudged, With muny pt~ths
Close together. The pattern, if accumulated over a long enough time,
appears to be symmetric With respect to the x~axis, although the bob
may spend substantial intervals In either the top or bottom hillf of this
pattern, trMsferring from one to the other at seentlngly random times.
Figure 3
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
6
Random is-what? The word comes from old French randir, to run
or gallop; the French knight, having donned his armor, and drunk
certain flagons of wine, was hoisted by crane onto his horse and
galloped about the field, doing random mayhem. The Anglo-Saxon, by
contrast, wore bearskin, drank mead, and on the battlefield went
berserk, a word meaning bearskin. To define random mathematically,
is something else again. Perhaps we can say what it is not. If our
pattern were two or more periodic motions superimposed, it would be
what is called quasi-pertodic; if the periodic motions were incommensurable, there would be no exact repetitions, but the motion would
not be random or chaotic. But our motion does not look quasi-periodic,
with those sudden shifts from one part of the pattern to another.
Figure 4
Figure 5
''
2.5
~
0
/,
0
-2.5
•
7.[,
2.>
c9
0
4r/l
4xjl
T = 0.9924 To
T = 1.0150 To
Figure 7
Figure 6
''
~
~
-2.5
4zfl
T =1.0213 To
/,
,,
.
"
-2.5
4z/l
T = 1.0225 To
I.
'·'
�WILSON
7
Let's tum to an actual physical experiment. Al Toft, assisted by Otto
Friedrich-machinist and carpenter for the laboratory-made this pair
of double pendulums in tandem, in accordance with a description
given in the American Journal of Physics in 1992 2 (Figure 8). Each
double pendulum consists of an upper and lower part, turning on
bearings, so that the friction is small. Each pari of each double
pendulum, both the upper and the lower, has its own natural period
for small-angle oscillatiqns. The situation for the lower pendulum is
similar to that of the p'erturbed simple pendulum I previously described. But now the perturber (the upper part) is itself significantly
perturbed; we have what is called feedback, circular causation.
The two double pendulums are identical twins. They are mounted
together on a sturdy support, so that neither will influence the other.
If I start one of them in an oscillation, the other does not pick up the
motion. If! start both together in a small oscillation, they play together
nicely (Figure 9).
With a large initial displacement, however, the pendulums don't
stay together (Figure 10,11). Nor, if we try the experiment over again,
does either do exactly what it did the first time. I hope this surprises
you. Before trying to account for it, let's see how we might show
quantitatively that the repetition isn't exact. We could use a rigidly
mounted electromagnet to hold the pendulum in a fixed initial position, to the side. Suppose the switch releasing the pendulum started
a stroboscopic flash camera, that took photos every 25th of a second.
On each exposure we could measure the angular deviations from the
vertical of the upper and lower paris. Then we could proceed to
compare different trials. This has actually been done.
In explaining this, I shall introduce a bit of the relevant mathematics. Take a look, for just a moment, at the differential equations of the
double pendulum (Figure 12). On the lefthand side, on top, you see
liJ, the angular acceleration of 81, the deviation of the upper pendulum
from the vertical. And below, on the lefthand side of the second
equation, you see 82, the angular acceleration of 82. the deviation of
the lower pendulum from the vertical.
Figure 12
~I
~2
g(sin .12 cos(.lt1)- /L sin .1,)- (12 0 l
+I, Ui
cos(.lt1))sin(.lt1)
11 (/L- cos (dt1))
2
g/L(sint1 1 cos(.lt1) -sinii2 )+(/LI 1 Ui
+I,Ul
12 (/L- cos 2 (.lil))
cos(.lil))sin(.lt1)
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
8
Figure a
Figure 9
Swing it low - Little Difference
Photography by Mr. John Bildahl
�9
WILSON
Figure 10
Figure 11
Swing it high- Big Difference
�lO
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
On the righthand sides you see a number of constants: g, 11. and
h. the lengths of the two parts of the pendulum; p, the ratio of their
masses. Also involved are sines and cosines of the two angles, and
also of their dtfference, 1\.6; these are variables. And two more variables
are i)Jand Sz, the momentary angular velocities of the upper and lower
parts of the pendulum. Both lit and 1lz thus depend on four variables,
e1 and ez. 1lJ and ih
The equations are not .soluble; we can't get separate formulas for
the two angles, as functions of time. But our system at any moment
depends on the four variables 6t, 62, 6t and ez. In the 1830s William
Rowan Hamilton proposed representing the evolution of such a system
in hyperspace, with a number of dimensions equal to the number of
variables on which the state of the system depends. Then a point in
this space would correspond to a momentary state of the system, and
a succession of points, or trajectory, would show how the system
develops. The space is called phase space. In our case, the space is
four-dimensional, and you can't visualize it. You can nevertheless
conceive it without contradiction. In the 1890s Herrrt Potncare undertook to study insoluble, nonlinear differential equations, by examintng
the ensemble of possible trajectories in phase space.
In our case, let's consider a few trial runs with our double pendulum, say four, and compare the points in phase space at the successive
moments when the photographs are taken. For a given moment, the
potnts in the four different trials will not be the same. There will be a
"distance" between any two of them, and we can get numbers for these
distances, using the four-dimensional analogue of the Pythagorean
theorem; that is, we take the square root of the sum of the squares of
Figure 13
4
Q
x
0
o
••
•..
"'
"'P"•tion bot"""'n trU.i> t •nd J
tri.lls 2 •r>d J
S<por•tionbttwornlri.ll• 1 •nd 4
"1'"""'" he!W<'<n Ul>ls 2 and 4
.. porolion betw .. n tfi•ls J ond 4
.. p•r•rion b<twe<1> num<ncol tri•ls
. . porotionbelw~n
Time (setonds)
"
"·'
�WILSON
ll
the components. In this figure (Figure 13). the experimental separations are plotted for the first half second. The solid line was obtained
by numerical integration of the differential equations, using two
slightly different sets of initial conditions. The separations increase on
the whole. That the separations have downswings at certain places is
due to the fact that, at the end of each swing, when the lower pendulum
is starting down again, it pulls down on the upper pendulum, and this
is a relatively stable situation.
A statistical study of'these numbers shows that, on the average,
the separation increases geometrically. Suppose the initial separation
between two trajectories in phase space is IVCo. Then the separation
at timet is
where e is a constant greater than 1, and ).. is a positive constant,
called Lyapunov's exponent, after the Russian who first discussed its
import. The separation doesn't just increase by the same additive
increment in each unit of time, but gets multiplied by the same factor,
so that the increase is exponential.
Of course, our data is only for the first half-second. Strictly speaking, ).. should be determined as a limit as t goes to infinity. But you
can't get funding for experiments that long. The chaos is apparent,
but is it real? How explain it?
First, however, what does a positive '/.. do to prediction? Recently it
has been shown that the long-term orbital evolutions of the inner
plants, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, are characterized by positive Lyapunov exponents. For instance, certain perturbations of the
Earth are in near resonance with its annual motion, in close analogy
with the case of our perturbed simple pendulum; and the same kind
of chaos results. Now we never know, with infmite precision, where a
planet is. By numerical integration it has been shown that initial
uncertainties for the Earth increase by a factor of 3 every 5 million
years. An initial error of 15 meters produces an error of 1.5 million
kilometers after 100 million years.
Yes, we'll all be dead, but my concern is a theoretical one, about
the nature of our knowledge. Can we understand a little better what
this chaos is, and whence it comes?
Back to phase space and another of Poincare's new techniques.
Here (Figure 14) is the four-dimensional phase space of our double
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pendulum, somehow represented in a pseudo-diagram; q1 and qz are
the coordinates, in our case angles, and PI and pz are the corresponding momenta, products of velocity and mass. The presentation of the
equations of dynamics in terms of the p's and q's is due, once more.
to William Rowan Hamilton. H, called the Hamiltonian, is the energy
of the system, expressed in terms of the p's and q's. We'll assume for
the present argument that His a constant: H=H (pJ. pz, q1. qz) = const.
In the pseudo-diagram H is represented as a surface; but it is really
a hypersurface in four-diffiensional space; the pseudo-visualization is
only to help you identify the terms I am using.
The constancy of H will allow us to express pz as a function of pJ,
qJ, and qz: pz = pz(pJ, qJ, qz). We can thus consider the projection of
any possible trajectory in the four-dimensional phase-space onto a
three-dimensional volume. That projection will contain all the information that the four-dimensional trajectory contained. The reduction
in the number of dimensions brings us back to somethingvisualizable.
Poincare carrted the process a step further. If the trajectory is
bounded-doesn't go off to infinity-then its projection in the threedimensional space will intersect some plane in that space repeatedly,
say the plane qz = 0 (Figure 15). Such a plane is called a Poincare
surface of section. What sort of pattem will the intersections make?
In the 1960s two astronomers, Henon and Heiles, were studying a
nonlinear differential equation intended to model the motion of a star
around a galaxy. They used numerical integration to find successive
intersections of the star's trajectory with a Poincare surface of section.
When the energy of the system was relatively small, the intersection
lay on certain distinct curves (Figure 16). With an increase in energy,
the pattem became this (Figure 1 7). There were still islands where,
for certain initial conditions, the trajectory remained on nice curves:
Figure 14
Figure 15
�13
WILSON
but otber trajectories proved to be chaotic, giving seemingly randomly
placed intersections. When tbe energy was increased still furtber, tbe
islands disappeared (Figure 18).
The motion is deterministic; tbat is, given tbe state of tbe system
at any moment. tbe equation of motion determines its state at tbe
moments tbat follow. The initial conditions detennine a position and
a velocity, and tbe equation of motion tben determines an acceleration.
Given position, velocity, and acceleration, tbere is only one way to go.
But tbe resulting pattein looks crazy. Again I ask, how should we
understand tbat?
Consider a plane of section witb tbe dimensions p and q; suppose
the successive points of section are confined to the unit square (Figure
19). A tbeorem in Hamiltonian dynamics says that, if tbe energy of a
dynamic system remains constant, tbe volume occupied by tbe a!·
lowed trajectories is also constant. But in truly chaotic dynamics, tbe
trajectory never retums to the same point, or even to any identifiable
curve. The volume of allowable patbs gets dispersed, mixed up witb
bubbles of tbe unallowable.
Some Russian matbematicians have sought to describe tbis mixing,
using a cocktail shaker, rum and cola. Sorry, we're stuck witb their
noxious example. Initially, tbe rum and cola are separate. Mter a few
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
14
shakes, if we imagine the cola as divided up into moderately small
cells, we find some rum in each cell. Later, the subdivision can be
made finer and finer, with each cell containtng some rum. This is called
a mixing transformation. Some dynamical systems have been proved
to evolve in this way, for instance a gas consisting of spherical elastic
molecules. Nearby possible trajectories necessarily spread apart, defocus. But because their energy is finite, they don't go off to infinity,
but get folded back into 1;he same space. The rule is Stretch and Fold.
It may be characteristic of chaotic dynamics generally. For illustration,
I shall present a particular mixing transformation, called the Baker's
Transformation (Figure 20).
Let the square, as of it were dough, be first squashed down tnto a
rectangle twice as long and half as high; then let the right half of it be
set atop the left half. We get back a square. What happens to a point
(p,q) within the square? Both p and q are numbers between 0 and l.
By squashing, all p's are doubled; but then, by the operation of placing
the right half atop the left half of the rectangle, the p's that became
greater than 1 are reduced again, by subtraction of the unit 1, to
numbers between 0 and 1. We can write this: p -> 2p (mod 1).
As for the q's, if our q was in the left half of the original square, it
is simply halved: q -> q/2. If it was in the right half, after halving it
we add 1/2: q -> q/2 + 1/2.
Figure 19
Figure 20
0
0
�15
WILSON
It will be helpful to think about p and q as written in binary notion,
so that each p and q will be written as, first, a zero, followed by a binary
point (replacing our decimal point), followed in tum by a string of zeros
and ones, infinitely long. All numbers between 0 and I can be written
thus. 0.1 means 1/2, 0.01 means 1/4, 0.001 means 1/8, and so on.
We use powers of 2 instead of powers of 10. Let our initial p and q be:
where the letters with subscripts are zeros and ones. Now a neat thing
about binary notation is that multiplying by 2 just amounts to shifting
the binary point to the light, whlle dividing by 2 just amounts to
shifting it to the left. If our initial point was in the left half of the square,
then PI was 0, and after the squashing, the transformed p will be
O.p2p3p4 ...
But the same result holds if our initial point was in the light half of
the square, for then p 1 was 1, and after the binary point is moved to
the right, 1 must be subtracted. In successive transformations p will
become
and so on.
What about the q's? If our original point was in the left half of the
square. then we want thP, halved value of q, which is
O.Oq1q2qs ....
I have moved the binary point to the left one place. If our original point
was in the light half of the square, then q first gets halved, but we
must add 1 /2 when the light half of the rectangle is put atop the left
half. Now, in this case PI was 1, which in the first binary place after
the binary point, means 1/2. So the transformed q can be written
O.p!q1q2q3 .... Actually, this works for q's in the left half of the original
square as well, for there p 1 was 0. A little reflection will show you that
the succession of transformed q's will be
O.p!q1q2 ... O.p2p1q1q2 .. O.psp2p1q!q2 ... , and so on.
As the successive pairs of transformed p's and q's emerge, the
important digits, the digits up front, come from ever farther to the light
on the original coordinate p. Initially, they looked insignificant. Yet
however far to the light they were ortginally, they become crucial as
the returns continue. The sensitivity to initial conditions is infinite.
Suppose, though it is empirically impossible, that we knew our
initial p and q exactly. The differential equation for the motion is not
soluble; our only resource is numerical integration, for which we tum
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to a high-powered computer. The computer, however high-powered,
cannot give us the chaotic trajectory precisely. That is because it is a
finite-state machine. It cannot accept a number expressed by an
infinite number of digits; it automatically rounds it off. With our p's
and q's undergoing a mixing transformation, the rounding, after a
while, will be disastrous; we will lose essential information. Whether
the p or the q, at some later stage in the succession of transformations,
starts with a 0 or a 1 will be as uncertain as the toss of a cotn.
Let me now, by way of conclusion, state some thoughts as to the
import of noniinear dynamics.
1. According to Laplace, wrtting in 1814:
An intelligence that knew, for a given instant, all the forces
by which nature is animated, and the respective situation of
all the beings that compose it, if it were vast enough to subject
these data to analysis, would embrace in a single formula the
motions of the largest bodies of the universe and of the
smallest atom; nothing would be uncertain to it, and the
future, like the past, would be present to its eyes. The human
mind, in the perfection that it has been able to achieve in
astronomy, presents a pale image of this intelligence. 3
Laplace is expresstng a universal determinism, which he equates
with predictability. Such a determinism. presenting the world as a
closed causal network. has often been taken as a dogma of science;
but its universalism appears to make the activity of the scientist
unintelligible.
Voltaire swallowed the doctrine whole:
everything [he wrote] is govemed by immutable laws ...
everything is prearranged ... everything is a necessary effect.. ..
There are some people who, frightened by this truth allow half
of it ... There are, they say, events which are necessary and
others which are not. It would be strange if a part of what
happens had to happen and another part did not.. .. I necessarily must have the passion to write this, and you must have
the passion to condemn me; we are both equally foolish, both
toys in the hand of destiny. Your nature is to do ill, mine is
to love truth, and to publish it in spite of you. 4
Post-Newtonians, impressed by the success of the new dynamics,
did not consider that the new methods might prove limited in scope.
The success of this dynamics was a success in solving linearized
differential equations. The world was taken to be an integrable system,
�WILSON
17
each variable being finally expressible as a function of time, independent of the others. So the world would be made up of non-interacting Leibnizian monads, each experiencing its own private cinema,
the harmony between them divinely preestablished.
This view, I say, was mistaken, because the differential equations
required to model processes in the real world are mostly nonlinear,
and most nonlinear differential equations are insoluble. It is from
insoluble, nonlinear differential equations that dynamical chaos
arises. Here determinism and predictability part company; Laplace's
demon, to do what he required of it, would need to compute with
numbers that it would take an infinity of time to write down. Successive approximations, which are the human way, wouldn't suffice.
I have spoken so far as if of a closed dynamic system, insulated
from the rest of the universe. But mixing systems such as I have
described are hypersensitive to initial conditions, and therefore hypersensitive to tiny perturbations. The flash of an electron in a distant
star may affect our mixing system. The intelligence that Laplace
imagined, however vast, being yet discursive, will suffer from overload.
If there is a God that knows the future, it is by means inscrutable to
human reason.
2. I want now to go beyond chaos. There is more to nonlinear
science than chaos. As we have seen, the chaos we have been
concerned with is not simply disorder; it is approached in an orderly
way; it is describable in a coherent way. Can nonlinear dynamics lead
to more interesting sorts of order? In fact, in dissipative systems far
from equilibr1um, new and surprising kinds of order arise. Some of
these are described in the book by Prigogine and Stengers entitled
Order Out of Chaos, cited above.
An example. The Benard instability is due to a vertical temperature
gradient set up in a horizontal liquid layer. The lower surface is heated
to a given temperature, higher than that of the upper surface. Thus a
permanent heat flux arises, from bottom to top, and for a low temperature gradient, this occurs by heat conduction alone, while the
Figure 21
Figure 22
iiii
0000
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
liquid remains at rest (Figure 21). But when the imposed gradient of
temperature reaches a certain threshold value, a convection involving
the coherent motion of ensembles of molecules is produced. Millions
of molecules move coherently, forming convection cells of a characteristic size (Figure 22). At higher temperature gradients there occur
periodic fluctuations in temperature and in the spatial arrangement
of the cells; finally there is turbulent chaos, which, again, is not
without its order.
Similar kinds of order arise in dissipative chemical systems. With
reactants entering and products leaving, the system may organize
itself spatially, or may come to act like a chemical clock, beating
rhythmically. Such coherent behaviors on the macroscopic level do
not appear to be reducible to the dynamics of atoms and molecules.
We have what may be called emergence.
3. According to a fairly broad consensus among scientists today,
living things are among the entities that have so emerged. We are, in
some sense of the word "are", stardust. Living things are complex,
dissipative structures, to some extent self-regulating, but maintained
ultimately by the flux of energy from the sun. If the geological
time-scale is represented as a thirty-day month, then life appeared in
the oceans by the fourth day, but became abundant only on the
twenty-seventh. The first land plants and the first vertebrates appeared on the twenty-eighth day; most of human culture appeared
only in the last thirty seconds. All this, at least up to the last thirty
seconds, is understandable in terms of evolution by random variation
and differential reproductive success.
Living things are not only embedded in the surrounding geological
world, but by their activities they have altered that world; at an early
stage, for instance, ancient relatives of present-day algae produced
the oxygen of the atmosphere. In various degrees, living things have
a circumscribed autonomy; it is wider for those with homeostasis of
the blood, wider still for those who can reason before reacting. These
are beings with desires, aims, purposes. The world lines of such
semi-autonomous entities, with their separate agendas, may intersect. A man goes to the agora, in the case imagined by Aristotle, and
meets someone who owes him money. Neither planned this encounter;
it is by chance. Species migrate or spread, encounter one another,
interact, find new ecological niches.
A world evolving through chancelike encounters, in which new
entities emerge in time, including intelligent beings, is unintelligible
if, with Leibniz or Voltaire or Laplace, we take that world to be an
integrable system. In an integrable system, the mere reversal of
�WILSON
19
velocities sends time backwards. There is no essential distinction
between future and past. The smoke can go down the chllnney and
reconstitute the firewood.
Why can it not? In the middle of the nineteenth century the law of
entropy was discovered: in any closed system, a certain mathematical
function tends to a maximum, and there is thus a fmward direction
to time, diametrically opposed to the backward direction. This law is
of everyday use in physi~s and chemistry, to predict the outcome of
experiments. But it contradicts dynamics, if the world of dynamics is
an integrable system. Physicists like Boltzmann sought to derive the
law of entropy from dynamics; irreversibility from reversibility. By the
1890s it was clear that it couldn't be done; a statistical or probabilistic
assumption, distinct from the dynamics, was necessary. Chance had
to be assumed to be real. This is an empirical assumption, warranted
by experience. Probability theory, at its core, is an empirical science,
which assumes the future to be different from the past.
Also toward the end of the nineteenth century, the American
philosopher C.S. Peirce suggested that the dissipative tendencies of
entropy could be balanced by the concentrative effects of chance.
Chance can have an integrative role, in the emergence of new entities
like us. Thus dissipative processes intertwine with integrative ones.
Nowhere is this more the case than in the activity most distinctive
of humans, that of learning and communicating. It is not possible
without a functioning brain, dependent on a flux of energy; the
reactions involved are dissipative and therefore irreversible. When we
learn a Greek paradigm, we change the physiology of the brain. We
learn not as beings detached and separate from the world, but as parts
of it, by engaging in activities of exploration, hypothesis, construction,
testing. Here there is an interplay between chance and reason. And
this is especially true in learning about nature: such learning requires
that we enter into a dialogue with nature. Thus I think that Einstein,
when he sought a vision of the world from totally outside it. and denied
the reality of time, was mistaken.
The perspective I am suggesting leads to a new respect for nature,
of which we are not the overlords but in which we are both embedded
and emergent. In this perspective, there are no guarantees; we live in
a chancy world. Nevertheless, a qualified hope is rational. Human
knowledge increases, not always steadily, sometimes by surprising
zigzags or even reversals; but the trend is unmistakably incremental.
It is not a deductive chain. It is a rope, no single strand of which is,
by itself, of incorrigible strength; but different strands, by pulling
against one another, constitute a fabric stronger than any of its parts.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In this lecture I have sought to signalize a mistake into which
dynamicists and philosophers of the past three centuries fell, imagining the world to be an integrable system. The biological perspective I
have been sketching can be a corrective. Our survival depends on
recognizing and respecting our own complexity and that of the nature
in which we are both embedded and emergent.
According to rabbinical commentary, the first word of Genesis,
Berechit, means not "In thf beginning," but "In a beginning." Twentysix attempts, say the rabbis, preceded the present Genesis; all ended
in failure. Holway sheyaanod, exclaimed God as he created the world:
"Let's hope that this time it works."
*
*
*
*
Notes:
l. Physica 11D (1984). 309-323 (North Holland, Amsterdam).
2. "Chaos in a Double Pendulum," AmericanJoumal ofPhysics 60, (June
1992). 491-99.
3. P.S. Laplace, EssaiPhilosophique sur Les Probabilites (Paris: Courcier,
1814). 2-3.
4. Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, quoted in I. Prigogine and I.
Stengers, Order Out of Chaos (New York: Bantam Books, 1984) 257.
[Note: The foregoing text is identical with the lecture delivered on 7 October
1994, except for two paragraphs relating to incomputable numbers, which I
have deleted. Questions raised in the question period by Michael Comenetz led
me to recognize that these paragraphs were dubious.]
�Tragic Pleasure
(A lecture on Aristotle's
Poetics
with excerpts appended)
Joe Sachs
Aristotle's Poetics is a much-disdained book. So unpoetic a soul as
Aristotle's has no business speaking about such a topic, much less
telling poets how to go about their business. He reduces the drama
to its language, people say, and the language itself to its least poetic
element, the story, and then he encourages insensitive readers like
himself to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings that reduce
tragedies to the childish proportions of Aesop-fables. Strangely,
though, the Poetics itself is rarely read with the kind of sensitivity its
crttics claim to possess, and the thing crttlcized is not the book
Aristotle wrote but a cartcature of it. Aristotle himself respected
Homer so much that he personally corrected a copy of the lliad for his
student Alexander, who carried it all over the world. In his Rhetoric
(III, xvi, 9), Aristotle crtticizes orators who wrtte exclusively from the
intellect, rather than from the heart, in the way Sophocles makes
Antigone speak. Aristotle is often thought of as a logician, but he
regularly uses the adverb logikos (logically) as a term of reproach
contrasted with phusikos (naturally or approprtately) to descrtbe
arguments made by others, or preliminary and inadequate arguments
of his own. Those who take the trouble to look at the Poetics closely
will find, I think, a book that treats its topic appropriately and
naturally, and contains the reflections of a good reader and charactertstically powerful thinker.
The first scandal in the Poetics is the initial marking out of dramatic
poetry as a form of imitation. We call the poet a creator, and are
offended at the suggestion that he might be merely some sort of
recording device. As the painter's eye teaches us how to look and
shows us what we never saw, the dramatist presents things that never
existed until he imagined them, and makes us experience worlds we
This lecture was delivered at Santa Fe and at Annapolis in the Summer of 1994. It
could not have been written without a number of things I learned from Bill O'Grady,
both before and after his death. The memory of things he said is still a living guide
to learning. -J.S.
Joe Sachs is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
could never have found the way to on our own. But Aristotle has no
intention to diminish the poet. and in fact says the same thing I just said,
in making the point that poetry is more philosophic than history. By
imitation, Aristotle does not mean the sort of mimicry by which Aristophanes, say, finds syllables that approximate the sound of frogs. He is
speaking of the imitation of action, and by action (praxis) he does not
mean mere happenings. Aristotle speaks extensively of praxis in the
Nicomachean Ethics. It is ,not a word he uses loosely, and in fact his
use of it in the definition of tragedy recalls the discussion in the Ethics.
Action, as Aristotle uses the word, refers only to what is deliberately
chosen, and capable of finding completion in the achievement of some
purpose. Animals and young children do not act in this sense, and
action is not the whole of the life of any of us. The poet must have an
eye for the emergence of action in human life, and a sense for the
actions that are worth paying attention to. They are not present in
the world in such a way that a video camera could detect them. An
intelligent, feeling, shaping human soul must find them. By the same
token, the action of the drama itself is not on the stage. It takes form
and has its being in the imagination of the spectator. The actors speak
and move and gesture, but it is the poet who speaks through them,
from imagination to imagination, to present to us the thing that he
has made. Because that thing he makes has the form of an action, it
has to be seen and held together just as actively and attentively by us
as by him. The imitation is the thing that is re-produced, in us and
for us, by his art. This is a powerful kind of human communication,
and the thing imitated is what defines the human realm. If no one
had the power to imitate action, life might just wash over us without
leaving any trace.
How do I know that Aristotle intends the imitation of action to be
understood in this way? in De Anima, he distinguishes three kinds
of perception (II, 6; III, 3). There is the perception of proper sensibles----colors, sounds, tastes and so on; these lie on the surfaces of
things and can be mimicked directly for sense perception. But there
is also perception of common sensibles, available to more than one of
our senses, as shape is grasped by both sight and touch, or number
by all five senses; these are distinguished by imagination, the power
in us that is shared by the five senses, and in which the circular shape,
for instance, is not dependent on sight or touch alone. These common
sensibles can be mimicked in various ways, as when I draw a messy,
meandering ridge of chalk on a blackboard, and your imagination
grasps a circle. Finally, there is the perception of that of which the
sensible qualities are attributes, the thing-the son of Oiares, for
�SACHS
23
example; it is this that we ordinarily mean by perception, and while
its object always has an image in the imagination, it can only be
distinguished by intellect, nous (IJI,4), Skilled mimics can imitate
people we know, by voice, gesture, and so on, and here already we
must engage intelligence and imagination together. The dramatist
imitates things more remote from the eye and ear than familiar people.
Sophocles and Shakespeare, for example, imitate repentance and
forgiveness, true instances of action in Aristotle's sense of the word,
and we need all the human powers to recognize what these poets put
before us. So the mere phrase imitation of an action is packed with
meaning, available to us as soon as we ask what an action is, and how
the image of such a thing might be perceived.
Aristotle does understand tragedy as a development out of the
child's mimicry of animal noises, but that is in the same way that he
understands philosophy as a development out of our enjoyment of
sightseeing (Metaphysics I, 1). In each of these developments there is
a vast array of possible intermediate stages, but just as philosophy is
the ultimate form of the tnnate desire to know, tragedy is considered
by Aristotle the ultimate form of our innate delight in imitation. His
beloved Homer saw and achieved the most important possibilities of
the imitation of human action, but it was the tragedians who refined
and intensified the form of that imitation, and discovered its perfection.
A work is a tragedy, Aristotle tells us, only if it arouses pity and
fear. Why does he single out these two passions? Some interpreters
think he means them only as examples-pity and fear and other
passions like that-but I am not among those loose constructionists.
Aristotle does use a word that means passions of that sort (toiouta),
but I think he does so only to indicate that pity and fear are not
themselves things subject to identification with pin point precision,
but that each refers to a range of feeling. It is just the feelings in those
two ranges, however, that belong to tragedy. Why? Why shouldn't
one tragedy arouse pity and joy, say, and another fear and cruelty?
In various places, Aristotle says that it is the mark of an educated
person to know what needs explanation and what doesn't. He does
not try to prove that there is such a thing as nature, or such a thing
as motion, though some people deny both. Likewise, he understands
the recognition of a special and powerful form of drama built around
pity and fear as the beginning of an inquiry, and spends not one word
jusW'ying that restriction. We, however, can see better why he starts
there by trying out a few simple alternatives.
Suppose a drama aroused pity in a powerful way, but aroused no
fear at all. This is an easily recognizable dramatic form, called a
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tear-jerker. The name is meant to disparage this sort of drama, but
why? Imagine a well-written, well made play or movie that depicts the
losing struggle of a likable central character. We are moved to have a
good cry, and are afforded either the relief of a happy ending, or the
realistic desolation of a sad one. In the one case the tension built up
along the way is released within the experience of the work itself; in
the other it passes off as we leave the theater, and readjust our feelings
to the fact that it was, after all, only make-believe. What is wrong with
that? There is always pleasure in strong emotion, and the theater is
a harmless place to indulge it. We may even come out feeling good
about being so compassionate. But Dostoyevski depicts a character
who loves to cry in the theater, not noticing that while she wallows in
her warm feelings her coach driver is shivering outside. She has
daydreams about relieving suffering humanity, but does nothing to
put that vague desire to work. If she is typical, then the tear-jerker is
a dishonest form of drama, not even a harmless diversion but an
encouragement to lie to oneself.
Well then, let's consider the opposite experiment, in which a drama
arouses fear in a powerful way, but arouses little or no pity. This is
again a readily recognizable dramatic form, called the horror story, or
in a recent fashion, the mad-slasher movie. The thrill of fear is the
primary object of such amusements, and the story altemates between
the build-up of apprehension and the shock of violence. Again, as with
the tear-jerker, it doesn't much matter whether it ends happily or with
uneasiness, or even with one last shock, so indetenninate is its form.
And while the tear-jerker gives us an illusion of compassionate
delicacy, the unrestrained shock drama obviously has the effect of
coarsening feeling. Genuine human pity could not coexist with the
so-called graphic effects these films use to keep scaring us. The
attraction of this kind of amusement is again the thrill of strong feeling,
and again the price of indulging the desire for that thrill may be high.
Let us consider a milder form of the drama built on arousing fear.
There are stories in which fearsome things are threatened or done by
characters who are in the end defeated by means similar to, orin some
way equivalent to, what they dealt out. The fear is relieved in vengeance, and we feel a satisfaction that we might be inclined to call justice.
To work on the level of feeling, though, justice must be understood as
the exact inverse of the crime-doing to the offender the sort of thing
he did or meant to do to others. The imagination of evil then becomes
the measure of good, or at least of the restoration of order. The
satisfaction we feel in the vicarious infliction of pain or death is nothing
but a thin veil over the very feelings we mean to be punishing. This is
�SACHS
25
a successful dramatic formula, arousing in us destructive desires that
are fun to feel. along with the self-righteous illusion that we are really
superior to the character who displays them.
The playwright who
makes us feel that way will probably be popular, but he is a menace.
We have looked at three kinds of non-tragedy that arouse passions
in a destructive way. and we could add others. There are potentially
as many kinds as there are passions and combinations of passions.
That suggests that the theater is just an arena for the manipulation
of passions in ways that are pleasant in the short run and at least
reckless to pursue repeatedly. At worst. the drama could be seen as
dealing in a kind of addiction, which it both produces and holds the
only remedy for. But we have not yet tried to talk about the combination of passions characteristic of tragedy.
When we tum from the sort of examples I have given, to the
acknowledged examples of tragedy, we find ourselves in a different
world. The tragedians I have in mind are five: Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides; Shakespeare, who differs from them only in time; and
Homer, who differs from them somewhat more, in the form in which
he composed, but shares with them the things that matter most. I
could add other authors, such as Dostoyevski, who wrote stories of
the tragic kind in much looser literary forms, but I want to keep the
focus on a small number of clear paradigms.
When we look at a tragedy we find the chorus in Antigone telling
us what a strange thing a human being is, passing beyond all
boundaries (lines 332 ff.). or King Lear asking if man is no more than
this, a poor, bare, forked animal (Ill, iv. 97ff.). or Macbeth protesting
to his wife "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more
is none" (I. vii, 46-7). or Oedipus taunting Teiresias with the fact that
divine art was of no use against the Sphinx, but only Oedipus' own
human ingenuity (Oedipus Tyrannus 390-98). or Agamenmon, resisting walking home on tapestries, saying to his wife "I tell you to revere
me as a man, not a god" (925), or Cadmus in the Bacchae saying "I
am a man, nothing more" (199). while Dionysus tells Pentheus "You
do not know what you are" (506), or Patroclus telling Achmes "Peleus
was not your father nor Thetis your mother, but the gray sea bore you,
and the toweling rocks, so hard is your heart" (lliadXVl, 33-5). I could
add more examples of this kind by the dozen, and your memories will
supply others. Tragedy seems always to involve testing or finding the
limits of what is human. This is no mere orgy of strong feeling, but a
highly focussed way of bringing our powers to bear on the image of
what is human as such. I suggest that Aristotle is light in saying that
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
the powers which first of all bring this human image to sight for us
are pity and fear.
It is obvious that the authors in our examples are not just putting
things in front of us to make us cry or shiver or gasp. The feelings
they arouse are subordinated to another effect. Aristotle begins by
saying that tragedy arouses pity and fear in such a way as to culrrtinate
in a cleansing of those passions, the famous catharsis. The word is
used by Aristotle only the .once, in his preliminary definition of tragedy.
I think this is because its role is taken over later in the Poetics by
another, more positive, word, but the idea of catharsis is important in
itself, and we should consider what it rrtight mean.
First of all, the tragic catharsis rrtight be a purgation. Fear can
obviously be an insidious thing that underrrtines life and poisons it
with anxiety. It would be good to flush this feeling from our systems,
bring it into the open, and clear the air. This may explain the appeal
of horror movies, that they redirect our fears toward something
external, grotesque, and finally ridiculous, in order to puncture them.
On the other hand, fear rrtight have a secret allure, so that what we
need to purge is the desire for the thrill that comes with fear. The
horror movie also provides a safe way to indulge and satisfY the longing
to feel afraid, and go home afterward satisfied; the desire is purged,
temporarily, by being fed. Our souls are so many-headed that oppo·
site satisfactions may be felt at the same time, but I think these two
really are opposite. In the first sense of purgation, the horror movie
is a kind of medicine that does its work and leaves the soul healthier,
while in the second sense it is a potentially addictive drug. Either
explanation may account for the popularity of these movies among
teenagers, since fear is so much a fact of that time of life. For those of
us who are older, the tear-jerker may have more appeal, offering a way
to purge the regrets of our lives in a sentimental outpouring of pity. As
with fear, this purgation too may be either medicinal or drug-like.
This idea of purgation, in its various forms, is what we usually mean
when we call something cathartic. People speak of watching football,
or boxing, as a catharsis of violent urges, or call a shouting match
with a friend a useful catharsis of buried resentment. This is a
practical purpose that drama may also serve, but it has no particular
connection with beauty or truth; to be good in this purgative way, a
drama has no need to be good in any other way. No one would be
tempted to confuse the feeling at the end of a horror movie with what
Aristotle calls "the tragic pleasure," nor to call such a movie a tragedy.
But the English word catharsis does not contain everything that is in
the Greek word. Let us look at other things it rrtight mean.
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Catharsis in Greek can mean purification. While purging something means getting rid of it, purifying something means getting rid of
the worse or baser parts ofit. It is possible that tragedy purifies the
feelings themselves offear and pity. These arise in us in crude ways,
attached to all sorts of objects. Perhaps the poet educates our
sensibilities, our powers to feel and be moved, by refming them and
attaching them to less easily discernible objects. There is a line in The
Wasteland, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Alfred Hitchcock
once made us all feel a little shudder when we took showers. The poetic
imagination is limited only by its skill, and can tum any object into a
focus for any feeling. I suppose some people tum to poetry to find
delicious and exquisite new ways to feel old feelings, and consider
themselves to enter in that way into a purified state. I have heard it
argued that this sort of thing is what tragedy and the tragic pleasure are
all about, but it doesn't match up with my experience. Sophocles does
make me fear and pity human knowledge when I watch the Oedipus
Tyrranus, but this is not a refinement of those feelings but a discovery
that they belong to a surprising object. Sophocles is not training my
feelings, but using them to show me something worthy of wonder.
I believe that the word catharsis drops out of the Poetics because
the word wonder, to thaumaston, replaces it, first in chapter 9, where
Aristotle argues that pity and fear arise most of all where wonder does,
and fmally in chapters 24 and 25, where he singles out wonder as the
aim of the poetic art itself, into which the aim of tragedy in particular
merges. Ask yourself how you feel at the end of a tragedy. You have
witnessed horrible things and felt painful feelings, but the mark of
tragedy is that it brings you out the other side. Aristotle's use of the
word catharsis is not a technical reference to purgation or purification
but a beautiful metaphor for the peculiar tragic pleasure, the feeling
of being washed or cleansed.
The tragic pleasure is a paradox. As Aristotle says, in a tragedy, a
happy ending doesn't make us happy. At the end of the play the stage
is often littered with bodies, and we feel cleansed by it all. Are we like
Clytenmestra, who says she rejoiced when spattered by her husband's
blood, like the earth in a spring rain (Agamemnon 1389-92)? Are we
like !ago, who has to see a beautiful life destroyed to feel better about
himself (Othello V, i, 18-20)? We all feel a certain glee in the bringing
low of the mighty, but this is in no way similar to the feeling of being
washed in wonderment. The closest thing I know to the feeling at the
end of a tragedy is the one that comes with the sudden, unexpected
appearance of something beautiful. In a famous essay on beauty
(Ennead I, tractate 6), Plotinus says two things that seem true to me:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"Clearly [beauty] is something detected at a first glance, something
that the soul...recognizes, gives welcome to, and, in a way, fuses with"
(O'Brien translation, beginning sec. 2). What is the effect on us of this
recognition? Plotinus says that in every instance it is "an astonishment,
a delicious wonderment" (end sec. 4). Aristotle is insistent that a
tragedy must be whole and one, because only in that way can it be
beautiful, while he also ascribes the superiority of tragedy over epic
poetry to its greater unity and concentration (ch. 26). Tragedy is not
just a dramatic form in which some works are beautiful and others not;
tragedy is itself a species of beauty. All tragedies are beautiful.
By following Aristotle's lead, we have now found five marks of
tragedy: (1) it imitates an action, (2) it arouses pity and fear, (3) it
displays the human image as such, (4) it ends in wonder, and (5) it
is inherently beautiful. We noticed earlier that it is action that
characterizes the distinctively human realm, and it is reasonable that
the depiction of an action might show us a human being in some
defmitive way, but what do pity and fear have to do with that showing?
The answer is, I think, everything.
F1rst, let us consider what tragic pity consists in. The word pity
tends to have a bad name these days, and to imply an attitude of
condescension that diminishes its object. This is not a matter of the
meanings of words, or even of changing attitudes. It belongs to pity
itself to be two-sided, since any feeling of empathy can be given a
perverse twist by the recognition that it is not oneself but another with
whom one is feeling a shared pain. One of the most empathetic
characters in all literature is Edgar in King Lear. He describes himself
truly as "a most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows,/ Who, by
the art of known and feeling sorrows,/ Am pregnant to good pity" (IV,
vi, 217-19). Two of his lines spoken to his father are powerful evidence
of the insight that comes from suffering oneself and taking on the
suffering of others: "Thy life's a miracle" (IV, vi, 55), he says, and
"Ripeness is all" (V, ii, 11), trying to help his father see that life is still
good and death is not something to be sought. Yet in the last scene
of the play this same Edgar voices the stupidest words ever spoken in
any tragedy, when he concludes that his father just got what he
deserved when he lost his eyes, since he had once committed adultery
(V, iii, 171-4). Having witnessed the play, we know that Gloucester
lost his eyes because he chose to help Lear, when the kingdom had
become so corrupt that his act of kindness appeared as a walking fire
in a dark world (III, iv, 107). There is a chain of effects from
Gloucester's adultery to his mutilation, but it is not a sequence that
reveals the true cause of that horror. The wholeness of action that
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Shakespeare shapes for us shows that Gloucester's goodness, displayed in a courageous, deliberate choice, and not his weakness many
years earlier, cost him his eyes. Edgar ends by giving in to the
temptation to moralize, to chase after the "fatal flaw" which is no part
of tragedy, and loses his capacity to see straight.
This suggests that holding on to proper pity leads to seeing straight,
and that seems exactly right. But what is proper pity? There is a way
of missing the mark that js opposite to condescension, and that is the
excess of pity called sentimentality. There are people who use the word
sentimental for any display of feeling, or any taking seriously of feeling,
but their attitude is as blind as Edgar's. Sentimentality is inordinate
feeling, feeling that goes beyond the source that gives rise to it. The
woman in Dostoyevski's novel who loves pitying for its own sake is an
example of this vice. But between Edgar's moralizing and her gushing
there is a range of appropriate pity. Pity is one of the instruments by
which a poet can show us what we are. We pity the loss of Gloucester's
eyes because we know the value of eyes, but more deeply, we pity the
violation of Gloucester's decency, and in so doing we feel the truth that
without such decency, and without respect for it, there is no human
life. Shakespeare is in control here, and the feeling he produces does
not give way in embarrassment to moral judgment, nor does it make
us wallow mindlessly in pity because it feels so good; the pity he
arouses in us shows us what is precious in us, in the act of its being
violated in another.
Since every boundary has two sides, the human image is delineated
also from the outside, the side of the things that threaten it. This is
shown to us through the feeling offear. As Aristotle says twice in the
Rhetoric, what we pity in others, we fear for ourselves (11.5 1382b 26,
II.S 1386a 27). In our mounting fear that Oedipus will come to know
the truth about himself, we feel that something of our own is threatened. Tragic fear, exactly like tragic pity, and either preceding it or
simultaneous with it, shows us what we are and are unwilling to lose.
It makes no sense to say that Oedipus' passion for truth is a flaw,
since that is the very quality that makes us afraid on his behalf.
Tragedy is never about flaws, and it is only the silliest of rnistranslations that puts that claim in Aristotle's mouth. Tragedy is about
central and indispensable human attributes, disclosed to us by the
pity that draws us toward them and the fear that makes us recoil from
what threatens them.
Because the suffering of the tragic figure displays the boundaries
of what is human, every tragedy carries the sense of universality.
Oedipus or Antigone or Lear or Othello is somehow every one of us,
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
only more so. But the mere mention of these names makes it obvious
that they are not generalized characters, but altogether particular.
And il we did not feel that they were genuine individuals. they would
have no power to engage our emotions. It is by their particulality that
they make their marks on us, as though we had encountered them in
the flesh. It is only through the particulality of our feelings that our
bonds with them emerge. What we care for and chelish makes us pity
them and fear for them, ;md thereby the reverse also happens: our
feelings of pity and fear make us recognize what we care for and
chelish. When the tragic figure is destroyed it is a piece of ourselves
that is lost. Yet we never feel desolation at the end of a tragedy,
because what is lost is also, by the very same means, found. I am not
trying to make a paradox, but to desclibe a marvel. It is not so strange
that we learn the worth of something by losing it; what is astonishing
is what the tragedians are able to achieve by making use of that
common expelience. They lilt it up into a state of wonder.
Within our small group of exemplary poetic works, there are two
that do not have the tragic form, and hence do not concentrate all their
power into putting us in a state of wonder, but also depict the state
of wonder among their characters and contain speeches that reflect
on it. They are Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Tempest. (Incidentally, there is an excellent small book called Woe or Wonder, the
Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy, by J. V. Cunningham.
that demonstrates the continuity of the traditional understanding of
tragedy from Arts toile to Shakespeare.) The first poem in our literary
helitage, and Shakespeare's last play, both belong to a conversation
of which Artstotle's Poetics is the most prominent part.
In both the Iliad and the Tempest there are characters with arts
that in some ways resemble that of the poet. It is much noticed that
Prospera's farewell to his art coincides with Shakespeare's own, but
it may be less obvious that Homer has put into the Iliad a partial
representation of himself. But the last 150 lines of Book XVIII of the
Iliad desclibe the making of a work of art by Hephaestus. I will not
consider here what is depicted on the shield of Achilles, but only the
meaning in the poem of the shield itself. In Book XVIII, Achilles has
realized what mattered most to him when it is too late. The Greeks
are dliven back to their ships, as Achilles had prayed they would be,
and know that they are lost without him. "But what pleasure is this
to me now," he says to his mother, "when my beloved fliend is dead,
Patroclus, whom I chelished beyond all fliends, as the equal of my
own soul; I am bereft of him" (80-82). Those last words, as our dean
once pointed out in a lecture, also mean "I have killed him." In his
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desolation, Achilles has at last chosen to act. "I will accept my doom,"
he says (115). Thetis goes to Hephaestus because. in spite of his
resolve, Achilles has no armor in which to meet his fate. She tells her
son's story, concluding "he is lying on the ground, anguishing at heart"
(461). Her last word, anguishing, acheuon. is built on Achilles' name.
Now listen to what Hephaestus says in reply: ''Take courage, and
do not Jet these things distress you in your heart. Would that I had
the power to hide him fqr away from death and the sounds of grief
when grim fate comes to him, but I can see that beautiful armor
surrounds him, of such a kind that many people, one after another,
who look on it, will wonder" (463-67). Is it not evident that this source
of wonder that surrounds Achilles, that takes the sting from his death
even in a mother's heart, is the iliad itself? But how does the iliad
accomplish this?
Let us shift our attention for a moment to the Tempest. The
character Alonso, in the power of the magician Prospero, spends the
length of the play in the illusion that his son has drowned. To have
him alive again, Alonso says, "I wish/ Myself were mudded in that oozy
bed/ Where my son lies" (V, i, 150-2). But he has already been there
for three hours in his imagination; he says earlier "my son i' th' ooze
is bedded; and/ I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded/ And
with him there lie mudded" (III, iii, 100-2). What is this muddy ooze?
It is Alonso's grief, and his regret for exposing his son to danger, and
his self-reproach for his own past crime against Prospero and
Prospero's baby daughter, which made his son a just target for divine
retribution; the ooze is Alonso's repentance, which feels futile to him
since it only comes after he has lost the thing he cares most about.
But the spirit Ariel sings a song to Alonso's son: "Full fathom five thy
father lies; I Of his bones are coral made; I Those are pearls that were
his eyes;/ Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea
change/ Into something rich and strange" (I, ii, 397-402). Alonso's
grief is aroused by an illusion, an imitation of an action, but his
repentance is real, and is slowly transforming him into a different man.
Who is this new man? Let us take counsel from the "honest old
councilor" Gonzalo, who always has the clearest sight in the play. He
tells us that on this voyage, when so much seemed lost, every traveller
found himself "When no man was his own" (V, i, 206-13). The
something rich and strange into which Alonso changes is himself, as
he was before his life took a wrong tum. Prospero's magic does no
more than arrest people in a potent illusion; in his power they are "knit
up/ ln their distractions" (III, iii, 89-90). When released, he says, "they
shall be themselves" (V, i, 32).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
On virtually every page of the Tempest, the word wonder appears,
or else some synonym for it. Miranda's name is Latin for wonder, her
favorite adjective brave seems to mean both good and out-of-the-ordinary, and the combination rich and strange means the same. What
is wonder? J. V. Cunningham describes it in the book I mentioned as
the shocked limit of all feeling, in which fear, sorrow, and joy can all
merge. There is some truth in that, but it misses what is wonderful or
wondrous about wonder. ,.It suggests that in wonder our feelings are
numbed and we are left llmp, wrung dry of all emotion. But wonder
is itself a feeling, the one to which Miranda is always giving voice, the
powerful sense that what is before one is both strange and good.
Wonder does not numb the other feelings; what it does is dislodge
them from their habitual moorings. The experience of wonder is the
disclosure of a sight or thought or image that fits no habitual context
of feeling or understanding, but grabs and holds us by a power
borrowed from nothing apart from itself. The two things that Plotinus
says characterize beauty, that the soul recognizes it at first glance and
spontaneously gives welcome to it, equally describe the experience of
wonder. The beautiful always produces wonder, if it is seen as
beautiful. and the sense of wonder always sees beauty.
But are there really no wonders that are ugly? The monstrosities
that used to be exhibited in circus side shows are wonders too, are
they not? In the Tempest, three characters think first of all of such
spectacles when they lay eyes on Caliban (II, ii, 28-31; V, i, 263-6),
but they are incapable of wonder, since they think they know everything that matters already. A fourth character in the same batch, who
is drunk but not insensible, gives way at the end of Act II to the sense
that this is not just someone strange and deformed, nor just a useful
servant, but a brave monster. But Stephana is not, I think, like the
holiday fools who pay to see monstrosities like two-headed calves or
exotic sights like wild men of Borneo. I recall an aquarium somewhere
in Europe that had on display an astoundingly ugly catfish. People
came casually up to its tank, were startled, made noises of disgust,
and turned away. Even to be arrested before such a sight feels in some
way perverse and has some conflict in the feeling it arouses, as when
we stare at the victims of a car wreck. The sight of the ugly or
disgusting, when it is felt as such, does not have the settled repose or
willing surrender that are characteristic of wonder. "Wonder is sweet,"
as Aristotle says (Poetics 1460 a 18).
This sweet contemplation of something outside us is exactly opposite to Alonso's painful immersion in his own remorse, but in every
other respect he is a model of the spectator of a tragedy. We are in
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the power of another for awhile, the sight of an illusion works real and
durable changes in us, we merge into something rich and strange, and
what we find by being absorbed in the image of another is ourselves.
As Alonso is shown a mirror of his soul by Prospera, we are shown a
mirror of ourselves in Alonso, but in that mirror we see ourselves as
we are not in witnessing the Tempest, but in witnessing a tragedy.
The Tempest is a beautiful play, suffused with wonder as well as with
reflections on wonder, bu,t it holds the intensity of the tragic experience
at a distance. Homer, on the other hand, has pulled off a feat even
more astounding than Shakespeare's, by imitating the experience of
a spectator of tragedy within a story that itself works on us as a
tragedy.
In Book XXN of the lliad, forms of the word thambos, amazement,
occur three times in three lines (482-4), when Priam suddenly appears
in the hut of Achilles and "kisses the terrible man-slaughtering hands
that killed Ws many sons" (4 78-9), but this is only the prelud< to the
true wonder. Achilles and Priam cry together, each for his ow grief,
as each has cried so often before, but this time a miracle happens.
Achilles' grief is transformed into satisfaction, and cleansed from his
chest and his hands (513-14). This is all the more remarkable, since
Achilles has for days been repeatedly trying to take out his raging grief
on Hector's dead body. The famous first word of the Iliad, menis,
wrath, has come back at the beginning of Book XXN in the participle
meneatnon (22), a constant condition that Lattimore translates well
as "standing fury." But all tills hardened rage evaporates in one
lamentation, just because Achilles shares it with his enemy's father.
Hermes had told Priam to appeal to Achilles in the names of his father,
his mother, and his child, "tn order to stir his heart" (466-7), but
Priam's focussed misery goes straight to Achilles' heart without diluting the effect. The first words out of Priam's mouth are "remember
your father" (486). Your father deserves pity, Priam says, so "pity me/
with him in mind, since I am more pitiful even than he;/ I have dared
what no other mortal on earth ever dared,/ to stretch out my lips to
the hand of the man who murdered my children" (503-6).
Achilles had been pitying Patroclus, but mainly himself, but the
feeling to which Priam has directed him now is exactly the same as
tragic pity. Achilles is looking at a human being who has chosen to
go to the limits of what is humanly possible to search for something
that matters to him. The wonder of this sight takes Achilles out of his
self-pity, but back into himself as a son and as a sharer of human
misery itself. All Ws old longings for glory and revenge fall away, since
they have no place in the sight in which he is now absorbed. For the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
moment, the beauty of Priam's terrible action re-makes the world, and
determines what matters and what doesn't. The feeling in this moment out of time is fragile, and Achilles feels it threatened by tragic
fear. In the strange fusion of this scene, what Achilles fears is himself;
"don't irritate me any longer now, old man," he says when Priam tries
to hurry along the return of Hector's body, "don't stir up my heart in
its griefs any more now,/ lest I not spare even you yourself' (560,
568-9). Finally, after they. share a meal, they just look at each other.
"Priam wondered at Achilles,/ at how big he was and what he was like,
for he seemed equal to the gods,/ but Achilles wondered at Trojan
Priam./ looking on the worthy sight of him and hearing his story"
(629-32). In the grip of wonder they do not see enemies. They see
truly. They see the beauty in two men who have lost almost everything. They see a son a father should be proud of and a father a son
should revere.
The action of the iliad stretches from Achilles' deliberate choice to
remove himself from the war to his deliberate choice to return Hector's
body to Priam. The passion of the iliad moves from anger through pity
and fear to wonder. Priam's wonder lifts him for a moment out of the
misery he is enduring, and permits him to see the cause of that misery
as still something good. Achilles' wonder is similar to that of Priam,
since Achilles too sees the cause of his anguish in a new light, but in
his case this takes several steps. When Priam first appears in his hut,
Homer compares the amazement this produces to that with which
people look at a murderer who has fled from his homeland (480-84).
This is a strange compartson, and it recalls the even stranger fact
disclosed one book earlier that Patroclus, whom everyone speaks of
as gentle and kindhearted (esp. XVII, 670-71), who gives his life
because he cannot bear to see his friends destroyed to satisfY Achilles'
anger, this same Patroclus began his life as a murderer in his own
country, and came to Achilles' father Peleus for a second chance at
life. When Achilles remembers his father, he is remembering the man
whose kindness brought Patroclus into his life, so that his tears, now
for his father, now again for Patroclus (XXN, 511-12), merge into a
single grief. But the old man crying with him is a father too, and
Achilles' tears encompass Priam along with Achilles' own loved ones.
Finally, since Priam is crying for Hector, Achilles' griefincludes Hector
himself, and so it turns his earlier anguish inside out. If Priam is like
Achilles' father, then Hector must come to seem to Achilles to be like
a brother, or to be like himself.
Achilles cannot be brought to sucb a reflection by reasoning, nor
do the feelings in which he has been embroiled take him in that
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direction. Only Priam succeeds in unlocking Achilles' heart, and he
does so by an action, by kissing his hand. From the beginning of Book
XVIII (23, 27, 33). Achilles' hands are referred to over and over and
over, as he uses them to pour dirt on his head, to tear his hair, and
to kill every Trojan he can get his hands on. Hector, who must go up
against those hands, is mesmerized by them; they are like a fire, he
says, and repeats it. "His hands seem like a fire" (XX, 371-2). After
Priam kisses Achilles' h'}nd, and afier they cry together, Homer tells
us that the desire for lamentation went out of Achilles' chest and out
of his hands (XXIV, 514). His murderous, man-slaughtering hands
are stilled by a grief that finally has no enemy to take itself out on.
When, in Book XVIII, Achilles had accepted his doom (115), it was part
of a bargain; "I will lie still when I am dead," he had said, "but now I
must win splendid glory" (121). But at the end of the poem, Achilles
has lost interest in glory. He is no longer eaten up by the desire to be
lifted above Hector and Priam, but comes to rest in just looking at
them for what they are. Homer does surround Achilles in armor that
takes the sting from his misery and from his approaching death, by
working that misery and death into the wholeness of the iliad. But
the iliad is, as Aristotle says, the prototype of tragedy; it is not a poem
that aims at conferring glory but a poem that bestows the gift of wonder.
Like Alonso in the Tempest, Achilles ultimately fmds himself. Of
the two, Achilles is the closer model of the spectator of a tragedy,
because Alonso plunges deep into remorse before he is brought back
into the shared world. Achilles is lifted directly out of himself, into the
shared world, in the act of wonder, and sees his own image in the
sorrowing father in front of him. This is exactly what a tragedy does
to us, and exactly what we experience in looking at Achilles. In his
loss, we pity him. In his fear of himself, on Priam's behalf, we fear for
him, that he might lose his new-won humanity. In his capacity to be
moved by the wonder of a suffering fellow human, we wonder at him.
At the end of the iliad, as at the end of every tragedy, we are washed
in the beauty of the human image, which our pity and our fear have
brought to sight. The five marks of tragedy that we learned of from
Aristotle's Poetics-that it imitates an action, arouses pity and fear,
displays the human image as such, ends in wonder, and is inherently
beautiful-give a true and powerful account of the tragic pleasure.
*
*
* * *
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Excerpts from Aristotle's Poetics
Ch. 6 A tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious and has
a wholeness in its extent, in language that is pleasing (though in
distinct ways in its different parts), enacted rather than narrated,
culminating, by means of pity and fear, in the cleansing of these
passions ... So tragedy is "1" imitation not of people, but of action, life,
and happiness or unhappiness, while happiness and unhappiness
have their being in activity, and come to completion not in a quality
but in some sort ofaction ... Therefore it is deeds and the story that are
the end at which tragedy alms, and in all things the end is what
matters most...So the source that governs tragedy in the way that the
soul governs life is the story. 1149b23ff
Ch. 7 An extended whole is that which has a beginning, middle
and end. But a beginning is something which, in itself, does not need
to be after anything else, while something else naturally is the case or
comes about after it; and an end is its contrary, something which in
itself is of such a nature as to be after something else, either necessarily or for the most part, but to have nothing else after it...lt is
therefore needful that well-put-together stories not begin from just
anywhere at random, nor end just anywhere at random ...And beauty
resides in size and order ... the oneness and wholeness of the beautiful
thing being present all at once in contemplation .. .in stories, just as in
human organizations and in living things. 1450b25ff
Ch. 8 A story is not one, as some people think, just because it is
about one person ... And Homer,just as he is distinguished in all other
ways, seems to have seen this point beautifully, whether by art or by
nature. 145lal6
Ch. 9 Now tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action,
but also of objects of fear and pity, and these arise most of all when
events happen contrary to expectation but in consequence of one
another; for in this way they will have more wonder in them than if
they happened by chance or by fortune, since even among things that
happen by chance, the greatest sense of wonder is from those that
seem to have happened by design. 1452alff
Chs. 13-14 Since it is peculiar to tragedy to be an imitation of
actions arousing pity and fear ... and since the former concerns some-
�SACHS
37
one who is undeserving of suffering and ihe latter concerns someone
like us ... ihe story ihat works well must ... depict a change from good
to bad fortune, resulting not from badness but from some great error
of someone like us, or else better raiher ihan worse ... One must not
look for every sort of pleasure from a tragedy, but for ihe one native
to it. And since it is ihe pleasure ihat results from pity and fear ihat
makes ihe work a tragedy, and ihe poet needs to provide ibis pleasure
by means of imitation, it. is evident ihat it must be artfully embodied
in ihe actions (and not rely on visual effects). 1452b30ff, 1453b5
Ch. 16 The best sort of revelation in a tragedy is one ihat arises
from ihe actions ihemselves, ihe astonishment coming about ihrough
ihings ihat are likely, as in ihe Oedipus of Sophocles. {A revelation,
as ihe word indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, ihat
produces eiiher friendship or hatred in people marked out for good or
bad fortune. The most beautiful of revelations occurs when reversals
of condition come about at ihe same time, as is ihe case in ihe
Oedipus.-Ch. 11) 1455bl7, 1452a30
Chs. 24-5 Wonder needs to be produced in tragedies, but in ihe
epic there is more room for that which confounds reason, by means
of which wonder comes about most of all, since in ihe epic one does
not see ihe person who performs ihe action; ihe events surrounding
ihe pursuit of Hector would seem ridiculous ifiheywere on stage ... But
wonder is sweet ...And Homer most of all has taught ihe rest of us how
one ought to speak of what is untrue ... One ought to choose likely
impossibilities in preference to unconvincing possibilities ... And if a
poet has represented impossible ihings, ihen he has missed ihe mark,
but ihat is ihe right ihing to do if he thereby hits the mark that is the
endojthe poetic art itself, ihatis, if in ihat way he makes ihat or some
oiher part more wondrous. 1460al2ff; 1460b23ff.
�38
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�FAUSTIAN PHENOMENA:
Goethe on Plants, Animals, and
Modern Biologists
John F. Comell.
When Faust strikes his deal with Mephistopheles, it is neither for mere
material gain nor for romantic conquest, nor even for power or
knowledge. It is for experience without end.
If I to any moment say:
Linger on! You are so fair!
Put me in fetters straightaway,
Then I can die for all I care!
(Faust L 1699-1702) 1
The challenge is at the heart of the Faustian legend for Goethe. The
desire to reach a point exceeding all hope of further striving is the most
diabolical desire he could imagine. It is mere love of one's own past
achievement-self-complacency. And in self-complacency man essentially delivers his soul to death because he gives up the devotion to
forward movement which is life. He renounces the very thing existence
asks of him, awareness of himself through increasing awareness of
the world. Goethe himself never rested in the struggle to unfold the
forms within and to understand the forms without In old age he even
jested that his soul deserved other embodiments in which to continue
its ceaseless activity.2
But Faustian striving was not for Goethe only an archetypal human
theme. He beheld the same soulful drama throughout the plant and
animal realms, too. The drive to excess, the restlessness for change,
the blind impulse toward a fuller existence that might finally attain a
novel form-these were also manifest in organisms of every kind. And,
as a naturalist who had rejected the special creation of species and
genus, Goethe could speculate that a continuous creative "urge" 3 in
organisms had even given rise to their diversity of kinds.
The present essay will look with Goethe at plants and animals with
this Faustian theme in mind. This is no idle literary exercise. For the
important contention of his biological essays is that an upspringing
movement is essential to all the phenomena of life. Moreover, he
argues that a dispassionate contemplation of living things reveals
John F. Comell is a tutor at the Santa Fe campus of St. John's College.
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
such vital striving over and above the functions necessary to survival.
This is one of the essential principles of the philosophical study of
organisms for Goethe. Unfortunately the practical and technological
interests of biologists increasingly distracted attention from this possibility. Many of his contemporaries already theorized, like ours, about
the organism as a conglomerate of mechanical processes, thus highlighting instead its susceptibility to ever more refined human control.
Goethe does not concede. however, that advanctng analysis of the
organism into simpler inorganic components must shed light on its
essential activity as a living whole.
Whoever wants to know and write about
A living thing, first drives the spirit out;
He has the parts withio his grasp,
But gone is the spirit's holding clasp.
(1.1936-9)
This does not mean that he actually posits a mysterious force to unite
the constituents discoverable by histology and biochemistry and so
on. He supposes no ultimate explanation of the organism in terms of
its parts or its whole. The aim of his biological method is simply to
study vital phenomena at the level of the active, already organized
being. He thus attends to properties overlooked by analytic methods,
the most important of which properties is the upward-driving urge,
discemible in both plants and animals, iotensified and extended in
manifold ways. His studies in "morphology" (as he called them) thus
represent avant la lettre a phenomenology of nature, an investigation
of the life-world independent of both traditional metaphysics and the
apparatus of experimental science. Perhaps it goes without saying that
these studies can help us appraise our conventional scientific conceptions of life that may rather mirror a technological mastery of the
organism. In any case I shall suggest a few comparative observations
along that ltne.
Let the plant and animal heroes come onto the stage.
To begin with Goethe's most famous character, the plant. The
unfoldiog of the plant's life is narrated tn the relatively popular
Metamorphosis of Plants of 1790 4 Its general theory of plants is
well-known enough to be subject to a common misconception. It is
often reduced to the doctrine that the organs of the annual plant are
io essence the same: the sepals (or the segments of the calyx holding
the flower), the corolla (the petals of the flower), the nectaries, and the
reproductive parts are in fact transformed leaves, reshaped to suit
their various functions. (Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species
�CORNELL
41
speaks of this doctrine as "familiar to almost everyone".) 5 The idea of
such homological relation among the plant's organs is an important
morphological insight that Goethe advanced. But it had been foreshadowed by earlier botanists, as he acknowledged (paragraph 4). 6
What is more remarkable in his account is how these form-elements
of the plant betray the direction of its ·movement, its "striving" toward
the flowering stage. For instance, Goethe devotes a whole chapter to
something seen in many, garden plants, that as the leaves ascend on
the stem they become more "developed"-more richly veined, more
notched and elaborate in pattem (Plate 1). This differentiation of form
may well be explained by intemal functions, for example, the refinement of the plant's saps (par. 39), but that in no way compromises the
fact that the phenomenon of growth follows a single apparent direction.
Other little irregularities in the plant's organs reveal how distinct
their forms may be from purely functional features. The forms of some
organs "anticipate" those higher up in the plant's ascent. The calyx,
or cup that holds the floral corolla and is ordinarily green, sometimes
takes on the coloring of the petals " ... at the tips, margins, back, or
even over its inner surface while the outer surface remains green. And
always we see a refinement [of form] associated with this coloration"
(par. 40). Goethe cites numerous morphological disruptions of the
supposedly strict functional series of appendages, and shows how a
sequence of form-elements may only by degrees achieve some functional organ. (par. 75, 83. Plate 2 shows marigold seeds making up
such a sequence.) Perhaps one remarkable instance he cites will
illustrate just how powerfully form can supervene function, and
express the weird upward striving of the plant. In a tulip, a stem-leaf
can rise to new heights and participate dramatically in the overall
pattem of the floral petals. "Such a leaf-petal," he observes, "is half
green, and divided into two parts, the green half being related to the
stem remaining attached to it, and the colored part being lifted up with
the corolla." (par. 44). Goethe supervised the drawing of a colored plate
to document this extraordinary but telling occurrence (Plate 3).
Goethe is showing not just the plant's composition from leaf-like
elements, but a powerful "urge" throughout its growth as these parts
successively appear. The ascending forms of the organs suggest the
plant's thrust beyond vegetative activity. Repetitive foliar growth
(which can be made indefinite by overfeeding) is progressively left
behind for the higher stage of sexual reproduction (par. 30). According
to another paper, he experimented with preventing the plant's elaboration as it grows from node to node and puts out a new leaf at each
step 7 He could continually produce near identity in every nodal
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
42
1) Sa pi us saponaria
after DeCandolle
arvensis
~~~It·~
pluralis
2) Fruit of marigold,
after Gaertner
3) Tulip with
extraordinary leaf-petals
Plates 1·3 appear courtesy of Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, Connecticut.
�CORNELL
43
segment and every new leaf (and thus prevent the normal foliar
refinement) simply by detaching every new shoot and replanting it in
soil. Thus he showed that the graded elaboration up the stem is
intrinsic to the plant's accumulation of the nodal series. In the life of
the complex single being, development appears to be necessary.
Botany demonstrates what Faust feels.
Goethe also inquired into how these stages of transformation arose,
but in doing so stayed clqse to an intuitive sense of life. Noticing that
the plant-organs developed in an alternating sequence of expansions
and contractions-expanded leaves, contracted sepals, expanded petals, contracted sexual organs, expanded fruiting organs-he naturally
asked what two forces struggled back and forth within the plant to
produce this rhythmic alternation of outward form. On an anatomical
level, Goethe could discern a related duality in the plant's two chief
tissues, the spiral vessels (or tracheids, usually on its periphery) and
the vertical fibre (in the interior) 8 But again the overall effect invites
another description: everything takes place as if two creative sources,
the male and female poles in the vegetative system, generate the
individual's growth by their opposition, in dialectical steps up a
"spiritual ladder" (par. 6). For the plant no less than for Faust, "two
souls abide" within its breast (1. 1112).
Goethe's nature-researches not only advance careful comparative
observation of living things but also typically reflect on the human
relation to them. Both moments together constitute his practice of
biology. This becomes particularly vivid in his zoological notes and
essays. Enter the artimals.
Goethe recogruzes a hidden similarity between plants and animals.
"Scarcely distinguishable" in their rudimentary stages, plants and
animals have taken opposite courses of development, plants toward
fixity and security, animals toward mobility and freedom. But fundamental to both, he explains, is the serial homology of their component
parts, the regular repetition of form elements-be they leaves, a sequence of nodes along an extended stem, the series of vertebrae in the
skeleton, or the segments of insects and crustaceans. (The serial
aspect of some invertebrate forms are evident in Goethe's own drawings, Plates 4 and 5.) But as with the plant, the animal form is raised
above a series of similar structures. Its differentiation admits of
degree: "The more imperfect a creature is, the more do these parts
appear identical or similar to each other and the more do they resemble
the whole. The more the creature is perfected, the more dissimilar its
parts become .... Subordination of the parts betokens a more perfected
creature."9 (By perfection, Goethe only means this morphological
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
44
distinction, and not any natural hierarchy: elsewhere he speaks of the
"so-called" perfected animals, sogenannten vollkommenem Tieren.) 10
In some animals, looking at their skeletal structure, an excessive
vitality is expressed by the sertes of caudal vertebrae which repeat
indefinitely and taper off. The tail, he observes, "may be considered as
suggesting the infinity of organic existences." In other cases, structure
supervenes on this repetitive growth. There is a "curtailment," for
example, in the snake's,.transformation into a long-legged frog. 11
Thus, compartng the general appearances of skeletons, we interpret
forms as elaborated upon ortginal serial processes.
In vertebrate zoology, because of the extensive reshaping of sertal
elements, the pattems of bones built up are more prominent than the
sequential foundations. Such visible pattems have been known since
Artstotle as anatomical "types." The typological approach to animal
forms is now discredited by historians ofbiology, who associate it with
a metaphysical interest in "Platonic" ideas. Yet one must be wary of
cartcaturtng typologists as idealists whose cherished types dissolve
once we recognize the flux of evolutionary change, the phases of which
are not all represented in extant species. The point of Goethe's typology
was not to establish any abstract animal ideas. 12 His ortginal report
on morphological types (1 795) stressed the practicality of establishing
a lexicon of basic pattems: the construction of general types would
organize new osteological data and facilitate the advancement of
science.
13
In fact, Goethe did not imagine the type as static. Like Faust, a type
is not permitted to rest thanks to the tension of forces within and
without. "What has been formed," he wrote later in an introduction to
his morphological papers, "is instantly transformed, and if we would
arrive, to son1e degree, at a vital intuition of Nature, we must strive to
keep ourselves as flexible and pliable as the example she herself
provides.'' 14 Perhaps Goethe implies that were we less rtgid we might
discem his hints at organic evolution? As the plant is compelled to
elaborate leaves up the stem, so the animal cannot remain fixed but
must evolve and differentiate into a multiplicity of genera. Significantly, the animal's bUnd drtves-the strtvings of instinct- havea major
role.
Among Goethe's zoological studies, one on rodents shows well how
he conceives evolution. Like the premier French anatomist Georges
Cuvier, he focuses on the rodents' powerful teeth. Their well-developed
upper and lower incisors offer an extreme example of how determined
animals are by their mode of feeding. Full of nervous, gnawing energy,
rodents take nutrttion to a Faustian excess: their teething, he says, is
�CORNELL
45
"vehemently compulsive, unintentionally destructive.'' 15 It is also
creative. Cuvier had noticed that rodents' incisors could develo&
monstrously, especially if unopposed by the teeth above or below.
Goethe sees them as conditioned more deeply by dental excess. He
contrasts their overactive incisors with the balanced set of teeth
possessed by carnivores, and considers how their gnawing gives rise
to a "capricious" range of forms. As the rodents' superfluous energy
is redirected toward the l;msiness of life, it fills various needs such as
making dams or burrows and storing food. Gradually the rodents
explore the main options for adapted living, which their generic forms
represent by striking parallels. Rats correspond to carnivores, hares
to ruminants (for lagomorphs were then classed as rodents), beavers
are swinish swamp-dwellers, and squirrels and flying squirrels parallel the apes and the bats respective!y17
Goethe's essay on rodents pauses to contemplate the common
squirrel with its capacity to stand upright. In quadrupeds, he notes,
the general tendency is that the posterior parts raise themselves above
the frontal ones. The contrary frontal elevation occurs in such "capital"
animals as the lion and elephant, whose heads are further emphasized
by ornament. He calls this elevation a "striving" (using the Faustian
word Bestreben). 18 Now among the rodents, he notices, it is the
ape-like arboreal acrobats, the squirrels, that have approximated an
upright beartng. They grasp small nuts and spruce cones with skillful
hands and, as they play mischievously with their food, we take
particular pleasure in watching them. Then Goethe imagines something like the rodents' social history.
[Gnawing] promotes a superfluous consumption of food for
the purpose of materially filling the stomach and might also
be regarded as continuous exercise, a restless urge to be
occupied which may ultimately lead to destructive fighttog ...After satisJY!ng immediate need to the liveliest way, they
would still like to live in more secure plenty. From this arises
the gathering-drive and the handling of materials which
might appear to be very similar to deliberate ariisiry. 19
Of what use to serious science is this reflection on the squirrel as
mirror of our own activity? First, with respect to the problem of upright
posture, note that although it represents a "contrary" tendency in
nature, a redirection of life's impulses, Goethe does not hold frontal
elevation to be especially rare. The upward tendency has a parallel in
members of several orders of animals; the urge it represents is not
restricted to human beings or even to primates. One might object that
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
this is some kind of anthropomorphic reading of other forms, but I
believe this objection will not stand. The fear of anthropomorphism in
studying nature assumes a fundamental separation of human essence
and experience from the rest of the world. On that assumption, human
activity is a prohibited model for interpreting animals, which must
rather be understood in the presumably non-anthropomorphic terms
of mechanism, along with the rest of nature. But Goethe, without
repudiating mechanism, Jets us glimpse nature's unity precisely by
generalizing the human way of being. We are literally on more equal
footing with other animals, but without (so to speak) a loss of standing.
The story of rodents' behavioral evolution similarly affirms our
solidarity with other beings. The perpetually nervous rodents, as
Goethe describes them, display greed and warlike habits and even
invent something like the arts. This is Goethe's version, or better, his
inversion, of sociobiology, his way of seeing the naturalness of our
"cultural" activity. Animals remote from human beings are beset with
similar blind drives which open up similar outlets, elaborated in
different degrees. It is noteworthy that he remains silent about mechanistic or teleological causes of these developments while illuminating
their connection with the animals' exuberance of life. For him the most
striking principle of animal behaviors is not "behind" the outward
phenomena, in the hereditary substance privileged by twentieth-century sociobiology. Nor, in the teleological sense of cause, is the
essential thing about animals the urge to disseminate genes through
reproduction, as sociobiology teaches under the influence of Darwin
and Malthus. There is excess in nature, but why confine its expression
to reproductive competition? Goethe does not so underestimate the
kinship between human beings and other organisms. If we reduce
human beings and all animals to reproduction machines, we miss the
analogical fact that hyperactivity and conflict might engender new
exertions of animals' energy. A rechannelling of animal force "upward,"
toward expression in art, might occur in squirrels no less than in
humans.
Scholars tell us that Goethe was not an evolutionist, that species
transformation was for him an absiract relationship rather than a
principle of genealogical kinship over time. They do not find in his
works a discussion of particular phylogenies linking living and fossil
species, nor do they find reference to evolutionists such as Lamarck
or Robinet. 20 But take care: the most convinced evolutionist cannot
necessarily offer convincing phylogenies. (Darwin did not, and Goethe
wrote decades earlier.) Further, it is known that Goethe sometimes
endorsed evolution with intimate friends; and in writing on evolution-
�47
CORNELL
.,..._....
...
114 I Pt
"':
;.,,~
4)
5)
Segmentation in insect
and crustacean,
by Goethe's hand
6)
3-toed and 2-toed Sloths_, or
Ai and Unau, from the
English edition of Cuvier
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ary speculations by Kant and Eduard d'Alton, he alluded to his own
belief in species descent. 21 Delicate public treatment of sensitive
subjects was a matter of principle for Goethe. He followed what he
called "the higher maxim of pedagogy: not to disturb children or the
un[educated] and half-educated in their reverence for higher things. "22
Was the poet merely judicious about the topic of evolution? We have
seen, I think, that Goethe's scientific writing is many-layered-provocative rather than demonstr.ative. Always the playwright, he does not
force ideas on his audienc~ but lets them consider implications of the
dialogue, the action, and the scene. Yet there is more than circumstantial proof of Goethe's evolutionist inclinations. Let us tum to an
essay where he in fact indulges in phylogenetic speculation, speculation leading even to the genesis of human beings.
In the middle of an essay on "Sloths and Pachyderms" Goethe asks
permission to resort to "poetic" expression, necessary (he says) to
reach where prose may not. He launches into an evolutionary fable.
The story begins With a "colossal spirit" [ungeheuerer Geist]. specifically a beached whale, a mammalian fish out of water. The animal
regrets its uncertain fortunes even as it begins to settle in its swampy
home: "... it feels as if it belongs half to earth and half to water." Its
inner turmoil passes "through whatever filiation" to its descendants,
who, having made their way into a drier, less confusing environment,
still do not develop harmoniously. As if vexed by some former constraint, as if impatient to exercise some freedom, they stretch out their
limbs and grow claws "... almost Without limit." These new beasts-the
sloths-are a genus in which Goethe recognizes a counter-spirit or
contrary-spirit, an Ungetst. But they are destined for "something
more," only temporarily unable to manifest it in its "principal appearance" [Haupterscheinung]. Gradually, the more integrated members of
the sloth genus, the species called the Unau, raise themselves to a
more versatile level of animality, and enter the scene as the highly
mobile apes. The story closes With a quick but arresting phrase. Still
referring to the great destiny of this animal spirit as yet unfulfilled,
Goethe concludes, "... and among the apes surely there are a few that
might show the way to it" ("man denn unter den A.ffen gar wahl einige
23
findet, welche nach ihm hinwetsen mogen").
Clearly Goethe's fable of the evolution of a spirited ape entails other
than literal meanings. The natural images not only hint at our origins
but also invite us to consider what new self-knowledge such conjecture would afford. Indeed his images tell a Faustian tale: painful birth
and ambivalence about life, slothful inactivity and Withdrawal from
the task of adapting to reality, unproductive vexation and finally, the
�CORNELL
49
beginning of a resolution, intense activity that realizes the potentials
hidden within. Further, as with Goethe's rodents, what at first seems
like monstrosity turns into creativity. The whale's maladjustment
presses him on, by stages, to a nobler destiny. 24
But in addition to these meanings, notice a particular scientific
sense in Goethe's tale. His ancestry for anthropoids suggests a
Faustian career by incorporating real zoological problems. Why the
whale and the sloth as h,uman progenitors? What links them in the
naturalist's mind? Both these animals are among the most extraordinary: they have proven especially hard to classify scientifically. Only
in modem times has the whale been made a mammal. In evolutionary
discussions during the past century, scientists have doubted whether
this superbly adapted sea creature, without hind legs, could possibly
have descended from a four-legged land dweller. Even today the
classification of whales is in dispute. Despite the taxonomic trouble
they have made, the whales' social structure and high intelligence
have always been admired. One hardly needs reminding that the
cachelot, the blunt-headed sperm whale, was a spiritual adversary of
seafaring mankind at the tum of the nineteenth century. Cuvier's
English editors record the sperm whale's bloodthirsty tyranny of the
sea and its vindictive pursuit of prey. This behavior, they say, "... has
scarcely any parallel in animated nature"-an ironic phrase, as they
later mention the notorious excesses of the whaling industry. 25 The
sperm whale and man are natural Faustian animals.
The sloths are also great eccentrics in biology, animals that, like
whales, have defied the authority of European classifiers. Cuvier called
them "imperfect and grotesque" because they violated his rules about
how the parts of animals should be functionally correlatedl 26 The
tree-hanging sloths, neither lovely nor lively, were also thought to lead
a painful existence, which Goethe concedes in attributing to them a
negative spirit. His claim that they are destined for something more,
alluding to their almost human form, is not so far-fetched. Some
species of sloth, after all, are good swimmers and have dexterous
hands. One can see the anthropoid bearing of the sloths pictured in
the English edition of Cuvier (Plate 6).
In brief, the ancestors Goethe selects for humankind have surprising zoological credentials. Sloths and whales are outstanding as the
natural rebels of nature, and as outlaws to scientific legislation. Their
conspicuous place in the human family tree accounts then for the
evolution of the human species with its own ambiguous stance In the
world. For Goethe, all life is at odds with mere being, all organisms
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
overreach themselves. But even this excess exceeds itself in the case
of our anthropoid precursors.
We have arrived with Goethe at the human animal. We may turn
now to the question of how not just biological phenomena but biological practice itself reflects the Faustian theme. Let us bear in mind the
historical uniqueness of Goethe's biological work, the audacity of his
integration of a science of organisms with a poet's vision of life. Wh!le
his researches have appealed to philosophical scientists-T. H. Huxley,
Claude Bernard, and Freud-and to ph!losophers such as Hegel and
Nietzsche, they did not advance the progress of quantitative and
experimental biology. Goethe's place in the history of life science is
what he might have expected. He is history's deviant-not the sloth in
his genealogical tale, but perhaps the Leviathan on the shore who,
wh!le not in his proper milieu, is an enormous creature all the same.
One may appreciate better the role of this strange giant in biology
by comparing him to another towering naturalist, Charles Darwin.
Indeed, by comparing Goethe with the greatest evolutionist since his
time, both of their enterprises might come into clearer focus. So, too,
might the Faustian d!lemma of contemporary biology.
Let us begin the comparison by citing Goethe's most "Darwinian"
text. He penned this speculation at the age of sixty:
The skeletons of some marine animals show plainly that, even
while fashioning these, Nature was already feeling her way
toward the higher idea of land animals ... ! would call them
marvelous, these transitions in nature, if in nature the marvelous did not happen to be universally common ...You can
imagine Nature standing at a gaming counter, as it were,
constantly shouting "Double" and continuing to play with her
winnings in all her domains with unfailing luck ad infinitum.
The stone, the animal, the plant-after a number of such lucky
throws they are all put at stake again; and who knows but
that man himself is not in his turn just another throw for
higher winntngs?27
The theme of "chance" is not prevalent in Goethe's biological
writings. But if chance is understood as what appears in creation
without design, it is certainly consonant with his idea of evolution. It
is consonant with the idea of nature experimenting with so-called
monstrous forms, blindly groping toward possibly higher destinies.
On the other hand, we discern something "Goethean" in Charles
Darwin's eloquence about the natural world. Recall how in the Origin
ofSpecies Darwin holds nature to be a tense harmony of sublime forces
superior to, and in a sense wiser than, human beings. He tried to
�CORNELL
51
establish the doctrine of natural selection by analogy from the inferior
methods of man's selective breeding. A deductive argument for natural
selection from wild populations alone was not conclusive. One needed
to see something about creative processes in order to imagine natural
creation as a whole. In the Origin, Darwin applied what we know about
making domestic breeds (e.g., greyhounds, wolfhounds, dachshunds)
to nature's "making" of species. One can find in his notes and
published pages other analogies from human artistry to nature's
process of creating. 28 Darwin the fertile theorizer, who piled up
insights in his notebooks and artfully sifted his best ideas, knew
something about the process of intellectual creation. It occurred to
him that nature's mode of creation, natural selection, is like all
ingenuity, a testing and refinement of half-conscious and unaccountable effusions. 29 From this perspective, Darwin's doctrine seems closer
to Goethe's Faustian theme: both would capture that blind purposiveness and creativity that makes nature the model of human ari.
This is not the place to show that the inspiration of the "romantic"
strain in Darwin might be traced ultimately to the German poet. 30
The history of science makes clear in any case that a difference
between the two nature researchers becomes far more important.
Natural selection is simple and universal mechanism, grounded positively in studies of plant and animal population. What Darwin called
his "long argument" of the Origin of Species inaugurates a new era in
life science, one based on natural selection, while there is nothing in
Goethe to compare. But this points us to a deeper disagreement, a
philosophical disagreement between Darwin and Goethe that sometimes surfaces in contemporary biology.
The disagreement has to do with the representation of nature not
just as universal mechanism but as any totality at all. Goethe's
researches, although consistently suggestive, were never systematized, his essays were not organized into a whole. The unity of living
nature remained an intuition that did not attain the architectonic
structure of positive science, according to the imposing Newtonian
model. Goethe mistrusted the Newtonian precedents for systematizing
researches into generalized, mathematics-like doctrine. 3 His biological writing thus reflected what he once said about dramatic composition-that it should have significant general features,
incommensurable, however, in representing the whole, so one is
drawn to study it again and again. 32 With all his Faustian urge to
understand life, Goethe supposed one limit in our quest for science:
every all-embracing scheme of natural history must be premature.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Darwin's metaphysical preconceptions denied this. Heir to the
Newtonian legacy that Goethe renounced, he supposed that some
simple, general law of natural genesis would eventually link all
particular biological problems. This supposition was grounded in
liberal theological belief. To Darwin it was reasonable to posit a God
creating through general laws in contrast to multiple, miraculous
creations. (I acknowledge in passing the historical irony: one of the
founders of agnostic scie¥ce was himself decisively influenced by
monotheistic creed.) A scientific natural history, more or less Newtonian, might then be possible. If one could present a new observational
law, a mechanism producing new species from old, the essential
phenomena of natural history might follow from this law of creationby-genealogical-descent. (This would become the main strategy of the
Origin of Species.) This metaphysics of Darwin's had momentous
consequences for his interpretation of his eventual discovery. When
he discovered the "natural selection" of organisms' individual variations through their life-and-death struggles, he understood this
process as no mere conditioning principle, no mere constraint on
whatever should evolve, but as the hidden creative law he was
seeking. 33 Natural selection seemed to be creation's supreme law also
because special creationists had stressed organisms' specially designed adaptations-and Darwin could reinterpret the feats of special
design as so many means of survival acquired through ages of
environmental pressure. He could interpret them as all acquired
through one simple law. 34 The theological presuppositions about
universal adaptation and universal law had reduced the vast problems
of evolution to one apparently solvable form.
Darwin's work developed in the open-air traditions of geology and
field natural history which studied the environmental contexts and
reticular interdependencies of living things. But under the shadow of
the theology of law and adaptation, the recognition of all meanings of
organic diversity was simply not possible. Morphological patterns or
tendencies in evolution, if decipherable through the comparison of
forms, could not impinge on a theorizing that concentrated on adaptive
success. As Darwin worked out his theory, he relegated part of
Goethean morphology-e.g., the theme of serial patterns and their
differentiation-merely to the list of evidences for evolutionary descent
(and indirectly for natural selection). 35 He classed other morphological
phenomena with the facts of organic variability, again a demotion
since variation was deemed consequential only if it led to adaptational
advantages. 36 In the end, Darwin's view of nature paralleled closely
that of the agricultural breeders whom he studied. For the breeder
�CORNELL
53
sees in the wealth of plant and animal variation not data of natural
history with interesting connections among other phenomena, but
accidental possibilities to be used or eliminated. Darwin regarded
organic variation as "accidental" only after turning to the breeders and
adopting the idea of a selective agency external to the organisms and
responsible for their evolutionary changes. 37 The extravagant multiplicity of nature thus receded as an essential fact when reduced to the
problem of more trivial vapation, that is, when a technological attitude
was imported into theoretical biology. The present-day marriage between biology and genetic technology dates from the reliance of the
Origin of Species on agricultural breeding.
By contrast, Goethe's phenomenological biology did not strive to
formulate one mechanism producing organic diversity, let alone one
aligned with human technique. He kept his distance from theology
and technology and all simplifying principles alien to the multiplicity
of beings. The comparative method assumed that the astonishing past
and present diversity of beings might teach us something about the
laws of these possibilities of life that a generalized mechanism, based
in the universal necessity of survival, could not. Goethe would have
seen the philosophical Iisk in minimizing the actual profusion of
nature's products by modeling It on accidental varieties and Individuals of a species. On the contrary, did he not thematize excess even in
particular living beings? His reluctance to assemble a complete doctrine of nature suggests a further point: Is not the ongoing investigation of visible growth processes and forms logically prior to the final
explanation of the evolution of these processes and forms? Comparing
phenomena could still lead to evolutionary stories, but they would be
stones told In a spirit of conjecture and even irony, whose plots would
involve the specific characters of the organic protagonists. The power
of a method like Darwin's, on the other hand, was also the problem
with it: it could prejudge the significance of all phenomena according
to its global type of Insight. The differences of species could not make
a lot of difference If the last word on their appearances was their
submission to a single law. 38 We might discern the meaning of the
Many only If they are not effaced to nothingness by the One.
Goethe admitted that Interpreting nature required method, and
that method In turn implied bias. The act of theorizing was like
creating the scene of a play where some truth is put In the spotlight
and some recedes into the background. 39 He thought that biological
researchers In particular would concede the infinite superiority of
Nature's resources to their own Ingenious ideas.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
54
When a man of lively intellect first responds to Nature's
challenge to be understood, he feels irresistibly tempted to
impose his will upon the natural objects he is studying. Before
long, however, they close in upon him with such force as to
make him realize that he in tum must now acknowledge their
might and hold in respect the authority they exert over him.
Hardly is he convinced of this reciprocal influence when he
becomes aware of a twofold infinitude: in the natural objects,
of the diversity of life and growth and of vitality interlocking
relationships; in himself, of the possibility of endless development through always keeping his mind receptive and disciplining it in new forms of assimilation and procedure. 40
The receptive biological mind had to appreciate a variety of methods
even if it devoted itself to one. Students of biology were to be like so
many Fausts, together pursuing a many-sided experience oflife. With
a plurality of approaches and viewpoints, enlivening particular inquiries even through conflict, 41 biology would not attach its fortunes to a
single doctrine of the organism. As in Faust's original bet, theorists
might seem to reach that "fair moment," the final vision of truth. But
then they might only have succumbed to the self-satisfaction that is
the essence of Mephistophelean temptation.
Faust does not give up easily. He learns that the instrumental magic
of Mephistopheles has its limits, and he will not be constrained to that
circle. At a crucial point Mephistopheles reluctantly acknowledges the
higher powers of the "Mothers," the possessors of the secrets of form
and transformation. He tests Faust's true mettle, describing to him
the vast void and terrible solitude he must brave in order to reach their
heathen dwelling. Faust dares to abandon his demon and take the
lonely route. For Goethe, the philosophical biologist cannot renounce
his Faustian desire. He cannot ignore the mystery of organic forms,
resting content with their physical mastery. The daring student of the
multiplicity of living beings might say, like Faust about to travel to the
goddesses of form,
All right! We'll try it out! In what you call
Sheer nothingness I hope to find the All!
(11.6255-6)
"'
"'
*
"'
�CORNELL
55
Notes:
1.
J. W. von Goethe, Faust, Part I and Part II, trans. Charles E. Passage
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 61. Hereafter references to Faust
appear without footnotes, with part and line number simply.
2. J. W. von Goethe, Conversations withEckermann (1823-1832), trans.
John Oxenford (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984). 233.
·'
3. On the difficulties of oUr linguistic terms for expressing life's essential
powers, see J. W. von Goethe, ''The Creative Urge," (Bildungstrieb) in
Goethe's Botanical Writings, trans. and ed. Bertha Mueller (Woodbridge, Connecticut: Ox Bow Press, 1989), 233-4.
4.
Goethe, 'The Metamorphosis of Plants," in Mueller, 31-78. References
will be to Goethe's paragraph numbers.
5. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, (London: Murray, 1859),
436.
6. Goethe's predecessors here were N. Grew and C. F. Wolff. See Agnes
Arber, The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (Darien, Conn.: Hafner,
1970). 40.
7.
J. W. von Goethe, "Vorarbeiten zur Morphologie," in Die Schrijten zur
Naturwissenschafi, ed. by Dorothea Kuhn (Weimar: H. Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1964), vol. lO (series not complete), 56-59.
8.
Goethe, 'The Spiral Tendency," in Mueller, 127-130.
9.
Goethe, "Formation and Transformation," in Mueller, 24.
10. Goethe, "lnwiefem die Idee: SchOnheit sei Vollkomrnenheit mit
Freiheit," in Kuhn, 10:125.
ll. J. W. von Goethe, "Concerning Types To Be Established for The
Facilitation of Comparative Anatomy," in A Source Book in Animal
Biology, ed. by Thomas Hall (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1970). 67.
12. E. Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1950); R. H. Brady, "Form and Cause in Goethe's Morphology,"
and T. Lenoir, "The Eternal Laws of Form: Morphotypes and the
Conditions of Existence in Goethe's Biological Thought," both in
Goethe and the Sciences: A Re-Appraisal ed. by F. Arnrine, F. Zucker,
and H. Wheeler (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1987).
13. Goethe, "Concerning Types," cited in Note ll. For a modern assessment of type as an irreducible principle, see 0. C. Reippel, Fundamentals of Comparative Biology (Boston: Birkhauser Verlag, 1988).
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
14. Goethe, "Formation and Transformation," p. 24. On Goethe's dynamic
notion of type, see also Brady, "Form and Cause In Goethe's Morphology," p. 274.
15. J. W. von Goethe, "Die Skelette der Nagetiere," in Die Schrijten zur
Naturwissenschajt, ed. Dorothea Kuhn (Weimar: Bohlaus Nachfolger,
1954), 9:377.
16. Georges Cuvier, AnimalXingdom., ed. by Griffith, Smith, and Pidgeon.
(London: Whittaker, 1827), 16 vols., 1:190.
17. Goethe, "Die Skelette der Nagetiere," 376-7.
18. Ibid., 375.
19. Ibid., 377.
20. D. Kuhn, "Goethe's Relationship to the Theories of Development of
His Time," in Goethe and the Sciences, 14-15.
2l.lbid., 10-12; Goethe, "Intuitive Judgement," Goethe's Botanical
Writings, 232-233; and "Die Faultiere und die Dickhautigen," 246-7.
22. Goethe, Diary, April 24, 1831, cited in Goethe: Wisdom and Experience, selections by Ludwig Curtius, trans. by Hermann Wiegand. (New
York: Pantheon, 1949), 197.
23. Goethe, "Die Faultiere und die Dickhautigen," 248.
24. Goethe's whale is a likely progenitor of the estranged water-animal
Nietzsche takes as our grandparent in the Genealogy of Morals, II, sec.
16.
25. Cuvier, Animal Kingdom, 4:473.
26.lbid., 3:261.
27. Goethe to Falk, June 14, 1809, cited In Goethe: Wisdom and Experience, p. 90.
28. Darwin Notebooks pp. (orig.) M 69, 154e: N 14, 36, 94, MacCulloch
11. See Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844, transcribed and ed.
by P. Barrett, P. Gautrey, S. Herbert, D. Kohn, and S. Smith (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
29. This indeed was William James' reading of Darwin. See Robert
Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987), 431-440.
30. A book that initially fired the young Darwin up Into a "burning zeal"
to contribute to science-he says in his Autobiography [The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow. (London: Collins, 1958),
�CORNELL
57
67-8]-was an account of nature-explorations by one of Goethe's
closest scientific admirers. The book was the Personal Narrative of
n-avels by Alexander von Humboldt, and it gave Darwin one of his
models for a poetic amd speculative natural history. See Alexander
von Humboldt, Personal Narratives of n-avels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the Years 1799-1804 (London: Longman,
1821-1829) 7 vols., especially val. l. Like Darwin later, Humboldt
takes nature and art as fundamental categories, and emphasizes the
superior majesty of nature over civilization. He also makes analogical
connections among particular facts to raise them into general ideas,
and keeps in the reader's view the human relation, the "dramatic"
relation to the physical world.
3l.J. W. von Goethe. Theory of Colors (Cambridge: M.l.T. Press, 1970),
p. xl.
32. Goethe, Conversations withEckerrnann, (1823-1832), 307.
33. See J. F. Cornell, '"God"s Magnificent Law: The Bad Influence of
Theistic Metaphysics on Da.IWin's Estimation of Natural Selection,"
Journal of the History of Biology 20, (1987): 381-412.
34.lbid., 397-398.
35. Darwin, Origin of Species, chapter XVII!, especially p. 435.
36. Origin of Species, e.g., pp. 146. 149, 153, 436.
37. Darwin"s NotebookE, orig. p. 111-112. SeeJ. F. Cornell, ""Analogy and
Technology in Darwin"s Vision of Nature,·· Jour. ofHist. Biol. I 7 ( 1984):
323.
38. Darwin's Notebook B. orig. pp. 207, 231-2. It appears that (at a point
before hitting on natural selection) Darwin saw evolution embracing
a plurality of goals; so the question may be whether the English
naturalist tradition tumed this plurally-purposed evolution into an
illusion overcome with the theory of a rigorous selection. Yet how is
adaptation manifest as an extravagant diversity of adaptation, if
diversity is not itself an essential principle in nature?
39. Goethe, Theory of Colors, x1vi.
40. Goethe, "Formation and Transformation," 21.
4l.J. W. von Goethe, "Principes de Philosophie Zoologique discutes en
Mars 1830 au sein de l'Academie Royale des Sciences," in Die Schriften
zur Naturwissenscha.fi, 10, esp. pp. 324-325.
�58
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�'I Have Become a Problem to
Myself': Augustine's Theory
of Will and the Notion of
Human Inwardness
Lester Strong
The theory of will has been discussed in many contexts, among them
religion (Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and other Christian thinkers).
deterministic philosophy (Hobbes). psychology (Nietzsche), and modem physics (Bergson), each containing its own presuppositions and
each relating will to other areas connected with its own field of interest.
In this essay I would like to examine will as discussed by Augustine,
which means an examination of will in the light of such notions as
moral choice, sin, and redemption, cast against the background of a
world created. by a Deity who is also the lawgiver and judge of his
creation.
Why Augustine? Because his discussion of will was pivotal in the
Western philosophical approach to the subject, and ultimately in the
Western approach to understanding what it means to be human. In
his complex theory, developed as it was over a long period of time, in
a variety of circumstances, and with different purposes in mind, the
problem of human inwardness ftrst emerges philosophically and there
occurs, as I shall later indicate, an important shift in the Western
intellectual outlook.
The concept of will was introduced in late Classical antiquity
through the Stoics, whose philosophy, like most philosophies before
it. was based on a tradition at least as old as Pythagoras-the notion
that "the real is the rational." This meant that in Stoic ethical theory
the will was the rational will, for in the hierarchy of mental faculties
as the Stoics (and earlier philosophers) conceived them, reason was
at the pinnacle and was therefore the essential expression of human
nature in the moral realm. At the beginning of the fourth book of his
Discourses, Epictetus says: ''That man is free, who lives as he wishes,
Lester Strong (SF'68) has lived and worked in New York City since 1968 as a writer
and editor. The original version of this essay was written for a philosophy seminar
in the History of Will given by Hannah Arendt at the Graduate Faculty of the New
School for Social Research in New York during the early 1970s.
�60
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
who is proof against compulsion and hindrance and violence, and
whose impulses are untrammelled, who gets what he wills to get and
avoids what he wills to avoid." 1 For the Stoics, the will, the power of
"getting and avoiding," was omnipotent in its own domain, totally free
from all outside interference in seeking to fulfill the good of the
individual. The problem for Stoic philosophers was to determine by
reason-the power of discrimination-the exact limits of the domain of
the will, so that within th<;m each person could successfully set about
securing serenity and happiness.
Augustine too, early in his career as a Christian thinker, seemed
to hold a similar position. In his dialogue On Free Choice ojthe Wi!1, 2
written between 388 and 395 A.D. to refute the Manicheean doctrines
with which he had earlier been associated, he argues that, because
the human will is omnipotent in regard to choice in the moral sphere
of the created world, it alone is responsible for both the existence of
evil and the fulfillment or frustration of the tndividual's happiness.
However, later, in his disputes with the Pelagians, he argues that,
because the will is in bondage to sin, the individual requires the grace
of God both to will rightly and to achieve happiness and and salvation.
The two positions of free will and the will's bondage to sin seem
contradictory, for on the first hypothesis the individual should merit
salvation or damnation, happiness or unhappiness, on the basis of
the will's free choice alone, while accordtng to the second no one
should be held responsible for acts committed by a faculty restrained
from willing the good by its bondage to the law of sin. And yet it is
significant that Augustine never repudiated either doctrine. Indeed,
tn the Retractations, written in 425 to 437 near the end of his life, he
held that both are necessary for the correct, i.e., the Christian,
interpretation of human nature and the relationship of human beings
to God. But what can have led him to adopt such a stand?
For Augustine, the validity of his polemics against the
Manicheeans and the Pelagians was evident: the truth, through God's
grace, has been revealed to him. If reason is confounded, reason itself
is at fault, not the divine truth it finds untntelligible. His arguments,
indeed, were of secondary importance to him, for regardless of contradiction, the truth had been been revealed and had to be proclaimed.
But there must have been something within Augustine's experience
that prepared him to accept what was for him the truth of divine
revelation. In the Retractations he mentions God's grace, "by which He
so predestines who the elect shall be that He even prepares the will of
3
those among them who are already making use of their free choice.''
But how does this preparation manifest itself? In the following pages
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61
I shall analyze Augustine's arguments concerning will in such a way
as to lay bare the presuppositions and attitudes upon which they were
founded. By doing so, I think there can be discovered a phenomenon
of human experience in which as a touchstone of Augustine's (and
Christianity's) interpretation of human reality, both freedom of choice
and the will's bondage to sin are revealed to cohere and even support
each other.
What specifically, then, does Augustine say of the will? Why does
it exist and how does it function in its freedom and unfreedom?
A reading of Augustine's various writings on the will, especially of
On Free Choice of the Will, indicates that will is the mental faculty by
means of which individuals choose and are able to live and act either
rightly and honorably or wrongly and sinfully. As Augustine states,
"without it men cannot live rightly" (OFC, Book 2, I, 5). Will therefore
grants individuals the ability to choose for themselves between good
and evil. Within the hierarchy of goods available to them from without,
individuals remain morally free, that is to say, responsible, agents.
They freely choose their own manner of living and thus freely merit
happiness or unhappiness and the divine judgment of salvation or
damnation:
Thus it is no wonder that unhappy men do not attain what
they want, that is, a happy life, for they do not also will to live
rightly-a thing which accompanies the happy life, and with
which the happy life can be neither merited nor attained by
anyone. The etemal law ... establishes with immutable frrmness the point that merit lies in the will, while happiness and
unhappiness are a matter of reward and punishment. (OFC,
Book 1, XIV, 101)
Merit lies in the will. Granting the hypothesis of creation, from
this view of the individual and his or her relationship to the world and
God the notions of responsibility and freedom follow quite logically.
On the one hand there is the created world, a hierarchy of goods
ordered according to eternal and divine law ["that law by which it is
just that everything be ordered in the highest degree" (OFC, Book 1,
VI, 51)] and the divine justice andjudgmentimplied by the existence
of eternal law. On the other hand there are human beings, creatures
of free will whose freedom consists in their ability to order their own
lives as they so choose. The freedom is not completely unbounded in
that they can only choose from among those goods presented to them.
For example, they cannot choose nonexistence over against existence
since nonexistence is not a created good; rather they can only choose
�62
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
among vartous kinds of existence-peaceful, unpeaceful, happy, unhappy, wise, or foolish. Nevertheless, their freedom of choice is such
that people can willingly sin or remain righteous, can choose lower
goods as opposed to higher, can fail to order their lives to that degree
consonant with their nature or can seek the best order possible.
Nothing it would seem, therefore, can abrogate the free wiil of the
individual. "For what lies more truly in the power of the wiil than the wiil
itself?" (OFC, Book I, XII, 1;!6). The wiil alone wills itself to wiil, and nothing
can force it to wiil against its own wishes. And if the wiil itself is
responsible for whatever sin or evil there is in the world, that is, if it is
the cause of all turning away from the higher (eternal) goods to the lower
(temporal and therefore corruptible) goods, the individual is accountable
before divine justice because he or she is free to make choices.
The above delineation of the nature of the will was drawn from
Books 1 and 2 of On Free Clwke of the Will, and, although based on
a Christian outlook, agrees with the Stoic emphasis on freedom of the
will. Yet when we tum to Book 3 of On Free Choke and to relevant
passages from Augustine's later works (for the purposes of this essay
to the Confessions and The Trinity), a quite different and in many ways
more complex position emerges. Wholly inconsistent with free will, it
is rather in line with Paul's statement in Romans 7:15: "For I do not
do what! want, but! do the very thing I hate" (Revised Standard Version).
A good transition to this different view is found in Book 3, where
Augustine writes, "When we speak of the will that is free to do right,
we speak of the will with which man was (first) made" (OFC, Book 3,
XVIII, 179). The doctrine of free choice, then, is only one aspect of
human existence in the moral sphere, for there is also a sense in which
the will is not free. Complementing the doctrine of free will is the
doctrine of original sin, humanity's fall from perfection and the
consequent need of divine grace for redemption and salvation. From
the discussion of the freedom to choose between good and evil, and
thus the implied responsibility of the individual, we must tum to a
discussion of the inability of the individual to will the good, and thus
the implied bondage to the law of sin.
The most graphic presentation of Augustine's arguments for the
will's lack of freedom is perhaps found in the account of his conversion
in Book VIII of his Confessions. 2 There we find Augustine in conflict,
tom between his wish to become a Christian and his inability to
renounce his former mode ofliving. This is a hiatus in Augustine's life.
He has overcome the intellectual obstacles on the journey to his
conversion and has acknowledged all of what he considers to be the
truth of Christian teaching. But he cannot achieve the final step. He
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63
is held down and chained to his past as if all his intellectual understanding were of no importance whatever.
The climax of this inner battle occurs one day when he is sitting
with a friend in a garden. In his agony he tears his hair, beats his
forehead, begins to cry. Going off alone, he throws himself on the
ground and prays to God for an end to his misery, when suddenly,
from a neighboring house, he hears a child saying, "Take up and read;
take up and read." Returning to where his friend sits, he takes a
volume of Paul, opens it, and reads the first passage his eyes encounter: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in strife and envying; but
put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh,
in concupiscence" (Romans 13:13. King James' Version). Instantly,
"by a light as it were of serenity suffused into my heart, all the darkness
of doubt vanished away" (C, Book VIII, XII, 29), and Augustine finds
that through the intervention of divine grace the long-hoped-for
conversion has taken place.
Reflecting later on this day, Augustine tries to understand the
nature of the will as it manifested itself in this event. "Whence this
monstrousness?" he asks, "and to what end? The mind commandeth
the body, and it obeys instantly; the mind commands itself, and is
resisted" (C, Book VIII, IX, 21). If Augustine could tear his hair, beat
his forehead, and throw himself on the ground in such a way "that
command is scarce distinct from obedience," why could he not freely
will his conversion?
The problem as Augustine understands it lies in the fact that, as
a "son of Adam," he has inherited a blemished will. Because of original
sin, the will is divided against itself:
It commands itself, I say, to will, and would not command,
unless it willed, and what it commands is not done. But it
willeth not entirely: therefore doth it not command entirely.
For so far forth it commandeth, as it willeth: and so far forth
is the thing commanded, not done, as it willeth not. For the
will commandeth that there be a will: not another, but itself.
But it doth not command entirely, therefore what it commandeth, is not. For were the will entire, it would not even
command it to be, because it would already be. It is therefore
no monstrousness partly to w111, partly to nil!, but a disease
of the mind, that it doth not wholly rise, by truth upborne,
borne down by custom. And therefore are there two wills, for
that one of them is not entire: and what the one lacketh, the
other hath. (C, Book VIII, IX, 21)
�64
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Human beings are subject to the struggle between opposing Impulses
of a divided will. Individuals cannot will the good because the "disease
of the mind" called sin divides them against themselves.
But what does this dividedness mean in terms of the functioning
of the will itself? In Book XI of The Trinity, 2 Augustine states that the
will functions as a kind of unifier, which it does by fixing the attention
of the mind upon an object. Thus light enters the eye In a purely
mechanical manner, but the person sees, that is, becomes aware of
the object presented, because the will fixes the attention of the mind
upon it. In the moral sphere, where the attention is fixed upon goals,
the will attaches the individual to the good, and should ultimately
allow one to ascend to God, who Is the source of absolute good, truth,
and being.
The Inner force by means of which the will accomplishes Its work
is love 4 : "But we must remain in this (good) and cling to it by love
[dUectione), that we may enjoy the presence of that from which we are,
In the absence of which we would not be at all'' (T, Book 8, 4, 6). It
follows, then, that sin represents a rejection oflove In its highest sense
and a fall into imperfect forms of Jove-into lust [libido]. for example,
which Augustine characterizes at one point as "blameworthy desire"
[improbabanda cupidite) (OFC, Book 1, IV, 28). This means, finally,
that sin is the rejection of God, for according to 1 John 4:8, "He who
does not love does not know God; for God Is love" (Gr. agape; Lat.
caritas) (Revised Standard Version).
The blemished will, the will of natural human beings after the Fall,
cannot will the good because, having rejected God, it has rejected the
principle of love which would allow It to unite with and "cling" to the
good. From the, for Augustine historical, fact of humanity's Fall, the
bondage of the will to sin is the theoretical correlate. Love for Augustine
is essentially the experience of oneness with the object loved, a binding
together which involves a respect for the beloved's rights and wishes
to the degree that they become one's own rights and wishes and which
Is achieved through a reciprocity 1n the love relation. The blemished
will, though, constitutes a denial of reciprocity because it sets Its own
desires apart from and above those of the beloved. For example, the
lusting will desires to possess even at the expense of the individual or
object possessed.
It is here that we meet the contradiction in the will that defines it
as blemished since it divides it from Itself. The blemished will, just
because It Is will, whose Inner force is love, expresses some form of
love, and indeed this must be so since it is merely blemished and not
nonexistent. Even lust is a form of attempted oneness with another,
�STRONG
65
no matter how misguided or blameworthy the attempt may be. The
blemished will wishes to unite with the good, but cannot do so. It tries
to love, but is too much in bondage to its own dividedness to succeed.
It pulls itself both ways, and the result is perpetual struggle. And so
love must be bestowed on it from without and grace it with the only
experience which can free it from its bondage and make it whole.
Augustine cannot freely will his own conversion, but must accept it
as a gift from God.
As is evident. the irrgument for the individual's need of grace
proceeds from a radically different perspective than the argument for
free choice of the will. Whereas in the latter people confront the moral
universe as free agents and sponsors of good or evil, in the former they
find themselves in their most intimate experience already determined
by evil intentions and acts. The one position emphasizes the presence
of freedom, while the other emphasizes its lack. Each seems incompatible with the other, for if the will is free it cannot be in bondage,
and vice versa.
And yet for Augustine freedom and unfreedom were related
aspects of willing, and not only in the historical, sequential sense of
the Biblical account of Adam's and Eve's disobedience to God and the
consequent blemished freedom each later generation has inherited.
Original sin is the theory that accounts for an experienced fact; it is
the Apostolic interpretation of the Genesis story, the reading of which
convinced Augustine and other Christian converts of the truth of
Scripture. But this conviction must have arisen from a prior experience of a phenomenon in the human realm that reveals the factual
interrelationship offreedom and unfreedom which the theory is meant
to explain. Augustine substantiates the claim that freedom and unfreedom are interrelated experientially in his Confessions when he
writes:
Therefore was I at strife with myself, and rent asunder by
myself. And this rent befell me against my will, and yet
indicated, not the presence of another mind, but the punishment of my own. Therefore it was no more I that wrought it,
but sin that dwelt in me: the punishment of a sin more freely
committed, in that I was a son of Adam. (C, Book VIII, X, 22)
And in another passage he writes, "For the law of sin is the violence
of custom, whereby the mind is drawn and holden, even against its
will; but deservedly, for that it willingly fell into it" (C, Book VIII, V,
11). The reality of human freedom and the reality of human unfreedom
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
are experienced as a unity, the manifestation of one involving the
manifestation of the other.
But where does the unifYing experience lie? It is not found in a
feeling of spontaneous freedom, for by the very terms of Augustine's
understanding of humanity such a feeling can never occur: The
individual after the Fall, the individual in bondage to sin, is a divided
self and trapped within the split, unable to feel the wholeness and
integrity of being that spontaneity Implies. Nor can the experience be
found in the feeling of bohdage alone, for without some feeling of
freedom, bondage could never be recognized. The experience, therefore, must lie In some phenomenon the occurrence of which reveals
the actuality of human freedom despite the feeling of bondage and
coercion and yet which exhibits the actuality of bondage beyond the
feeling of freedom that is the precondition for the recognition of its
presence. And that phenomenon, I think, is the experience of guilt.
In what manner does guilt manifest both freedom and unfreedom?
The relationship is difficult to articulate, for by analyzing the components one risks losing the sense of the integral feeling itself. Guilt is
essentially an awareness that one has committed or desired to commit
an act of intended harm toward another and the wish to make amends
for it-more, to erase the intention as though It had never existed.
Looking back toward the former intention, the guilty individual says,
"I am responsible for the act or desire: I wanted to harm another, but
need not have wanted to." At the same time, the person asks him- or
herself, "If! need not have wanted to harm another, why then did I do
so? I did so because I was coerced into my decision by the evil
intentions themselves." Guilt presupposes both one's freedom (and
consequent feeling of responsibility) and one's lack of freedom (and
consequent feeling of coercion). In some manner guilty individuals feel
both that they freely chose to intend harm and that they could not
have so chosen unless those intentions had coerced them into it. They
feel at once the sponsor and victim of their evil intentions. And without
the presence of both feelings, the sense of guilt would not arise.
On the other hand, the guilty individual also actively wishes to
make amends for those former intentions. Such a wish involves a hope
to return to the situation that prevailed before the decision was made:
a hope to heal the breach that has sprung up between oneself and the
person one intended to harm and a hope to heal the breach that the
decision and resultant guilt have caused in oneself. It is in this context
that phrases such as "make one's peace with someone" or "make one's
peace with oneself' are used. But to make one's peace in either sense
�STRONG
67
is to escape one's feeling of guilt since it is guilt that maintains the
feeling of breach.
This aspect of guilt thus reveals the presence of freedom, for the
guilty individual is at last free of the former evil intentions. It also
underlines the presence of bondage, however, for the person can only
be absolved by the injured party. "Why not now? why not is there this
hour an end to my uncleanness?" asks Augustine shortly before his
conversion occurs (C, Book VIII, XII, 28). Guilty individuals cannot
absolve themselves becau~e the feeling of guilt itself pronounces them
unfit to do so. Although they are free of their earlier intentions, they
still feel sinful. The feeling of freedom, therefore, merely serves to
underscore the actuality of bondage.
Guilt, then, is both a judgment (a self-judgment, as it were) of
responsibility and a recognition of bondage-the two conditions from
which Augustine argued for the freedom and unfreedom of the human
will. It demonsirates human accountability before the law and the
need for redemption and grace, which is the message of Chiistianity
as Augustine construed it.
But although I have discussed guilt mainly in terms of occurrences
between human actors, this was not the only moral sphere against
which Augustine earned out his own discussions of freedom, unfreedam, and sin. Nor did he have in mind the purely legalistic sphere
within which guilt denotes the simple determination that someone
indeed committed an act with which he or she has been indicted. "But
Thou, 0 Lord my God, hearken; behold, and see, and have mercy, and
heal me, Thou, in whose presence I have become a problem to myself;
and that is my infirmity" is the way Augustine expresses it in his
CorifessiDns as he surveys the inextiicable tangle of good and evil in
his life (C, Book X, XXXIII, 50). This passage points to the Chiistian
notion of universal guilt, 5 or the individual before the bar of his or her
own conscience and his or her very existence decreed in need of
salvation and justification.
It is here, I think, clothed in the language of theology and born
out of the intensity of ills religious expeiience, that Augustine's
discussion of will discloses its wider significance. "And heal me, Thou,
in whose presence I have become a problem to myself": with these few
words Augustine lifts the inner, specifically human realm of existence
into a new kind of prominence.
Inwardness is, of course, as old as self-reflective humanity itself,
and its lise as a theme of thought can be traced back from Augustine
through Paul, through the Greek poets and dramatists, through the
Book of Job and other Jewish Biblical stones, and perhaps even
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
further through more ancient writings. It is the problem of the
individual's relationship to him- or herself in the world, or rather the
relation between that part of the individual which lives in the world
(physical and social) and relates to the world's demands and that part
which stands free, which contemplates, criticizes, perhaps even approves of and loves the worldly creature, but which stands apart from
it. Inwardness, then, is precisely the realm of human freedom and
unfreedom par excellence,, the domain beyond politics or physical law
in which individuals discover whether they are free or not, and in what
manner they can act on that freedom if it does exist. It is this complex
inner realm to which Augustine refers when he writes of the struggle
between the parts of the blemished will, and never before had it been
given such philosophical importance.
What shift in intellectual outlook did his concern with inwardness
introduce? I spoke earlier of the traditional notion that "the real is the
rational." Augustine's theory, however, breaks with that tradition, for
in fallen humanity, human beings unhealed by the gift of grace, reality
is also the irrational, the divided and conflicted inner self with all its
contradictory desires and needs; and feelings such as guilt, despair,
or love are its "signs and portents," the careful study of which reveals
the metaphysical condition of being human. If previous thinkers
emphasized reason as the essential characteristic ofhuman existence,
as the distinctive feature by which humanity's place in the world is
defined, Augustine focused on the inner relationship of the individual
to him- or herself, with all its conflicts and dividedness, as the essence
of humanity. That essence might be distorted for Augustine because
in his view humanity is fallen. But inwardness for him was still the
central locus from which emerges the definition of what it means to
be human. 6
Karl Jaspers wrote, "The self-penetration that set in with
Augustine continued down throu~h the Christian thinkers to Pascal,
to Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche." But indeed, the influence of his
self-penetration, and of his manner of self-definition, has been felt in
circles far wider than those of strictly Christian or philosophical
thinkers. For example, it marks the difference between the Orestes of
Aeschylus, whose experience of guilt for murdering his mother the
playwright portrays as an external flight through the world pursued
by vengeful Furies, and the tormented heroes of Kafka's novels and
stories, whose external surroundings have become reflections of the
self-vengeance meted out to them by their own guilty consciences; in
a less somber mood, it marks the contrast between an Odysseus
seeking to escape the enchantments of Circe, and a Don Quixote
�STRONG
69
willingly trapped in the illusions of his own imagination. Whether one
agrees with Augustine' religious convictions or not, his discussion of
will has had a decisive impact on intellectual attitudes. "I have become
a problem to myself." With the birth of Augustine's perplexity, Western
humanity's method of interpreting itself enters a new phase .
• • • •
Notes:
l. Arrian's Discourses on Epictetus, trans. P. E. Matheson, in The Stoic
and Epicurean Philosophers (New York: Modem Library, 1940), p. 406.
When I speak of similarities between Augustine's arguments and Stoic
theories, I refer solely to their common conviction that the will is free.
Augustine did not agree with the related Stoic doctrines of Fate and
apatheia (suppression of the passions) and in fact vigorously denounced them.
2. Quotations in English from Augustine's writings used in this essay
are taken from the following three works: On Free Choice of the Will,
trans. Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis: The
Library of the Liberal Arts, 1964); The Corifessions of Saint Augustine
(New York: Airman! Classics, 1969); and The 1Tinity, trans. Stephen
McKenna (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1963).
Because Augustine's works have been published in so many editions,
quotations are referenced in text not by page numbers, but instead
by the letters OFC, C, or T, respectively, followed by book, chapter,
and section numbers.
3. Quoted as part of the Appendix to the Library of the Liberal Arts edition
of On Free Choice, p. 152.
4. A small library of articles and books could be cited on Augustine's
philosophy oflove. Not only is the subject very complicated, but in his
writings he often uses different terms to mean approximately the same
thing (i.e., caritas and amor Det1, or sometimes the same term in
different contexts to carry different connotations (i.e., amor sui, or
self-love, which can be viewed either positively or negatively). In regard
to this essay, the highest or purest kind oflove would be that signified
by the Latin term caritas, or the Greek agape (in English "charity"),
used in 1 John 4:8 to mean divine love. This divine love is the power
by which the world is brought into harmony with itself and with God
("ordered in the highest degree"). For Augustine, all other forms oflove
have a relationship to caritas, no matter how evil or misguided they
may be, because everything that exists has a relationship to God.
DUectione, derived from the Latin term dUigere, has a positive conno-
�70
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tation, meaning love in the sense of "to esteem highly": libido and
cupidite, both negative in connotation, are disordered (overly possessive or greedy) forms of love. Whenever I use the word "love" in the
essay, I mean it in the highest sense of "charity."
This note and the discussion of love in the essay's main text are
based mainly on two sources: Karl Jaspers, Plato and Augustine (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962). pp. 95-99; J. Burnaby, Anwr
Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Hodder, 1938).
pp. 85-179.
5. Kierkegaard comes to mind immediately when one speaks of universal
guilt, or as he terms it, "essential guilt." But the notion runs throughout Christian theology and thinking. "In the state of sin, the guilt
remains as a permanent awareness of willful disorder, viz., the willful
'separation from God ... "' [The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 854]. In the state of sin, therefore,
individuals live with the permanent awareness of a breach with God
and thus a breach in the foundations of their own being.
6. Augustine expresses this metaphorically in his well-known phrase
pondus meum amor meus ("my weight is my love"): "The body by its
own weight strives toward its own place. Weight makes not downward
only, but to his own place .... My weight, is my love: thereby am I borne,
whithersoever I am borne" (C, XIII, IX, 10). Augustine never denies the
importance of reason, and in many instances explicitly says the
human soul is the rational soul. But when the topic of humanity's
place in the world is under consideration, it is the will that is most
important, with love as its motive force.
7. Karl Jaspers, Plato and Augustine, p. 119.
�The·Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry:
The Clark Lectures at Trinity
College, Cambridge, 1926, and
the Turnbull Lectures at the
Johns Hopkins University, 1933.
by T.S. Eliot.
edited by Ronald Schuchard.
Harcourt Brace, 1994, 343 pp.
Cordell D.K. Yee
T.S. Eliot's reputation as a literary critic rests largely on a few of his
essays. His most widely read essay is one of his earliest, ''Tradition
and the Individual Talent," which first appeared in 1919. In it Eliot
exhibits his skill at phrase-making, particularly in making the claims
that poetry is an escape from personality and from emotion, and that
the object of literary study is the poetry itself. These two claims have
exerted a powerful and lasting influence on the study of literature, at
least in the United States. Despite the various waves of critical fashion
that have come and gone in the past few decades, attention to the
poetry itself, explication of text, still predominates in the undergraduate teaching of literature. Literary works are studied apart from other
kinds of works-this in accordance with Eliot's notion that they
comprise a monolithic but dynamic whole, a tradition.
It is customary to divide Eliot's career into two phases-his modernist phase and his post-conversion phase, which begins some time
after 1928 when he, an American raised as a Unitarian, declared
himself to be "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglocatholic in religion." 1 The influence of ''Tradition and the Individual
Talent" has led to some neglect of Eliot's later critical writings. Eliot
is remembered most for a kind of formalism, impersonalism, and
anti-historicism, all somewhat revolutionary in the academic world of
the early twentieth century. The moral and religious emphasis of his
later essays-for example, The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and
Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948)-is often regarded as
Cordell D. K. Yee is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
retrogressive, anti-modemist, even counter-revolutionary, in that it
seems to repudiate Eliot's earlier insistence on the autonomy of art.
The publication of Eliot's eight Clark lectures, delivered at Cambridge
University in 1926, may force some revaluation of Eliot's critical
work-as Ronald Schuchard, the editor of the lectures, suggests. The
lectures show that Eliot's critical thought, even rather early in his
career, resists easy reduction into a set of "-isms."
The subject of the lectyres is metaphysical poetry. The term is
usually applied to sevente.!nth-century English poets like John Donne,
but Eliot seeks to extend its application to Dante in the thirteenth
century and to Charles Baudelaire and Jules Laforgue in the nineteenth. The lectures are an exploration of the ways in which it makes
sense to bring such different poets together under the same rubric.
Eliot recognizes the difficulty of his enterprise. Midway through the
lectures, Eliot says that the term metaphysical poetry escapes precise
definition. Nevertheless, he does identifY what he considers the key
characteristic of metaphysical poetry. Such poetry fuses thought with
feeling: "it elevates sense for a moment to regions ordinarily attainable
only by abstract thought, or on the other hand clothes the abstract, for
a moment with all the painful delight of flesh" (55) 2 · Here Eliot extends
to intellectual statements his notion of the "objective correlative," once
described as a concrete image-"a set of objects, a situation, a chain
of events"-that serves as the formula for a particular emotion· 3
Intellectual statements can also be translated into sensible form, thus
enlarging the world of sense. An illustration of this is Donne's "fusion
and identification of souls in sexual love" (54). Donne affords access to
the immaterial through the sensible; he is able to feel an idea so as to
make it yield its emotional equivalent. Thus one cannot think with Donne
unless one can feel with him: "In order to get the full flavour out of Donne,
you must construe analytically and enjoy synthetically" (124).
The rationale for Eliot's emphasis on the fusion of thought and
feeling is his belief that a precondition for great art is an alliance of
poetry and philosophy: poets at their best have a role in the life of the
mind. It is thus no surprise that Eliot's varieties of metaphysical poetry
tum out to be products of similar historical circumstances. They all
appear against a background of coherent systems of thought, or at! east
fragments of such systems. For Dante it is Thomist-Aristotelian
thought. For Donne it is "the fragments of every philosophical system
and every theological system up to his own time" (203), but primarily
Jesuitism and Calvinism. For Laforgue it is Arthur Schopenhauer and
Eduard von Hartmann. Differences in intellectual background account for the stylistic variations in metaphysical poetry:
�YEE
73
the acceptance of one orderly system of thought and feeling
results, in Dante and friends, in a simple, direct and even
austere manner of speech, while the maintenance in suspension
of a number ofphilosophies, attitudes and partial theories which
are enjoyed rather than believed, results, in Donne and in some
of our contemporaries, in an affected, tortuous, and often
over-elaborate and ingenious manner of speech. (120)
The stylistic differences show up most clearly in the poets' handling of
figurative language. Dante's similes and metaphors have a "rational
necessity": "the adjectives are chosen as they might be in a scientific
treatise, because they are the nearest possible to approximate what he
is driving at" (120-121). With Donne and those like him, the characteristic device is the conceit, the intricate development of an image or the
juxiaposition of discordant elements. Conceits entail risk since they can
lead to a loss of the clarity and precision achieved by Dante: a conceit is
"the extreme limit of the simile and metaphor which is used for its own
sake, and not to make clearer an idea or more definite an emotion" (138).
Conceits, however, can be used as a crtterton of excellence. They often
involve a fusion of thought and feeling. As Aristotle suggests in the Poetics
and Rhetoric, good metaphors have clarity, sweetness, and strangeness:
to metaphorize well means to contemplate likenesses between things.
Metaphysical conceits, at their best, lead to a strange sort of beauty: 'To
contemplate an idea, because it is my idea, to observe its emotional
infusion, to play with it, instead of using it as a plain and simple meaning,
brings often curious and beautiful things to light, though it lends itself,
this petting and teasing of one's mental offspring, to exiremities of
torturing oflanguage" (85).
The peak of metaphysical poetry is represented by Dante: he
"always finds the sensuous equivalent, the physical embodiment, for
the realisation of the most tenuous and refmed intensity . . . of
experience" (57). With Donne, there is some decline in quality, because in Donne there is no structure of thought. Mter Donne, poetry
progressively deteriorates because of what Eliot calls a "disintegration
of the intellect." Poets no longer try to develop both thought and feeling,
but emphasize one over the other. Not until the nineteenth century in
France are poets seen working to right the imbalance.
The brief literary history that Eliot offers is notable for some of its
omissions: Homer and Shakespeare, to name only two. 4 Eliot concedes that not all great poetry is metaphysical, but in explaining the
omissions, he says that metaphysical poetry was an impossibility for
the ancient world, and that Shakespeare was not philosophical. Eliot
�74
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
perhaps had second thoughts about such claims. Shortly after delivering the Clark lectures, Eliot judged them as "full of hasty generalisations[,] unsubstantiated statements and unverified references," and
written in an "abominable" style. It is not hard to justifY this judgment.
The lectures were composed in haste and suffer occasionally from
a lack of focus and clarity, desJ?ite Eliot's profession of Cartesian
strivings to be clear and distinct. The major points of the individual
lectures are not always qbvious, and the course of the lectures does
not always conform to Eliot's announced purposes. For example, in
one lecture Eliot proposes to discuss "the studies of Donne and their
influence upon his mind and poetry" (67). The lecture does give an
account of some of the authors and subjects Donne read in, but their
influence on Donne is hardly illustrated. Eliot says that Donne is to
be distinguished from the writers of the Middle Ages, but by the end
little light is shed on how Donne belongs to his own time and not to
the Middle Ages. What Eliot presents are some generalizations: for
example, that Donne "read a great deal without order or valuation"
and that he "thought in a spasmodic and fragmentary way when he
thought at all" (83)-all this without recourse to Donne's writings,
poetry or prose. Along the way, Eliot gets sidetracked by scholarly
debates and quibbles, despite his statement that he is attempting not
a work of scholarship, but of literary criticism.
As criticism of Dante, the lectures elaborate on what Eliot had said
in an essay dating from 1920. There Eliot refers to Dante's comprehensiveness and his success at making the intellectual perceptible.
He also hints at some similarities between Dante. "the great master of
the disgusting," and nineteenth-century French poets like Baudelaire:
''The contemplation of the horrid or sordid or disgusting, by an artist,
is the necessary and negative aspect of the impulse toward the pursuit
of beauty. "6 Eliot began to compare those French poets to the "school
of Donne" in ''The Metaphysical Poets," an essay dating from 1921.
But as far as I know, it is not until the Clark lectures that Eliot links
Donne directly to Dante to form a line of metaphysical poetry.
As criticism of English metaphysical poetry, the Clark lectures do not
go much further than the 1921 essay. There Eliot had already drawn
attention to the use of conceits by seventeenth-century English poets,
proposed fusion of thouglit and feeling as a gauge of literary merit, and
posited his theory of the dissociation of sensibility, which, according to
Eliot, has hampered poetry since some time in the seventeenth century.
In addition, some of the explanations and analyses in the earlier essay
are unsurpassed in the lectures. A case in point is Eliot's treatment of
�75
YEE
this line by Donne from 'The Relique": "A bracelet of bright haire about
the bone.'' 7 In the lectures Eliot says that this line
is an example of those things said by Donne which could not
have been put equally well otherwise, or differently by a poet
of any other school. The associations are perfect: those of
"bracelet", the brightness of the hair, after years of dissolution, and the fmal emphasis of "bone", could not be improved
upon. (125-126)
In the essay less seems to say more. Alter observing that "some of
Donne's most successful and characteristic effects are secured by brief
words and sudden contrasts," Eliot goes on to say that in the line
quoted above "the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden
contrast of associations of 'bright hair' and of 'bone. "'8 Eliot's account
in the lectures, though lengthier, omits mention of what makes the
line striktng (beyond the incongruity between a grave and a bracelet
of bright hatr)- the sudden contrast of associations: for example,
softness versus hardness, warmth versus coldness, life versus death. 9
At other places in the lectures Eliot does not take the time to discuss
the workings of the imagery. It is almost as if the lectures presuppose
knowledge of the essay.
All this is not to say that the lectures are not worth reading. They
are, though not primarily because of what Eliot says about Dante,
Donne, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, Baudelaire, Lafargue, or
any of the other poets he treats. The lectures do hold some interest
for what they reveal about Eliot. Eliot was notorious for his reticence
and coyness about himself and his work, but there are places in the
lectures where Eliot's dry humor comes through, as in this belittling
remark about Crashaw:
Subtract from Donne the powerful intellect, substitute a
feminine for a strongly masculine nature, posit a devotional
temperament rather than a theological mind, and add the
influence of Italian and Spanish literature, take note of
changes in the political and ecclesiastical situation in England, and you have Crashaw. (162)
The mathematical form of this statement-it is phrased in part as a
subtraction problem-follows its function, to diminish Crashaw's reputation. Eliot himself may also be a target here. He may be engaging in
self-parody, making fun of his efforts to raise criticism to a science.
Despite this apparent gibe at critical pretension, the value of the
lectures does lie partly in the illustration of critical practice. In them
�76
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Eliot attempts to practice kind of criticism he advocates in essays
published in the wake of 'Tradition and the Individual Talent." These
essays qualifY, if not repudiate, the earlier essay's claim for the
autonomy of literature. In "Hamlet and His Problems" (1920) Eliot at
first seems to uphold this claim: "Qua work of art, the work of art
cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret; we can only
criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other works of
art." 10 Insofar as criticiSJTI involves comparison of works of art, the
study of literature seems 'to be an autonomous activity. Eliot, however, adds that "for 'interpretation' the chief task is the presentation
of relevant historical facts which the reader is not assumed to know."
This statement seems to call for some historical research, but Eliot
does not elaborate. In "Metaphysical Poets" Eliot gives an example of
how historical facts can be used-he relates historical circumstances
to literary style. 'The Function of Criticism" (1923) re-affirms the use
of history: a critic must have a "highly developed sense of fact." A
critic's function is not to interpret, to communicate his understanding
of a work, but to compare and analyze works and to furnish readers
with facts they "would otherwise have missed." Fact cannot cormpt
taste; at worst it can gratifY a taste for history "under the illusion that
it is assisting another." 11
In the Clark lectures, Eliot enlarges the scope of criticism further.
He says that a critic cannot afford to study literature in isolation:
The literary critic must remain a critic of literature, but he
must have sufficient knowledge to understand the points of
view of the sciences into which his literary criticism merges.
You cannot know your frontiers unless you have some notion
of what is beyond them. (226)
Eliot admits that his expectations of critics are formidable. For a
model he looks to Aristotle, the "only writer who has established a
literary criticism which both sticks to the matter in hand and yet
implies the other sciences." Unfortunately for the modem critic,
Aristotle is a model that cannot be equaled, because his comprehensiveness, "in the expanse of modem science and knowledge," is
impossible (226). Nevertheless, in the lectures Eliot tries to practice
what he preaches: on the poetry, he brings to bear history, philosophy, and even psychology. An understanding of Donne's poetry, he
says, depends on some understanding of what Eliot, for lack of a better
word, calls "personality" the very thing that a poet is said to extinguish
in 'Tradition and the Individual Talent." The impersonality he advocated in that essay might apply to practicing poets, but can be
�YEE
77
jettisoned when it comes to criticism. Eliot's polymathic view of
literary criticism precedes by more than a half century the rise of the
interdisciplinary study of literature in the form of the "new historicism," which does not seem quite so new, especially in light of the
Clark lectures. In the lectures Eliot has clearly departed from the
formalist emphases of the New Criticism, and it has taken some time
for literary critics and scholars, in the United States at least, to come
to a similar view.
Eliot's attempts to exp'and the domain of criticism help to make
clear his place in the Western literary tradition. A tendency of recent
scholarship has been to elide Eliot's differences from his predecessors,
for example, the Romantics. Eliot's focus on emotion and feeling in
'Tradition and the Individual Talent," for example, might suggest that
Romanticism had influenced him more than he thought. That may
be so, but to be influenced by Romanticism does not necessarily make
one a Romantic. Influence, as Eliot points out, does not preclude
revolt. Eliot's addition of thought to feeling typifies his reaction
against Romantic notions about poetry, especially as exemplified by
Wordsworth's famous and still influential formula that poetry is the
"spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Poetry, for Eliot, as he
makes clear in the lectures, is not simply a matter of emotional
expression. At its best it also involves intellectual effort and struggle.
By widening criticism's scope, Eliot seems to be trying to emerge
from the shadow of Matthew Arnold, whom he faulted for not being
enough of a critic. Eliot took issue specifically with Arnold's tum
toward politics, and implicitly with Arnold's much-maligned "touchstones"-specimen passages quoted with the expectation that their
value required little or no elucidation. Arnold represents a danger for
Eliot: his advocacy of treating poetry as poetry could lead to another
version of Arnold's gem-studded crtticism. In the Clark lectures Eliot
frequently resorts to Amoldian touchstones, trusting that lines from
Blake, for example, will appear unpoetic, or that lines from Crashaw
will obviously lack intellectual effort.
Nevertheless, Eliot does succeed in going beyond Arnold's dictum
to see "the object as in itself it really is." On the whole, the lectures
succeed in illustrating Eliot's fusion of the critical and the creative-a
rejection of Arnold's separation of the two. His juxtaposition of Dante
and Donne is bold, conceited even. Some of his critical claims serve
to illustrate poetic technique. They reveal Eliot to be a practitioner of
what might be called "metaphysical criticism." In the Clark lectures
the form of Eliot's criticism follows that of his subjects.
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The lectures are useful as criticism in yet another way: they help
one to understand Eliot's own work. Nowhere in the lectures does Eliot
mention self-commentary as an aJm explicitly or even implicitly. But
as Eliot was fond of repeating, a poet does not always understand his
own purposes, is not always the best judge of his work. This applies
also to the poet-critic.
Eliot was too self-effacing to say so, but his poetry up to the time
of the Clark lectures fits !)is characterizations of metaphysical poetry.
In "The Metaphysical Poets" he says that modern poetry must be
difficult, for precisely the same reasons that Donne is difficult. In his
own time Eliot perceives a background of disorder:
Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity,
and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined
sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The
poet must become more and more comprehensive, more
allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if neces-
sary, language into his meaning. 12
Eliot's championing of Donne has an ulterior motive. By claJming
Donne for the "direct current of English poetry," Eliot tries to make
his own place in that current, or in more contemporary terms, he
attempts to re-form the canon. Like Donne, Eliot is conceited. The
opentng lines of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in which the
evening sky is compared to "a patient lying etherised upon a table,"
are as incongruous with their context as what one finds in Donne.
Also like Donne, Eliot is sometimes given to obscurity and displays of
learning. The best example of this is The Waste Land whose allusiveness, indirectness, and comprehensiveness are apparent from a glance
at the references in Eliot's notes. A defense of Donne fro~ charges of
excessive ingenuity and erudition is thus in effect a self-defense. A
statement Eliot made in 1942 lends support to this view:
the critical writings of poets, of which in the past there have
been some very distinguished examples, owe a great deal of
their interest to the fact that the poet, at the back of his mind,
if not as his ostensible purpose, is always trying to defend the
kind of poetry he is writing, or to formulate the kind that he
wants to write. 13
In the Clark lectures Eliot is engaged in the activities of defending and
formulating. He uses Donne to defend the kind of poetry he had
written. In Dante he begins to see the kind he wants to write. His
elevation of Dante's poetry seems to have led him to search for the
�YEE
79
intellectual order he saw behind Dante. Eliot thought that he had
located it in "anglo-catholicism," and this changed the character of his
poetry. To appreciate the change, one needs only to compare Four
Quartets with The Waste Land.
Eliot said that poets do not seek to become great, but simply to
make a contribution. In the Clark lectures, however, we see Eliot
himself striving covertly for greatness, placing himself in the company
of Dante, Donne, and Baudelaire, and setting the terms for the
comparison. What Eliot Wl'ote in "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
applies here: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning
alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his
relation to the dead poets and artists." 14 One of the functions of
criticism, Eliot says, is to help decide what is useful. Understanding
Dante, Donne, and Baudelaire, Eliot implies in the Clark lectures, is
useful for understanding his own work. If one function of criticism is
also to help us read better, the Clark lectures seem to fulfill that
function best with the works of their own author.
Eliot had intended to rework the Clark lectures into a book entitled
The School of Donne, but did not get around to it. Perhaps it is more
accurate to say that he did rework the lectures, not tnto a book, but
into shorter essays. Eliot later published essays on Dante and
Baudelaire, which expand on generalizations made in the lectures.
The essay "Dante" (1929) develops further the notion that Dante is a
model of precision, clarity, and intensity. The essay "Baudelaire"
(1930) takes up the moral theme introduced at the end of the Clark
lectures, where Eliot suggests that a renewed interest in questions of
good and evil contributed to the metaphysicality of nineteenth-century
French poets. The essay discusses Baudelaire's moral preoccupations, arguing that his sense of evil implies good. It also commends
Baudelaire for elevating imagery of the "sordid life of a great metropolis" to the ''first lntens!ty." 15 As in the Clark lectures, Eliot seems to
be defending his own work, poems such as "Preludes" and The Waste
Land, which employ images of the sordidness of metropolitan life, and
in which a sense of evil might be said to imply good.
In 1933 Eliot revised and condensed the Clark lectures into the
Turnbull lectures, given at the Johns Hopkins University and now
published together with the Clark lectures. In the revised lectures he
is more forceful in advocating a historical approach to literature, but
is less sanguine about the certainty attainable by the critical enterprise. There are also foreshadowings of later essays: in the Turnbull
lectures Eliot speaks of poetry as "incantation," looking forward to his
interest in the music of poetry-a contrast with his earlier focus on
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
imagery. He also speaks of metaphysical poetry as "civilised poetry,"
a shift in terminology that looks ahead to his essay "What Is a Classic?"
(1944).
By the time of this essay, "metaphysical" had long been superseded
by another term of approbation, "classic." The classic has the same
characteristics as the metaphysical: universality, comprehensiveness, and fusion of thought and feeling. In addition, Homer and
Shakespeare, just as th~y were not metaphysical, are not classic
either. Now, however, Eliot is better equipped to state his reasons:
their societies were not "mature." He had argued in earlier writings
that the worth of a poet's work should be measured by the greatness
of the underlying philosophy: Shakespeare's age was not a mature
time for philosophy. Eliot had also stated that literary criticism was
only the beginning of the study of poetry: it should be completed by
criticism from a "definite ethical and theological standpoint." 16 In
Shakespeare's work Eliot has trouble detecting a deep religious sensibility. This limited religious sensibility is a sign of the fragmentation
of common culture in Europe since Dante's time. Eliot's interest in
the historical background of literary production might seem to imply
a denial of the possibility that poets can transcend their historical
circumstances. This denial might seem consistent with Eliot's earlier
statement that poets surrender themselves to their tradition and with
his preoccupation in his own poetry with the problem of transcending
time. But the denial is only apparent.
Eliot's excursion into literary history in the Clark lectures leads him
not to critical relativism, but to some criteria of poetic worth. Literatures develop and mature. As a result, literary works can be ranked.
"A mature literature," Eliot was to write later, "has a history behind
it"-history defined as "an ordered though unconscious progress of a
language to realize its potentialities within its own lirnitations." 17 In
anticipation of this later formulation, the Clark lectures show that
historicism need not mean neglect of questions of value. For Eliot,
history does not provide grounds for forsakingjudgments of value, but
constitutes a basis for standards of transcendent value. Eliot is a
historicist, but his historicism is in the service of classicism.
This all-too-brief survey of Eliot's later criticism should suffice to
show how regularly Eliot retumed to the Clark lectures. With the
lectures out of view, the issues and themes taken up in the later essays
seem newer than they would otherwise: Eliot appears to be dealing
with fresh thoughts. With the lectures in view, Eliot's criticism seems
more static and richer than it once appeared. It seems doubtful that
he ever really belonged to the period of the New Criticism, though he
�YEE
81
may have helped to initiate it. 18 If in moving beyond formalism,
literary critics and scholars of the last three decades or so had thought
they were leaving Eliot behind, they were wrong. Eliot had already
gone beyond formalism and been where they are now. Literary theory,
it seems, is still trying to catch up with him. 19
*
*
*
*
Notes
1. T. S. Eliot, For LancelotAndrewes: Essays on Style and Order (London:
Faber & Gwyer, 1928), ix.
2. All parenthetical page references are to the work under review,
Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry.
3. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems," in his The Sacred Wood: Essays on
Poetry and Criticism (7th ed. London: Methuen, 1950), 100.
4. Another omission is non-Western literatures. It is not clear whether
Eliot believed metaphysicalit;y belonged exclusively to Western poetry,
but it is clear that Eliot valued his reading in Eastern literature: "I am
not a Buddhist, but some of the early Buddhist scriptures affect me
as parts of the Old Testament do" (The Use of Poetry and the Use of
Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England
[Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933], 82). In After Strange
Gods, a piece noted more for intolerance than for tolerance, Eliot wrote
that his study of Sanskrit and Patanjali's metaphysics at Harvard had
left him "in a state of enlightened mystification." He also professed
"the highest respect" for the Chinese mind and Chinese civilization:
at its highest Chinese civilization has "graces and excellences which
may make Europe seem crude." He noted a current fashion for
Confucius, observing that linguistic and cultural distance made it
difficult for a Westerner to understand his philosophy. (See After
Strange Gods: A Primer of Modem Heresy [London: Faber and Faber,
1934], 40.) In later years Eliot seems to have changed his mind about
the accessibility of Eastern works to Western readers. In Notes
towards the Definition of Culture he writes of the influence of the
poetical translations from the Chinese made by Ezra Pound and
Arthur Waley; they "have probably been read by every poet writing in
English." Western literature may constitute a unity, but not one cut
off from the East. Through interpreters "specially gifted for appreciating a remote culture, every literature may influence every other." (See
Notes towards the Definition of Culture, in Eliot's Christianity and
Culture: "The Idea of a Christian Society" and "Notes towards the
Definition ofCulture"3 [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968],
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
191.) Those who seek refuge in Eliot from multiculturalism probably
ought to look elsewhere.
5. In fairness to Eliot, it should be pointed out that he composed the
lectures under trying circumstances: he was not in the best of health,
and he was experiencing marital difficulties.
6. Eliot, "Dante," in his The Sacred Wood, 169.
7. John Donne, 'The Relique," l. 6, in Herbert J.C. Grierson, ed .. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921). 21. Eliot used this anthology as
a source of examples for the Clark lectures. AB Schuchard documents in
his footnotes to the Clark lectures, Eliot frequently did not transcribe his
examples accurately. In one case, he miscopied "thee" as "tree," so that
two ltnes from Abraham Cowley's ode, 'To Mr. Hobs," become: "1 never
yet the livtng soul could see./ But in thy books and tree" (196).
8. Eliot, 'The Metaphysical Poets," in his Selected Essays (new ed. New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1950). 242-243.
9. But in neither the essay or the lectures does Eliot mention how
alliteration helps to unite the disparate elements.
10. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems," in The Sacred Wood, 96.
11. Eliot, 'The Function of Criticism," in Selected Essays, 19-21.
12. Eliot, 'The Metaphysical Poets," in Selected Essays, 248.
13. Eliot, 'The Music of Poetry," in On Poetry and Poets, 26.ln 1961 Eliot
said that in his early criticism he was "implicitly defending the sort of
poetry that 1 and my friends wrote." See his To Criticize the Critic and
Other Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965), 16.
14. Eliot, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent," in The Sacred Wood, 49.
15. Eliot, "Baudelaire," in Selected Essays, 377.
16. Eliot, "Religion and Literature," in Frank Kermode, ed., Selected Prose
ofT.S. Eliot(NewYork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Farrar, Straus and
Gtroux, 1975), 97.
17. Eliot, "What Is a Classic?" (1944), in his Poetry and Poets (London:
Faber and Faber, 1957). 55-56.
18.ln 1956 Eliot declined to take credit for the New Criticism: "1 fall to
see any critical movement which can be said to derive from myself,
though 1 hope that as an editor 1 gave the New Criticism, or some of
it, encouragement and an excerise ground in The Criterion." See Eliot's
essay, "The Frontiers of Criticism," in On Poetry and Poets, 106.
�YEE
83
19. I will cite one example of the Eliotic tincture of some current literary
theory: "there can be no general theory of canon formation that would
predict or account for the canonization of any particular work, without
specif'ying first the unique historical conditions of that work's production and reception. Neither the social identity of the author nor the
work's proclaimed or tacit ideological messages definitively explain
canonical status" (John Gu!llory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of
Literary Canon Fonnation [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993]. 85). This seems . to be a more Latinate version of much of what
Eliot says in "What Is a Classic?" I don't think that I have caught up
with Eliot either, since I am hardly as comprehensive as Eliot would
have demanded. But I owe thanks to members of a preceptorial in the
fall of 1994 for helping me make up some ground.
�84
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�A Suitable Boy: A Novel
by Vikram Seth.
(First published in India in 1993)
Harper Collins, 1993, 1379 pp.
Eva T. H. Brann
What are book reviews for? Some are to vent righteous spleen-a
scribbler has wasted our time, and here is the moment for revenge.
Some are to establish superiority-what an author has made a critic
can now break. Some are to whet the appetite-a writer has captivated
our attention, and now we want to entice others into the same
delighted captivity.
It is this third motive that causes me to report on my recent reading
of A Suitable Boy by Seth (pronounced to rhyme with "gate" or "great").
To persuade one's friends to read even an ordinary-sized novel is a
responsibility. They part with some of their money and invest some of
their life. But here is a huge book, a three-weeks' book for a gulping
reader like myself, or a three-months read at a more moderate pace.
I will venture to attempt to snaffle you into it, and upon my head be it.
Moreover, while you are at it you might as well, I suggest, read
Seth's two earlier books, From Heaven Lake (1983) and The Golden
Gate (1986).
From Heaven Lake is, as far as I know, the latest in that proud
procession of"making it to Lhasa" books. I have a love for.trave1 books
which has become a passion since I spend most of my life in an office.
[fhis passion is aided and abetted by one of our alumni, Jerry Caplan,
A'73, with whom I exchange title for title and sometimes book for book.
In fact, From Heaven Lake went out to him yesterday.) Among travel
books I read most avidly the Tibetan type, for the intrepidity required
of the travellers, for the stupendousness of the Himalayan "Roof of the
World," for the romance of the real Shangri-la, for the mystery of
forbidden Lhasa, for the grandeur of Potala Palace, for the strange
plausibility of Buddhist practice, and-this reading is in a different
key-for the pathos of the destruction wreaked on this vulnerably
beautiful civilization by the Communist Chinese in the sixties. Before
getting back to Seth, I cannot resist here recommending the Tibetan
books of Alexandra David-Neel. the most adaptable, courageous,
Eva T. H. Brann is Dean at St. John's College, Annapolis.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
86
learned and funny member of that astounding tribe of women travellers who for three centmies now have been making distant worlds
unsafe for officialdom.
Seth's Tibet book makes delightful reading, but l mention it here
really mostly because on occasion it breaks into verse. Such occasional verse foreshadows his next book and first novel, The Golden
Gate: A Novel in Verse. (Versification is, it seems, a different art from
poetry; Seth has also published two books of poems, one of them called
The Humble Administrator's Garden, which I have not read.) The
Golden Gate is a California novel-and thus for us orientals a kind of
travel book-written entirely in an iambic tetrameter stanza with a
complex rhyme scheme borrowed from Johnston's "luminous translation" ofPushkin's Eugene Onegin. (On Seth's versified recommendation I bought it, and spent several happy nights discovertng that the
Russian national epic is, of all things, witty.)
"A Novel in Verse" may sound unlikely if not repellent. Seth reports
attending a party
Hosted by (long live) Thomas Cook
Where my Tibetan travel book
Was honored
and an editor
seized my arm: "Dear fellow,
What's your next work? "A Novel... Great!
We hope that you, dear Mr. Seth-"
"... In verse," I added. He turned yellow.
In fact, it turns out to be more readable than many a prose novel, and
for all its playfulness, quite moving. It also seems to me to prefigure
one of the qualities that makes A Suitable Boy so engaging a work-involvement. I mean that each of the cast of characters is involved with
all the others, in selies or in parallel, in accordance with the recognized
register of traditional and contemporary "relationships"-lover, exlover, divorced lover, paterfamilias, materfamilias, counsellor, physician, husband, wife, fliend, fellow-demonstrator, support-giver, and
suitor, unsuitable or suitable. The verse novel and the prose novel-A
Suitable Boy is subtitled A Novel as if to set it off from The Golden
Gate-have this feature in common, that the author has an easy
command of every local tradition and every latest trend, yet presents,
for all his huge absorptive virtuosity, no superciliously scintillating
comedy of manners, but a warm, even loving, account of the human
�BRANN
87
nodes in which these conventional relations terminate, in California
or in India.
Why, besides the reason given, is A Suitable Boy subtitled A Novel,
I keep wondering. What else could it be? Well, judging by its length,
it my be taken for another Anglo-Sanscrit epic. (There is actually such
a book by Shashi Tharoor, a very funny book full of English and
Sanscrit literary allusions, called The GreatlndianNovel, 1989, based
on and named after the JVahabharata.) Or it might be read as a social
history oflndia, (Seth did do a lot of research) or as seven novels bound
in one (Seth had actually planned a series of novels covering half a
century). In fact, it is all of these. But it is, I suppose the author meant,
above all and unabashedly a novel at a time when the novel has been
pronounced a finished genre. Critics have remarked that Seth is quite
unaffected by this news and that he is determinedly unexperimental,
just as if straight novel-writing were still an option.
Here I cannot resist recurring to a favorite observation of mine, a
secret by now so open that the critics have begun to bruit it about. It
is a fact designed to make those of us who wield English As A Second
Language proud and pleased. The English language is about the nicest
thing that happened to us immigrants. It is the thing we gained,
whatever else we lost, and now our debt is being repaid. For while the
language and its literature is under assault by popular carelessness
and intellectual wilfulness in its home countries, the fom1er margins
are coming to the rescue. The most agile, handsome, freshly traditional
Engiish is being written by bilingual authors at home in Chinese,
Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi-to name some I know, by Timothy Mo,
Kazuo lshiguru, Tayeb Salih, and Vikrarn Seth himself. They display
an unselfconcious sense of possession and an unabashed English
literacy. (The character who seems to represent Seth himself in the
book, the eligible young writer Amit Chatterji, has it said of him that
"Jane Austen is the only woman in his life," and Amit himself excuses
the over-a-thousand page novel he is writing by reference to Middlemarch-now on our program, I am happy to· say.) And their novels are
full of novelistic invention-so rich in current content. who cares if the
form be passe.
I have heard, and could in any case have guessed, that the use of
English is a fiercely touchy issue in India, but while the nationalists
and intellectuals argue, the writers write. Seth went home to live with
his family in New Delhi to write his novel, and it appears to me to be
an Indian Novel. At least I seemed to learn a lot about a time in India
of special interest to me, the years 1951-52, half a decade after
Independence and Partition. As readers of my reviews in this journal
�88
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
may recall, I am a great admirer of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, and Seth's
period falls between that work and its sequel, Staying On. (I hope one
day to learn what Seth thinks of this predecessor work, which he must,
somehow, have taken into account. There is, for example, an invented
city, Brahmpur, in Seth's book, of which "a few misguided souls"
assert that its name means "the city of illusion and error;" such a city
name, Mayapore, also occurs in Scott's Jewel in the Crown.) But then
agaln A Suitable Boy is an.Anglo-Indian novel, and the mode of being
Indian that several of its protagonists display is to out-English the
English. This mode may seem shameful or comical to people devoted
to ressenttment, but to me the point is that these devotees to anglicization succeed so well. Their English is pleasantly and playfully
correct, they have appropriated Shakespeare, and they can quote
more English poets than I have even heard of. ''They," of course, means
Seth himself, whose gift for language play is marvelous. Indian English
is many-voiced, and Seth renders the variants with affection. There is
the nonchalant idiom of the Oxbridge graduate, the just-off diction of
the Midlands university student, the over-correctness of the hometralned official, and, most delightful, the inspired solecism of the babu,
the Hindu clerk. A family retalner, Biswas Babu, has a genius that
way: "a different kettle of tea," advice that "runs off your back like
duck's water," and "commenstruable" for "commensurable." The most
hilarious passages in an often very funny book are Seth's renditions
of the English verses written by the members of the Brahmpur Literary
Society.
The authmial voice is, in contrast, smoothly unobtrusive, to let the
various flavors of spoken speech come out. Seth, wisely, makes no
concessions to the non-Indian reader's ignorance of the ordinary terms
of Indian life, such as titles or colloquial terms like angreziyath,
evidently something like "anglomania". (This guess was confirmed by
a friendly functionary at the Indian Embassy.) In particular, there is
incessant reference to delicious sounding but image-void foods and
drinks. What for example, might a gulabjumam be? A sweet, it is clear
and appetizingly gloppy-sounding, but made of what? So, like life, this
novel requires us to live with and around these terminological mysteries. No doubt a future edition will give in and supply a glossary.
Besides the pervasive comedy of language, the book has some
lovably, comic characters. If you like the literature of the Jewish
Mother, you will love emotive Mrs. Mehra, whose daughter, Lata, is
the heroine of the book, the one for whom "a suitable boy" is to be
found. There is also an irresistible child. (To me the presence of such
a personage, like Petya Rostov in War and Peace, is the penultimate
�89
BRANN
test of an author's skill.) His name is Bhaskar Kapoor. and he is Lata's
little nephew. He is a mathematical monomaniac. For example, here
his favorite uncle. Maan, is taking his leave:
'Bye. Maan Maama ... oh, did you know that if you have a
triangle like this, and if you draw squares on the sides like
this, and then add up these two squares you get a square,'
Bhaskar gesticulated. 'Every time.' he added .
..
'Yes. I do know that.' Smug frog, thought Maan. ·... Do you
want a good-bye sum?'
We would have to invent an AP Freshman mathematics tutorial for
that little genius.
This same Bhaskar nearly dies. This is a novel of ordinary life, and
mostly of middle class life at that. Seth has a gift for making the
narrative run along like a colorless stream of water with a constant
rippling of events. again like life. And then suddenly. and yet again
like life. a torrential disaster comes rushing down. There is the horror
at the Pul Mela. the venue of a great Ganges festival, where crowds
panic, a thousand are dead in a quarter of an hour, and Bhaskar's
hand slips "digit by digit" out of his mother's grasp. The reader, this
reader at least. immersed tn the stream of action thinks. "Oh no, not
Bhaskar!" and an instant later, stepping outside. "Must he-Seth-do
that to us?"
Seth's ability to build up a catastrophe. be it for a crowd or for a
character, by a slow-rising of the narrative flow. to write a tempestuous
episode. and then, as happens in life, to let it die down and stream
away. is remarkable. Equally accomplished is his weavtng of the web
of involvement I spoke of before.
There are four families: the three Hindu clans, the private middle
class Mehras. the political Kapoors. the literately chattertng, coupletmaking Chatterjis, and fourth. the demoted, post-Independence nawabs. the Muslim Khans. The Hindu families are related to each other
by marriage and to the Muslims by friendship. The author has kindly
supplied a family chart.
The bar to tnterreligious marriage is one of the novel's lines. In a
bookstore, Lata meets a handsome young Muslim. "the most unsuitable boy of all," Kabir. She is flipping through Tennyson and he
recommends to her Courant and Robbtns (a delightful all-purpose
mathematics text which we once used in the junior mathematics
tutorial). Passionate love develops. but ultimately. by her own will. she
yields to her mother's wishes. It is neither tragedy or sudden glory,
�90
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and it reminds us that a novelist's proper function is to make the
non-tragic and the inglortous, that is, ordinary life, deeply satisfying.
Other issues are unobtrusively broached: the obsessive intra-Indian color consciousness, the unextirpated caste system, the struggles
of the energetic commercial classes (we learn a lot about the shoe
trade), the ramshackle and rambunctious new democracy, and the
tenacious struggle of an old religion against modem imputations of
superstition. The point is ,that it is all done through the lives of people
who are knit into a network of blood and social and emotional
relations. Seth's control, his ability to yield to his characters the
freedom to be, while keeping them enmeshed each with all, is what
seems to me his main novelistic virtue, over and above even his
linguistic and observational virtuosity.
To the West, India seems infinite, but A Suitable Boy is only long.
Seth by craft has managed to impose closure on his temporal slice
through her enormous life-though, happily, without foreclosing a
continuation, in Indian fashion. The versified table of contents ends
with a half-promise:
The curtain falls, the players take their bow
And wander off the stage-at least for now.
�Karate-Do and Zen:
An Inquiry
by Jorge H. -Aigla
Do Press, 1994.
James Carey
This book deals with the question of how Zen Buddhism as a practice
can be realized in a setting which might at first glance seem altogether
antithetical to it. The author, Jorge H. -Aigla, has been practicing the
martial arts for the past 25 years, and is currently ranked fifth Dan
(i.e., holds a fifth degree black belt), master instructor, in Wado Ki
Kai Karate- Do, a style of Shoto Kan Karate-Do. His famfiiartty with
the martial arts is broad and deep. After practicing medicine in San
Francisco for six years, he joined the teaching faculty of St. John's
College in 1985. Over the past decade he has offered free classes in
Karate-Do to interested members of the college community. During this
time he has also read widely and has deepened his understanding of
Eastern and Western thought. His book is a readable, intelligent account
of both the spirttual roots and the physical principles of Karate-Do.
Most people in this country think of Karate only as a bare-handed
fighting method of Asian migin. Few, even among its practitioners.
think of it as a Do. The Japanese word "Do" is derived from the Chinese
word "Dao'' (sometimes spelled "Tao''). and is conventionally translated
as "way". Karate- Do might then be construed as a way oflife infused
with the principles of Karate. This formulation is insufficiently exact, for
almost any set of principles, drawn from any sources however dubious,
could be said to constitute a way of life, for better or worse. But Karate,
along with several other Asian martial arts and activities such as
calligraphy, flower arrangement, and the tea ceremony, is held to be a
means of access to and a wakeful participation in the Way, the latter
being understood as an impersonal and underlying, though largely
concealed, principle of harmony immanently governing the world.
Karate-Do and Zen- An Inquiry elucidates the concept of the Way,
which is of Taoist origin, in relation to the Buddhist concept of
emptiness (Sunyata). Mr. Aigla presents a thoughtful account of how
an individual who would take his bearings by these concepts should
regard himself in relation to the environing world, and to his fellows
Mr. Carey is a tutor at St. John's College in Santa Fe and coordinator for the new
Graduate Program in Eastern Classics. He has been a practitioner of Genji Kai
Karate for the past eight years.
�92
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In particular. Sunyata as a principle applicable to man means primarily emptiness of ego, absence of self-centeredness. In the course of
practicing a martial art one discovers that solicitude for the self Is a
gross Impediment, most conspicuously In those situations where it
might have seemed least dispensable. Indeed, the very expression
"self-defense" Is misleading, certainly as a name for the goal of
learning a martial art, since focussing on the self Is a principal
hindrance to proper execution of the movements that comprise the
art. The more one forgets 'oneself and allows these movements to take
on a life of their own, to happen automatically, so to speak, the greater
one's prospects of achieving technical proficiency and, paradoxically,
the greater one's prospects of successful self-defense should the
extreme situation arise In which one is forced into a fight.
Karate-Do, as an attunement to the Way, comprises specific features that are unique to It and to a few other martial arts. One of these
is the Kata, which is a form, a set of movements and techniques
performed in a prescribed sequence. Each style of Karate has Katas
that are unique to it, though there is considerable overlap, and the
number of Katas included in the different styles varies widely. Some
Katas are quite old. There is nothing comparable to them in Western
boxing or wrestling, or in Western sports generally. The closest parallel
could be found in gymnastics, although there the order of movements
is not entirely prescribed. The foundations of any Kata are the basic
techniques: blocks, strikes, punches, and kicks, executed from a
variety of stances. Mr. Aigla laments the custom in many schools of
rushing the beginning Karateka (or practitioner of Karate) from these
basics into Kata. "Basics are never to be quickly gotten over with: they
are to be gone through patiently and with full commitment; they are
to be lived "(p.55). Only if a Kata is fmnly grounded in the basic
techniques can it be performed with spirit. As the Karateka becomes
more and more experienced in the performance of a given Kata, he
reaches a point where the movements begin to come of their own
accord. "When a Katais well done it actually ends up being embodied
in the practitioner: a Kata is said to be learned only when it is done
with full spirit and emotional content. I say the Karateka 'does a Kata';
it would be just as accurate to say that 'the Kata does the Karatekd
by carrying him through its movements" (p.56). After many years of
practice, "the Karateka realizes that the rhythm and timing of the
particular Kata seem to spring out of the Kata itself: the Kata is
teaching itself' (p.62). Since the movements of the Kata are the very
ones that would come into play in a combat situation, the Kata is
�CAREY
93
properly performed with gravity as well as with spirit. "Kata is the
heartbeat of Karate -Do, one indispensable way into the Way." (p.65)
It should go without saying that the true Karateka hopes that
actual combat will never take place. He is deterrn1ned to stay out of a
fight at almost any cost, though he has developed the confidence that
if he is forced into one he will give a respectable account of himself
and his art. In place of fighting, the Karateka engages in Kumtte, or
controlled sparring. Wh~ther the Kumite is highly formalized and
prearranged or whether it is "free," the Karateka, as Mr. Aigla stresses,
must regard his opponent not as an enemy but as a "partner," and
the exchange of techniques as a kind of"conversatlon." Kumite "is one
of the highest and most beautiful forms of intercourse, conversation,
and empathy; it requires care, restraint, and acknowledgment of
another's humanity" (p. 74). Contrary to the common impression, the
genuine Sensei, or instructor, is not someone at whose feet disciples
reverently sit as recipients of an esoteric teaching delivered from on
high. In spite of the formality that reigns in the Do-jo, the Sensei is a
partner in the learning that takes place. He learns with his students
and from them. Nowhere is this fact more conspicuous than in Kumite
between Sensei and aspirtng Karateka.
AB Mr. Aigla insists, the goal in Kumite is never to hurt the
opponent. Indeed, since self-mastery is the central goal of Karate, the
real opponent is ultimately oneself. Even if and when forced into an
actual combat situation, the Karateka is obliged to use no more force
than is needed to convince his assailant of the pointlessness of further
aggression. Karate-Do is essentially an ethical Way, and the formal
Katas habituate the Karateka into this ethical Way. "Karate-Do is
moral training as well as physical conditioning" (p.l8). Mr. Aigla notes
that most Katas begin and end in exactly the same spot, even though
the intervening motions have coursed widely from this spot. He
interprets this as embodying the Zen Buddhist conception of the
identity of beginning and end. "Katais mora! geometry" (p.61). Approprtately, the sign of accomplishment in Karate is the belt, its color
indicating the rank attained by the wearer. "A belt crosses the tanden
or hara-the belly. It envelops and supports the moral center of the
practitioner" (p.l45). These quotations give one a sense of the prevailing tone of Karate-Do and Zen.
Mr. Aigla treats a variety of other features of Karate with the same
sensitivity and perspicacity that characterize his treatment of Kata
and Kumite. Among these are the way in which the Karateka is to
regard the Do-Jo, or training hall, the bow and what it signifies, and
the Kiai, which is the charactertstic shout that takes place at certain
�94
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
points in the performance of a Kata and during Kumite. Mr. Aigla's
treatment of the Kiai draws from his extensive knowledge of anatomy
and physiology. Without attempting to give a comprehensive physiological account of all the remarkable things a trained Karateka can
do, Mr. Aigla refutes the more preposterous claims that have been
made by instructors who in their zeal to attract students overlook the
fmdings of basic physics and biology. In fact, Karate-Do and Zen is
unusual among books in the martial arts in its combination of
scientific learning and detachment, on the one hand, and openness
to experiences that do not yield to a reductive analysis. on the other.
At the conclusion of a scientifically compelling account of how even
slightly built Karatekas are able to concentrate an exceptional amount
of power in their techniques, Mr. Aigla offers some intriguing suggestions on the physiology that lies behind the increase in power contributed by the KiaL But, conceding that these suggestions are highly
speculative, he concludes, "this augmentation of power comes from
Mushin [no mind] during a true and deep Kiaf' (p.l38). Earlier in the
book Mushin has been described as a "mode and type of emptiness."
(p.57) and as a deep "mystery" that defies logical analysis (p.58).
Karate-Do and Zen contains, as a corollary to the Buddhist principle of Sunyata, an argument against the substantial identity of the
mind over and against the transient biological processes that constitute the body. The arguments and the evidence Mr. Aigla adduces
against "mind-body" dualism, drawn largely from the experience one
has of being a "creature of movement," are provocative and illuminating. Even intractable dualists, such as the Wliter of this review, have
to concede that none of the traditional philosophical conceptions of
the mind-body relationship, from the more subtle accounts one finds
in Greek antiquity to the cruder (and justly parodied) "ghost-in-amachine" models of early modern philosophy, render altogether comprehensible the intimacy of this relationship.
Mr. Aigla has written a book that is informative and balanced. It
is replete with specific references to authors read on the program at
St. John's, and is written virtually in the form of a continuous
conversation with them. The book constitutes a bracing response to
those who are inclined to deride the body as a mere appendage to the
intellect. particularly those by whom the body is alternately despised,
pampered, and debauched. The author makes a compelling case for
how the discipline of the martial arts can assist in habituating
"creatures of movement" into inner harmony, integrity. self-mastery,
and generosity. Karate-Do and Zen-An Inquiry admirably conveys the
ethos of Karate at it is best.
�The Republic: The Odyssey
of Philosophy
by Jacob Howland
Twayne's Masterwork Studies no. 122
(New York: MacMillan, 1993). xiv + 187.
Carl Page
Each volume In the Twayne's Master Studies offers a "lively critical
reading of a single classic text." The readings are Intended to be
Introductions, aimed principally at undergraduates but also at anyone
looking for an Informed yet uncluttered guide to entering-or re-entering-the essential plain of thought in a classic work. Jacob Howland's reading of Plato's Republic does the job splendidly. It is concise,
readable, and animated by a deep grasp of the dialogue as a whole,
brimming over with discussable topics and Inviting elaboration at
every tum. As is fitting for such an Introduction, not everything the
author might have said has been said. Howland has admirably
balanced authorial restraint and pedagogical provocation, without
falling into over-simplification and without patronizing his audience.
In all likelihood there is no comprehending Plato's Republic in a single
book, but Howland leaves no doubt that he has his finger on its pulse.
I know of no other book devoted to the Republic that so straightforwardly furnishes a healthy orientation to Plato's philosophic intentions. It will be of unqualified interest both to first-time students of
the Republic and to their teachers. Yetlt will also intrigue those looking
for further, responsible light on apparently well-worn paths. A most
inviting, helpful reading.
What sort of background material is appropriate for approaching a
Platonic dialogue? Howland deals with the issue straightforwardly and
sensibly. There is a chronology of Plato's life and works (pp. xl-xiv).
detailed in precisely the way beginning readers want and need. The
book proper begins with a short chapter on cultural context (pp. 3-9)
whose topics are: (1) the contest (agon) regarding the best life, (2) the
unique character of the polis, and (3) the dangerously fruitful tensions
associated with the love ofhonor and striving for excellence. Howland's
sense of context is thus far from historicist; it is topical and thematic,
Carl Page is a tutor at the Annapolis campus of St. John's College.
�96
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
therefore useful. This observation applies throughout. Three further
chapters-also short, informative, and cleaving to essentials-address
the intellectual, critical context of Platonic writing (pp. 10-31). Remarks on the Republic as political philosophy precede a discussion of
Aristophanes' contemporary challenge to Socratic philosophizing,
Aristotle's qualms about Socratic extremism, and Karl Popper's wellknown if misconceived diatribe. This puts the topics of sophistry and
political responsibility on the table. A brief section on poetry and
tragedy follows, with special reference to Nietzsche and a mention of
recent scholars such as Martha Nussbaum (The Fragility of Goodness].
In all cases, Howland uses the familiar names to raise and represent
deep, pervasive themes evident in Plato's own work. A chapter on
Platonic dialogue as philosophic drama completes the orientation. It
emphasizes how the poetics of the Republic explicitly and self-consciously draw from tragedy, comedy, and epic all at once, permitting
eros and order, irony and death to become commensurable in the
genre of Platonic dialogue, a genre akin, perhaps, to the all but lost
form of the satyr-play (p. 31).
The Republic emerges as an artwork whose supporting web is drawn
directly from the practical, political realities of the ancient polis and
from the theoretical, intellectual concerns of a literate culture intensely aware of the dynamic, unstable relations between speech
(logos) and deed (ergon). It is far from spectatorial, accidentaL uncommitted; it enters fully-armed into the agon for wisdom, challenging all
previous authorities from Homer on. The tapestry of allusion that gives
so much body to the dialogue, therefore, is essential to its purpose-a
tapestry that Howland's reading makes both compelling and unavoidable.
His subtitle-The Odyssey ofPhilosophy-points to a central motif
of Plato's tapestry: "the homeward quest of Odysseus is woven into
the dialogue as a mythical subtext ofits philosophic action" (p. 32).
meaning that "philosophy ... attempts a kind of 'homecoming' for human beings-not a literal, physical homecoming but a metaphysical
homecoming of the soul" (p. 49). Such homecoming gets its sense from
an embattled estrangement caused by "the multifarious attractions of
full-blown erotic liberty," against which "Socrates must defend both
philosophy and justice" (p. 39). The outwardly political problem of
justice cannot but return to the problem of intelligently rectil'ying
desire. Howland places emphasis on the latter throughout.
More specifically, however, Odysseus's own famous voyage is directly reflected into many details of the text (pp. 4 7 -54). The framework
has three main parts: (1) Odysseus's fantastic adventures amongst
monsters, goddesses, and dead souls (cf. books 1-5). (2) his sojourn
�HOWLAND
97
with the Phaeacians "whose nearness to the gods and freedom from
cares, pain, and toil betoken their distance from things human" (p.
47) (cf. books 5-7), and (3) his retum to the real potis of Ithaca (cf.
books 8-1 0). The three waves that mark the apparently digressive
transition from the severe, purged version of the city-in-speech of the
earlier books to the Kallipolis of the middle books mark "a transition
analogous to that undergone by Odysseus when ... he leaves Calypso's
island cave" and is even~ually thrown up onto the sands of Scheria.
The parallel is suggestiVe. Calypso enchants, yet Odysseus cannot
hide his human longing, just as the purged city attempts but fails to
draw a veil over eros. Yet Kallipolis, too, is defective. It is defective in
direct proportion to the ways that the fantastic kingdom of the
Phaeacians cannot be the real kingdom of Ithaca-an incommensurability implied by the permanent isolation of the Phaeacians after
Odysseus's visit. ''The Phaeacian rulers Alkinoos and Arete-King
'Mighty Mind' and Queen 'Virtue'-provide a Homeric analog to the
humanly impossible hegemony of intellect and virtue in the Kallipolis"
(p. 53). The impossible Phaeacian monarchs are the paradigm of
Socrates' Philosopher King. Socrates, in contrast, "is far closer to the
roving, polytropic Odysseus" (p. 117).
Howland's commentary proper begins at chapter 6, "A Host of
Challenges" (pp. 56-76). He reads the wonderful drama of book 1 with
fine attention to detail, interpreting its development as a display of the
"birth of philosophic discourse" (p. 77), inflected by the as yet unexamined tensions and relations between virtue, eros, spiritedness
(thumos), poetry, and skill or art (techne). Glaucon's interruption at
the beginning of book 2 brings to the fore the problem of "the tyranny
of desire" (pp. 79-84), seconded by his brother's moral indignation (pp.
84-86), a ragged reflection of virtue's discipline. Kallipolis, on the one
hand, and the purged city of the militarized Guardians ("the City of
Adeimantus"), on the other, will become coordinated with the two
brothers in a hunt for the polity that combines the moderation of
Adeimantus's first approximation ("the City of Pigs") and the humanity
of Glaucon's ("the Feverish City"). The fundamental tension is eros vs.
education: "insofar as eros is tyrannical and unjust, it must be
subdued by the city; insofar as it is essential to being human, it must
be nurtured" (pp. 92-93).
The main constructive part of the city-in-speech (roughly, books
3-6) is a ''Tale ofTwo Cities" (pp. 94-118), told as asortofAristophanic
comedy against the epic backdrop already explicated. The tragic
perspective will be integrated later as Kallipolis unravels (cf. RP
8.545e). Adeimantus's city of dyed-in-the-wool Guardians seems to
�98
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tame Glauconian thumos, but evidently falls to educate potentially
philosophic eros (pp. 94-104). It is not even clear that Guardian dogs
might not yet still be wolves, an instability flagged by the expulsion of
divinely inspired poets and the political need for Noble Lies. Polemarchus's interruption, at the beginning of book 5, on behalf of ordinary
sexual eros and its natural, familial attachments prompts the second
phase of Socrates' epic comedy, an essay in the suppression of "erotic
necessity" (RP 5.458d). "Necessity is precisely what Socrates, with
Promethean arrogance, attempts to overcome in the Kallipolis" (pp.
111-12). Beauty and sex are sundered, as Socrates argues custom
away in favor of nature. Auxiliary Guardians tum into beasts, bred
like the dogs after which they were oliginally modeled, and by the time
Socrates is done with Philosopher Kings they have correlatively turned
into abstract, all but motionless and certainly anerotic gods.
With the image of Philosopher Kings, Socrates has provoked in
Glaucon a culiosity about the nature of philosophy. But the image is
a piece of philosophic poetry, a comic mask, whose partial truths need
fuller explication. Howland thus turns to the different style of imagery
presented in books 6 and 7. The images of Sun, Line, and Cave
"illuminate the 'wandering,' stliving character of Socratic philosophizing" (p. 118). They embody the resources of"Philosophical Imagination
and Prophecy"-the subtitle to Howland's chapter 9. His reading of
these much discussed passages keeps philosophic eros and Socratic
craft (poiesfs) in view throughout. The account of the Divided Line
draws heavily on and duly acknowledges Jacob Klein's Meno book,
while Howland offers his own, relatively extended interpretation of the
Cave in terms of"what could be called the locatedness-within-detachment of the human place" (p. 133). In his lich account, Howland shows
how that predicament is differently approached by the philosopher.
the prophetic poet, and the sophist, a reading that lays the foundation
for appreciating the deep kinship between poetry and philosophy in
particular. For although eikasia ("Imagination") Is necessary for philosophic education, its work belongs to poetry: "the responsibility must
lie with prophetic imagemakers. whose craft reflects and preserves
within the tradition at least some part of the truth about the noble,
the just, and the good" (p. 142).
A final chapter deals bliefly with the dissolution ofKallipolis, a tale
showing that "although our erotic natures bear the impress of custom
and convention they are never wholly mastered by nomos" (p. 150).
The emphasis then falls on the Myth of Er, in particular on the "lottery
of lives," which makes about as clear as can be "the superficiality of
all nonphilosophical 'education'" (p. 151).
�HOWLAND
99
Most students reading the Republic for the first time-though not
only they-are puzzled, not to say frustrated or even outraged, by the
mounting oddities and ironies of the city-in-speech as Socrates and
company move from the City of Pigs through to Kallipolis. Justice does
not seem to get satisfactorily defined, as the reader is led to believe it
might, and Socrates, so skeptical and liberal in other dialogues, seems
distressingly sanguine, paternalistic, and even patronizing in his
apparent political recom!Jlendations. Howland's treatment forestalls
these problems, by simply and convincingly revealing how to begin
reading a text as peculiar as Plato's. He shows how to take seriously
the dialogue's playful, shimmeringly variegated (potkilos) exteriors
without losing sight of its thoughtful interiors. All summaries and
introductions run risk of becoming cartoons, but this is not the case
here. Thoughtful readers are initiated into the demands of Plato's
unique art. From there they may proceed to the hard work of making
Platonic insights their own.
�Results of
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Let's Be Liberal
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They have won $35 credits at the St. John's College Bookstore.
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Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Bojaxhi, Gjergji
Sachs, Joe
Cornell, John F.
Strong, Lester
Yee, Cordell D. K., 1955-
Page, Carl
EZRA
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLIII, number two (1996)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm Von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Gjergji Bojaxhi
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College. Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T. H. Brann,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00
for three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes appear
semi-annually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays,
stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College. P.O. Box 2800; Annapolis,
MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available. at $5.00 per issue, from
the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1996 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
Marcia Baldwin and The St. John's College Print Shop
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�Contents
Essays and Lectures
Hegel's Logic of Desire
Peter Kalkavage
1
An Ennobling Innocence: . . . . . . . . . 21
The Founding of Socrates' Republic
David Lawrence Levine
The Past-Present
Eva T. H. Brann
. . . . . . . . . . 39
Interpreting Genesis Through
The Foundational Symbols of
Earth, Water, and Air
Harvey L. Gable, Jr.
. . . . . . 55
Book Reviews
A Handbook That Provides No Help
. . . 79
William Packard's A Poet's Dictionary
Elliott Zuckerman
Theater and Polity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Mera Flaumenhaft's The Civic Spectacle
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
The Human Sense for Justice
. . . . . . 101
Clifford Orwin's The Humanity ofThucydides
Henry Higuera
��Hegel's Logic of Desire
I
Peter Kalkavage
There is such divine hannony in the realm oflifeless
nature, why this discord within the rational?
Schiller, The Robbers
To open the pages of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is to enter a
labyrinth. The Minotaur of these regions, the Demon of Difficulty,
haunts every chamber. The difficulty of Hegel is both legend and
cliche. It tends to be so great and so persistent, so much a part of
how Hegel thinks and speaks, that we rtsk losing our way at every
tum. Early on, Hegel tells us that the Phenomenology chronicles no
mere path of Cartesian doubt but a way of despair. And yet, how little
he seems to realize that his book, intended as a ladder to the absolute,
is itself a way of despair for the would-be reader.
This essay is an introduction to the Phenomenology ofSpirit. I shall
try to provide a thread to guide us through Hegel's labyrinth. The
center of this labyrinth is the self; it is the point around which
everything else in the Phenomenology tums. The word "spirit" or Geist
that appears in the title, a word that also means "mind," is just
this-the condition of fully developed selfhood. Hegel's book tells us
how this condition is achieved. In his commentary on Hegel, Alexandre Kojeve begins with the following definition: "Man is self-consciousness." My efforts take their cue from this definition and are devoted
to an exploration of what Hegel means by the self.
For the most part, I will be dealing with the chapter on self-consciousness. But before plunging in, I want to say a word about the
Phenomenology as a whole and discuss a few of Hegel's basic terms.
The Phenomenology belongs to a quartet of greatest works on the
theme of education. The other three members of the quartet are
Plato's Republic, Dante's Divine Comedy and Rousseau's Emile. Despite their profound differences, these works have important similarities. For one thing, each reflects on education through some
over-arching story or muthos. In the Republic this muthos is the
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at the Annapolis campus of St. John's College. This essay
was first delivered in lecture form on the Annapolis campus in March, 1995.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
founding ofthe best city in speech; in the Divine Comedy it is Dante's
journey to God; in Emile it is Rousseau's fiction of playing governor to
a child not his own by nature. In the Phenomenology, too, education
is not simply talked about but presented as a drama or story. It is the
story of how spirit, which for Hegel is somehow both human and
divine, struggles to attain self-knowledge. Another similarity is that
each of these stories is a tale of liberation. Each tells of how man is
freed from some bad qnd enslaving condition~from either a cave, or
a dark wood, or the coiTupting influence of society or, in the Phenomenology, from what Hegel calls "natural consciousness." Finally, and
most importantly, each work in the great quartet explores the relationship between reason on the one hand and action and passion on
the other, between man as a thinker and man as the being who acts
and feels.
Hegel educates the reader by initiating him into the minds of others.
To use a metaphor that occurs in the final chapter, the Phenomenology
is a picture gallery (492). * It presents us with a colorful array of human
characters or types. Hegel calls these types "shapes of consciousness." These shapes are the phenomena or appearances for which the
Phenomenology seeks to provide a logos or reasoned account. In the
course of the book we encounter all manner of characters, much as
we do when we read the Platonic dialogues or when we journey with
Dante through his three-fold cosmos. We meet the scientist and the
warrior, the Stoic and the Sceptic, the unhappy consciousness and
the beautiful soul. Sometimes we meet characters lifted from the
realm of fiction: Faust, Karl von Moor, Don Quixote, Antigone and
Rameau's crazy nephew. All have their place within Hegel's picture
gallery; all are stages on the way to the fully developed selfhood of
spirit.
The single most important feature of this array of human types is
that each embodies or personifies a specific claim to know. This claim
is put forth by the character as unquestioned and unqualified, in other
words, as absolute. Absolute knowing is not just in the final chapter
but permeates the whole. It is present in all the preceding chapters,
present not as genuine absolute knowing but as the unsubstantiated
claim to know absolutely, that is, divinely. This clalm to absolute or
divine knowing Hegel calls "certalnty." Hegel's phenomenologist is a
combination of impersonator and spy: He must infiltrate all these
appearances of absolute knowing, enter into the spirit of their characteristic certainties, and expose them for what they are-mortal
shapes or, to use one of Hegel's most beloved words, moments. The
shapes that come before the phenomenologist, the shapes he has
* Numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the Miller translation, from
which I have occasionally departed.
�KALKAVAGE
3
critically "taken on," are self-refuting; they are consumed in the very
process of articulating themselves. In the course of witnessing this
process, a process Hegel calls "experience," the phenomenologist sees
something positive: He sees the logical order of generation by which
one shape gives birth to another. In this way he reconstructs the path
that leads to genuine absolute knowing, to the truly divine.
Hegel tells us in the Introduction that the Phenomenology depicts
the education of natural/ consciousness as it "presses on to true
knowing"(49). The Phenomenology is not about the education of single
human individuals. As we shall soon see, the individual is at the heart
of what Hegel's book is all about; nevertheless, no single human
individual traverses the stages of consciousness. becomes a Stoic at
one point in his life and gets converted to scepticism at another. It is
mind or spirit in its universality, what Hegel provocatively calls "the
universal individual''(l6). that makes the transition from stage to
stage. The universal individual manifests itself in the valious epochs
of world history, epochs summed up by the characters I mentioned
earlier: Antigone, for example, sums up one aspect of Greek ethical
life. while Rameau's nephew sums up the perversity of the modern
world of culture. The individual reader, to be sure, goes through all
the stages; but he does so from the standpoint of "true knowing," that
is, dialectical knowing. He enters into the labyrinth of each mode of
certainty vicariously, playfully. He does not lose his way-at least, he
is not expected to-and he does not share the self-ignorance and
self-deception of that mode. As Hegel tells us in the Preface, philosophy in the form of science has already come on the scene. In tracing
out the logical thread that runs through all the shapes of consciousness, the reader vindicates what he already possesses rather than
learns what he did not know. Education in the Phenomenology. then,
is the education not of conscious individuals but of consciousness, of
universal mind struggling to know itself. What, then, is consciousness? Clearly, we must ask this question if we are to understand what
Hegel means by self-consciousness.
Consciousness for Hegel is any mode of thinking that is characterized by a strict distinction between a thinking subject and an
external object. "External" here means "external to thinking." Consciousness is the subject-object opposition. It is inwardness that is
outer-oriented, outer-directed. Ordinruy sense experience offers a
simple instance of consciousness. I see an apple before me. It is one
thing; I am another. My gaze is directed, vector-like, away from myself
and towards the apple. This is the attitude of consciousness. Consciousness does not give subject and object, perceiver and apple. equal
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
weight The apple is there, it exists. It would be there if I weren't
looking at it The apple is assumed by the attitude of consciousness
to be the real, the substantial, the true, while the light of consciousness that falls on the apple is assumed to have nothing to do with the
apple. In short, consciousness does not merely perceive the object
but values or esteems it insofar as it is an object; and furthermore. it
values or esteems it at the expense of the conscious subject. This may
be termed the prejudic~ of consciousness.
To educate natural Consciousness is to lead it out of this prejudice
that "holds up" objects and "puts down" subjects. Natural consciousness is man in an intellectual "state of nature." In this state he
identifies the true with the natural. Now "natural" here means more
than the apples that exist outside the perceiver. It refers to anything
that is assumed to have either an immediate existence or an immediate
truth. "Natural" means "logically undeveloped." It refers to anything
that is assumed to be true simply and solely on the grounds that it is
given. This realm of the natural as the mind's undigested "other"
includes not only sensuous givens like the apple but also, and more
interestingly, intellectual givens like innate ideas, intellectual intuition,
the categorical imperative and conscience. Man can even adopt this
natural atiitude towards himself He can think of himself as having a
fixed "nature" llke the apple, a nature that is simply given. Dialectic
in the Phenomenology is the logical process by which the immediate
is mediated or thought through, As the systematic destruction of all
givenness, it embodies Hegel's attack on the merely naturaL
Consciousness, for Hegel, is the human condition from a certain
point of view. It is a divine condition, too, a mode in which God as
universal mind appears on earth, appears in and through man: but
for now I want to focus on the human side ofHegel's man-God identity.
In the condition of natural consciousness, man finds himself thrown,
unaccountably, into a whole world of extemal objects. This world
includes laws, customs and prohibitions as well as apples. In his
natural or pre-educated condition, man regards all these things not
only as objects over and against him but also as objects over and above
him. With all their apparent determinateness and solidity, all their
naturalness, they lise up before man llke an overbearing autholity
figure. The attitude of natural consciousness makes the world seem
that way, invests the merely given with authoritativeness.
With these observations we begin to see the moral dimension of the
Phenomenology. Natural consciousness is man's cave and dark wood,
his condition of bondage. The education of this consciousness is the
path by which man becomes fully himself or free, free of the tyranny
�KALKAVAGE
5
of nature and all the undigested othemess that nature implies.
Dialectic, as the mediational process by which all givenness is destroyed, is not only the path to the true; it is also the path to man's
highest good in the form of freedom. As we shall see, this good can
be attained only on the basis of a revision of how we understand
human desire. Consciousness must get beyond merely looking at the
apple: It must eat the apple and then suffer the consequences. This
is what happens at the level of self-consciousness.
The chapter on self-conSciousness is the most important as well as
the most dramatic in the whole Phenomenology. It is the point at
which the book finds its center and true beginning. The three preceding stages of sense-certainty, perception and understanding, important and interesting as they are, form but the prologue to Hegel's
impelial theme of the self. Now the whole Phenomenology is the study
of the human-divine spirit in the mode of consciousness, spirit or mind
caught up in the subject-object opposition. That is why every character in the book is said to be a shape of consciousness. But the three
opening stages represent consciousness in its narrower sense. Here
the thinking subject places the truth squarely in a non-thinking
object: sense-certainty in the sensuous This, perception in the thing
and its properties, and understanding in force. These stages are
objective, not only because they locate truth in an object but also in
the colloquial sense: They are objective in the sense of being detached
or uninvolved. The subject here merely "takes" its object. The subject
is neither practical nor productive; it neither acts nor makes. Nor is
the object in any way a reflection of the thinking subject: . It neither
lives nor thinks. The "cool" detachment of these modes of certainty
stands in sharp contrast with the "heat" of self-consciousness. Selfconsciousness is passionately involved with its objects. As we see
from the opening "fight to the death," its very first manifestation is
that of extreme violence. When self-consciousness bursts upon the
scene in the Phenomenology, it does so like Alcibiades in the Symposium-drunk, tyrannical and full of a truth it does not understand.
The key to the self-consciousness chapter, and indeed to Hegel's
book as a whole, is the violence with which self-consciousness first
appears. This violence exerts its influence over all the characters we
meet in the chapter, not only the warrior and the lord, but also the
Stoic, Sceptic and unhappy consciousness. Hegel's technical word for
this violence is negativity; the experiential word for it is desire. In the
introductory section entitled 'The Truth of Self-Certainty," Hegel tells
us: "Self-consciousness is desire"(l05, 109). The remainder of my
essay is an effort to understand this sentence.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
In order to get at why self-consciousness is violent. let us ask a
more basic question: Wbat does Hegel mean by the self? Towards the
end of the Phenomenology, Hegel utters a surprisingly helpful answer
to this question. He says: "The 'I' is not merely the self, but the identity
of the self with itself"(489). The self, in other words, is a relation, the
relation of identity. More precisely, it is the act of self-relation. One
is tempted to coin the verb "selfing." The self is not something I have
but something I do;. and this doing is what I most deeply am.
Ordinarily, when I refer to my self, I refer either to my body or to
something mysteriously lodged in or attached to my body. I treat the
self as though it were an object that is simply there-like the apple.
To recall the three stages of consciousness, I treat the self as though
it were a unique This that detles language, or a thinking thing with
properties, or a psychic force. For Hegel all these ways of thinking
about the self belong to natural consciousness, the condition of
bondage from which philosopher and non-philosopher alike must be
delivered.
Self-consciousness is the spelling out of selfhood as the act of
self-relating. It is the experience of what it means to say, not just "I"
but "I am myself." Self-consciousness is the so-called "law of identity,"
"A=A," that has "bubbled up" to the surface of human expe1ience in
the form of "1=1." My selfhood, my act of relating myself to myself, is
the law of identity brought to life. For Hegel, this act of self-relating is
negative or self-contradictory. The reason is that, in being aware of
myself, I hold myself before myself: I am both subject and object. To
pursue the spatial metaphor, I generate an inner "distance" between
myself and myself. In logical terms, I generate the condition of
selfothemess. Were it not for this self-otherness, I could not be
self-aware. But clearly I cannot stop at this moment of distance or
self-otherness, for then I would not be aware that what I hold before
me is myself. In order to be aware of myself as identical with myself,
I must generate a distance and overcome that distance in one and the
same act. Self-consciousnesss is this single act: it is the experience of
being at once self-same and self-other. We have here the paradigm of
what Hegel calls determinate negation. This is negation that preserves
what it negates. In being self-conscious, I negate my simple or
immediate self-identity, my naturalness, and simultaneously negate
the negating. Determinate negation is negation with a positive result.
In this case the result is-me as a self-conscious individual. All this
explains why the "law of identity," "1=1," is an incomplete or what Hegel
calls "abstract" truth. It is incomplete because it conceals and even
seems to deny the moment of self-otherness, without which my
�KALKAVAGE
7
selfhood would be impossible. To be grasped in its wholeness, and
therefore in its truth. self-consciousness must be regarded as the
unity of the self-same and the self-other. If the logical dissonance
within this unity ever came to be resolved in the sense of obliterated,
if logical dissonance were like musical dissonance, I would cease to
be self-aware, I would cease to be.
Earlier I sald that self-consciousness was the spelling out of what
it meant to say "I am myself." What are the moral consequences of
defining man as self-conSciousness, as the being who says "I am
myself'? To address this question, we must bring in one of the most
important terms in Hegel's book-individua1ity. The chapter on selfconsciousness is Hegel's exploration of what it means to be an
tndividual. "I am myself' is the maxim of individuality, the claim that
captures the individual's certainty of himself as an inward or self-relating being. No one who utters this sentence or hears it uttered can
fail to note its assertive, even militant tone: "I AM MYSELF." "I am
myself' is not a mere proposition, the mere statement that I happen
to be identical with myself, but an affirmation, an act of will. In saying
"I am myself," I stand up for myself; I affirm the value and dignity of
my being not just human but this human, my value and dignity as an
tndividual. Furthermore, I assert that this value and dignity derive
from my ability to say "I am myself," that is, from the sheer fact of my
inwardness or self-consciousness. In saying "I am myself," in affirming his individuality, man says: "I am an end and not a means, a whole
and not a part-and I am to be respected as such." In short, this
self-affirmation, this battle cry of the tndividual, is man's ·:declaration
of independence." It is man's unwillingness to bow before any authority other than himself.
The willful or militant character of "I am myself' brings us back to
the violence that defines self-consciousness. The violence we witness
in Hegel's drama derives from the fact that self-consciousness, as
Hegel tells us, is desire. What, then, does Hegel mean by desire? And
why does desire serve to define self-consciousness?
Like every other character in the Phenomenology, self-consciousness starts out in the condition of mere certainty, as an unsubstantiated claim to absolute knowing. Here the self is certain, not of
external objects but of itself. The most immediate or natural form of
this self-certainty is egotism or amour-propre. Hegel's technical term
for this egotism is "simple being-for-self'(ll3). At this primitive level
of selfhood, the individual is all wrapped up in his own utterly private
perspective on the world. He is, in the colloquial sense of the word,
subjective. Because of his intense concentration on his exclusive
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
selfhood, the individual is at war with the whole external world, at war
with otherness. As consciousness, the self was mesmerized by the
apparent solidity of external objects. This worship of objects vanishes
with the individual's certainty of himself. To be sure, the external
world is still there; but it has been demoted. No longer a regulated
cosmos of independent beings, the world is now fuel for the engine of
selfClove.
This negative attitude towards externality or otherness is what
Hegel means by desire: Self-consciousness is desire because, in the
condition of radical egotism, self-certainty at its most immediate level,
the individual asserts himself at the expense of the world. I return to
the apple of my earlier discussion of consciousness. As a self-conscious individual, I no longer want to look at the apple; nor do I want
to understand the natural laws by which the apple grows or falls to
the ground. I want to eat the apple. The desire to eat the apple, as
Hegel sees it, does not derive from my hunger for apples. It derives
instead from my belief, my certainty, that I am substantial while the
apple is not. I set out to eat the apple in order to prove that this is
the case, to demonstrate my being and its nothingness. We recall
Hegel's praise of the animals in the sense-certainty chapter: "They do
not just stand idly in front of sensuous things as if these pos·sessed
intrinsic being, but, despairing of their reality, and in complete
certainty of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and eat
them up"{65). Self-consciousness is deeper than consciousness because it knows the wisdom of the animals: it knows that objects are
insubstantial. But, as we shall see, it is also more deeply tragic. In
seeking the annihilation of the world, in giving way to desire, self-consciousness kills off the necessary condition for self-fulfillment.
Hegel's logic of desire is clearly a radical departure from how we
ordinalily think about desire. Desire in its ordinary sense is positive
and other-directed. By this I mean that it is the desire for something,
and that it is the desire for something other than myself. The ordinary
view is echoed and elaborated in various ways by Plato, Aristotle,
Aquinas and Dante. Hegel inverts the two characteristics of desire in
its ordinary use. Desire for him is negative and self-directed. It is
negative because it is the impulse to destroy rather than to acquire;
it is more like hatred than love. And it is self-directed because the
whole point of all this negativity is the selfs affirmation of itself. A
necessary consequence of this inversion of desire is a radical shift in
the meaning of a final cause. Man, for Hegel, is not evoked, called
forth, by some being outside him, neither by the Platonic forms nor
an unmoved mover nor the grace-bearing Beatrice. He is driven from
�KALKAVAGE
9
within, impelled by his very self-certainty to seek the truth of that
certainty through antagonism towards the external world. What man
strives for, desires in the broad sense of the term, is not an object other
than himself, nor a divine condition to which he aspires without ever
attaining, but his own full self-expression. Man, for Hegel, is his own
end. This autonomy first shows itself in man's radical egotism, his
simple being-for-self.
·Desire as the will to negate is most clearly present in the fight to
the death, with which the drama of self-consciousness begins. The
individual in his condition of amour-propre fmds himself in a world
that includes, not only external objects but also other self-conscious
individuals, other beings who say "I am myself." From the individual's
perspective, these other individuals must be "phonies"-thieves and
usurpers of the sacred pronoun "I." Now, certain as he is of his own
selfbood, the individual is also aware that that's all he has-mere
certainty, the untested assurance that he is the legitimate bearer of
the name "I." Out of this awareness is bom the individual's insecurity
and his need to "prove himself." In Hegel's language, he is driven to
raise his mere certainty to truth. Positively, he must prove himself to
himself. show that his self-certainty is even more important than his
life. Negatively, he must destroy the merely apparent or false selfhood
of his opponent, who, we must remember, is also driven to prove his
self-worth.
To say that self-consciousness is desire is to say not only that the
self wishes to destroy but also that it thrtves on what it destroys. If
the object were irrevocably consumed, consumed once and for all, the
self would have nothing to "feed off." Since self-consciousness derives
its sense of self from the negation of an other, the other must somehow
be preserved even as it is destroyed. In the very first experience of
self-consciousness, the individual realizes that killing one'S opponent
is ultimately unsatisfying, that what he really wants is recognition.
The individual who fights for recognition desires to annihilate the
otherness of his fallen opponent. He wants to deprive the other self
not of his life but of his selfbood and individuality, his right to say "I
am myself." He does so by making the other individual his slave. The
warrior at this point loses his nobility in becoming a lord. He is now
"free" to indulge his lower desires: He can eat the apple pie that the
slave has made. But the slave, precisely through his subservience to
his master in the form of work, rises above his master. He does so
because his condition of servitude, not to mention his overwhelming
fear of violent death, has stifled his former will to destroy, his former
desire. The apple pie may he food to the master, but to the slave it is
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a work of art, an independent thing that the slave makes but is not
permitted to consume. In the independence of the thing, the apple
pie, the slave sees the embodiment of his own independence as a
maker or producer. The pie is not just the product of his work but
the objectification of the slave's act of working, the slave's investment
of himself in an external object. The lord, on the other hand, remains
in his condition of desire. Partly, this is because desire, once gratified,
only repeats itself. I eat the pie, and an hour later I am hungry again.
The result of giving in to desire is just the reappearance of the desire.
But even more importantly, the lord can hardly derive much satisfaction from the recognition that comes from a debased human being, a
being who lacks independence. The mastery of other selves is necessarily self-defeating.
The initial war of the selves cannot help but remind us of Hobbes's
state of nature. Hegel appropriates Hobbes's view that man is by
nature competitive or warlike and gives it a logical grounding, that is,
a grounding in the logic of selfhood. What for Hobbes was a fact-the
first fact-of human nature, is for Hegel the logically necessary
outcome of the selfs dialectical identity, its dissonance of"same" and
"other." The individual is by nature at war with other individuals
because, as a self-consciousness, he is at war with himself. Earlier
we saw how selfhood for Hegel was the unity of the self-same and the
self-other. The clearest indication that I am a divided being is the fact
that I am alive; I am a self-consciousness sustained by and rooted in
an organic body. My body is an "other" that is at the same time also
myself. It is also that aspect of my existence that does not have to do
with dignity and worth. At its most immediate and therefore most
violent level, self-consciousness, since it is obsessed with self-sameness as the sole basis for its absolute worth. is at war with its own
body and life. It feels its manhood undercut or rendered questionable
by its animality. That is why the waning individual risks his own life
in seeking to destroy the life of the other, why the fight to the death is
combat rather than murder.
The dual or self-divided nature of the self has profound consequences for the desire for recognition. For many authors, pagan and
Christian alike, this desire, so closely connected with amour-propre,
is held in low esteem. Perhaps the author who puts the desire tor
recognition in its worst light is Rousseau. For Rousseau this desire is
not natural to man but artificial: It is aquired as a result of man's
membership in civil socierty. Towards the end of the Second Discourse
we are told that whereas natural or savage man lives "in himself,"
societal man "is always outside himself and knows how to live only in
�KALKAVAGE
II
the opinion of others." Against Rousseau, Hegel upholds the inherent
goodness of the desire for recognition. He does so by making it literally
and necessarily the case that man lives "outside himself." In the fight
for recognition, this other who stands before me, strange to say, is
myself. As Hegel tells us early in the chapter, self-consciousness "has
come outside itself' as an opposition between two tndividuals (111).
Self-consciousness is one universal self actually divided into two
individual selves. This numerical duplication is the selfs inner dissonance made actual in the external world. If indeed the other
individual is my own selfbood thrown out in front of me, then my fate
as an individual is utterly bound up with the fate of this other. I no
longer have the option of saying: "It doesn't matter what other people
think of me; I know my own worth." Such "self-esteem" that seeks to
do without the esteem of others is meaningless: it is a falsification of
one's own individuality. Hegel gives cognitive value to recognition:
The violent desire for recognition is in fact the first or most immediate
manifestation of my desire to complete my vision of myself in this other
individual, to reconcile the two warrtng aspects of my own se!fbood
through a reconciliation with this externally existing, actual other.
The desire to be known by another is in fact my desire to /mow myself
in the context of a human community. What the combatants do not
yet know-because they have not yet experienced it-is that genuine
recognition comes about only if it is reciprocal or shared, only if the
one who recognizes me is not a slave but my equal. Nevertheless, fuis
later, mature stage cannot be attained without the oliginal violence:
Progress for Hegel is made not through smooth degrees, nor through
the tempering of extremes, but through the pushing of extremes to
their logical and self-defeating conclusions. The Hobbesian state of
war, the violence of desire, is the very principle of man's education
and refinement.
The negative spirit of desire continues into the second section of
Hegel's chapter, the section entitled "Freedom of Self-Consciousness."
The Stoic, Sceptic and unhappy consciousness are all instances of the
will to negate the world in order to affirm the self. On the surface, the
Stoic seems to be motivated by will rather than by desire. The Stoic
affirms himself. He does so not in the external world-for that is the
place of suffering-but in the unperturbed realm of thought. The
stubborn inwardness of the Stoic, his will to be himself regardless of
what happens to his life in the external world, is what makes the Stoic
violent or, in Hegel's technical meaning of the term, desirous. Scepticism is the truth of Stoicism because it unleashes this violence. The
Sceptic actually carries out the destruction of the world that the Stoic
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
implies and presupposes but is too noble to carry out himself. In the
move from Stoic to Sceptic, arguments replace platitudes. Through
his endless paradoxes, the Sceptic shows that the external world is
riddled with contradiction, that it is altogether tnsubstantial.
Hegel's account of the Stoic is two-fold: lt consists of both praise
and blame. The Stoic's freedom is abstract, just as his talk about virtue
is empty. But the Stoic seeks to express himself and his freedom in
the realm of pure thtnktng, thinking that is no slave to pictures or
images. This bond with pure, pictureless thinking does more than
ennoble the Stoic; it also makes him the precursor of philosophy in the
form of system, tn particular the precursor of the science of logic.
Unfortunately, the Stoic resolves to "think positive"; he disdains the
negative activity that alone could give his thinking and freedom some
filling or substance. The account of the Sceptic is similarly two-fold.
The Sceptic frolics tn negation and so holds in his hands the key to the
divine logos. He, too, is a precursor of sorts. The problem is that the
Sceptic, who is a child at heart, frolics rather than thinks; he does not
see the determinate or positive character of his randomly produced
negations but delights in negation for its own sake.
We TIO'?f come to the crowning moment of the chapter, to the
character Hegel dubs "the unhappy consciousness." It is extremely
important here to remember where we are in the dialectic of
self-consciousness. As I mentioned earlier. self-consciousness, like
every other shape in the Phenomenology, starts out in certainty and
ends up in truth. The truth always contradicts the original certainty.
The unhappy consciousness, in other words, is not merely the last
character in the chapter but the negative truth of self-consciousness
as a whole, the truth that undermines the original effort at self-affirmation. The individual started out as a proud warrior. He wanted
to prove that he was simply for himself, that he was "the genuine
article." In the course of Hegel's drama, the warrior falls; he is reduced
to the status of the humble Christian, who lives only for Another. The
wnour-propre or egotism that fueled the whole project of self-affirmation
at this point is transformed into the obsession with annihilating
amour-propre, into the hatred of self-interest. the desire of desire. The
violence of desire, formerly directed towards the extemal world, is
now tumed back on the self; negativity is now self-sacrifice, and
self-certainty self-condemnation.
The unhappy consciousness emerges from the dialectic of Scepticism. The Sceptic is self-contradictory. On the one hand, he says,
"All things are relative"; on the other, he puts forth this teaching as
absolute truth. This contradiction reveals that there are in fact two
�KALKAVAGE
13
modes of thinking, two selves, within the Sceptic. One self is defined
by its contact with unchanging truth; the other self is defmed by
thoughts that constantly fluctuate and contradict one another. Now
the Sceptic, in his childish way, keeps going back and forth between
these two selves. He is a unity of opposites, but he does not know
that he is a unity of opposites. The unhappy consciousness is the
explicit awareness of this unity within opposition. It is, to quote Hegel,
"the consciousness of Ot;leself as a doubled, merely contradictory
being"(l26). Ever since sense-certainty, the force of contradiction has
been at work in every shape of consciousness. But only now does a
shape actually experience contradiction as such. That is why the
unhappy consciousness is unhappy. not because there is something
outside it that it wants and cannot get, but because its "inside," its
very se!fhood, has been divided and set at variance with itself. To be
unhappy, for Hegel, is to be "not oneself."
Hegel's account of unhappiness is logically complex. It is also
steeped in Christian imagery. I will here confine myself to showing how
Hegel's sentence, "Self-consciousness is desire," continues to be operative. Desire comes up in the unhappy consciousness in three guises.
The first I've already mentioned. Since it is painfully aware of its own
egotism or "sinfulness," the self is continually "down on itself"; it
desires to be rid of its self-love, which it identifies with the unessential
or fickle aspect of its being. Secondly, there are, of course, all those
desires it is seeking to negate, desires that it considers "dirty." But
the third guise of desire is the most interesting and important. This
is the longing for union with the one true Self, the "infinite yeaming,"
as Hegel calls it, for God. This is the first time that God comes up in
the Phenomenology, although, to emphasize God's function in the
argument, Hegel prefers to call Him "the unchangeable."
Man started out in the self-consciousness chapter wanting to affirm
himself as an individual. He tried to validate his self-certainty by
negating the world. In the unhappy consciousness this negativity, the
violence of desire, circles back on the self. But in this reflexive and
self-defeating moment, desire has accomplished something: It has
generated the new experience of infinite yearning. To the unhappy
consciousness, this yearning is directed towards God as the sacred
Other. The unhappy consciousness is the lover, and God the beloved
object. What the self longs for is to be with God in some hoped for
beyond. In other words, the unhappy individual labors under the
illusion of natural consciousness; he is enchanted with some immediate given, in this case, a timeless and infinitely remote God. What
the unhappy consciousness regards as an infmitely remote object is
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
really the divine or unchangeable aspect of itself. This follows from
the defmition of the unhappy consciousness. The unhappy consciousness is a mortal self and a divine self in one and the same
consciousness; or, as Hegel puts it, it is "the unity of pure thinking
and individuality"(l30), where thinking is my self-sameness or divinity, and individuality is my otherness and mortality. If rightly understood, the divine is not a beloved object but man's own selfhood in its
purely divine aspect,, the moment of man's selfhood that is purely
self-same. What the self-consciousness chapter dramatizes, then, is
the logical generation of the divine nature out of the human, the
generation of the universal self out of the particular. It shows us how
man, for Hegel, is the father of God.
What, then, is the true nature of the infinite longing for God? It is
what we have seen all along as the abiding goal of human striving:
Man's inner compulsion to be himself, to be fully htmself. What the
unhappy consciousness interprets as man's erotic longing to be with
God is in reality man's will to be God, the individual's \vill to be
universal. Self-affirmation, having fallen to the ground, rises up
again, this time at a new and higher level, a level that is not characterized by desire. Hegel's name for this higher level of self-affirmation
is-reason.
In spite of its many subdivisions, the Phenomenology as a whole is
composed of only three main parts: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness,
and a third part, which Hegel leaves untitled. Consciousness, we
recall, was the self's fascination with objects. The apple was an object
of intellectual reverence rather than something to eat. At the level of
self-consciousness, the individual regarded the apple only as food,
regarded the whole external world with all the other sgJves in it only as
fuel for the engine of self-love. At Hegel's third level. the individual stops
trying to destroy the world in order to afiirm himself. Here the
individual allows the world to be substantial. He sets out not to destroy
the world but to find himself in it. to give worldly substance and solidity
to his otherwise abstract and purely subjective selfhood.
In this third and untitled part of the Phenomeno1ogy, the longest
part by far, man's quest for selfhood is completed. Man becomes
complete when the logical implications of his self-identity rise to the
level of conscious experience, when man is explicitly or actually what
he is implicitly or in his concept. But what is man implicitly? What
is man's concept? This we have already seen in the earlier account of
self-identity. Man as self-consciousness is the unity of the self-same
and the self-other. Man is the being w~jo beholds himself. How, then,
is man to experience himself for what he is? What can it possibly
�KALKAVAGE
15
mean to experience the determinate negation that is logically inscribed
in man's self-awareness, in man's concept?
With these questions, I reach the last leg of my journey through
Hegel's labyrinth. Consider the title of Hegel's book: The Phenomenal·
ogy of Spirit. Phenomena or appearances, whatever else they may be,
are outward or showy, while spirit is inward and deep. To give a
phenomenology of spirit, then, is to give a reasoned account, a logos,
of what it means for spitit to appear, what it means for the inner to
make itself outer, for the deep to be showy while still remaining deep.
For Hegel, the inner and the outer, self and world, are both necessary
to the full expression of selfhood. That is why desire failed. It failed
because the individual wanted to affirm himself at the expense of the
world. If there is no world, or if the world is just a vale oftears, then
there is nothing solid, nothing objective, in which I might contemplate
my worth, in which I might behold myself. Just as consciousness, in
its unreflective piety towards objects, lost sight ofthe true goal, so too
does self-consciousness in its effort to destroy objects. Complete
selfhood demands that the purity of thinking and the showiness of the
world somehow come together, come together in a way that is not a
mere contradiction or dissonance, as it was for the unhappy consciousness. In the account of natural consciousness I gave at the
beginning of this essay, I laid particular stress on the tyranny of the
external world. But that is not the only tyranny that besets man in
his quest for selfhood. There is a worse monster than the extemal
world. This monster is man's fascination with his own spirituality or
inwardness, man's tendency to become~a beautiful soul.
The beautiful soul is a more deeply tragic version of the unhappy
consciousness. It is also more perverse. The unhappy consciousness
was a lover; it longed for union with an infinitely remote God. The
beautiful soul, too, is a lover, but not of an object. It is in love with
its own inner purity, in love with itself as the Holy of Holies. Whereas
the unhappy consciousness distanced itself, infinitely, from the one
true Self, the beautiful soul identifies with this Self, with God in all
His purity. The unhappy consciousness found itselfhopelesslyworldly
and carnal; the beautiful soul, on the contrary, foreswears the world
and the flesh. Regarding itself as "too rich for use, for earth too dear,"
it treats itself as though it didn't even have a body. In Hegel's
characterization, "It lives in dread of besmirching the splendor of its
inner being through action and existence"(400). Having turned its
back on the world, the beautiful soul simply dies for want of a life. It
vanishes, Hegel says, "like a shapeless vapor into thin air"(400).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The beautiful soul dies because it throws away the self-otherness
that is necessary to man's self-identity. Man cannot be fully himself,
cannot behold himself, unless he somehow preserves the world that
stands before him as his "other," comes to regard that world as his
"significant other." To fulfill the destiny of his self-otherness, man
must become reconciled to the world's externality. Man's inwardness,
his spirituality, must somehow come to terms with the outward and
showy realm of action p.nd existence.
The phenomenon of reconciliation is the climax of Hegel's story of
consciousness. At this point God comes on the scene, not as an
infinitely remote beyond, but as a living presence within a community
of selves, as the spirit of that community. The last two chapters on
religion and absolute knowing are Olympian reflections on the relation
between God and time; they stand above the "way of despair," the
Golgotha, which the Phenomeno1ogy attempts to give rational or
scientific form. In this last moment of the phenomenological journey,
two individuals confront one another, as they did in the earlier fight
to the death. One judges; the other is judged. The judging individual
has become enchanted with his own moral austerity, his moral purity.
He has looked upon the Gorgon's head of pure spirituality and has
been tumed to stone. His stoniness takes the form of condemning
others who are not pure like him, the Napoleons of the world, who
have "sold out" and traded in their purity of soul for outward show
and worldly preoccupation. The self-righteous individual judges the
other to be immoral, not because that other has done something
wrong, but simply because he has done something, because he has
allowed himself to have an outward existence and a concern for action,
because he is worldly or secular. To the judgmental individual, this
worldliness is the greatest betrayal of which a human being is capable,
the betrayal of the sacred inwardness that alone makes us worthy of
respect. The judge judges the other to be a hypocrite, someone who
claims to be spiritual or inward but in fact prostitutes this inwardness
by worldly action and concern. The judge is the Napoleon of pure
morality, the emperor of inwardness. He is also a hypocrite, an even
bigger Tartuffe than the individual he judges. The reason is that
judgement, which for Hegel must take the form of outward speech, is
itself an act, a moment of entrance into the external and secular world.
The judge cannot pass judgement on the other individual without
becoming like him. He cannot denounce hypocrisy and also remain pure.
Reconciliation occurs when both individuals admit to being worldly
and in that sense the betrayers of spirit. Each must confess his
worldliness. This is clearly a much more dramatic and difficult
�KALKAVAGE
17
moment for the judge, since he has to sacrifice his purism, abdicate
as the emperor of inwardness. As the judge confesses his own
hypocrisy and forgives the hypocrisy of the other, he gives his blessing
to the secular world he once had cursed. In this moment of reconciliation, each self sees itself in the other and admits to this seeing. Now
hypocrisy is self-otherness: it is the knowing concealment of one's true
selfhood, in particular, the concealment of one's worldly self-interest
and amour-propre beneatl;:t a pious "front." When each self admits to
seeing itself in the other, self-otherness, the moment of self-identity
that had been denied for the whole course of the book up to this point,
at last receives its due. The long-suppressed self-otherness rises to
the surface of human experience. The most important feature of
reconciliation is the change that takes place in the relation between
self and world. With the confession of self-otherness, the external
world ceases to be the inimical "other" over and against the self; it is
now the horne of spiritual manifestation, the place of God.
Reconciliation, for Hegel, is a human experience with a conceptual
or philosophical meaning. Much more is going on in this phenomenon
than the individuals involved realize. In the act of forgiveness, the
hard heart melts. This softening of the hard heart is, in truth, a
dialectical or intellectual accomplishment. The softening of the heart,
the loosening of hard being-for-self, is the feeling of dialectical fluidity,
the feeling of thinking. Now it is the peculiar power and sublimity of
reconciliation to retain past enmity as something that has been
overcome. In other words, reconciliation is the experience of determinate negation, negation that preserves what it destroys. In this feeling
of determinate negation, man can experience, at last, the complete
unity of his self-identity, the being-together of the self-same and the
self-other. In the section on revealed religion, Hegel gives us his
definition of spirit. He says: "Sptrit is the knowledge of orteself in the
externalization of oneself; the being that is the movement of retaining
its self-identity in its othemess"(459). This is precisely the condition
that has been dialectically generated in the phenomenon of reconciliation. In the confession ofhypocrisy, the two selves "come out" of their
private selves, become external to themselves while remaining inward
or spiritual beings. There is now mutual recognition of selfhood,
unlike the one-sided kind we had earlier. The individuals here have
experienced the divine in time: They have become reconciled, not only
to one another but also to the universal self that the individual self
had unhappily fathered.
All this, we must note, takes place in and through language. For
Hegel, the inner must become outer. The inner is by definition the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
drive or compulsion to be an extemalized inner, an inner that has
some substance to it. The self-righteous judge must not simply think
his condemnation of the other; he must utter it, indeed, throw it in
the face of the other individual. So too, in the moment of reconciliation, the two hypocrites must confess their hypocrisy openly to one
another.
Now language plays a central role throughout the Phenomenology.
Even sense-certainty, 1J.P to a point, speaks. But language acquires a
special importance in the context of reconciliation. For Hegel, language is not 1nere communication but spiritual or intellectual presence. In Hegel's words, it is "the being-there or existence of
spirit"(395). Simply put, language is the outward expression of inward
thought. When I speak, I translate my inwardness into something
outer and real. I make my thought present for my listener and also
for myself. Language is thought standing in its own presence, thought
that beholds itself as thought. But this outward expression is not a
direct and smooth translation of the inner into the outer; it is not
without its moment of conflict. To speak is to betray a thought. In
uttering a thought, I betray it in the negative sense that I tum against
my own dear inwardness and hand it over to its enemy-the extemal
world. To speak is to act. Now comes the magic oflanguage, the magic
that distinguishes language from every other human action. Even as
I betray my inward thought by making it outer, I turn against this very
betrayal and defeat the "bad effects" of externality: I betray my
thought in the positive sense that I express or reveal it as thought. In
other words, language, the quintessential act of man. is the most
immediate, most obvious instance of spirit as Hegel defines it-the
retaining of inwardness in the very act of externalization. Like forgiveness, language is the overcoming of betrayal in its negative sense.
Reconciliation is for this reason not just an instance of Speech but the
logic of the very act of speaking brought to the level of experience.
In the phenomenon of reconciliation man experiences his true
identity, experiences himself as the dialectical unity of same and other.
But man is not fully himself for Hegel until he gets beyond this
experience and thinks his identity, until he thinks the reconciliation
of opposites at the level of pure conceptuality-thought without
pictures. This is the level we reach in the final chapter on absolute
knowing, the level Hegel calls science. At this level, mind, having been
purged of all naturalness or anti-mind, wins the condition of complete
self-identity and freedom. Mind is free to be itself, to lead the life that
is completely its own. In the Phenomenology, man does not simply
come to know the truth; he comes to know that he is the truth. He
�KALKAVAGE
19
comes to know that his concept as a self-conscious individual is
identical with the Concept, with the divine intelligibility, the divine
1ogos, that steers its way through all things. This divine 1ogos, the life
of pure intelligibility, is embodied in the magnificent Science of Logic.
By entering into this life of the mind, man enjoys the divinity that is
inscribed in his self-consciousness. In the spontaneous unfolding of
what Hegel calls the Concept or Notion-Hegel's analogue to the Platonic
Good-man enjoys the very principle of his cherished freedom and the
pure play of his self-identitY. He is transported to the true heaven.
But the divine life of thinking does not spring full-blown from the
head of the philosopher. For Hegel, philosophy in the form of science
is the product of history, the product of human self-identity working
out its many contradictions in time. The Phenomeno1ogy is the history
of consciousness, the history of man as a thinking being, put into
rational form; it is time looked at from the standpoint of mind. The
world for Hegel is not a cave from which the philosopher tries to escape.
For one thing, he cannot escape. As we hear in another work, The
Phitosophy ofRight: "Each individual is in any case a chitd of his time;
thus philosophy, too, is its own time comprehended in thoughts"
(Preface). But more importantly, the true philosopher will not want to
escape. AE the friend of reason, he will acknowledge that the world in
its historical unfolding, the outer world of action and struggle, is
precisely the path along which wisdom is attalned, or rather, generated out of man's self-conciousness. To be rational, for Hegel, is to give
the external world its due, while still revering the inward purity of
thought. It is to acknowledge the world as the home of thinking. This
acknowledgement is the wisdom at which Hegel's book aims. In the
Phenomeno1ogy the philosopher "recollects"-to use Hegel's word-the
laborious process that gave rise to the philosopher's own act of
thinking. As phenomenologist, the philosopher returns, knowingly, to
his prephilosophical origins. He enacts what might be called intellectual gratitude, gratitude towards Time as the mother of Wisdom.
I now take my leave of Hegel's labyrinth; I bid farewell to all its
monsters and heroes. Hegel ends on a grand theological note. He speaks
of time as the Place of Skulls, where spirit suffers and reveals its glory.
My clostog note will be far simpler. Hegel cautions us in the Preface about
our enchantment with things uplifted and remote; he warns philosophy
agalnst ingratitude toward its worldly orgins. This warning is echoed by
Zarathustra, whose plea captures the spirit of Hegel's Phenomenology:
"I beseech you, my brothers, remainfaithjUL to the earth"
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�An Ennobling Innocence
The Founding of Socrates' Republic
David Lawrence Levine
Even the wolf... Phaedrus, has a
tight to an advocate, as they say.
Plato, Phaedrus
Practical wisdom makes provisions
to secure theoretical wisdom.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
The Greeks were superficial ... out
of profundity.
Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom
I
l. The Deed of Book I
The Republic opens with an act of force.' Socrates is prevel)ted from
returning to Athens, restrained by the others to remain below and join
them in viewing a novel religious procession after dinner (I 327a-8b,
V 450a, VII 514a-515c; cf. X 614e). He cannot prudently protest. He
is outnumbered. But nor, they say, will they listen to him. Polemarchus challenges Socrates to prove stronger than they are (I 327c; cf.
34lb, V 449b, 450a, 45lb, 474a, VI 500d, 509c). The community of
interlocutors here constituted is initially founded on force, the fundamental fact of politics.
Nevertheless Socrates will try to persuade them of an alternative
course of action (I 327c, II 357af.). Otherwise he will have to pay the
penalty of being ruled by lesser men than himself (I 347c). It is the
task of the wise ruler to seek to transform the city based on force into
one based on speech (if only on myths and noble lies). This is no
different for a founder of a community of discourse than for a founder
of cities. The primary task of Book I of The Republic, then, is the
foundation of a human mutuality based on an openness to speeches
David Levine is a tutor at the Santa Fe campus of St. John's College. This essay
was originally presented as part of a series of faculty colloquia at Oklahoma State
University (1984). A revised form was delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in
the summer of 1995.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(logical moderation).' Socrates' efforts toward this end, however. are
complex and, on the surface, quite puzzling.
2. Thrasymachean Justice
Following the discussion of Polemarchus's common, partisan
understanding of justice as "helping one's friends and harming one's
enemies" (I 33ld-336a, N 442e). Thrasymachus, no longer able to
restrain himself (cf. I 352c). protests that Socrates' view renders one
defenseless and vulnerable. Harming one's enemies, according to
Socrates, was said to be incompatible with justice. Far from sometimes
having to inflict harm, as Polemarchus thought, justice should seek
to make us all better.
"Hunched up like a wild beast," Thrasymachus flings himself into
the discussion ready "to tear [the interlocutors] to pieces" (I 336b). It
would appear that Thrasymachus is himself an enemy of logos and
that Socrates is up against a "wild beast" (cf. III 4lld-e, VI 493b-c,
496d). But are Socrates and his city in fact as defenseless as Thrasymachus presumes? Socrates made it plain in the foregoing that one
sometimes misidentifies one's enemies (I 334cf.; cf. VI 498c-d). The
question arises what fitting response there is to a Thrasymachus.
As the Greek proverb has it, Socrates has had his eye on the wolf
all along (I 336d; cf. III 416a, VIII 565d-566a, IX 576d). One could even
say that his "nonsensical" and "foolish" argument with Polemarchus
was designed in part to incite this wolf. Socrates knows Thrasymachus. 3 He now appeals to him on the (false) grounds that they,
Socrates and Polemarchus, must have been incompetent." They need
rather to learn from someone who "knows," correction and betterment
being the fitting punishment for mistreatment of arguments. Thrasymachus at first understands this to be yet another case of injustice
on Socrates' part. Socrates, he thinks, is being his usual self, deliberately evasive and disingenuous; he misleads the argument at will. 4
That's "the habitual irony of Socrates" (I 337a)! Thrasymachus thinks
he knows with whom he speaks.
Surprisingly, Socrates' insistence that the just punishment for
ignorance is correction through learning is accepted byThrasymachus
(along with some added compensation), For all his supposed wildness,
is Thrasymachus more moderate and tractable than the city of Athens,
the city that not only accused but convicted and sentenced to death
this man who appears to shrink in the face of hurting anyone, even,
it would seem, his real enemies?5
�LEVINE
23
Thrasymachus is willing at least to teach the transgressor a lesson,
if not of the sort that would make the deficient Socrates better. He
says: "Now listen ... the just is nothing other than the advantage of the
stronger" (I 338c; cf. III 412d, IV 442c). This rightly famous statement
is definitive. But Socrates knows that it needs a closer look.
3. The Elicitation
The manner of eliciting Thrasymachus's fuller understanding is
surprising. Socrates' method involves us in an unusual course of
reasoning. To begin with, he seems to insult Thrasymachus's and our
intelligence by introducing an apparently inappropriate counter-example: Poulydamas the pancratist. Because the latter is strong and
eats great quantities of meat, does this mean that we too, the weaklings, must eat large amounts of meat? An oblique example to be sure,
but one that makes plain the distinction between equalitarian and
distributive justice. Thrasymachus seeks unequal treatment.
In his defense Thrasymachus makes it first appear that he holds a
common view. one shared by many: govemments are the expressions
of the strongest group (a theory of comparative legitimacy). However,
in such a view, all govemments are equally legitimate. Were this his
real opinion, Thrasymachus would be a defender of the legal and the
status quo.
To make it clear that this is not so, Socrates reverts to the problem
of mistakes earlier raised in connection with Polemarchus's·understanding of justice. Thrasymachus is no less prone to trip over this
than Polemarchus, for neither considers adequately the role that
knowledge must play. Thrasymachus is led to make the extraordinary
claim that he intends "the ruler in the precise sense" only, that is, one
who not only intends but achieves his own benefit. Socrates cannot
but wonder what is at the heart of this understanding of human
excellence.
Indeed Thrasymachus now insists on this "precise" ruler. The
presumption implicit in the notion of the precise sense is that oftotal
mastery: the perfect ruler, infallible, simply does whatever he or she
thinks. But taken in this way, the ideal of pure action, of acting out
one's intentions faultlessly, is dangerously ambiguous. 6 Present in
Thrasymachus's formulation are the ideals both of the philosopher-,
king (the knowledgeable ruler) and the tyrant (the knowledgeable
exploiter) (1336a, II 36lb, III 409c-d, V 477e, VII 517c, 518d-e, 519a).
Though abstracting from the problem of the imprecision of the
world-one of the fundamental political problems is precisely that
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
people do not know their own good, their own advantage, with
precision-this formulation will require that we rethink our ambiguous thoughtfulness.
To b1ing the problem ofThrasymacheanjustice to a head, Socrates
introduces the analogy of the arts. Now art might be seen as concerned
with its object exclusively, other interests being inessential and ancillary. As such, an art can be understood (ambiguously) to "rule over"
its subject matter. Tflis Thrasymachus readily concedes, but in so
doing he does not realize that the notion of selfless dedication entailed
in such a view leads to the opposite of his real intention. Add to this
Socrates' hasty generalization-"there is no kind of knowledge that
considers or con1mands the advantage of the stronger, but rather of
what is weaker and ruled by it" (I 342c)- which in tum is hastily
generalized still again as "therefore ... there isn't ever anyone who holds
any position of rule, insofar as he is ruler, who considers or commands
his own advantage" (I 342e), and we have a conclusion that confounds
not only Thrasymachus, but us as well.
Unable to see his way clear of this thicket of tacit presuppositions
and hasty generalizations, Thrasyrnachus resorts to defamation of
_character: the sniveling Socrates must have been overprotected by his
wet-nurse (I 343a). Of all men, he would appear to be ignorant of what
in Thrasymachus's view-and not only his-is the most significant
fact of life: the fundamental difference between the shepherd and the
sheep. It is clear to everyone who has not lost his good sense (I 348d)
and his way amidst the tangle of abstract arguments that the shepherd
fatten3 his sheep for slaughter, for dinner and for his and his master's
bank account, in short "for his own advantage."
While appearing blind, Socrates' obtuseness yet forces Thrasymachus to be more explicit. Indeed, only now is the latter candi(l. As
Socrates suspected all along, Thrasymachus here admits that it is
rather injustice that leads to happiness: justice only leads to "getting
less" (I 343d). Not the higher ground of comparative governments,
then, but the lower ground of acquisitiveness and "getting more"
(pleonexia) recommends his view.
By leading Thrasymachus to think that justice understood as an
art can only serve the good of that over which it is an art "in the precise
sense," Socrates has forced him to say what he really thinks but had
been reluctant to put into words (cf. I 336c and 338b). Thrasymachus
now declares: "as I have said from the beginning"-that is, as he has
secretly thought and intended from the beginning-injustice is "freer,
mightier, and more masterful than justice" (I 344c). This is his final
word. So, having made known his "better opinion" (I 337d), and with
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25
no further sense of obligation to the others (I 344e), he prepares to
leave this community of discourse.
4. A Questionable Analysis
The justice of Socrates and the others, however, prevents Thrasymachus from leaving (cf. I 327a-c). The question of injustice after all
is not an indifferent one (cf. IX. 545f.). Tyranny is a deep human
temptation (the dialogue proper is framed by the question of tyranny,
cf. II 358-367, IX 57lb-d, 592b, X 615a-6b, 618a, 619a, b-d). Behind
our uncertain conviction that justice is a good lies our experience and
doubts to the contrary-, as well as the indiscriminateness of our desires
(cf. I 347e, II 359bf., IX 572b, 588c-9a). 7 Socrates is especia.lly
concemed with the effect that such praise would have on Glaucon and
the others (I 34 7 e). He must do what he can.
Socrates begins his exposition by pointing up a contradiction that
follows from Thrasymachus's newly revised view. The secret admiration of the unjust man clearly violates their earlier agreement to think
of the artisan in Socrates' precise sense. Precise speech divorces the
other-concern of the arts from the accompanying self-concern of the
artisan. Moreover, it makes it appear that the former cannot be a
means to the latter but is exclusively an end in itself. By appearing
blind to what in Thrasymachus's view is man's underlying essence-his acquisitiveness and desire for more-Socrates again flabbergasts his interlocutor.' He perplexes him still further when he
makes it appear that the sought after offices of the rulers are not only
not choiceworthy in themselves but actually onerous burdens, the
precise opposite of what Thrasymachus holds. Socrates' arguments
are stunning; the wolf ceases to howl.
Yet the claims for injustice, though silenced for the moment, have
not in fact been refuted (II 358-367). The question remains whether
" ... the life of the unjust man is [indeed] stronger than that of the just
man" (I 347e). Socrates therefore undertakes to counter this.
In Thrasymachus's view what we call justice is, quite frankly, a kind
of "noble innocence." By contrast, injustice is "prudent counsel" (I
348c; cf. X 598d). The implicit equation here of the unjust with the
good and the wise needs to be put into question. Socrates does this
by interpreting him to mean that "the unjust tries to get the better of
the like and the unlike" (I 350b), therewith highlighting its implicit
claims to domination. With the very questionable, indeed false, premise that "each is such as those of whom it is like" (I 349d)-because
this looks like a good argument surely does not mean that it is a good
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
argument (cf. V 476c)-along with the ambiguous use of the expression "to get the better of," Socrates manages to invert the matter and
conclude that "the just man is like the wise and the good and the
unjust man like the bad and the unlearned" (I 350c). Again the very
opposite of what Thrasymachus holds is made to appear to be so.
Thrasymachus, silenced again, now sweats, indeed even blushes. 9
He feels what he cannot see for himself, the lack of sufficiency of his
views. But the cause pf the reddening is not logic, the victory not one
of reason. He blushes because he has been defeated by rhetoric, by
his own craft. Thrasymachus has been given a taste of his own justice
and he doesn't like it. The "advantage of the stronger" all of a sudden
doesn't feel like justice to him (cf. IX 582a). Nevertheless we witness
a surprtsing reversal of aggression. Thrasymachus surrenders. From
now on, he says, he'll just "nod" like an old woman listening to tales
(I 350e).
This is not the end of Socrates' logical rapaciousness, however. Next
he considers whethe_r injustice is "more powerful and mightier" than
justice (I 35la). Shunting the question of the injustice of others from
view, Socrates points out that injustice seems to lead to "factions,
hatreds and quarrels." In light of this it would appear that an unjust
society is inherently unstable, indeed bent on self-destruction. Applying this to an individual, it would seem to follow that injustice renders
one "not of one mind with himself" and "unable to accomplish
anything" (I 35le-352a). History notwithstanding, the unjust would
seem to be intrinsically ineffective. Tyrants are not capable of the
enslavement of whole peoples. Indeed it appears to be a logical
impossibility.
Socrates' amazing resourcefulness-his word wizardry-proves too
much for Thrasymachus (and us?). If Thrasymachus was compliant
before, he is totally acquiescent now. The wolf bares his belly. Recognizing Socrates' logical ravenousness, Thrasymachus concedes yet
again: "Feast yourself on the argument, for I won't oppose you ... " (I
352b). He is defenseless (an oblique proof that tyrants are inefficacious?). Yet he should oppose Socrates. That there is some measure
of disorder among thieves surely does not mean that thieves are totally
ineffective. Socrates has only shown that it is not the injustice in the
"precise sense" that Thrasymachus imagines. This is hardly decisive
(as Socrates admits at I 352b-c, 11 361 a).
The banquet and the feasting are not quite over, though. "Come ...
fill out the rest of the banquet for me," is all the word-weary Thrasymachus can now muster. His innermost thoughts have been made a
meal of. The last argument in this three-course dinner concerns the
�27
LEVINE
question whether the unjust "live better." "They look as though they
[do] ... ," Socrates grants (I 352d; cf. II 358-367, III 379c, X 613a). His
reply tums on the meaning of the middle term arete, or excellence.
Socrates would have it that each species, indeed each functioning
being, has a special "work" (ergon) that "one can only do with it or best
with it." Indeed the soul has its excellence as well. The good life, then,
is not possible without it. Therefore the life of injustice cannot be better
than that of justice. ClearlY the argument rests on ambiguity: the
ambiguity of "the good life" and of excellence itself. w
After such a dizzying argument, Thrasymachus can only hope that
Socrates' logical indulgence is at its end, that he has had , as he says,
" ... his fill at the festival of Ben dis" (I 354a). Socrates' eagemess has
led him to giuttony, however. Indeed he even regrets what he has done:
I am like the gluttons who grab at whatever is set
before them to get a taste of it, before they have in
proper measure enjoyed what went before ... I have not
had a fine banquet, ... it's my own fault ... " [I 354b; cf. I
337a, 340d, II 357a, 358b, Ill 413b).
Above all, the question of the supelimity of justice to injustice
remains. The claims for injustice are only further accented by Socrates' own actions. Hasn't Socrates unjustly treated the arguments,
unjustly treated Thrasymachus?
II
5. Socrates' Self-indictment
What is one to conclude from this strange business? Socrates was
indiscriminate, Thrasymachus undiscriminating. Socrates' own selfassessment is categorical: "as a result of the discussion, I know
nothing" (I 354c). This is neither modesty nor irony. Indeed the fearful
prospect presents itself that we are in an even worse position with
respect to the question of injustice than when we began (as Glaucon
and Adeimantus see well, II 357a).
Thrasymachus was light: Socrates feasted himself on the arguments. And although it was the case that he saw what Socrates had
done to the other interlocutors better than he was able to see what
Socrates did to him, still it was true, as Thrasymachus observed,
Socrates did not come out from behind his questions (cf. I 338b). And
if one can infer the intention from the result, one might suspect with
Thrasymachus that Socrates was bent on victory and advantage after
all. This supports the popular suspicion of Socrates' dialectic as
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
essentially dissembling and destructive. But do Thrasyrnachus and
the populace know Socrates?
This master of the logos and of question and answer astonished us
with his numerous fallacies and paralogisms, yet he was victorious.
(If we could offer a casual list, it would include: oblique examples,
deflecting abstractions, rampant ambiguity, obtuseness, evasion of
the issue, and, for want of a better phrase, preposterous counterfactualism.) Although e)ements of his arguments were defective, the
argument proved overwhelmtng as a whole (cf. VI 487b-c). We cannot
avoid the conclusion that Socrates not only knows rhetoric in the
abstract, but that he is a master of it in practice. 11 Horrible to think,
he knows how "to make the weaker argument the stronger." This
disappoints our modem expectations. We would rather have seen
Thrasyrnachus defenseless before the onslaught of a rapier-like and
trenchant logic. 12 This wasn't what happened. Thrasymachus "was
tom to pieces" (cf. I 336b) to be sure, but he is a victim of his own
sophisticated trade.
This is potentially disillusioning. We are made to wonder about this
figure before us. Was the respect we had for Socrates not based on
careful insight into who he is? He used word wizardry: he violated
logical rules. The question is what he does with this ambiguous
knowledge. Has he committed an act of injustice? If so, should we not
join with the people of Athens and indict Socrates for-sophistry? But
"like" is not the same as "is," no matter what Socrates may have said
earlier to the contrary (cf. V 476c, X 596e, 598a, 60lb, 607a).
6. Prelogical Prologue
Indeed before we condemn him, let us recall the cin:;umstances and
context of the discussion. At the very outset of the dialogue. we
encountered the basic fact of political life: force. There it was made
clear that unless people are willing to listen, force will rule unchallenged. In this way we were brought to realize too that a community
of discourse should never be taken as a preexistent given, for it is not
"by nature" but is a human accomplishment and as such is precartous. A community of speech is always vulnerable to deteriorating into
a community of force. Logos, then, is not the uncontested ruler of
human affairs. There are preconditions to its holding sway. Socrates,
then, has first to attempt to lay the foundations of an altemative, more
rational and juster community.
And it was the figure ofThrasyrnachus, more than any ofthe others,
that threatened the openness and mutuality necessary for discussion.
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29
·Thus, before Socrates could persuade Thrasymachus of any
truths-and before logic in its refined and schematic forms could have
any approprtateness and reasonable effectiveness-the "wild beast"
either had to be done away with (cf. the treatment of Cephalus) or
"tamed" (cf. I 354b, V 470e). Socrates chose the less violent, altemative
course. He knows Thrasymachus (cf. I 327c, VI 498c-d). But even so,
one does not, indeed cannot, tame with logic those who do not listen.
In this political sense, logic is not an independent science, nor is it
first in the order of human things. Even it presupposes the political
arts.
13
We need, then, to acknowledge the political function of speech, the
founding function of speech above all. Without it there exists no arena
for dialogue or for thought. A contextiess speech falls to communicate;
"mere words'' do not speak "to" anyone. It is thus a very great reduction
to think that logos can be properly translated by "reason" or "logic."
There is more to logos than in our overly abstract and reductively
narrowed sense of philosophy.
Otherwise, we will not be able to see that, despite the "blunders,"
what is enacted here is a just logos in deed. Book One ofThe Republic
is precisely what it is, the first and preparatory book to that which
follows. As such it is also an indispensable prtmer in political founding.
7. The Logos of Force
One may object that Socrates has gone too far in his forceful
"taming" ofthe "wild beast." Even accepting the necessity of moderating and taming that which, if given enough rein, would overthrow the
very basis of the life of dialogue, we might yet regret that the vital
Thrasymachus has not only been logically reproached but, further,
denatured and incapacitated (cf. VII 519e, IX 590c-d).
Such a view rests on an underestimate of opinion. Despite the fact
that Socrates everywhere insists on a distinction between opinion and
knowledge, it is yet a significant misunderstanding to think that for
him opinions are ever "mere opinions." Although knowledge has "a
greater reality" (V 477e-8a), opinions should not be discounted to the
point that we no longer see their consequential natures and human
or political significance. Above all, they are not a thing of the mind
alone, confined to some restrtcted sphere of self-relation called "subjectivity" and thus a matter of "personal perspective" with no beartng
on life and action. The medium of the polis and of human life is opinion.
We are doxic beings.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Opinions, then, are not disengaged abstractions but first of all
expressions of a particular opiner. Truly candid opinions {those not
interposed to camouflage our secret thoughts). once elicited, are
revelations of the being of the speaker, who he or she is. We choose
what we think; we act out what we think; we live what we think; we
are what we think (the multiple difficulties therewith notwithstand·
ing). Opinions define the person, then. They are formative-preform·
ing, informing, transforming, deforming-and thus they bespeak and
perform a life (IX 574d). Socratic discussions seek to go to the quick
and expose the deeper "logic" beneath: the defining logos of a soul,
and thus constitute a philosophical psychoanalysis ("the art of creep·
ing into souls": IX 576a·7b, 578d, 579e; cf. VI 500d).
Thus it is not a matter of abstracted definitions, but of the lives
they bespeak-here the secret admiration for the tyrant-that needs
to be our principal focus. And it is this "opinion," given its potential
for immoderation and anti-political "getting more" (a more serious
form of ravenousness) that has to be called up short, not for Socrates'
"advantage," but for the community of those around him, especially
the young Glaucon. Beneath the appearance of a defense of what is
properly "one's own," the city. is hidden Thrasymachus's profound
longing for that which would ravish the city. an offensive and glutton·
ous self-assertion (a more serious form of dissembling). It is thus just
punishment and necessary corrective therapy that such persons be
stunned, deflated, and dispirited, at best as a preliminary step toward
their improvement, but if not as a way of preventing harm to others.
And this is what Socrates seeks to do at every turn by demonstrating
that not only is Thrasymachus wrong but the very opposite of what
he says is true.
Despite the fallacies, can such a therapeutic and prudential1ogos 14
be considered unjust. indeed illicit? At the very least: it is dedicated
to the well·being of "that toward which the art is directed" and thus
epitomizes the true art of the guardian "in the precise sense. " 15 The
just guardian, we learn later, cares for the city as a whole (V11 519d·e,
IX 586d·e). Is this the "foolish shepherd's art" of which Thrasymachus
was so contemptuous?
8. Socrates' Contrariness
Socrates then is not simply being contrary. True, everytimeThrasy·
machus asserted something, Socrates sought to "prove" the very
opposite, 16 and this even if it meant proving the contrary of what
everyone knows to be true. The term "contentious" thus fails to
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describe his activity. Socrates appeared to deny the importance of
such central issues as self-defense, human error, and self-interest for
this discussion of justice (and by extension for political philosophy).
He began by appearing to deny the right of self-defense. He seemed
to deny the traditional conviction that the city must protect itself and
restrain, indeed punish, wrongdoers. The ever-present threat of external enemies did not ever seem to warrant doing them harm. From this
it appeared that there was, no such thing as a just restraint. This rightly
tnfuriated Thrasymachus's sense of order (if only that of the rule of the
stronger), for such a view undermines the security of any city.
Then Socrates proceeded to deny the political importance of human
error (despite 1334cfand 339bf, VI and VII). The discussion of the arts
"in the precise sense" eclipsed the matter of misjudgment and errancy.
Would that errors were not a serious problem and we did not have to
pay for the consequences of people's mistakes.
But above all, the discussion of the arts and their total dedication
to that toward which they are directed eclipsed the fundamental
question of self-interest. The result was that human acquisitiveness
and pleonexia were rendered secondary in this, a discussion of
political philosophy. The human being was equated with the artisan
and thus. confined to a single, selfless interes tin the good of his subject
matter alone. There are numerous consequences of such a simplification of human intentions (IX 57lb, 572b, 573a, 588b-589b), but by
far the most significant is the apparent denial of any human desire
for domination (cf. X 615bf. and 619bf). He denied, on the· one hand,
that rule could ever be to anyone's advantage and thus was not
choiceworthy, and on the other hand, that rule, if ever secured, could
ever be harmful. Sheep are not ever the victims, in short, of anyone's
self-interest. As such he totally obscures what in Thrasymachus's
view, and not only his, is the fundamental fact of politics. Such, then,
were Socrates' arguments.
Thus the question emerges, why would anyone interested in political philosophy ever want to consult The Republic? Why such political
innocence, if not blindness? 17 The answer is not simple. Formally this
is the price one has to pay for premises that demonstrate that injustice
is not simply to be equated with worldly wisdom or human excellence
of any sort, that human history and experience notwithstanding,
injustice is not mightier than justice but is the opposite, impotent and
incapable of wreaking havoc on us all (II 358b, 367d-e, III 392b, V
472e, VI 497c, X 612c). This is a comforting thought, worth hanging
one's hopes on (II 368b). The overall effect of this section, then, is to
quiet our concems about the injustice of the world and to temper our
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
political ambitions to get for ourselves what we would not, in our
unjust world, otherwise receive. Is this not an act of justice in its
noblest, if innocent, sense?
But our first response may not be adequate. If we look at the
dramatic argument as a whole, and not simply at some abstracted
segment. we see that Socrates, far from denying these things, has in
fact defended himself quite well (V 464e), that he has ensured that his
greater self-interest not be denied, all in his overall attempt to forestall
the destructiveness of human error. To illustrate how the deed may
well be different from the word, let us recall the logos that seemed to
argue against any restraint, even a just restraint. Was not its effect
an exemplification of the proper exercise of such restraint? Wasn't its
intent to restrain logically Thrasyrnachus's excessive readiness to
inflict harm on others and dominate the discussion? Indeed its
consequence was the total suppression of his dialogic ambition or
thumos. Thus only on the surface did the logos make it appear that
political life is to be disarmed and rendered vulnerable. The deed
makes manifest what the words shrink from overemphasizing for fear
of fanning the indiscriminate fires of righteous indignation. 18 The
argument at its core and taken as a whole is fully cognizant of the
need for a just restraint but aware also of the possible abuse to which
such a conviction could lead in the hands of some. Justice is more
than right arguments or over-generalized principles.
9. Frtendship and Community
Socrates knows Thrasymachus. Above all he knows that he is not
an irreconcilable opponent (V 470e, VI 498c-d). Thrasymachus, a
professional rhetorician, is open to, indeed vulnerable to logos. Socrates has thus sought to tame him with words. Once confuted, the
beast grew gentle. Thrasymachus is thus susceptible to a persuasion
of a higher sort than brute force, susceptible therefore to an act of
helping and moderating justice (V 47la, X 599c-600e, 604c-d).
Because of this, Socrates tn this case could defend himself without
hurting others (cf. VII 525b). Justice, then, is not a matter of the
extremes, "helping one's friends and harming one's enemies." Socrates
demonstrates a third possibility (1327c): he tums an apparent adversary into a potential, if precarious, compatriot (Vl 498c-d, 598d).
Sophists are not always the unalterable opponents of the city they are
sometimes made out to be (cf. VI 492a). In some cases there is an
alternative.
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33
The capacity of speech to influence others is thus broader and more
mantfold than we are accustomed to grant. As we saw, it is not the
trenchant cutting of an incisive logic but that of his own craft that
brings about the reversal. Though self-conscious, Thrasymachus is
not fully self-knowing. Despite his profession, he does not realize the
full potency of logos. Above all, he does not realize that questions can
be as devastating as any authoritative declaration: they may not have
the face of wolfish boldness. yet they can go for the jugular.
What is undeniable about Socrates' peculiar manner of speech and
argumentation is that it opens up opinions and reveals their innermost
intentions. He brings the interlocutors to say what they think but
would not otherwise say, and to say what they did not expressly think
but harbored deep within. He pries open what is sealed with embarrassment, lack of candor, self-ignorance, or by our numerous mechanisms for not facing ourselves or the truth. His irony, his feigned
obb.:;seness, his purported incompetence, his exaggerated self-depreciation, all serve as negative pressure, so to speak, to force into the
open those cherished and protected self-defining opinions that we
would prefer remain behind the scenes. Such a diagnostic logos is
worth our attention.
Such an exposition, then, is undertaken by Socrates, also in the
interests of friendship or justice (1 35ld, X 62lc). This is not sufficiently appreciated. The most unexpected and significant event of the
whole of The Republic is Thrasymachus's staying and growing involvement in the common task of disclosing this complex thing called
justice. Logos has had a moderating effect even on him and has thus
made it possible for him to become a participating member of the very
community that he earlier sought to abandon, if not also to dominate
(cf. I 336d, V 450h, VII 52la, X 600d). This is both good for him and
for those around him. For now, this city won't have this wolf threatening its fold (III 415e-6a, V 450c).
10. Socratic Justice
It is thus the case that throughout the discussion Socrates' phronesis and justice is more outstanding than his truthfulness. The reasons
begin to emerge.
Above all we recall the lesson of the discussion with Cephalus.
There it becomes plain that simple truthfulness fails to fulfill the
greater demands of human responsibility. Simple truthfulness can be
indiscriminate and lead to harm (V 459c-d). Opinions, too, can be
harmful, as we saw from the exposition of Thrasyrnachus's secret
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
intention. If arete follows logos, then discretion is the better part of
nurture and politike. Socrates' argument was thus at pains to conceal
wherein danger was to be found. The action of the conversation
exemplifies the broader notion of justice and responsibility implicit in
Socrates' criticism of Cephalus's traditional view. Justice is surely not
something that can be indifferent to human consequences.
So too, we see that the careful notion of justice implicit in Socrates'
actions is imbued witl;l the positive element of Polemarchus's definition of justice. Socrates seeks to help his frtends and not let them
harm themselves (nor does he precipitously and falsely judge as an
enemy one who isn't [Ill 414b, V 450 a·b, 45la, 470b·c, Vl 498d, IX
589e, X 62lc]). It was for their well-being that Socrates obscured the
problems of human nature and power {or in the modem sense, of
politics as such). He- has· sought to prevent the excesses of an
unreflective self-interest and partisanship, that is to make his friends
and us better, not worse.
And, lastly, in seeking the true advantage of those over whom he
rules in speech, and not his own advantage narrowly conceived, he is
the just ruler "in the precise sense" (cf. Vl 503b). Thus he even fulfills
the unintended truth ofThrasymachus's definition. In every way that
the discussion considered in short, Socrates' logos is a just speech.
The price of such justice, however, is not small; his cause for
dissatisfaction is genuine. The gain is not small either. His salutary
distortions allow those present to think of politics, not in its most
reduced form as a matter simply of self· preservation (cf. VIII 547e)-a
negative and defensive form of politics (realpolitilc)-but in a positive
and formative way, as the precondition of human excellence. By
obscuring the threat from without and from within, we can now look
undistracted to ourselves and consider what is necessary, not simply
for survival, butfor higher human accomplishments (a partial antidote
to cynicism. estrangement, and disaffection). Socrates' discussion
with Thrasymachus thus shows that. while he is not blind to the truth,
neither is he blind to the good.
Book One of The Republic is thus an act of political justice as well
as political founding. Socrates has laid the foundations for a commu·
nity of speech and human excellence (VI 540a·b, X 613d). As part of
its founding and refounding, a city requires the continual reintegration
of centrtfugal individuals. Polemarchus, in contrast to his father, has
stayed, and so has, to our great surprise, Thrasymachus. Though not
disposed to at first, people have been opened up and are listening.
They can now become participating citizens of their community (i.e.
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35
are properly politicized). We are in the company, after all, of the sons
of the Best (VI 500d)."
But even more than that has been accomplished. By eclipsing
certain issues for now, Socrates has simplified and moderated the
participating reader's thumos; by pricking our logical interest, he has
at the same time engaged our thumos (IX 58la, 586d). Ever since we
too have been committed to the perpetuation of this community of
speech (cf. V 450a-b). The )1igh art of the founder, psychagogia or the
leading of souls, works its' powers on us as well (VI 500d, VJI 519c-d,
X 599c-600e, 604c-d). 20
Notes:
1. All quotations are from The Republic of Plato, translated by Allan
Bloom, (New York, 1968). On the title see; The Repubtic I 348c; also II
377d et passim, 378d; lit 409a and VII 539a. This interpretation has
sought to follow the commentators in the dialogue, Socrates, Glaucon,
Adeimantus, and even Thrasymachus, noting their dissatisfaction
with the course of the discussion in particular (I 337a, 340d, 341b,
354b, II 357a, 358b, III 413b). Our premise is Jacob Klein's insight
into the mimetic character of the dialogues: a dialogue about justice
has also to be an instance of justice. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics l447b9-l0;
Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, (Chapel Hill, 1965), pp. 3-31;
Leville, "Plato's Arithmological Order of Being," The Southwestern
Joumat of Philosophy, XI (Summer 1980). pp. 109-128.
2. This community at the very least needs to be one that will free Socrates
from the restraints of others and at its best do justice to his and our
natures (VI 497).
3. By contrast, Channides and Critias, far less dedicated to speeches,
are not so resistible, and thus their dialogic future (the one to be
numbered among the Ten of the Piraeus, the other among the Thirty
Tyrants). Cf. Channides 157c, 176d; Levine, "Tyranny or Ignorance:
On the Enigma of Socrates," Essays inHonorojRobertBart, (Annapolis). 1993, pp. 143-154.
4. Cf. The Republic III 394d where Socrates says ambiguously that he is
following wherever the argument, compared to a wind, leads. But an
unpredictable wind can in no way serve as an image of logical
necessity or of prudential guidance. Openness to new implications is
not the same as insight therein.
5. Apotogy of Socrates 18a-19a.
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6.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
That this is an exaggerated response, Glaucon makes plain at II 36la.
7, Cf, TheRepublicX619b-d.
8. The distinction between a self-interested and a selfless or otherdirected art is odd (I 345d-7b). How can one serve one's own interest
without doing something in particular? Thus, although they are
distinguishable in speech, are they separate in being?
By distinguishing the art of moneymaking or the wage-eaTiler's art,
Socrates does acknbwledge that there is at least one self-interested
art. Moreover, as the city in speech is constructed, there is not a
separate sub-class of moneymakers, but all artisans are "wage-earners." And given the extraordinary restrictions placed on the guardians
(above all V 457d-47ld), one comes to see that one of the foremost
problems dealt with by the founders is the self-interest of all the
citizens. The soul, uniquely self-relating, is an essentially self-referential, if not also a self-interested being. While a complicating factor,
the issue is thus unavoidable (cf. III 409d-e, 4llc, lV 430e-2b;
Timaeus 98a, Phaedrus 245c-6d, Laws X 895e).
The introduction of the distinction does invert Thrasymachus's
self-priority, making what he thinks primary, self-interest, supplemental at best to the non-self-serving aspect of the arts, that for him
are but the means to his securing his advantage.
9. Blushing might be thought the quintessential self-reflexive human
act. Is it not Montaigne who gives us the epigram, "Man is the animal
that blushes?" {Nietzsche's Zarathustra also says that "Man is the
beast with red cheeks.") While this moment of uncontrollable selfdemonstration shows that Thrasymachus is no more than a man, the
question remains how deep and defining his or anyone's sense of
shame is. Is it more than a momentary or situational reddening?
10. The latter pervades The Republic, The question from the very beginning
has been the question of arete: whether natural individual perfection
is the same as moral or political excellence, especiaily conventional
moral excellence.
11. Socrates' persuasion is not simply for the sake of victory, omarnent
or self-aggrandizement. His rhetoric is rather in the service of his
newly founded community. Above all it isn't blind to the consequences
of its speech {I 33lc). His is a mode of political discourse that first
seeks to establish the conditions on the basis of which something like
a responsible "rational speech" can have a place in human affairs.
One may object to such an instrumental {prelogical} use of speech.
But does the means negate the end? And is a city of force preferable
to a more refined community?
12. This hope has led to a scholarship of rationalization or an attempt to
justify and validate invalid and uncogent arguments, a modern ver-
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sian of the ancient skill. Is not one of the principal functions of logic,
though, the identification of the weaker argument as weaker?
13. If changing a soul is not the same as refuting an argument, if Socrates
is genuinely concerned with his interlocutors and not simply with
their abstract "positions," and if those with whom he speaks aren't
listening (I 327c) and aren't tnterested in "the choice oflives" (I 344e,
X 608b}, then "logical refutation" amounts to "smoke and non-sense"
(IX 58ld). Socrates' response, his elenchus, has to find a different
mode of access, one that makes dialogue-a community of speechpossible in the first place (IX 582a), Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
VI 1145a6
14. On the therapeutic logos, see The Republic II-III, X 608a. It is difficult
for some to allow that Plato is practicing what he has his character
Socrates recommend (cf. III 387c).
15. Compare the discussion of"the true political artist" at Gorgias 521c.
16. Cf. Symposium 214d; Klein, J., Greek Mathematics and the Origin of
Algebra, translated by E.Brann, (Cambridge, 1968) p. 97 (alsop. 95).
17. Cf. Callicles' criticism of philosophy as politically naive (Gorgias 486f.).
18. To pacifY the overly aggressive is not the same as passivism. Hence
Socrates understands Thrasyrnachus's criticism of the dream of the
latter as dangerous. He proceeds stepwise: first tame the wild, then
enlist the moderated, and only thereafter can one prepare the judicious use of what otherwise would be reckless.
19. Hegel too has seen that the face of the dialogue is a problem, although
his account is quite different. For him The Republic is an atavistic
document: "the want of subjectivity [in The Republic with its "denial
of individuality"] is really the want of [subjectivity in] the Greek moral
idea" Lectures on The History ofPhilosophy, translated by Haldane and
Simson, (Lcndon,1892; 1968), vol. II 113-114; also "Preface," The
Philosophy of Right, (Oxford, 1967), p.10. However, as he also recognizes with notable penetration, the introduction of the sophistic
principle of individuality comes with great risks (Lectures on the
History of Philosophy, I 365, 373, 354-5, 433; also Philosophy of
History, New York, 1956, pp. 265, 269). As a result, one might for good
reasons not want to overemphasize and promote it. Hence the extraordinary care with which Socrates treats Thrasyrnachus.
20. Everybody who will listen has remained. Those who were problematic
have been tamed~a wonderful, if improbable, outcome. Justice based
on a just rhetoric has brought about an uncommon harmony and
friendship (I 351d, 369b, N 443d). But a city based on friendship is
not the typical political community. For this reason, it is emphasized,
we are tn the company of "the sons of the Best" (cf. II 368a, N 427c, V
450d, 479a, IX 580b-c, also I 338d, 351d, II 381d, V 477d, VII 536e).
�38
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Plato thus poses the prospect that one can be civilized and political
without becoming slavish (cf. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, sect.
11).
2l.Alexandre Kojeve's claim that "history" is the perfecting, i.e. moderating, influence on the tyrant thus appears dangerous wishful thinking
(".Tyranny and Wisdom," in Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, New York, 1963
pp. 143-188). That the tyrant will not remain an island of self-seeking
unto himself but ~11 submit to others for "recognition" is a hopeful
sentiment. It is optilnistically rendered here but not borne out by the
rest of the dialogue. Thrasymachus does seek reputation and recognition. But were it not for Socrates' skill, it would only fuel his desire
for mastery. A more extreme case is Critias in the dialogue Channides.
The historical figure's "tyrannical procedures"~Kojeve's value-free
euphemism for the tyrant's cruelty-are adopted without reservation
precisely because others always remain a means to his private
advantage.
Ifhistmyis allowed to judge for us, then we do not judge for ourselves.
"Liberty is endangered when its power finds no obstacles which can
retard its course, and give it time to moderate its own vehemence"
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Reeve and
Bowen, (New York, 1945), p. 260. Dialectically put: has it not been
the sad history of those who have allowed the tyranny of the actual
that it led ineluctably to the actuality of tyranny?
�I
The Past-Present
Eva T. H. Brann
Tonight I want to state, and even to overstate, what I believe to be a
tnlth about the Program of St. John's College. What makes the tnlth
worth considering is that it goes against the plain appearances and
against what people, quite understandably, say about us.
I want to state this truth especiaily for the freshmen, the newest
members ofthe college, who might be surprised to hear it. And I want
to overstate it, because a sharp finite pronouncement is probably the
most productive prelude to the chief part of any Friday evening, which
is the question period. It is then that I can modifY, qualifY, perhaps
even retract what I am about to say. But before I state my truth, let
me say something to the freshmen about all such opinions. Many of
you have probably already guessed that this Program of learning is
like an iceberg, which has a visible tip that swims along on a
subaquatic mass nine times the size of the visible part. It is perfectly
fine and profitable to attend entirely to the brilliant tip, to study the
superlative books and acquire the liberal skills set out in the Program.
But some of you will wish to dive from time to time into the murky
depths to inspect the contestable theory that supports the Program.
The statement I am about to propose belongs to this netherworld.
I say that as students of the St. John's Program we have no interest
in the Past. None. What I mean is that care for the past is not one of the
features that makes this curriculum what it is meant to be. This school
has no institutional interest in what has gone by and passed away. You
might say that we let bygones be bygones. I assert this in the face of the
obvious fact that almost all our books, scores, theorems, and experiments
have authors that are, as human beings, long dead and gone.
When I say that we do not care about the past I am not particularly
thinking of the fact that we do not study history as a field. After all,
we do not study any of the other normal university disciplines either
-sociology, geology, psychology. We do read the two authors who are
generally agreed to be the founders of history. However it is not clear
just how much interest these writers had in the past. Herodotus
The Dean's lecture was delivered on September 2, 1994, al the Annapolis campus
of St. John's College
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
introduced the word history, historia, for his composition concerning
the Persian War, but the Greek word means primarily an inquiry. It
has the same origin as the verb for knowing: a histor is someone who
knows, not necessarily things remote in time. Even when it is taken
in the current sense, history has a relation to the past which is anything
but straightforward. After all, History with a capital H, that is, the
public memory of events in the past, comes into being after history with
a small h, the work of reconstructing the past, has been done. Some
people go so far as to claim that historians in telling their plausible and
timely tales do not reconstruct so much as construct the past, so that
the past is an invention ofthe present. I might say that I cannot quite
believe so extreme a claim, because I know of some histmians who are
less truthful than others and therefore of others who are more truthful
in trying to determine the deeds done (these are called facts) and the
times assigned to them (these are called dates). Facts and dates form,
of course, the skeleton of history. I do believe that something definite
in fact happened at a certain date, but I doubt that it is in principle or
in practice possible to find out what that was, and I am pretty sure that
it ought not to be our business here to learn what others thought
happened or to try to find out for ourselves. The reason is that the
recovery of the past from its fragments is a practically infinite and
intellectually tricky task that requires a completed liberal education.
In short, you learn to do it in graduate school.
Yet, as I said, the fact that we have no department of history, or
that some of us have misgivings about the relation of history to the
past that was (meaning the past that really was and is really gone). is
not what makes me say that we have no interest in the past.
Nor could I possibly say that as private persons many of us lack
interest in the past. Many of us are ardent time-travelers. We like to
go sight-seeing in temporally distant places. For example, in my free
time I like to read about the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru.
Part of that interest is, to be sure, intellectual and is closely connected
to the fact that I function in a program that deals exclusively with the
Euro-American West, so that any light that is thrown on this tradition
immediately draws my attention. In the case of the Aztecs and the
Incas it is the evidently irresistible potency of the West, the power to
conquer, to coopt and to corrupt that is sometimes luridly and
sometimes tragically illuminated. I have in mind the awful fates of
those two great kings, Montezuma of the Aztecs and Atahualpa the
Inca. Both of them-canny, sophisticated potentates-gave themselves, like rabbits frozen in a trembling panic, into the treacherous
hands ofthose two conquistadores Cortez and Pizarro, whose scruffy,
�BRANN
41
diminutive bands had only a few horses, a few guns, limitless greed,
and impregnable faith in the Cross, to oppose to the two huge
magnificent royal armies. Naturally I would like to know, if history can
tell me, why the West always conquers and conquers so completely
that all resistance assumes the means and terms of its enemy.
But learning lessons, if there are any, is not my best reason for
reading books of history. Mostly I want to see new worlds. No city,
except perhaps Athens, has a more beautiful past behind its ugly
present than Mexico City. Bernal Diaz, the soldier-chronicler of the
Conquest. who rode with Cortez, says this of ancient Mexico City,
Tenochtitlan, set in a great lake covered with floating gardens:
When we saw so many cities and villages built in the
waters of the lake and other large towns on dry land,
and that straight, level causeway leading into Mexico
City, we were amazed and we said that it was like the
enchanted things related in the book of Amadis because of the huge towers, temples, and buildings
rising from the water, and all of masonry. And some
of the soldiers even asked whether the things we saw
were not a dreaJTI.
The book of Amadis, Juniors will know, is the romance that inspired
Don Quixote.
The hanging city ofMachu Picchu, a fortified outpost of the Inca empire,
rediscovered accidentally in 1911, also has a weird and wonderful beauty,
which I simply have in my mental picture book of ancient marvels.
And that seems to me to be the main attraction of the past- that
it adds worlds to my world, and bygone beauties to a present diminishing in beauty. It does so much as does fiction, only with the
strangely moving modifier of real past existence. I read history dutifully for information, I consult historians somewhat skeptically for
illumination, but I am in the past unclitically as in a romance, like
Bernal Diaz when he saw Tenochtitlan. For the past is primarily a
place (we will see that all talk of time is infected by spatial metaphor),
a romantic place, as the present is prosaic and the future uncanny.
Perhaps we can talk about this claim, that the past is the place of
romance, in the question period.
II
This might be a proper spot to collect the reasons I can think of
why anyone should, and why many of us do, care about the past, if
not as students and tutors in the Program, then as human beings.
For the two are not entirely coincident.
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
1. Well, then, I have just mentioned the romance of time travel. I am
persuaded that all devoted archaeologists and historians begin as
temporal romantics, though it is their professional obligation not to
let on. When, some thirty-six years ago, I was a practicing archaeolo·
gist-which means someone who gives an account of very old things
-I was not too young and naive to get pleasure from watching each
of my revered elders in the excavation at Athens talking in carefully
damped scholarly prose about the particular period for which I well
knew each cherished a hopeless passion. It was like listening to a
lover giving a disingenuously objective account of the one face about
which that is really impossible.
2. A second reason why people do care about the past is, as I have
already mentioned, that they hope to learn its lessons. Sometimes they
mean to use the past to lay the past to rest, for it is said that those
who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it. One book of
essays we study, the Federalist Papers, is full of such a use of the past.
The eighteenth paper, for example, written by James Madison, is a
study of failed Greek confederations, intended by horrible counterex·
amples to point the way to a successful federal structure. In other
words, the past can be used like our personal memory, as the
depository of accumulated experience.
3. For some, the past is treasure trove and the way to it a treasure
hunt. The origin of archaeology was largely in grave robbing and gold
digging.
4. Eventually the passion for lost beauty and lost treasure turned into
a sober science of carefully recorded diggtng below ground and meticu·
lous mapping above ground. The passion of discovery and acquisition
yielded to the more temperate but equally tenacious passion for detec·
tive·like tnduction, and for accuracy, cataloging, and tabulation.
As the past below the earth is carefully brought up and recorded,
so the past above ground is carefully preserved and restored. Time·
reservations, such as Williamsburg, are established somewhat in the
same spirit as that in which in Victorian times the woman of the house
would maintain a "good" parlor-a place protected from the wear and
tear of daily life.
Thus nostalgia is legitimized by academic discipline, and the past
is ·preserved in a form more pristine than it had as a present.
5. A peculiarly contemporary way of dealing with the past is to put
energy not into digging out the roots of the present but into inventing
them. Such inventions are platn lies, told by people, usually profes·
sors, who should and do know better, to people who have no way to
�BRANN
43
be critical-told for dubiously therapeutic reasons. The people who
participate in these self-deceptions tend to understand that the
passage of time confers honor and that the past plays a role in
establishing what is nowadays called "identity.''
6. On the opposite end with respect to motive and honesty is an
academic way of occupying oneself with the past that is exemplary in
its rigor. It is represented by the university discipline called "history
of ideas." Here past and bygone notions evoke a meticulous reconstructive interest, and are objectively reported as beliefs that used to
be believed. I have always been puzzled by the strong attraction of so
bloodless an activity.
7. A last, and to my mind best, way of having close relations to the .
past that I have observed is the way of revival, rebirth, recovery,
renascence. It is an act of pure imaginative vitality, of which the
greatest histmical example is the period called the Renaissance. Its
mode, which can be reactivated anytime, and certainly right here and
now, is to attempt to revivifY a golden antiquity while succeeding in
bringing to life a resonant modernity.
Each of these ways ofbeing involved with the past has its dangerous
and debilitating aspects. The romantic attachment to the past, which
is called nostalgia, is a form of sentimentalism. The lessons of history
teach everything and nothing. The earth's treasures are no longer for
the taking, and robbing graves is in most countries plain illegal. The
exact recording and reconstruction of the relics of lost worlds imposes
an abstracted rigidity on the messy life that was. Self-invention with
respect to the past is also self-delusion. The meticulous study of
superseded opinions is even drearier than the trendy courting of
current ones. There are two ways of mummifYing the past: by not
letting it die and by not letting it live.
On the other hand, to be disconnected from the past is also a
pathology. A human being that lives merely in the present is less than
Euclid's point that has no parts-it is a dimensionless being that lacks
even a location. For such a memoryless being has no path behind, no
human lineage .. It seems to me part of our human location in the world
to feel sometimes some sorrow at all the worlds that are lost and gone
and some elation at all the civilizations to which we are heir. This
function of pity and love for the sheer goneness and absence of
previous worlds and people, a sense not so much of personal as of
generic loss, seems to me a necessary part of one's humanity .
Therefore I do think we ought to be sometimes somewhat in love
with what I shall call the past-perfect, the past that is finished, has
passed away.
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
III
I think the time has come to analyze more soberly what is implied
in caring about that past-perfect, that fmished past. In all such caring,
this seems to me to be the essential element: The past is the temporally
absent. As students are not usually marked absent from a class in
which they have not been previously present, so absence in time
implies an earlier presence. The future is not. to my mind, temporally
absent, because it h&sn't yet been present. Therefore the essence of
caring about the past-perfect is a relation, be it of love, hate, or
fascinated indifference, to what was. "Was'' is the past tense of "is."
"Was" is an "is" that is no more. (Let me interject here the thought
that "no more" need not mean "nevermore," for I am not at all sure
that the adage about not turning the clock back is true. I think we can
turn the clock back at a blink ofthe will. It is only a question of cost.)
"Temporal" as in "temporal absence" is the adjective formed from
time. To think about the past it is thus necessary to think about time.
I have read an estimate of the number of publications conceming
time: Since 1900, there have been 95,000 books, and since 1990 well
over 90,000 articles. Of these writings I've read perhaps forty-five,
among them the eight or nine that seem to matter most. They do all,
apparently, agree about this-that time has two major aspects: Now
and Then. They also agree that Then in tum has two aspects: Before
and Mter Now or Past and Future. Beyond these three aspects or
phases of time, Present, Past, and Future, everything is debatable.
The Now presents a set of puzzles first set out by Plato in the dialogue
Parmenides. The order of importance of the phases, the direction in
which they advance, the substantiality of time itself, the relation of
time to soul-these and many more issues are treated by Aristotle,
Augustine, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Husser!, and Heidegger. Most of
these you will in fact read in the next four years. What I will say tonight
will be almost culpably sketchy.
And first I have to observe once more, without stopping to dwell on
the reason, that it is practically impossible to speak of time and its
phases without using spatial metaphors. The past particularly is in
its very name metaphorical, for "past" is related to "pace" or step, and
to "passage" or a going by; past means, as I have said, by-gone.
Let me now give you the features that I think of when I reflect on
the meaning of the word "past."
l. It is one of three times or phases of time "in" which an event can be.
Notice the space-like location of events implied by the preposition "in."
�45
BRANN
2. It is what was. Notice the apparently unavoidable contradiction of
the tenses used in this description.
3. It is present for us in two ways, externally and internally. Notice
that the past is present for us as memory (an insight I have borrowed
from Augustine's Confessions), and that memory has two storage
spaces, so to speak. One is in our souls. It is described beautifully by
Augustine as a "spacious and infinite inner sanctum" (X, 8). A being
without such an inner rodm is one for whom nothing has significant
connotations or imaginative penumbras.
The other memory space is outside. It consists of all the testimonials, be they writings or objects, that have survived into our present
as evidence of past life. As I have already said, it seems to me that a
person who has no knowledge of these reminders of our human
antecedents is an unanchored and untethered being.
4. My fourth and final feature of the past is the one I have just
mentioned: the gravity of our attitude toward it, whether it is to be
deliberate denial, laborious reconstruction, shameless invention, nostalgic luxuriating, or free appropriation. Notice the implication that
our position with respect to the past is at some point a most deliberate
choice with wide consequences to our life.
IV
I now feel entitled, and perhaps even obligated, to say outright how
I think we should bear ourselves toward the past and how We should
live with it.
There are past-related pathologies that seem to me particularly
sick. One is the condition of those people, descrtbable as galvanized
zombies, who live in a frantic present, without a moment's collected
contemplation. This mode is practically definitive of contemporary
life. The other is the luxuriating nostalgia of Poe's Raven, who croaks
"Nevermore." This mode is practically definitive of romanticism.
For my part I think the past is indeed a place in which to take refuge
when it is necessary to pull back, to contemplate life and mull things
over. The present is the phase for brisk deliberation, decision, and
action, for being in that sleepwalking state in which we do, more or
less surefootedly, the one thing needful just now. In visiting the past,
whether in books or places, we get longer, more serene views.
In the past too the open-ended passage of moments turns into
completed tales, from anecdotes to myths.
In it, moreover, are to be found the models for our actions and the
patterns for our demeanor, without which it is impossible to shape a
distinctive self.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
46
And finally the past is to be appreciated as a double source of
dimensionality, a source of solidity and ghostliness at once. For, as I
have already intimated, it is the past that adds a dimension to the
here and now, which would otherwise be a mere momentary facade,
a painted curtain stretched over nothingness, floating into a shapeless
future. It is the past that gives this moving front of present appearances some sense of solidity, of having endured and betnghere to stay.
The ghostliness I pave mentioned is really the same effect tn a
different mood. When I was in Japan I saw in the enclosures of
Buddhist temples trees with prayer strips affixed to the branches,
fluttering in the wind. So also memories of the past attach themselves
to places and flutter about them, giving them an attendant ghostly
life. To be sure, not all locations are equally good ghost-catchers-for
example, to my mind, this auditorium is not as good at it as our Great
Hall over in McDowell.
v
Now I want to recall to you the claim that set me off. paradoxically,
on this praise of the past. The claim is that whatever attachment we
do and ought to have to the past privately, as students in the St.John's
Program we have none whatsoever. It is a claim I mean to argue even
in the face of the fact that we study hardly any contemporary book or
subject, and that almost everything we pay attention to is rather old
-or as Francis Bacon says, very young, since the older a production
is, the closer it is to the childhood of humanity.
To develop my opinion, I want to put before you, and to distinguish,
three terms. They are History, Tradition, and Past. I don't feel much
obligation to define them here. When people say "Define your terms,"
they usually mean to turn a conversation into a debate. But although
I am putttng forth my claim with a certain panache, I would like it to
be the beginning of a conversation rather than an argument. So I shall
offer a mere collection of the connotations that I personally intend,
first putttng some prelimtnary effort into distinguishing these terms.
I have already said something of the Past. The past, I say, is what
is absent tn time, bygone. It is a kind of folk wisdom that the past
was, meaning that it is a bygone present, and that it is therefore in a
way that neither the moving now nor the unhappened future is .
. History, of which I have also spoken before, is the deliberate
account given of selected past events or conditions by historians,
whom we may call public memory-experts. History depends on the
fact that human affairs assume distinct shapes, either as discrete
notable events like revolutions or as continuous but noticeable con-
�47
BRANN
ditions like social movements. History with a capital H is reconstructed in histories with a lower-case h by means of written and
tangible testimonials. The writing of history is therefore, as I said, a
research activity, and its study from books requires the experience
necessary for a critical review of the use to which the testimony is put.
All writing of histories that 1 know of rests on the faith I have already
mentioned, that human time on this earth organizes itself into discernible entities that hape some relation of cause and effect. This
fundamental axiom of all History is no stronger than a hypothesis
because, since events are always demonstrably unique, no one is in
a position to show for sure that a given outcome was lawfully caused
by a given antecedent. You might call this historian's faith a post hoc,
ergo propter hoc disposition. This Latin tag means: "After the event
and therefore because ofit," and we all tend to believe it. I'll give you
two personal examples: I ardently believe that I could be bam in
Europe only because Leonidas and his three-hundred Spartan held
Thermopylae for a while against the Persians, and I ardently believe
that I could flourish in America only because Abraham Lincoln was
president when the Union was threatened. But who could prove that?
The deeds that make up History are alive insofar as we feel their
effects reaching into the present and dead insofar as the sheer increasing weight of intervening human moments push them tnto the ineffective distance. Since the fall of Troy in 1183 B.C., 100,189,872,000
seconds have gone by-and anyone who has ever had a sharp pain or
keen sorrow knows what a second is, each an etemal moment. Most
of History is truly gone by, only dimly and diffusely related to our lives.
The historical past is prologue but not present.
VI
So we are left with the third term, Tradition. The word literally
means a "handtng down" of the past to the present. Often it means
ritual that has been taken over and respected because it has long been
established; thus Shakespeare speaks of"respect, tradition, form and
ceremonious duty" (Richard II, III, ii. 173). There is however, another
strong and significant usage. The word is often used of the literary
and textual tradition, the set of books that have survived because
people have respected and protected them and have handed them
down, mostly in those book-reservations called libraries. This tradition includes only a small part of the writtngs of the past. We can hope
that it is an advantageously sifted past, and that the best books are
the ones that survived, but we cannot be sure. For example, of
Sophocles' 123 dramas only seven are extant, one eighteenth of the
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
output of Athens's central tragedian. From the vicissitudes of war,
like the-allegedly-accidental burning of the huge library at Alexandria during Caesar's siege of the city in 48 B.C., to the deliberate
torching of books conducted by the Nazis in Berlin in 1933, from the
mildew of forgotten trunks to the acid bum that is eating up old books
in contemporaxy libraries, circumstance has played a large role in the
selection of the written tradition, since it is handed down physically.
That we are lucky both in the losses and in the survivals, that what
survives is both the best and somehow coherent, is a faith, a reasonable faith we have in the discrimination and care of our predecessors.
In sum, we believe that the past has preserved for us plenty of great
books, and they seem to speak to each other.
How does this tradition of texts, be it texts of words, or mathematical
symbols, or musical notes, differ from the other remains of the past?
Let me use as an example our own McDowell Hall, the pride of the
Annapolis campus. Our Director of Admissions, John Christensen,
probably the faculty member best known to the freshmen, has put
together a handsome and informative volume about this "historical"
building.
McDowell was begun in the 17 40s and by 1799 it housed all the
functions of St. John's College, which had been chartered in 1784. In
1909 it was burned down to just above the first story. The then-principal,
Dr. Fell, wrote that the students "ruined their suits of clothing to save
the building and its contents." This dreadful catastrophe inspired
some dreadful student poetry about old McDowell, who, it was written
in the yearbook, "has perished in the flame ... and she's nought now
but a name." Which was as wrong as the poem was bad, because she
rose, like a phoenix: from the ashes, to be continually used as our main
building. In 1989 McDowell was again gutted, this time for a deliberate and beautiful renovation and modemization.
Here is the contrast between our building and our books, the
contrast that is relevant to my point: We can modernize old buildings,
install new operational systems, modifY unsafe or inconvenient features. We cannot do that to our books. Modem paraphrases or
bowdlerized versions will not give us new improved up-to-standard
texts, but travesties. Secondly, we can live comfortably and purposefully in our building without understanding it, or with only a dim sense
of esthetic satisfaction, yet without knowing the underlying construction or even seeing the elegantly rational hierarchy of its elevation. But
we can't live with our books unconsciously. Everything depends on
maximum awareness of detail, structure, purpose. A dim sense of a
great text is almost a contradiction in terms.
�49
BRANN
Therefore, the books of the past differ from the buildings of the past
in the manner of their renovation-the renewal of the books excludes
comfortable remodeling and trouble-free use. We have to do it their
way. They would seem to impose their past on us.
VII
But actually the case is just the opposite. Because we have to
engage the books of the tr'lldition as they are and with all our available
awareness, they are notin the past, but in the present. There are not.
except in incidentals, bygone. What they say to us is what they have
always said, and they say it now and always now.
There is the simple past, the once-and-for-all past, which is absent
except in memory or in monuments. But there is also a past which
may be named after the grammatical tense from which I took my title:
past-present. It is a nice fact that there are certain verbs in English
as well as in Greek that display this past-presence dramatically. The
English "can" as in "I can" is actually a past from a verb meaning to
know, as in "cunning," or German, kennen. Past knowing is present
power; to have learned is to be now able. Similarly, the Greek verb
for "I know," aida, is a past form of the verb for seeing; to have seen
is now to know. That is what the grammarians call the past-present.
It brings a past form into the present tense.
The tradition, as I understand it, does the same. It presents a past
thatis not absent but present- if we let it be. I can think of a powerful
image for what I mean. When Odysseus goes into the undetworld the
diaphanous shades flutter about him and cannot attain to living
presence until he lets then drink from the pit of sacrificial blood (Book
XI). The books are, with our encouragement, capable of taking life.
VIII
To understand the tradition of books consciously as I have delineated it, you have to be willing to entertain a very powerful-and very
controversial-set of beliefs. There is, I hasten to add once again, also
the possibility of just reading the books receptively. It is perfectly
profitable, and even sound, for students to read thoughtfully without
reflecting very often on the conditions for reading. But you might want
to consider them sometimes, so here are the beliefs that I think
support the idea of the tradition as a past-present.
First: I think that, in order to believe that there is a past that is
present, you have to believe in the unity of literate humanity. You
have to imagine the thinking and writing human species as living
below the threshold of natural evolution and also as standing in some
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
part outside the vicissitudes of history. For example, I believe that a
certain young man called Glaucon, one of Plato's older brothers, if he
were present tonight, might be puzzled and disgusted to see a female
in unbecoming dress address the public and utter decided opinions.
But although he might not get over the indecency of it in one lifetime,
I believe this time-immigrant would undergo the same naturalization
as does a contemporary space-immigrant. He would pick up our
customs and prejudic\'s and begin to be involved with us. He might
even enroll in the Graduate Institute. His intellect would be engaged
even tf his sensibilities continued to be outraged. My guess is, he
would imperceptibly become acclimatized until he loved this place
better than that time and could bear to return to Athens only in the
manner of a loquaciously superior tourist, as happens to most of us
immigrants when we try to go "home."
So much the more readily would his quicker and deeper younger
brother be naturalized, especially since he would already have understood, and as I think, respected, democratic life. For he had observed
that the kind of free discussion concerning the choice of a way of ltfe
and of a political constitution that his Socrates carries on, happens
naturally in democracies (Republic VIII, 557). So conversely, since we
can readily imagine him thinking with us, we can pick up his writings
and think with him. For these writings are meant to be ahistorical in
the sense that we can, in imagination, discount historical circumstance. Of course old books will refer to past prejudices and preoccupations, but we, by trying to understand what it means to be
prejudiced and preoccupied, will soon learn to read around what is
simply past in old books.
Second: A closely related belief maintains that we have not only been
the same rational species throughout recorded time, but that we do,
in fact, have the same preoccupations, the same queStions as even
our remotest ancestors, provided only the level of formulation is deep
enough. We must feel a little queasy at the sanctimonious superiority
with which people who think they preeminently tnhabit the present
condemn the opinions of people who lived in the past. But let me
choose items on which positive contemporary opinion probably really
is on safer moral ground, say, the position of women, the exposure of
children, the owning of human chattel. We do, whatever our local
conclusions may be, at the least share the questions (perennial
questions, as they are rightly called) concerning human equality, the
right to ltfe of the very young, the inalienable freedom of individuals.
These problems you will recognize as not dated at all.
�BRANN
51
But the argument that we are, at least in our questions, alike
through time, could be tumed against the tradition. If at a level
properly established nothing changes, neither human nature nor
human preoccupations, why bother with older, Jess accessible versions? If concems are perennial, why not seize hold of them in the
present from?
Third: Yet two additional beliefs address this reasonable point. One
is the belief hom of experience, which I for one hold with equal
amazement and fervor, that there is a palpable distinction between
good and great. Good books are written all the time and they lean in
fuendly fellowship on their great relatives. But those great ones are
few and far between. There seem to be times, to be sure, when they
are bunched together. It is probably that inexplicable fact, that
miracle of history, that makes us think of centuries as if they were
breeding grounds: the fifth century B.C. for Parmenides, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Plato; the sixteenth century for
Luther, Bacon, Shakespeare, Galileo. But however they seem to be
bunched or strung out on the tablets of time, these writers are rare
and-I will say this most controversial thing-absolutely great. As you
know, this faculty, your tutors, claims for itself-some might say
arrogates to itself-the judgment and the choice of books. We have
many gross and subtle criteria, which we might wish to discuss in the
question period. The first one for me was formulated by the teacher
who introduced me to Homer and won me for Classics, back in
Brooklyn College in 1950. I recall a student asking her in a bright
and impertinent tone-we were a bright and impertinent lot-what
made her know a great book, and she said in the throwaway voice of
utter conviction: "It makes my hair stand on end."
One answer, therefore, to the desirability of taking up books
ostensibly written in the past is that the tradition is a very slowly f.tlling
treasury. We are too poor in the present to be able to afford the loss
of this inheritance.
Fourth: But one more belief, complementary and even antithetical, is
needed. When the past is regarded as presenting unique and irreplaceable treasures to the present, one dimension of human thinking
and imagining is disregarded. We live, as I said before, at the front of
a facade of time, a facade propped up and given solidity by the past
behind it. It is not that we need to think of the past as determining
our thinking. Thought is by its nature capable of thinking anything
at any time. Yet it is a fact, perhaps a paradoxical fact, that we live
with inherited opinions. It is a paradoxical fact because most opinions
are held thoughtlessly; they are unthought thoughts. It is a very
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
different thing to inherit a book and to inherit an opinion, not only
because the books reach much farther back than the opinions, but
because the books become ours only by an effort of appropriation,
while the opinions are what we effortlessly just have. They are part
of that ever-advancing, ever-changing facade called the present.
There is no denying that the facade progresses, not necessarily in the
optimist's sense of getting better but in the neutral sense of going on.
For while the questiops may stay recognizably similar, the answers
change drastically, by creeping evolution or abrupt revolution. Yet it
seems that the more radical a new departure in thought is intended
to be, the more it is shaped by its origin, be it through the precise
contradiction involved in a sharp rejection, through the careful reconstnlction required by a conscious recovery, or through the conversational continuity encouraged by a receptive response.
It follows that the tradition, as I understand it, is for us not only a
treasure house for any time but also a key to our specific present
condition, to our understanding of private and public humanity, of
nature and of divinity. One way or the other-as suppressed antithesis, as deliberate reacquisition, or as conversational partner- it props
up our present, and on our knowledge of it depends our critical
appreciation of our time.
I speak of time, but, really, time, datable time, has little to do with
it. I can think of several ancient authors who are nearly two millennia
away from us in time, but two seconds away from us in thought-two
seconds being what it takes to conceive a tremendously new idea. The
order in which these authors appear probably matters but not the date
of their birth, just as in our thinking the sequence of conception, the
genesis of understanding, is significant, but very rarely the exact time.
This notion of mine, that order matters but not dates, is, I must tell
you, pagan; in fact it seems to me to be the gist of Paganism. It is
therefore highly debatable, and I hope we will talk about it in the
question period.
In any case, the point I want this notion to reinforce is that
absorbing the tradition is not the same as studying history or caring
about the past. For we study these books not insofar as they tell us
of bygone times but because they tell us of the present. They are not
absent in time, as is the past, but present (and perhaps even out of
time altogether). They are the past insofar as it is present; they are
effectively present; they are in the terms of the title of my lecture, the
PAST-PRESENT.
But that is not quite the last word. The books of the tradition, our
books, become present, as I have said, only when we let them. We
�BRANN
53
revivifY them and make then vital. Therefore they stand by us and
speak as does that shade in Hades whom Odysseus calls ""the prince
of those with gift of speech.'" It is the seer Tiresias, and he pleads:
Let me but taste of blood, I shall speak true.
(Odyssey XI, 96, Fitzgerald)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Interpreting Genesis Through the
Foundational Symbols of
Earth, Water, and Air
Harvey L. Gable: Jr.
There have of course been many commentaries on or readings of
Genesis, but while much progress has been made in identii'ying source
material and refining etymological precision, it remains an open
question what the book as a whole is intended to be about. I am
speaking here of the intention of the compiler in choosing to select,
edit, and arrange the selections as he has done, since ultimately it is
this and not the sources of the original fragments, or even their original
meaning, which is cogent. 1 While a definitive answer to this question
may be impossible, there are certain "structuralist" principles of
interpretation which can give us some insight into the kinds of
elements that hold these stories together. 2 As I will show in this essay,
if we regard the second Genesis creation story (Gen 2:4ff), which
describes the construction of man, as setting the terms by which the
book is to be read, we can see the subsequent stories as something of
an owner's manual, describing how and how not to opel-ate this
mechanism that God has created, but left us to run.
The second creation story focuses on man as a composite being,
structured from three basic elements: earth, water, and air or breath,
each of which has its symbolic meaning. It is essential to remember
this simple recipe for making a man, since in all the pre-patriarchal
stories of Genesis 1-11, whenever the creature, man, malfunctions,
the fault can inevitably be traced to an excess or deficiency of one of
the three elements in his mixed nature. These stmies operate consistently, I will argue, on a cause-and-effect model, each describing an
imbalance of earth/water/air and showing its consequences. Taken
together, they make a point about who man is and what he must do
to remain balanced and healthy; they also define an ontological system
which, in the second half of the book (after chapter 11), becomes the
implied backdrop against which the lives of the Patriarchs are played
out. In this second section, the characters and the landscape are more
life-like but the issues at stake are still those defined by the act of
creation in Genesis 2.I argue, in other words, that the central question
Harvey L. Gable, Jr. holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught
at Chicago and the U.S. Naval Academy.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of Genesis is "what is man?" and the answer is "a creature formed of
earth, water and air"-an answer that has significant moral and
historical consequences.
Chapters 1-ll: Eden and the Fall
For man, the first consequence of his mixed nature is instability:
he has been concocted from three essentially incompatible things
which only the grace of God can keep in harmonious balance. A second
consequence is that man feels blood-kinship with earth as well as with
things of the air. An ignorant man, not aware that earth is only a
secondary manifestation of God, is likely to regard himself as a child
equally of father God and mother earth-with, perhaps, even a
stronger tie to mother than father. Together these two consequences
make sin inevitable: man is inherently unstable, and he is weighted
toward the material. 3 Genesis is remarkably thorough in describing
each possible kind of imbalance, but this material weight is the primal
fault, and the most common.
Man's !Adam's] original sin takes exactly this form: God commands
"no" from above, while the snake/earth says "yes" from below. One
offers the fruits of the spirit; the other, the fruit of earth. God's voice
here is the voice of air or spirit in this oppositional sense, but more
correctly it is the voice of balance: He enjoins man to live on the earth,
but to avoid being fully absorbed by it; the tree at the center of the
garden provides an "other," a kind of spiritual navel which balances
the purely material with the anti-material. Kept sacred, as God has
enjoined, the idea of the tree permeates all physical things with a
spiritual awareness: each bite of allowed fruit reminds man that other
fruit is not allowed because of a law other than the merely physical
law. In this sense the tree acts as a link binding heaven to earth, much
as, in man, water binds earth and breath. The call of the earth, of the
serpent who is mere formed' earth and of the tree that is also earth, is
the call to forget this sacred navel, to cut the umbilical cord as it were,
and declare that all is earth-that the other world is a fiction. 4
The question remains: why does this tree, sprung from the earth,
promise knowledge of Good and Evil? The traditional explanation that
Good and Evil refers to sexual knowledge or sexual shame is inadequate, since man was commanded at creation to be fruitful and
multiply. We notice, too, that Adam and Eve do not hide from each
other, but from God. Adar (among others) argues that the words "good
and evil" "lend themselves to interpretations other than moral; they
allude to the ability to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant,
between useful and harmful. "5 Read in this way, God's prohibition
�GABLE
57
against eating the fruit amounts to saying "so far, you have known
only pleasant earthly things, but if you eat from this tree you will learn
that earthly things can also be unpleasant." Eating the fruit provides
this experience because disobeying the prohibition creates these
unhealthy material things: The balanced system in which material
things were suffused with a spiritual presence becomes unbalanced
when man chooses to break the spiritual connection with God. In effect
the act closes the navel (or· severs the umbilical cord) through which
true life flowed into material objects, leaving the material world dried
and unhealthy. This transformation occasioned by man's choice
explains why there is confusion in the text about whether there is one
tree or two: The tree that gives knowledge of Good and Evil is the Tree
of Life, the navel through which Life flowed into the world. Man's
decision to cut the link makes that tree unavailable to him in the
future. I said above that Genesis operates on a cause-and-effect model,
and this case is a perfect example: The sentence by which God
excludes man from further contact with the Tree is not so much a
punishment as a verbal recognition of the inevitable consequences of
what has been done.
Likewise the curses or punishments meted out to man are really
the predictable results of the imbalance that he has created. First, a
separation from the spiritual: God, once their companion, must now
seek them out. Second, an excessive identification with the physical:
They became aware of their nakedness. Third, and most significant,
their earthly encrustation creates a barrier against the entry of spirit
into the world of flesh. For woman, bringing a new soul into the earth
is no longer an act of joy but one of great effort and pain. Likewise for
man in his sphere, cultivation of the earth, the creation of new life
requires great effort. Adam's curse, "In the sweat of thy face shall thou
eat bread" (3: 19) really encapsulates the meaning of the Fall. Water
symbolizes God's blessing, and here it has been withdrawn (or ra!he~,
refused): the luscious garden is replaced by arid desert, and man must
now supply the missing fluid with his own sweat, and replace the
missing fecundity with his labor. In effect Adam's sin has partly
reversed the creation, and unmixed what God had mixed. Thereafter
Adam must do the mixing himself: Only through his own hard labor
will his earthy nature be "cultivated" sufficiently to receive the blessing
again and bear fruit. Presumably the slowly diminishing life spans of
the patriarchs are also an indication that the life-giving spirit is
receding from earth.
Scholars have argued that in the Biblical context "nakedness"
usually means something akin to "lacking all possessions"; "not
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sexuality at all but a state of defenselessness and helplessness,
without possessions or power. "6 Eating from the tree leaves man naked
in this sense; He is uncomfortably exposed and dispossessed, poised
between God's order which he has rejected and a new matertal order
uninformed by God's spirit, from which he is also alienated because
he no longer possesses it through the spirtt but merely lives in it as a
discrete object. The new awareness that Adam and Eve gain is a
product of redefining themselves as purely physical beings, mere
naked and helpless animals. In this sense the Fall is that moment
when the earth/water I air balance is 1\rst tipped and man remakes
God's creation into an earth-dominated mixture. This understanding
of the Fall, or something quite like it, was shared by "many of the early
kabbalists," who, according to Paul Morns, "understood that before
Adam's sin there was as yet no material world at all .... Adam was a
wholly spirttual being and his exile from the upper world represents
the beginnings of corporeal existence. "7 This kabbalist reading portrays Adam as one who "misperceived the nature of the Godhead and
took the Shekhinah [the divine presence on earth] to be the Godhead
itself," and that therefore "this is the esoteric meaning of the commandment not to 'eat' of the Tree of Knowledge, that is, not to cleave
· to the Shekhinah alone." 8 My argument would suggest that Morris (or
the kabbalists) are overstating the case, since the Fall is not from spiiit
to earth but from a balanced state of earth/water/air to an earth·
dominated imbalance. Nonetheless, the kabbalist reading provides
historical precedent for reading the events in the Garden in this way,
and also reinforces the sense of this text as a philosophical allegory of
the highest order.
Cain and Abel
In Cain and Abel are displayed humanity's old (and potentially
recapturable?) self, which is eventually slain by the new self. Abel, as
a keeper of sheep, is living the role of an Eden-dweller, whose job is
to have dominion over the creatures of the earth; in Cain we see the
new man, the "tiller of the ground" condemned to struggle, with only
partial success, to bring back some semblance of the old balance,
endeavortng to wrestle God's blessing from the earth which used to
bear it spontaneously in abundance. He is one, in other words, who
struggles in vain to infuse his earthy self with a spiritual nature and
so achieve a sustained balance. He fails, as his nature dictates, and
in the process becomes a worker against God's balance, spilling the
life-giving fluid from his brother's vesseL He acts, apparently, from
sheer frustration at his now less prtvileged position. This frustration
�GABLE
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may also explain his decision to become a citydweller: The city is man's
attempt to recapture Eden, insofar as it represents comfortable life
without the need to wrestle sustenance from the ground. 9 The Cain
story shows how man, once unbalanced, becomes a dangerous d.estabilizing force that tends to spiral further out of balance.
Cain's punishment is again less of a curse than a predictable
consequence of his actions. God does not abandon the gift of life but
hears its voice calling to him "from the ground"; his waters descend
and then retum to him but are never lost. But for Cain the seminal
blessing of water, once squandered, cannot be recovered again, and
so "when [Cain] tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto
[him] her strength" (4: 12). His sin is similar to Onan's: He lacks a
proper sense of the sacredness of God's gift of life. w Henceforth Cain
lives in the city, which may be thought of as the grossest of gross earth,
the land on which no water of God's blessing falls, and no spirttual
life can spring forth. The children of Cain become, typically, those who
have no contact with the living earth, but instead make their living
manipulating the dead matertal world: Tubalcain, for example, "an
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron" (4;22). ''And predictably,
Cain's lack of balance only engenders further imbalance, as subsequent generations become increasingly perverse in a similar vein.
The sanctity with which God has invested life, the mark of Cain,
becomes for Lamech a mere excuse for taking life casually.
Conversely, the competing line of man, which descends from the
better-constructed Seth, is able to maintain the balance of Eden
longer; they "walk with God" (5:24) as men did in Eden. But of course
even in this line of descent, the inherent balance of earth, water, and
spirit is precarious.
The Nephilim
This disturbing incident, in which "the sons of God" breed with the
daughters of men to create a super race whose spirits contend with
God (6: 1-4) is best understood (as are all these incidents) in conjunction with its immediate consequence, the flood. In terms of the
earth/water I air balance, the problem being addressed here is plain
enough: A race of men have surreptitiously enriched man's mixture,
filling him with more spirtt than is allowable." The result is not a race
of spiritual men, as we might expect, but a race who have contempt
for the earth, as Cain had contempt for the spirit: men of great
dating-the "men of renown" of classical antiquity who love glory and
not men. That this is a problem of improper mixture becomes apparent
in God's solution, the flood. Bearing in mind that water symbolizes
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
God's grace, the glue which binds earth and air together, we can see
the flood as an effort to separate earth and spirit, to pull apart what
has been joined, by injecting an excess of water to lift the breath from
earth: "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in
the dry land, died" (7:22). God unmixes the three ingredients of life so
that he can mix them again in proper balance. This plan would seem
to be undercut by His mercy to Noah, but it is in this mercy that we
see the unsolvable problem inherent in man's mixed nature. Noah is
a 'just man and perfect in his generations" who "walks with God" (6:9);
presumably God recognizes that in Noah the best possible mixture
already exists. Yet Noah still displays in his seed the chronic instability-an instability that is apparently simply inherent in the mixture.
Only the grace of God, actively sought and given, can hold the balance
in harmony.
One might ask, why did God not withdraw his blessing? i.e., why
was the catastrophe not a drought rather than a flood? On the one
hand the flood provides an image of God's active power, rather than
his passive disapproval. His grace actually lifts the breath out of man,
a case of active intervention· rather than passive neglect. Yet at the
same time this image of an active God is:also nicely consistent with a
cause-and-effect model, showing excess answered with excess: The
spiritual excess of the Nephilim is answered with a flood of God's
power I grace, which it cannot withstand. Since all the cases of abuse
and punishment in Genesis rely on a principle of natural reaction, it
seems reasonable to suggest that the influx of floodwaters is a natural
consequence oftoo great an influx of spirit: that opening the gates of
heaven too widely (cf 7: 11). the Sons of Heaven have generated
unexpected consequences.
The Drunkenness of Noah
After the flood, the inherent instability of man is demonstrated
again in Noah's drunkenness. The incident may be regarded as an
echo of the Eden story. Noah's drunkenness iS a kind ofFall: He drinks
of the fruit of the vine and, like eating the fruit of the Tree, the act
brings shame into being in the new world. Indeed we sense in the line
"Noah began to be a husbandman" (9:20) an echo of the curse of Adam
creeping into Noah's perfection. Noah's son Ham reaps the consequences of this inherent sin-perhaps, we feel, unfairly. But this is an
ontology of cause and effect, not of legalistic punishment: "If thou
doest not well, sin lieth at the door" (4:7). The story of Noah's
drunkenness does not deal directly with images of earth/water/air,
but it clearly begins to focus on the implications of this model. On every
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occasion for sin we face the choice of Adam, to respect the father and
so reassert the balance of spirit, water and earth. or choose to treat
the Father as merely another man or even an object, and so assert a
purely material ontology. In creational terms. we might think of reality
like a cake: Each act either whips air into the batter making it lighter
and more savory, or draws air out, making life dry and unpalatable.
The Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel story describes a third kind of imbalance
different from Cain's contempt for the spirit or the Nephilims' contempt for earth. Here there is contempt for the water of God's grace.
In this tncident, mankind attempts to forego grace. the normal glue
that unites spirit and earth, and instead build a man-made union in
a gross physical way, using "slime" to unite earth and heaven via a
tower. This "slime" is an earthy and polluted form of water: God's
grace, not in its pure form but as given to man and then contaminated
and misused by him. The project can be seen as an effort to recreate
Eden on a secular basis, since the tower will replace the function of
the Tree in Eden as the central navel uniting heaven and earth. By
uniting individual men (bricks of earth) into a whole, they hope to
reach heaven: in other words, to create a purely material religion, a
humanist philosophy "blessed" by the "slime ... The error here is similar
in kind to the original sin of mistaking a secondary manifestation of
God (there, earth; here, water) for an independent force. Of course this
attempt by man to recreate himself according to his own- recipe is
doomed, because there is no glue that will bind the two radically
different substances of earth and spirit. except the purest form of God's
grace. The consequences of the attempt are predictable: The glue fails,
the unity collapses. and its pieces are flung abroad with a force
proportional to the great height it had reached. The central point of the
story is not. as so many perverse commentators have argued, that God
is "inimical to the laudable human striving for progress."" The real
moral iR man's perversity. God is both wise and kind: His recipe for a
man cannot be improved upon, and He has repeatedly warned us that
it is dangerous to try. Yet we insist on doing so.
Chapters 1-11
The first eleven chapters of Genesis, then. show us the various
possible kinds of human imbalance, and their consequences. They
also implicitly defme the proper balance that should be maintained.
This information can be summed up in two propositions: first, we must
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
accept that our nature is a perfect yet always potentially unstable
mixture of three elements. We must accept that it is perfect. because
any attempt by us to adjust God's mixture results in a free fall spiral
of ever-worsening consequences; We must accept that it is always
unstable, because only our act of will-our willingness to "walk with
God"-can keep the mixture in balance. Secondly, we must understand the unique role that God's grace plays as the water that binds
the two halves of our,nature together, and also realize that our fallen
nature makes it difficult for this fluid to do its job properly. Because
we are fallen we must work to maintain the balance: We must plow
and work our earthy nature, struggling to mix the waters of grace into
them. In other words, our plight as men in the material world is the
plight of a people in the desert: To live we must dig; we must break
beneath the hard crust of a dead material world to find the blessed
waters of life beneath.
In this way the moral system constructed in chapters 1-11 is
transformed into a landscape agalnst which the Patriarchs play out
their lives; the story of survival in the desert becomes also the story
of spiritual struggle. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the
story of Abraham and Lot.
Abraham and Lot
The story of Abraham and Lot parting ways (chap. 13) is a fable
about how one perceives the world, and the consequences of that
perception. The story juxtaposes two styles of choosing, based on two
differing assumptions. Lot, faced with the choice between the fertile,
well-watered plains of Jordan and the arid regions of Canaan, naturally chooses the former. His choice is logical, and seems acceptable
within the structure of the metaphor of balance as well: The well-watered plain suggests a land blessed by God. As far as.we know Lot is
an unexceptionable man; but as with all these stories, we see after the
fact, in the consequences of his action, the mistake he has made and
the flaw that it reveals. Lot's choice betrays that he still has what we
may call an Edenic mind, relying on God to rain blessings down for
man to enjoy in leisure. The space that he chooses is charactertzed by
this attitude. The cities of the plain, Sodom and Gemorrah, are
populated by those who share the curse of Cain: they do not dig the
earth, but irresponsibly exploit the blessings given by God.
Abraham, by contrast, does not appear to favor either fertile or arid
region. The excellence that distinguishes Abraham from Lot is not one
of faith, as is so often argued. Lot questions God's choice of destination
when he is warned away from Sodom, certainly: but Abraham and
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Sarai laugh at the absurdity of God's promise to give them a child, and
Abraham also argues with God when the fate of Sod om and Gemorrah
is at stake. Worst of all, Abraham repeatedly doubts God's power to
fulfill His promise of seed, even jeopardizing the future of the promise
by attempting to pass off his wife as his marriageable sister." Faith is
not the issue between Abraham and Lot, but rather the fact that
Abraham has absorbed the lesson taugbt by Genesis 1·11, while Lot
has not. Abraham understands the curse of Adam: he knows that the
world is a desert, that the true water must be found beneath the
surface, and man must struggle to find it.
The differing fruits born to these two attitudes become apparent in
the stories that follow, in which Abraham and Lot come to be opposed
in various ways: Abraham becomes a mighty prince, Lot a captive slave
(14; cf Ham); Abraham is given land, Lot has his land destroyed;
Abraham's wife bears fruit, Lot's wife dies. In every case Abraham
ripens while Lot withers. The difference is water. Abraham was given
a desiccated land in which to dwell and a wife who is dried up ["it
ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" (18: 11); "who
would have said with Abraham, that Sarah should have given children
suck?" (21:7)], but God's hidden waters revivi:fy both land and wife.
Lot's experience is the opposite: Living in a well-watered land he makes
no effort to dig beneath the surface. The earthly waters give him no
sustenance, and his wife, once fertile, is dried to a pillar of salt. The
choice that Lot's wife makes when fleeing Sodom emphasizes this
family flaw; she must choose between looking up the mountain toward
the face of God, or looking down longingly at the pleasures of the flesh.
She chooses the latter, and as a result the water of blessing is lost:
She becomes a dry pillar of salt. Her choice echoes the choice of her
husband, and that of the original sin; it reveals an i:mbalanced soul
weighted dangerously toward the physical. Abraham prospers and Lot
suffers based solely on their willingness to "walk with God," in the very
technical sense defined in chapters 1·11: accepting the
earth/water /air balance that God has ordained, and cultivating a
receptivity to the fecund waters He offers. The same angels bring
waters of life to Sarai and fiery death to the cities of the plain. It all
depends on how one greets them. 15
The Lives of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac
The lives of the Patriarchs all follow a common pattern, the point
of which is to take men who may, at first, resemble Lot more than
Abraham, and train them to live a life of balance in which earth is
softened with water, and suffused with air/spirit.ln other words they
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
must be "rebom" into the kind of understanding that Genesis 1-11
implicitly urges us to have, in which we die to the Eden mentality of
privilege and enter tnstead into the post-lapsarian or "desert" awareness of precarious balance held in equilibrium by an ongoing act of
the will. Each patriarch must learn for himself that the physical world
is dead and attachment to it leads to death, while true life is found in
cultivating our earthy nature to receive spiritual force into it. The point
of this exile into the desert is to enable a retum-not to the mundane
family home, but in the larger sense to the state of Eden, now redefined
16
in terms appropriate to a spiritual rather than a physical awareness.
The story of Abraham begins with a call to material glory. Abram
will become a great nation (12:2) and will be given a land to inhabit
(12:7). From a purely literary point of view this promise motif becomes
a cruel but sometimes quite amusing joke, as Abraham again and
again fulfills God's conditions, only to have additional conditions laid.
Harold Bloom calls this relationship "a cruel pattem of power.'o~ 7 This
process of divine backpedaling reaches the level of absurdist theater
by chapter 17, when God again renews his promise to Abram, but
demands that the poor fellow change his name (17:5) and circumcise
himself and all his followers (17: 10-12). At the end of his life Abraham
is still wandering, still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled.
From a more sympathetic point of view, however, we can see that
God has a purpose in his backpedaitng, which is to make Abram into
a digger of wells. To move him forward from the man he was, who
presumably would not have answered any call but one promistng
material wealth, to one whose promised land is a purely inward,
spirituai garden. This process is not rigid, but for all the Pairiarchs it
tends to involve certain typical elements: an early demonstration of
spiritual proclivity; a rituai death in which he dies to his old life and
is bam to a new one; a vision or drean1 in which he concretely
experiences the reality of another world; a period of apprenticeship
during which he makes mistakes but progresses toward spirituai
understanding; and typicaily, a finai demonstration of his achieved
prowess.
That Abram was strongly predisposed to this spiritual outlook is
evident when he and Lot part ways, the second incident recorded after
his call. That he still requires an apprenticeship period is demonstrated by the first recorded incident, his joumey into Egypt, when he
allows his wife to be wooed by Pharoah in a botched attempt to avoid
unpleasantness. The awareness that Abram shows here, one that
gives priority to physical security and the experiences ofthe moment,
is directly opposed to the awareness that God is trytng to teach. We
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see that higher awareness demonstrated in Abram's vision, in chapter
15. This eerie incident, in which God [again] reasserts His promise,
begins with a ritual sacrifice during which Abram is thrown into a
trance-state:
And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I
shall inherit it?
And he said unto him, Take me a heifer of three years
old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of
three years old, and a turtledove, and a young
pigeon.
And he took unto him all these, and divided them in
the midst, and laid each piece one against another:
but the birds divided he not.
And when the fowls came down upon the carcasses,
Abram drove them away.
And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell
upon Abram: and lo, a horror of great darkness fell
upon him. 18
In that trance, Abram has a vision:
And [God] said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy
seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs,
and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them
four hundred years ...
But in the fourth generation they shall come hither
again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down,
and it was dark, behold a smoking fumace, and a
buming lamp that passed between those pieces.
(15: 13,16-17)
It is of course significant that God reveals to Abraham that the nation
of Israel must pass through the same ritual pattem of death (or
"descent" into Egypt) and rebirth (retum) that each individual patriarch must undergo. But for Abraham the real significance here is the
opposition between real life and dream/ spirit life. It is here that God
first begins to show his intention for Abraham, by essentially inviting
him to take up residence in an altemative reality. God is saying to
Abraham: "ignore what your senses tell you to be true: the truer reality
is within." Of course the promise of land does eventually come true (if
not exactly in the terms that Abraham originally understood); but it
is also clear that the retum to Eden (which is ultimately what the
Promised Land represents) will not take place on the physical plane,
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but must take place as a spiritual journey undergone inwardly. 19 By
luring Abram from his old ways with the ever-receding promise, God
is effectively training him to live, not for immediate gain in the material
world, but for the relationship with God, the locus of which is another
world.
There then follows a lengthy apprenticeship period, in which Abraham absorbs this lesson. His main problem, the area in which his faith
seems weakest, is the most material of areas, reproduction. This is no
doubt the reason behind the pact of circumcision: Circumcision marks
the organ and serves as a reminder to Abraham and his descendants
that the sexual function too is dedicated to God's purpose-a lesson
that he is nonetheless slow in learning. Sexual misconduct is the most
common sin in Genesis, and the result is always, of course, renegade
or "unbalanced" offspring whose hand is set against the Hebrews (e.g.
16:11-12; 19:36-38.)
In this context the culminating event of Abraham's life, the "sacrifice" of Isaac, can be seen as a metaphor for Abraham's final triumph
over his physical self. Abraham shows that he is not attached to the
physical, not even the most cherished of physical things, representative of the most uncontrollable of human instincts, reproduction.
However, read as an injunction to absolute faith, Abraham's willingness to sacrtfice Isaac is a troubling incident, one that no reasonable reader could endorse, since to do so would serve to justifY the
most horrible acts of zealotry. Instead I would argue that the incident
serves as the symbolic culmination of Abraham's life because it
demonstrates Abraham's knowing acceptance of God's balance.
Whereas before Abraham had doubted the efficacy of God's waters in
what appeared to be a purely material world (how can God wet the
womb that Earth has dried?) he now knows their power: For the mock
sacrifice of Isaac to make moral sense, Abraham must be fully aware
that Isaac will not die, despite the material appearance to that effect.
In other words Abraham's experience should not be summed up in
the words "God gave, and God can take; my own heart's desires are
meaningless," but rather "I know God's waters are upon my son, he
will not bum." (cf. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel3.) In
this way the incident can be seen as a parallel to the death of Lot's
wife. As that incident shows, it is up to man to maintain the balance
of earth/water/air by an act of will. If his attention wavers, as Lot's
wife's did, he will lose the blessed waters, and so burn.
Presenting the incident in these terms, we can also begin to see a
second function of the incident. It is not only Abraham's last act, but
Isaac's first, a kind of rite of initiation in which Isaac is shown the
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truth about man. The sacrifice by fire is an image of desiccation: of
God forcibly removing the blessing waters, and the ritual of "trial by
fire" to which Isaac is subjected is a way of showing the boy how fully
he is dependent on the blessing. It is God's way of holding the boy over
the fire, like Jonathan Edwards's sinners in the hands of an angry
God. ln this way the boy learns, through ritual instruction, what his
father learned through experience. This sense of passing on a spiritual
tradition is present throughout the story in Abraham instructing the
boy how to conduct himself.
Indeed arguably, Isaac's initiation is the centra[ focus of the story
(despite the narrator's-perhaps inserted?-commentary to the contrary.) Every other story in Genesis couples an event with its consequences in order to make its point. If this story is about Abraham then
it is unique in that there are no recorded consequences for Abraham.
But there are consequences for Isaac. It seems likely, at least, that the
seemingly unique incident of the sacrifice might be the cause of the
equally unique life lived by Isaac, the only Genesis patriarch who does
not have a problematic apprenticeship in his relationship with God.
Isaac's rich spiritual life is beautifully summed up in one sentence:
"And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in
the days of Abraham his father" (26:18). Isaac's spiritual precociousness is also indicated by the fact that he is named by God in the
womb-rather than initiated later into full Patriarchal status with a
new name, as Abram and Jacob are. Perhaps the memorable experience of being held over the fire by God, and understanding in a
palpable way how essential the blessing is to man's existence, has left
Isaac in need of no further instruction.
Other parallels within the lives of the Patriarchs also support this
interpretation. Each Patriarch in Genesis must undergo a rite of
passage (exile or ritual death) before achieving spiritual maturity.
Joseph's is the purest case of the pattem: Before he can begin his
spiritual joumey he must be cast into the pit, left for dead, and then
brought up again. This ritual death releases him from the old life and
into a new one. 2° For Jacob and Abraham, exile from home performs
this function: They must leave all they know-" country ... kindred ...
thy father's house"- and begin anew, eventually achieving a new
identity marked by a new name. For Isaac this transformation occurs
instantaneously in one act of ritual violence. He is jolted from his old
life into a new one by an abrupt combination of ritual death (being
held over the fire). spiritual vision (he communes with God on the
mountaintop, perhaps for the first time); and accelerated apprenticeship (leaming the ritual from his father, by preparing for his own
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
physical death). Thus Isaac is pushed through all of the necessary
stages of development in a single incident, and we may regard him as
spiritually mature from that point onward (although he does repeat
his father's sexual error in the episode with Abimalech; chapter 26).
Jacob
For Jacob the symbolic descent and rebirth follows a lengthy arc
of exile and retum, but the same goal is achieved through the same
means. Jacob's early life and his struggles with Esau may reasonably
be compared with Abraham and Lot, and the point is similar. God
chooses the boy predisposed to spiritual things and cultivates his
understanding, while the more physical of the two is allowed to sink
deeper into his earthiness. To them that have, more is given. {The root
of Jacob's naiile, which means "heel," comes from the Hebrew verb "to
follow," suggesting, perhaps, among its other connotations, that he is
a natural follower on the path.) This distinction also operates on the
telltale sexual level as well, Esau choosing two nearby, and presum·
ably attractive Hittite women, while Jacob chooses a more distant
mate suitable for perpetuating the blessing. Like Isaac before him,
Jacob finds his beloved by a well, symbolizing that she is an appro·
priate mate in the truer reality, and a spiritual resource.
Following demonstrations of his spiritual propensity Jacob then
undergoes a ritual death, in which he is expelled from his horne. The
double explanation of his departure, that he is forced to leave because
he stole the blessing (27:41·45) or that he leaves in peace with his
father's blessing to get a suitable wife (28: 1·4) are really one in the same
from the point of view of the characteristic structure: He is forsaking
the old life of"country, kindred, and father's house" to enter a new life
driven, ultimately, by the desire for a relationship with God.
Jacob's departure is immediately followed by a dream vision similar
to Abraham's:
And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went
toward Haran.
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried
there all night.. ..
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder was set up
on the earth ....
And behold, the Lord stood above it and said I am
the Lord God ...
the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give
it....
(28:10·13)
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The dream/vision is intended to draw Jacob into the altemative
reality, as it did Abraham. This vision reveals an inner Eden where
once-sundered heaven and earth are reconnected (here by a ladder
rather than a tree.) But Jacob is not yet prepared to live in such a
world. The experience exacts only a tentative commitment of future
interest from him. And, as with Abraham, it is an interest based on
material gaJn: "If God will be with me, and will keep in the way that I
go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on./ So that I
come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my
God .... " (28:20-21.) There follows a long and, it would seem, largely
unsuccessful apprenticeship period in which Jacob's primary interest
appears to be the acquisition of women and property-indeed, having
taken up Esau's blessing he seems to have also assumed his personality, no longer a "plain man, dwelling in tents," but a rough adventurer. Within the context of the larger metaphor however, we can see
the change as positive: Jacob has outgrown his anachronistic Edenic
consciousness in which he expects to be blessed withoUt eaming it,
and adopted a post-lapsarian (or "desert") mentality in which, Adamlike, he labors to extract blessings from the land, and, metaphorically,
to spiritualize his rough earth. The penultimate scene in his story, in
which he spends an entire night wrestling with God, finally managing
to extract a blessing, suggests the same motif of an essentially earthy
nature struggling to achieve some spiritual insight. While Jacob never
reaches the goal of full integration of earth and spirit that was held
out to him in his ladder dream-never regains Eden-he doeS. manage,
in his own way, to make a retum of sorts to the gates of the garden,
in his reunion with Esau. This encounter has all the elements of the
Cain and Abel conflict: two jealous brothers, a disputed blessing,
long-simmering resentments. But Jacob manages to rever$£ the decline of that second fall, making correct choices where Cain (and Jacob
himself in his earlier manifestation) had made wrong ones: Cain was
jealous of the blessing his brother had received; Jacob offers his own
blessing back agaln to his brother (33: ll "Take, I pray thee, my
blessing that is brought to thee.") Cain is ungrateful for the blessings
he has received; Jacob is thankful, despite his long suffering ("because
God hath dealt graciously with me,"), and Jacob is satisfied with his
lot ("I have enough"); Caln lacked respect for the spirit within Abel;
Jacob regards his brother's face as equivalent to the face of God ("I
have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God," 33:10); and
therefore is happy when that face is pleased ("thou wast pleased with
me.") Jacob has achieved an impressive degree of spiritual success.
But his iriumph is not complete; he has reversed the historical decline
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of man back to the gates of the Garden, but is unable to press further,
into the New Eden.
Joseph
The story of Joseph again follows the same pattern, but with a twist
in the return: Rather than being gathered unto his fathers, Joseph
gathers his father unto him. As in the case of Abraham and Lot, and
Jacob and Esau, Joseph's story begins with a distinction being made
between the spiritual tendencies of the special son, and his more
worldly brothers. Joseph has the power of prophetic dreams. This
power occasions some pride on his part and jealously on the part of
his brothers (reiterating the Cain motif again), which sets the stage
nicely for the next step in the pattern, the ritual death in which the
hero is ostracized and humbled. In this case, as with Isaac, the ritual
death almost becomes a literal one: He is thrown into the pit, and his
brothers report him as dead. The coat of many colors serves as a
literary device to provide proof of the dead one's identity, but it also
makes a significant point about the arena in which God's chosen ones
should seek glory, and why the Patriarch must die to this world. The
same point is made also at the end of the story, in the wonderful scene
in which the old shepherd Jacob stands before Pharoah on the throne
(47:7-10.) In this single image of spiritual wealth facing material
wealth, much of the message of Genesis is encapsulated. Only here,
perhaps, do we begin to see the artistry of the text in drawing us into
its own world-view: Absorbed in the drama of the Patriarchs' quest we
had never stopped to think how ordinary these men appeared to their
fellows at the marketplace, or along the road. The scene of Jacob before
the throne of Pharoah jolts us into the awareness that despite the
promises of land and great nations, these material th.ings are not at
all what God's promise is about. The patriarchs are not kings of
government or commerce, but of an inward land.
Like Isaac, Joseph needs only one hard demonstration to learn this
lesson well. After his ritual death Joseph passes easily into his new
life, never again displaying the slightest degree of pride or resentment.
Whatever his circumstances, life is all one to Joseph, in a way that
reminds one of an eastern swami. Whether servant. prisoner or ruler
of all Egypt, he never changes, and never displays any attachment
whatsoever to his material surroundings. Although the text never
expltcWy says so, his equanimity must result from his firrn foundation
in the alternative reality of dreams. Knowing what the future holds,
and that it is ordained by God, he is at peace with both appearances
and reality.
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In this sense Joseph is already possessed of the Promised Land, a
new inward Eden which is his true home, no matter what his outward
circumstances may be. Like the original pre-lapsarian state, this new
Eden is characterized primarily by balance, in two senses: His spirit
is completely at peace, and his nature is a balanced mixture of earth,
water and breath, according to the original recipe. That is, his physical
life is fully permeated by spiritual awareness, as rich soil is permeated
by water, and so is fertile ground for fruits of the spirit. When Jacob
summarizes his son during his deathbed blessing, this image is
exactly the one that he chooses: "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a
fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall. .. " (49:22).
Judah
Like Isaac, Joseph has a very brief apprenticeship and a lengthy life
of grace. His final test (which like Jacob's, involves overcoming the Cainite
desire for revenge agalnst his brothers) is largely a perfunctory exercise,
and is really less of a test for Joseph than an initiation for Judah, in
which Judah must prove himself by offering his body as a saclifice to
redeem Benjamin. In this way the incident is structurally similar to
Abraham's binding of Isaac: The final test in which the Patriarch proves
his own excellence also serves as an initiation for his protege.
Judah, however, disturbs the pattem of succession that has been
so consistent throughout Genesis and also undermines Joseph's
stature when, in the final verses of the book, he appears to take the
prominent place, even above Joseph, in his father's blessing: Judah's
prominence may be, as some have argued, simply an insertion to
adjust the text to later historical reality. Or, perhaps, it is not
necessarily inconsistent with the message of Genesis as a whole, since
Judah's reign is in the temporal world, as a "law-giver," while Joseph
reigns in the higher world of dreams. But it is also true that it is from
Judah, not Joseph, that the most prominent line of descent comes.
The line of Judah results in both David and Solomon (1 Chronicles 2).
and Christ (Matthew, chapter I). Judah hardly seems to be an
exemplary Patriarch, however, and the details surrounding his progeny is also troubling: The line is perpetuated through a woman
previously married to two of Judah's sons, who poses as a harlot to
become impregnated. We can only conclude that this complex story
is meant to impress us with the lengths to which God is forced to go
to keep the Hebrew lineage pure, in the face of man's lack of cooperation. Purity is essential because those lineages that have strayed too
far from God's balance cannot be rebalanced, and will only serve to
unbalance others. When Joseph marries an Egyptian (given to him
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not by God but by Pharaoh). and Judah marries a Canaanite woman,
the purity of the line is in jeopardy, but despite all, God manages to
remove any obstacles and unite Judah with a Hebrew woman.
From the Chiistian point of view, which asks us to explain Judah's
as the lineage of Chiist, we can argue for Judah's greater worth in
light of the fact that he offers his body to redeem Benjamin from the
bondage of sin, lest his father be saddened by the loss. The language
here is strongly evocative of Christ's mission: "Now therefore," Judah
tells Joseph, "I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a
bondsman to my Lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren./ For
how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me?" (44:33-34).
Such a reading of Judah's role may disrupt the neat narrative pattern
of Genesis, but fulfills the larger message of the book. Since the trend
from Abraham to Joseph has been to replace the lure of mateiial gain
with that of spiiitual wealth, Judah's life story could profitably be seen
as the fulflllment of that trend, the first stage in a new order tn which
men live not for their own gain but for the good of others. This is an
appealing readtng, and has only one source of lingeiing doubt. Since
Joseph's experience is arguably also one of sacrificing himself for
others ("God did send me before you to preserve life," 45:5). it is
difficult to see how Judah's sacrifice takes precedence over Joseph's.
But perhaps the fact that Judah appears to be the lesser man may
really be the point. The shift from Joseph to Judah does seem to
suggest almost a changing of the guard. Perhaps it is most profitable
to see Joseph as the last of the great "demigod" patiiarchs and Judah
as the start of a new era, in which the best of men are good enough,
but none too good by Patiiarchal standards. This idea is supported by
the metaphors of Jacob's fmal blessing. While Joseph is called a
"fruitful bough by a well" (49:22). Judah is a "lion's whelp," one who
"binds his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine"
(49: 9, II). The metaphors suggest a piimary quality about Joseph's
spiiitual life that is missing in Judah: Joseph has his roots sunk
directly into the waters of life, while Judah is merely tethered to the
vine whose roots feed on these waters. Judah has access to these
life-giving waters only in adulterated, second-hand form, through the
fruit of the vine. (Here, as in the story of Noah's drunkenness, fruit
evokes the taint of the Fall.) The same point is latent in the image of
Judah as a lion crouched over his prey: Judah's blessing is a secondhand sort-life drawn from another life, not anginal in itself.
The overwhelmtng preponderance of evidence, then, seems to mark
Jacob's blessing as a turning point in the history of God's chosen
lineage, tn which the generation of Patriarchs has ended, to be
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replaced by a race of "law-givers," men whose most direct access to
God is through the letter, and not the spirit. Speaking of himself to
his brothers, Joseph says "God did send me before you to preserve
life," words that are perhaps meant to link his activities to that of the
last great member of an earlier race, Noah. Their roles are certainly
similar. Noah collected the animals to preserve them from a flood;
Joseph collects the grain (epitomized as seven fat cows in Pharoah's
dream) to preserve life from drought. But the most important similar·
ity, perhaps, is that both'men are the last of a past, greater race, a
superior generation who "walked with God."
For in fact, the God of Genesis is a receding God. In Abraham's day
God spoke to Abraham as man to man, even coming to his tent in
human form (18:lff) and debating with Abraham and his wife. By
Jacob's time God comes in dreams only, speaking, indeed as man to
man, but only in the visionary state, and never as a physical presence.
(I assume that Jacob's wrestling match with God occurs within a
vision.) Joseph, despite the many blessings he receives, and despite
his great wisdom and insight, never sees God or speaks face to face
with him, or even hears his voice. For Joseph, God comes only veiled
in prophetic dreams. Unmistakably God is receding fi:·om the world in
Genesis. The reason appears to be that He came here only to lead his
people out. He was active in men's affairs when He needed to be, during
man's infancy when man was not able to maintain the earth/water I air
balance himself. But He has receded as men begin to learn the secret
themselves. This is not to say that He is no longer available to men,
but rather, that he is available through different channels, and that He
typically does not come to us, but waits for us to find the way to Him.
Notes:
1.
"One should not think," writes Von Rad, "that the many individual
traditions about the patriarchal period in circulation came together
by themselves into such an artful and theologically deliberate composition." (Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1961, p. 159.) On the issue of source research,
Van Rad asks rhetorically "What is the content of chapter 22 if the
narrative no longer legitimizes the abolishment of child sacrifice?
What is the meaning of chapter 28 ... if the narrative no longer legitimizes the sacredness of Bethel and its customs?" The answer, of
course, is that they mean what the compiler has designed them to
mean within the larger context of the work.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
See also Zvi Adar, The Book of Genesis: An Introduction to the Biblical
World (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press of Hebrew Univ., 1990). p. 9ff:
"Even on the assumption that the Book of Genesis is composed of
different elements, it is clear that they have been blended into one
integral whole."
2. By "structuralist" I mean, here, a way of reading that begins by first
considering the internal ontology of the text, rather than, say, its plot
or characterization, on the assumption that the meaning of characters
and events deperid significantly on their ontological ground. This
analysis is accomplished by considering the specific meaning of
particular images (or words or ideas} first within the structure of the
text as a whole, rather than in their discrete contexts: In other words,
I assume that certain words can take on special meanings in a text
because of the way they are used. This is similar in many regards to
traditional interpretive reading, except that in locating these "special"
meanings this method does not distinguish between "real" objects and
images in the text: It doesn't matter whether the water is real water
or metaphorical water, or even water used as a metaphor by a
character and hence doubly removed from "real" water. I am concerned, instead, with what water means to the author of the text.
Presumably, such knowledge is indispensable if one is to understand
the full meaning of a sentence like, for example, "And Isaac digged
again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham
his father" (Genesis 26: 18).
In some texts, of course, this method of reading will yield little of
interest. It is most useful in texts that have a strongly symbolical bent,
and it is especially appropriate for a text like Genesis, which claims
to speak about the Word become concrete reality in Creation, and
which claims a special status for itself as a living Word: In Genesis,
matertal substance is more than mere substance, and metaphors are
always somehow more than just metaphors, because in the ontology
of the living Word all ideas are really both metaphor and substance.
Under such circumstances, it would be a mistake not to read the text
with an enlightened disregard for the boundary between symbol and
reality,
3. The one really significant difference between Adam and Eve is seen
here, in the degree of their closeness to the Earth/Mother principle.
In the second Creation story (2:22 ff) Eve is said to be made from a
rib of Adam's; she is therefore presumably embedded one level deeper,
as it were, in the material Creation, and so is one step further removed
from the breath that originally gave Adam life.
In the same vein, it is significant that Eve is described as being
"made" rather than "created." The first· creation story (Genesis 1)
draws a significant distinction between those things that God created
(i.e., ex nihilo) and those he made: For example, the first appearance
of a "moving creature" (1: 20-21) is described as an act of creation,
�GABLE
75
but subsequent different forms of that original concept are described
as being "made." It seems likely that the making of Eve in the second
creation story is designed to follow this pattem. This fact can be
interpreted in two ways. It could be argued simply that Eve is a
subsequent production in the same line, and so would naturally be
"made" and not "created." But the more traditional view would suggest
that Eve has contact with God mostly secondartly, through Adam, and
the fact that she is made from Adam's substance, rather than simply
made, would seem to support this idea. The point of this hierarchy is
presumably to maintain a family structure headed spiritually by the
husband~to make him the broker through which the female receives
God's blessings. It must be said, however, that ultimately the impact
of this male-female difference on the larger picture is fairly minimal:
The spiritual health of both male and female depend on the same
things, only the norm would be for the female to access those things
primarily [or partly] through her husband.
4. The idea of the tree as navel, derived here from the imagery of joined
opposites that is characteristic of the earth/water /air imagery in
Genesis, may in fact have deep roots in early cosmological conceptions. See for example, Shemaryahu Talman, Literary Studies in the
Hebrew Bible: Form and Content, (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press of
Hebrew Univ., 1993) pp. 50 ff, 'The 'Navel of the Earth' and the
Comparative Method." Talman points out that "the representation of
the world in the form of a human body, a disc, or a square whose
center is marked by a tall mountain which represents its navel, is
prevalent in the mythical traditions of many cultures." In Genesis 2
of course we are dealing with a tree rather than a mountain, but other
imagery in Genesis, notably the tower of Babel and Jacob'S dream of
the ladder, suggests that the Biblical cosmology may well implicitly
assume the idea of a lost "navel" connecting heaven and earth.
5. Zvi Adar, An Introduction. p. 25. This reading is based on a comparison with li Samuel 19:36 (and other passages): "] am this day
four-score years old, can I discem between good and bad? Can your
servant taste what I eat or what I drink?"
6. Jonathan Magonet, "The Themes of Genesis 2-3," A Walk in the
Garden: Biblical, Iconographic and Literary Images ofEden, ed. by Paul
Morris and Deborah Sawyer, Joumatfor the Study of the Old Testament, Supplemental Series 136, (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992) p. 43.
7.
Paul Morris, in Morris and Sawyer, Walk, p. 130.
8.
Ibid, p. 135.
9. Robert Sacks, A Conunentary on the Book of Genesis. Ancient Near
Eastern Texts and Studies Volume 6 (Lampeter. U.K.: The Edwin
Mellon Press, 1990) makes an interesting point regarding Cain's
frustration and his inability to accept his new status: "Cain's decision
to return east establishes a pattem which will be followed throughout
�76
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the whole of the book. ... there is something radically wrong with going
east, insofar as it is a partial retum to Eden. Those men who do so
will all tum out to be cowards. It is a manifestation of man's attempt to
return to Eden rather than to face the world as it lies before him" {p. 43).
10. Onan spilled his seed upon the ground rather than sowing it in his
brother's widow, as his father (Judah, and, arguably, God) had
commanded, because he "knew that the seed should not be his"
(Genesis 38: 9). This is a waste of God's gift of potency, as Cain had
wasted his brother's life-blood. In the context of the earth/water /air
imagery, this curious incident of Onan's disobedience also has overtones
of an incestuous and idolatrous love of the earth/mother {again like Cain,
who is the earthy brother): His effort to inseminate the earth directly
seems to suggest, through impious parody, an attempt to usurp God's
power to make the earth fecund by wetting it. Like Cain, he fails to see
that there is no way but God's way to be fruitful and multiply.
11. Umberto Cassuto, among others, hypothesizes that "Cain" refers to
a tribe "designated by the name Cain, or by the appellative Kenite,
which is mentioned several times in Scripture .... The name of the tribe
indicates that it was engaged in metal work .... Hence the tribe of
Kenites was utterly despised in the eyes of neighboring tribes, just as
in Arabia today the wandering tribes of smiths are held in utmost
disdain by the Arabs" (A Commentary on the Book of Genesis,
Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1961 p. 180).
The mention of "such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle"
in the list of Cain's descendents has seemed inconsistent to many
critics. Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn (Before Abraham Was:
The Unity of Genesis 1·11, Nashville: Abington Press, 1985) make a
fairly convincing stab at explaining this apparent enigma. The word
translated as "cattle" here is Miqneh, which means "a living possession
... [for which] the possessor has legal title as he would for something
commercially bought." (p. 56). Such a word, they argue, would be
inappropriate to describe the relationship that Abel had with his
animals, and suggests that Cain's descendents are the originators of
commercial farming.
12. See Von Rad (Genesis) p. 110: "Because of the union of these heavenly
beings with earthy women, God's spirit and life-giving power entered
mankind far beyond the original design at creation."
13. Calum M. Carmichael, "The Paradise Myth," p. 47 of Morris and
Sawyer, Walk.
14. Various explanations of these sister/wife incidents have been advanced, but the undeniable fact is that whatever the intended point,
even the participants recognize that Abraham is not protecting his
wife's body and so his own future progeny as he ought to do.
15. Since both Abraham and Lot are shown entertaining the angelic visitors
(chapters 18 & 19), it seems likely that we are meant to locate
�GABLE
77
significant differences in the styles of their hospitality. The differences
between the two are subtle but consistent. Abraham sits in the door
of his tent, Lot at the gates of Sodom; both first offer water to bathe,
rest, and later food, but Lot's offers seem frenzied ("he pressed upon
them greatly," 19;3) and more designed to impress ("he made them a
feast"); Lot insists that they "tarry all night" (19;2), while Abraham
asks only that they tarry until their hearts are "comforted "(18;5); and
of course Lot's entertainment draws significant interest from his
neighbors. Most importilJltly Abraham seems to know who his guests
really are, while Lot apparently does not. Taken together these details
suggest a distinction consistent with the rest of the story: Abraham
is a thoughtful man of spiritual insight, a man who minds his own
business but is also concerned about others. Lot is more interested
in worldly pleasure, and in impressing others. What, after all, can
have been his purpose in sitting at the gate of Sodom, if not to mind
other people's business, and to intercept interesting-looking strangers
to entertain?
16.See Paul Morris, "Exiled from Eden," pp. 117-166_ in Morris and
Sawyer Walk: According to the Midrash, "these 'histories' ... are
focussed on the punishment of exiles and the overcoming of such
pnnishment {'retums') ~Israel's sin and exile are a reiteration of
Adam's sin and exile ~".
17. Harold Bloom, ed., Modem Critica1 Interpretations: Genesis. (NY:
Chelsea House Publishers, 1986) p. 4.
18.15: 8-12. E. A. Speiser (The Anchor Bib1e: Genesis, Garden City, NJ:
Doubleday & Co., 1964, pp. ll2ffl among others, notes that this is a
contemporary covenant ritual, in which the parties to a contract
incant formulas inviting the powers that be to split them asunder like
these beasts should they breech their promise. Since God is the
promiser here, the lamp and fumace that pass between the pieces of
carcass {15: 17) suggest the physical presence of God. Possibly in this
context we are meant to think of the fire as separating the two halves
of the beasts~a negative image of God's water which would normally
hold the two halves of the creatures together. In any case the image
of split halves as a punishment is quite appropriate in light of other
similar imagery in Genesis .
19. See Von Rad, Genesis, p. 158: "the fulfillment of this promise lies
beyond Abraham's own life, and it is scarcely thinkable that the
Yahwist considered it as fulfilled in his day."
20. See James S. Ackerman, "Joseph, Judah, Jacob," in Bloom, Interpretations, p. 103: "The brothers see Joseph coming and ambiguously
refer to him as "ba'al of the dreams." This means something like
"hotshot dreamer"; but the allusion to Ba'al~the Canaanite vegetation God who annually descends into the pit and then arises~under
scores the mythic descent pattem of the hero."
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�A Handbook
That Provides No Help
Elliott Zuckerman
I have read a good number of books about poetic devices, and from
almost all of them I have learned something new, usually about some
· detail or distinction in the realm of rhetoric. But the account of verse
itself will typically sbike me as unclear and incomplete. On those rare
occasions when I can piece together a clear and coherent account of
the meters of English, I am relieved, for at least I can begin to consider
the differences between the author's views and my own. But most of
the time there is no theory of verse discoverable amidst the comments
on random details and the vague waving in the direction of pieties
about poetry in general. And so my reading of books about verse, even
those considered important and definitive, has been an unrewarded
search for how the author would answer this or that clear question.
Although they call themselves prosodists, most of the authors do not
seem to recognize that the theory of verse, like the theory of meter in
music, is a bounded subject requiring decisions about how to read
and scan and count. and that it is not for nothing that poets once
talked of "measures" and "numbers."
Recently I came across a handbook in paperback that I had
somehow missed when it first appeared in hard cover. The author is
William Packard, who (according to my brief researches). has been a
professor of poetry at New York University and edited a magazine -for
some years in New York but later in Maine-devoted to what he calls
the craft of poetry. The Poet's Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and
Poetic Devices was published in 1989 by a reputable publisher and
reissued in paperback in 1994. * It carries a foreword by the poet and
prosodist Karl Shapiro, who himself wrote one of the standard
handbooks of the sixties; and there is a blurb on the cover of the
paperback -placed in quotation marks but unatbibuted, like a sign
in a supermarket-asserting that "both novice and professional poets
and all afficionados [sic] of verse should rejoice over" the book. (The
mis-spelling might serve as a warning to readers who still expect
accuracy in such details.) Although I am something more than a novice
poet yet not a professional (whatever that may be), I do, I think, qualiJY
*The Poet's Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices (Harper & Row,
1989). HarperPerenniel Paperback Edition, 1994.
Elliott Zuckerman is Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College.
�so
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
as an aficionado of at least some kinds of verse. But far from pleasing
me, the book made me indignant -indignant enough to write this
unsolicited review. I do thtnk that the best reason for writing criticism
is to call attention to a good book that might otherwise be overlooked.
But sometimes a review has to be written as a waming against a
presumed authority who misleads and misinforms.
I
Like many handbobks, this one is written in short titled articles
arranged alphabetically. There are about a hundred and ten articles-from ACCENT to ZEUGMA-in a little more than two hundred
pages. I like to read such books by starting with one ariicle and then
going on to wherever the references lead me. In this case I started at
the beginning, because the article on ACCENT promised to lead me
right away to the important entry called METER. It is in METER that the
ktnds of feet are briefly defined, and illustrated with passages of verse.
I deduced from the brief naming and illustration of the kinds of feet
that the author seemed to subs crtbe to a fairly common view of how
to expound meters, which I call the Substitution theory. An iambic
tetrameter, for example, in its simplest fonn will consist of four clear
iambs. Then for any iambic foot (but particularly the first in the line)
another kind of foot can be "substituted." In my opinion, this theory
is by no means so straightforward as it sounds. It almost invariably
ignores the question of where the stress of the substituting foot lies
in relationship to the stress of the hypothetically underlying foot. To
put the important question slightly more generally: Does the theorist
subscribe to a more or less isochronous placement of the stressed
syllables? Are the stresses more or less equidistant in time?
Let's take as an example the simplest case. The most common
"substitution" that occurs 1n English iambic verse is the use of a
trochee in the opening foot:
The Gods, that mortal Beauty chase,
Still in a Tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that She might Laurel grow.
In these couplets from Marvell's "Garden," the second and fourth
lines display an opening inversion. And perhaps that is all that needs
to be said about the scansion-unless one ventures into the realm of
interesting prosodic questions, which, in my opinion, begins with the
question of where the stresses of the trochees lie in relation to the
stresses of the underlying iambs. Should we, that is to say, posit an
isochronous, or evenly spaced, set of stresses, which underline both
�ZUCKERMAN
81
the regular meter and the meter that is vaned with so-called substituted feet? Are the stresses on "Still" and the first syllable of "Only" in
the same place (so to speak) as the stresses on "Gods" and the second
syllable of "Apollo"?
Let me repeat these questions with reference to a purely metrical
schema. Here is a representation of the underlying iambic tetrameter,
the regular meter that is unchanged in lines one and three:
ulululul
And here is the common variation in which a trochee replaces the first
iamb, as in lines two and four:
luululul
Now if the stresses are meant to be more or less equally distant from
one another, the two lines would line up in this way:
ulululul
luul u I u I
-which is what I think happens metrically. Of course there are
prosodists who refuse to posit isochronous stresses at all, and although I think they then have a great deal of trouble defining what
they mean by meter, I welcome learning of their refusal, because it
clalifies where they stand.
I would, with some interest, have started to search for Mr Packard's
views about this question, but I was stopped short by certain details
in his exposition that were misleading about far simpler'- matters. I
quickly began to see that questions about isochronism were far too
subtle for this book, and that innocent readers were in danger of being
confused by statements and examples about elementary definitions.
Consider the first example given to illustrate the trochaic, which is
from the first act of Macbeth, a witch speaking:
I'll drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his penthouse lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
To be sure, once it gets going the meter here can be called trochaic;
but with all the clear and even sing-song trochaic tetrameters to
choose from, why use one that begins with an iamb, in a line that is
plainly iambic? Even the subsequent lines are not lucid examples, for
in this meter the row of trochees is catalectic, or missing the final
unstressed syllable. Lines two, three, and four look like this:
luluful
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Are those four trochees wHhout a tail, or are they four iambs without
a head? But that is hardly a question one should have to begin with
when simply being shown what a trochee is. Anything from Hiawatha
would have made the point impeccably.
Mr Packard's second example of the trochaic is King Lear's line of
culminating negatives:
Never, never, never, never, never!
Here are five incontrovertible trochees, but in a line that I and others
have used often enough to display the painful distortion of five iambs
into their opposites. To be sure, the suggestion that there is something
metaphorical of Lear's despair in the very prosody of the line would
seem high-powered in the context of simply introducing the trochee
as a foot. So why choose this example, which, for any reader who
knows that it comes from a context of iambic pentameter, brings up
questions far in excess of the matter at hand? As blank verse, for
example, the line could be construed as five iambs with a feminine
ending and misstng the first upbeat-a five-footed equivalent of the
ambiguity in the previous example.
Mr Packard's illustrations of the spondaic likewise skips over
essentiai aspects of the definition, while at the same time prompting
perplexities for which the reader has been given no preparation. The
first example is once again from Macbeth -I am not questioning the
quality of the examples, only their illustrative adequacy:
Out, out brief candle ...
These are not clear spondees at all. In the context of blank verse there's
no reason why the first "out" shouldn't be taken as an upbeat to the
stronger second. Or, to put it another way, this "spondee" could be
construed as an iamb in which the light syllable has been "promoted"
to almost equai status with the stressed syllable. But nowhere in the
book is there the slightest mention of the useful idea of the promotion
or demotion of stresses. The question of the relation of the spondee to
an underlying iamb arises in full force with Packard's next example,
a famous one from Paradise Lost:
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and Shades of Death.
Here at least I can (with no help from the teacher) pair up the first six
monosyllables into three iambs-or I suppose I should say three
spondees that are substituting for the iambs-and then be left at the
end with two incontrovertable iambs: "and Shades/ of Death." Not a
bad example at all, if only the reader had been told what to look for:
�ZUCKERMAN
83
certamly better than Mr Packard's third and last example of the
spondaic, from Ginsberg's Howl:
I saw the best minds of my generation ...
The only presumed spondee I can find here is "best minds"; but if I
construe the line (or fragment of a line) according to traditional
scansion and discover that it falls (not surprisingly) into blank verse,
it turns out that "best" and "minds" belong to different feet:
I saw I the best/ minds of/ my gen/ er·a/ tion
And if I don't scan the line tn any traditional way-and one might well
question whether an introduction of the standard feet ought to use
lines, or part of lines, from free verse-there's not much point in the
close analysis offeet at all.
It is something of a give-away that Mr Packard follows his brief
exposition of the various kinds of feet with a note of warning, along
with quasi-scriptural quotations from Shelley and Emerson and Col·
eridge which really have very little relevance to his warning. Here's
what Packard himself says:
No matter how adept one becomes at metrical scansion,
one should remember that poets have always insisted
that the intuitive music of poetry must come first.
It is hard to know how "tntuitive music" might differ from any other
music of verse, but the connotation seems to be that_ something
intuitive must be better than something that sounds as mechanical
as "metrical scansion." There is anyway little danger that a reader of
this book will become adept at scanning, mechanically or otherwise,
since nowhere in the book are there indications of how to scan
according to any clear set of rules.
II
So far I have complamed of theoretical vagueness and misleading
examples-not quite enough to precipitate an extended attack. But it
was not long before I met the first of the many expositions that display
deep-seated misunderstandings. The unlikely location was the section
on RHYME--and I say unlikely because tn my experience there is not
much that can go wrong when expounding something so straightfor·
ward. Packard has no trouble distinguishing tersely between mascu·
line and feminine rhymes: he gives examples of each, and tells us that
the masculine rhyme falls on the last syllable of the line and the
feminine on the next-to-last. So far so good.
�84
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
He then introduces a poem of Herrick's that "altemates masculine
and feminine rhymes ... until the final couplet, which employs a monosyllable masculine rhyme." Anyone who knows the usage should know
what to expect: a poem in which a couplet the two lines of which end
in one kind of rhyme, the masculine, is followed by a couplet whose
lines end in the other kind, the feminine, and so on in alternation:
mmffrnrnff.... Such altemation happens to be the staple prerequisite
for all rhyming in French verse (where of course a fmal schwa-like
"silent e" provides the second syllable of the feminine rhyme). and
because of the altemation it can safely be said that the totality of
French verse displays an equal number of each sort of rhyme. In
English, however, such strict altemation is rare, and I looked forward
to seeing it done by Herrick. Instead this is what Packard quotes:
A sweet disorder in the dresse
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A Lawne about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring Lace, which here and there
Enthralls the Crimson Stomacher:
A Cuffe neglectful!, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving Note)
In the tempestuous petticote:
A careless shoe-sbing in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Doe more bewitch me, then when Art
Is too precise in every part.
Anyone acquainted with the stmplest facts of rhyming can see that atr
the rhymes here are masculine. There is indeed something going on
that is worthy of comment-and not easily noticed unless one starts
looking for what aspect of the rhyming Mr Packard could possibly be
pointing to. It seems that in almost all the couplets except the last,
the first syllable of the rhyming pair happens also to be a monosytrabic
word, while the responding syllable of the rhyming pair is the final
syllable of a polysyllabic word. When Packard asked us to notice
altemating masculine and feminine rhymes, I could only take that to
mean altemating pairs of such rhymes, for we all know (and I think
he knows elsewhere) that it is nonsense to speak of a single stressed
syllable as "rhyming" with a disyllabic combination of stressed-andunstressed (or stress plus enclitic). Moreover, even if what happens
in the Herrick poem could be called a sort of unusual rhyming, then
the "rhymes" called feminine would have to be characterized as doubly
�85
ZUCKERMAN
feminine, for the stressed syllables are followed by not one but two
unstressed syllables. Packard's confusion is deeply embedded, for the
"rhyme" that he refers to is that of a stressed syllable with the second
of two unstressed syllables. But Herrick's rhymes are not "dresse" and
"wantonnesse," etc., but "dresse" and "nesse," "thrown" and "on,"
"there" and "cher," the second of each pair counting as a masculine
single stress, just like the first-and indeed there is an over-rhyme in
the case of"tye" and "ty," an identity of sound of the sort that is sought
after in French but discouraged in English.
Another way of putting all this is to acknowledge that all the lines
are in the same meter, an iambic tetrameter (in which, as we have
already noticed, the opening foot can be a trochee, as in lines two and
four). Hence the rhyme, is always the eighth syllable, regardless of
whether that syllable is a single word or the last syllable of a polysyllable. Nowhere is there a ninth syllable (necessarily unstressed) to
provide a feminine ending, and if there were such an ending there
would of course have to be a pair of them to make a rhyme. This is a
wordy way of putting things, and I used to think of such matters as
too obvious to be written out-before I encountered the strange
mistakes of Mr Packard. Imagine the perplexity of some beginner who
thought he grasped the easy distinction between masculine and
feminine rhymes and then was presented with the Herrick example
and its introduction.
III
It is under the entry ALEXANDRINE that Mr Packard makes his
worst set of mistakes, and shows that his confusion about English
verse is matched by his confusion about French verse, despite the fact
that the book includes many examples of his translations of the
French masters. Right away we are told that in the classical French
alexandrine-which is, of course, to French verse what iambic pentameter is to English-there is a caesura that divides the line into two
half-lines "of three feet each on either side."
I remember when, during my first encounter with French verse, I
tried to read the French alexandrine as though it were pretty much
the same as the English; it seemed reasonable enough to do so: there
are six syllables on either side of the pause, and since the hemistich
often enough had its stresses-different, of course, from English or
German stresses, but still discernible-on a combination of the second
and the sixth, or the fourth and the sixth, it was possible to pair up
the six syllables as iambs. This: • • I • • I, and this: • • • I • I, could
both be read as • I • I • I. But I was disabused soon enough, most
immediately by the sort of line I had to call "anapestic":
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
••I ••I
As an example of that sort of line, I'll use one that Mr Packard himself
quotes elsewhere in his book, displaying as usual his taste for great lines:
Je levis, je rougis. je palis
a sa vue ...
No amount of wishful scanning could force the two trisyllable divisions
of each hemistich into three disyllabic feet. This line from Phedre also
happens to be the line'that is cited in the article on the ALEXANDRINE
in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics, where there is a correct
reference to "the fluid 4 accents ... " of the French line. Mr Packard even
quotes the evidence against his own statement right after he makes
it, for there he gives us the inevitable opening lines of the play:
Le dessein en est pris: je pars, cher Theramene,
Et quitte le sejour de l'aimable Trezene.
Dans le doute martel dontje suis agite,
Je commence a rougir de mon oisivete ...
Although there are some half-lines in this speech (the second half of
line one, for example) that could, for speakers of English, fairly
naturally be construed as having three iambs, I should think that
there is strong enough evidence here against the notion that anything
like three feet can generally be found. The most common forms of the
hemistich show two stresses-on syllables two and six,
Je pars, cher Theramene
Et quitte le sejour
or furee and six-what I have called the "anapestic" hemistich:
Le dessein en est pris
De l'aimable Trezene
or four and six. (In the hemistiches quoted, those ofthe first two lines,
note the chiasmus.) When the hemistich is the first half of the line,
the sixth syllable is the stress preceding the caesura; in the second
half, it carries either the masculine rhyme-syllable or the stressed
syllable of the feminine. And with this way of putting it, there is no
need to speak of "feet" at all.
But Mr Packard's misconstruction of French verse is merely a
prelude to some deeper confusion about the scansion of our native
tongue. Although the English Alexandrine has the same name as the
French, it is something quite different: an iambic hexameter, with the
usual break after the third iamb:
u I u I u 1. u I u I u I
�ZUCKERMAN
87
After translating the Racine into fairly wooden but correct English
alexandrines, Mr Packard summons an authority:
C. S. Lewis in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century ... explains the departure in English from the
neoclassic conventions of the alexandrine ...
Since the only "neoclassic convention of the alexandrine" so far quoted
or referred to is that of the French classical drama, the reader may be
understandably puzzled to'hear that sixteenth-century English poets
departed from the practice of the French poets of the next century.
But in the passage that Mr Packard is quoting, C. S. Lewis is clearly
making a general comparison of the two alexandrines, French and
English; tf there is a chronological reference, it must be to the French
alexandrines ofthe sixteenth-century poets.
The quotation of Lewis goes on:
The medial break in the alexandrine, though it may do
well enough tn French, quickly becomes intolerable in
a language with such a tyrannous stress-accent as
ours: the line struts. The fourteener has a much pleasanter movement, but a totally dtfferent one; the line
dances a jig, Hence in a couplet made of two such
yoke-fellows we seem to be labouring up a steep hill in
bottom gear for the first line, and then running down
the other side of the hill, out of control, for the second.
A new term has been introduced, the "fourteener," that has no entry
of its own tn Mr Packard's dictionary. What he says about it here, in
the article on the alexandrine, is entirely wrong. He quotes a Spenserian stanza, and tells us that the final line is "a loose alexandrine, or
what Lewis calls a 'fourteener. "'
Now the alexandrines that end the Spenserian stanza are always
easily scannable iambic hexameters. After the first eight lines of
pentameter, the line with the extra iamb serves to give the reader a
sort of shove into the next stanza-a little push that is, I should think,
needed by readers of The Faery Queen. What Mr Packard calls a "loose"
alexandrine seems to be one in which the caesura is not strictly in the
middle of the line, like the one he quotes:
Of huge Sea monsters, such as living sence dismayd.
Whether or not one wants to call this line loose, there are clearly no
more than the correct twelve syllables. Such lines are emphatically
not what Lewis, or anyone else, would call a "fourteener," which (not
surprisingly) is a line that has fourteen syllables, or seven disyllabic
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
88
feet. In the Princeton Encydopedia it is discussed under the heading
HEPTAMETER. and is clearly no more related to the English alexandrine, or hexameter, than the pentameter is. The three long iambic
lines are of course quite different in character. The longest, the
"fourteener," is usually criticized as "monotonous"; it is the meter of
Chapman's Iliad, and may be the reason why (as someone once joked)
that book can't be read, by Keats or anyone else, much beyond one's first
looking into it. But gi.yen a pause after the fourth foot, the fourteener
reveals itself as one of the most common meters in our language-that
of the ballad, or the Common Measure of the hymnbooks:
ujujujujujujuJ~
uju/ujuj
ujujuj
The kind of "couplet" that C. S. Lewis is referring to is clearly not,
as Mr Packard has it, a mixing of mid-caesura alexandrines and what
he calls "loose" ones, but a coupling of alexandrtnes with fourteeners,
or, to give them the names that show their kinship, of iambic hexameters and iambic heptameters. In its day the coupling was nicely called
"Poulter's Measure," after the presumed practice of poulterers to give
twelve eggs in the first dozen and fourteen in the second. Princeton
quotes an example from Fulke Greville, one in which he turns into
trochees the opening iambs in both lines, as well as the line after the
caesura of the hexameter:
Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage,
Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of our age.
IV
In the space of a page. Mr Packard as been wrong on many counts.
He has unci early distinguished a "loose alexandri:Oe." incorrectly
identified it with Lewis's fourteener. despite the obvious difference in
syllable-count, and shown his ignorance of the existence of Poulter's
Measure. As to the first, I have so far assumed that by "loose" Mr
Packard simply means that the caesura is placed not strictly after the
third foot. But in the rest of the article, even that becomes unclear.
After quoting the Spenserian stanza. Mr Packard quotes a sonnet from
Astrophet and Ste11a, telling us that there "Sir Philip Sidney used loose
alexandrines." It is not clear from that locution whether he means that
all of the lines or only some of them belong to the category: as it
happens. twelve of the fourteen lines are strongly stopped strictly in
the middle, and only one line-it happens to be the first-is interestingly divided otherwise: 2 - 2 - 2:
�ZUCKERMAN
89
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show ...
The next "loose" alexandrine that Mr Packard quotes-the last line of
one of the (Spenserian) stanzas of Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes"-conforms
to the definition, for the caesura is a syllable late:
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
-but the line of Dryden quoted next and also called "loose" has the
caesura in the middle:
But mellows what we write to the dull Sweets of Rhyme.
Perhaps a few additional sentences could have cleared up such
ambiguities. But the matters about which Mr Packard was plainly
wrong clearly required apology and revision, not republication five
years later in paperback.
v
So far I have discussed only two or three of the entries in this
dictionary. A selective miscellany of other references will show that it
is wrong or misleading almost everywhere. In the following lines of
Desdemona's, we are told that lines 3 and 5 and 6 are hexameters:
My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty:
To you I am bound for life and education;
My life and education both do learn me
(5) How to respect you; you are the lord of duty;
I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother show'd
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
But lines three and five are clearly pentameters that require only a
minimum of elision-"I'am" and "you'are"-and even line six is more
easily scannable as a extrasyllabic pentameter. The hexameter always
seems to be a source of trouble in this book, but Mr Packard goes on
to tell us something else: that "Lines 1 and 10 are foreshortened lines."
Nowhere in the book could I find out clearly what he means by
"foreshortened," but surely in the context of this quotation the reader
ought to be reminded that line one completes the end of the preceding
speech, and line ten is completed by what follows.
No era of English verse is left unmarked by error, confusion, or
neglect. We are told that in Beowulf "there is usually a single
alliteration in each line"; but putting it that way hardly suggests the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
known pattern in which there is alliteration of three of the line's four
strong stresses. There is no mention of the question of the "silent" e's
in Chaucer, and the opening line of the Canterbury Tales is given in
one of its versions, without the instructive inclusion of the other. A
version of one of the Psalms is given as an exan1ple of Free Verse, but
without any mention of how the lines of the Hebrew are organized. The
Limerick is more or less rightly introduced as an anapestic meter,
but-without any wqming apart from saying that it is the "earliest
record of the form"_:_the first example rtngs out with dactyls and
ian1bs:
Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock.
Poe's "Raven" is the example of octarneter, but there is no mention
there or anywhere else of the concept of dipodic verse, in which
trochees or iambs are construed as pairing up to form double feet of
four syllables. Poe's line:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while 1 pondered, weak and weary,
is probably too ponderous to be construed as anything other than
eight trochees. But there are trochaic octameters that can be fairly
schematized as four "feet" looking like this: uu/u. Such dipodic verse
is the staple of Victorian comic verse:
This particularly rapid unintelligible patter
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter.
Many years of reading manuals of meter and poe"tic rhythm have
taught me that it is better to begin the study with comic verse. or
so-called Light verse, and then work one's way to the freer forn1s. just
as the analysis of a subtle minuet or a grand symphonic waltz
movement might best begin with a study of the mere formalities of the
dance itself.
VI
The poem "Sprtng and Fall" of Hopkins is wrttten with four stresses
in each line, without regard to the unstressed syllables. Sometimes
the n1eter may coincide exactly with a traditional trochaic tetran1eter:
By and by, nor spare a sigh
�ZUCKERMAN
91
And sometimes the line has to be marked with special accents that
show where to fmd the stresses that would otherwise be unknown or
ambiguous:
Ali. as the heart grows older
(with accents over the vowels of"Ah" and "as"). In the opening couplet,
the second line is traditionally trochalc, but the first line requires extra
notation:
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
(with accents over the vowels in the first and third syllables of
"Margaret," to show the odd double stress on the name of the child
addressed). In his brief discussion of "sprung rhythm," Mr Packard
gets that first line wrong:
Margaret, are you grieving ...
(with accents over only the first syllable of "Margaret" and on "are").
Now it is of some help to be told to stress the questioning verb, but
surely it is the stressing of the last syllable of the girl's name that we
must be specifically told to do. By omitting that accent-mark, yet
retaining the now unnecessary mark on the opening syllable, Mr
Packard's version seems to prescribe the very reading that Hopkins
had to warn us against, the "normal" reading of only one stress on the
name, hence only three stresses in the line. If Mr Packard's accent-marks represent a printer's error, then of course it ought to have been
corrected when the paperback was issued. But his brief description
of the Hopkins technique suggests that he did not understand what
was going on). "Sprung rhythm," he says, "counts the number of
stresses per line as normally sounded in everyday speech .... " I think
the experience that most people have with the technique is that they
don't "get" the line until they find the right syllables to stress (and,
correlatively, those syllables that have to be glossed over); and that,
far from always being the stresses of ordinary speech, we sometimes
have to be specifically told to stress what would ordinarily be an
unstressed syllable-as we are throughout "Spring and Fall."
VII
Mr Packard has an entry for PROSODY itself. most of which is taken
up by a quotation of someone else. The statement is so uninformed
and so tasteless that I wonder why anyone would choose to quote it.
Here's Mr Packard's reason:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In addition to the introduction of entirely new elements into contemporary prosody, there has also been
a radical revision of the way traditional prosody is
viewed. Thus Michael Moriarty, the poet and actor,
described his own approach to prosody in an NYQ
Craft Interview.
The New York Quarterly is the magazine that Mr Packard founded and
edited; itfeatured in~erviews with contemporary poets, and with those,
like Mr Moriarty, who combined poetry with other pursuits. In fact,
Mr Moriarty begins by telling us what he does, and what his various
activities have in common:
The basic common denominator I have through writing poetry, prose, or acting, is music ....
The pleonastic diction and the unbalanced syntax remind us that this
is part of an interview, presumably recorded as spoken:
And that's my own approach, my only aesthetic now. With
each breath either of prose or of poetry there are certain
principles of balance to music. Then, no matter what's in
it, I never question its integrtty or its authenticity...
I'm not sure what the antecedents are of "that" and "it," but the display
of fashionable vocabulary is exhilarating-almost as exhilarating as
the outrageous historical sketch that follows:
And, the more I look at the world through musical
terms, the more I shed outwom modalities, outwom
paradigms. And, as example: the diatonic system in
Bach's time reached its highest level-then it had to
be re-examined, and so the Romantics and the twelve
tone series came along, and their creators said: "I don't
care what people say; certain notes can live together
and ought to live together." And they've proven that
point well. And the same thing exists in plays and
exists in life, like living in New York City. New York is
a perlect example where not only certain notes can live
together, but certain people can live together brushing
elbows every day ....
Packard and Moriarty have performed a service for me, for their
writings have removed whatever vestige remained of my wish to retum
to New York City.
�ZUCKERMAN
93
VIII
It occurred to me to look up the original reviews of the Packard
book. The only one I could easily find was in Choice, where there are
brief reviews to aid librarians. Here are the last two sentences of that
review:
Reliability and authenticity are hallmarks of this dictionary. which deserves strong recommendation for
both public and academic libraries. It should also be
on tbe desk of all teachers of literature.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�Theater and Polity
I
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
When we go to our local Vldeowatch or Blockbuster and rent, let's just
say Lawrence Olivier's Henry V or Kenneth Branagh's version of the
same play-or perhaps even Batman Forever-and then bring the
tapes home to watch of our own VCR, with or without friends and
family, we are participating in a mode of activity that began more than
two-and-a-half millennia ago in rustic festivals of ancient Greece.
From those festivals emerged the dramatic form that makes us
observers of actions that we know are representations of actions that
may or may not have taken place as we see them performed. Whether
we watch videotapes or a theatrical production, we know that what
we observe is not what we observe, that we are seeing people who are
not the people (or the animals) that they portray. While we watch this
fantasy world, we engage ourselves in it, and we make it real by the
very process of watching-looking upon the actors as if they were the
people they portray.
The Greeks watching the drama of the Oresteia or the Oedipus
trilogy or the Bacchae knew that they were not seeing Agamemnon,
or Oedipus, or Dionysus. They were seeing representations of those
individuals, men with masks to hide their true identities: by those very
masks, the actors confirmed that they were not the individuals they
were portraying. And yet, "fear and pity" filled the spectators as they
observed events whose representations were performed ~n a defined
stage, employing defined conventions. The characters whose faces
appear on our television sets via the VCR are the same. The actors
may no longer wear masks, but we know that they are not the
characters they portray: while we watch the screen, though, they are
real. We allow illusion to control us and, most important, as Mera
Flaumenhaft develops in The Civic Spectacle*, her elegant study of the
theater and the polity, we allow those illusions to educate us.
Two central themes run through Flaumenhaft's work: first, the
community that is (or is not) created among those sharing in the
illusion of theatrical performances and second the educative role of
these shared (or not shared) illusions. The history that she traces
takes us from the profoundly political, community-building experiences of Greek drama to the isolated individual experiences of the
* Mera J. Flaumenhaft, The Civic Spectacle: Essays on Drama and Community
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 1994).
Arlene W. Saxonhouse is James Olin Murfin Professor of PoliUcal Science at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
contemporary movie houses and theaters, with their dimmed lights
and their seats all facing forward towards the stage or screen with the
consequence that we have little sense of the others who share the
experience with us. Through a focus on four different plays, Aeschylus's
Oresteia, Euripides' Bacchae, Machiavelli's Mandragola, and Shakespeare's Henry Vas interpreted in the movie versions by Olivier and
Branagh, Flaumenhaft explores the different political (or non-political)
teachings that emergeJrom each production, teachings that must be
directly related to the context in which the play is produced. Thus, we
move with her from the ancient amphitheater where the plays are
performed by actors with their masks, where from sunrise to sunset,
the entire city watches, to the living room where, with a few others or
perhaps alone, we observe at close range faces that reveal the psychological drama of characters the actors are representing. From a public
grandeur and speech, from a political community observing the
exploration of the principles of justice, of membership, of order, we
end up in a private, intimate world of personal pain, anguish, and, on
occasion, joy.
Flaumenhaft begins this joumey with an essay on the Oresteia. For
those of us saturated with the 0 .J. Simpson trial that was performed
almost daily on the TV screen, Flaumenhaft's discussion reminds us
of the very important connection between theater and the judicial
system. Her discussion focuses on how the trilogy captures the
emergence of the polis in the process of making justice visible. By
bringing the execution of vengeance, the execution of justice, out of
the hidden recesses of the house into the open forum of the polity,
theater becomes the model for the trial. Flaumenhaft's analysis made
this reader, at least, a bit more tolerant of the events which took place
in the Los Angeles courtroom. A trial is a form of theater and, as the
Oresteia illustrates, we should be thankful. Through the theater /trial,
the public community becomes invested in the exercise of justice, we
share in a "common looking," and thus we share in the transition made
so many centuries ago when the execution of justice moved from the
responsibility of the kin of injured to the polis, when the political
community on took the task of remedying harms committed.
The trial as portrayed on the Attic stage or on our televisions is the
retelling of the story, a re-enactment of what was. We may find some
of the stories more petty than others, we may prefer that the story deal
With kings and queens caught in webs of cosmic necessities to stories
that deal with jealous, abusive husbands, but the publicity of both
tums audiences 1n to communities grappling with the necessity of
justice, with understanding the meaning of evidence, of motives, of
�SAXONHOUSE
97
passions, of human desires-and the need for public institutions to
address these issues. The trial as theater and the theater as trial draw
us together and as the play-(trial-)watchers we are united and educated in the ways of justice.
To discuss one of the greatest pieces of Western literature and the
0 .J. Simpson trial in the same paragraph may perhaps seem an act
of sacrilege, but Flaumenhaft's book is constantly taking us persuasively from the ancient st~ge of our world, showing us the continvities
and the differences, helping us reflect on the cultural significance of
modern festivals and even of scripts without page numbers (p. 78).
Even though we no longer sit on the stone seats from sunrise to sunset,
we engage in the activity that began in the Greek amphitheater and
the variations that we have brought to that experience reveal much
about who we are and what our politics has come to mean.
Flaumenhaft's discussion of the raw and difficult to watch Bacchae
continues her theme of theater as a community of voyeurs, but in this
essay Flaumenhaft points more powerfully to the differences with
modem theater. We are reminded of how theatergoing in ancient
Athens was a civic festival. However much we may advertise "festivals"
today, a Shakespeare festival at Stratford, a Shaw festival at Niagara,
and so forth, in no way do these festivals capture the experience of
parading by torchlight through the city in politically defined divisions
in honor of the god of the theater and/or the city. But it is not only
the differences between ancient and modern festivals the at interest
Flaumenhaft. Through an analysis of the Bacchae she illustrates how
that particular tragedy is a commentary on the community activity
entailed in going to the theater in the ancient world. "In the theater,
spectators must face what is mixed and mingled, mangled and impure" (74). The boundaries that defme where the citizens and spectators march in the parade, where they sit when they are in the theater,
how they vote (or do not vote) as citizens, appear, under the influence
of Dionysus, the god of the theater, permeable and uncertain.
Dionysus wanders through the drama taking place before the
audience, breaking down all distinctions between male and female,
god and human, animal and human, city and country. Pentheus, the
ruler of Thebes, whose body is to be tom to pieces and gnawed upon
by his mother, tries ineffectively to affirm distinctions, political
boundaries between cities, between male and female, between free and
impiisoned. Those boundaries charactertze the city and are essential
for the functioning of the political unity. But the theater, already
questioning the boundaries between what is real and what is illusion,
forces the audience to acknowledge how boundaries are constructed
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and not natural, how the orderly procession that preceded the performance is a human assertion of st:Iucture against the formlessness
of the very god of the theater. Yet, in the theater, "looking together,"
as Flaumenhaft points out, "they can face what, if experienced first
hand or seen privately, might destroy their humanity" (77).
It is precisely this "looking together," so emphasized in Flaumenhaft's argument, that enables the many gathered to become and
remain one together, a r.ity, even as they observe a fractured world on
stage. Modem dramatic productions, often drawing from ancient
themes, point as well to a fractured world. It is world view that,
Flaumenhaft suggests, builds of the cubist artists' representations
"unbounded by frame or linear, articulated forms" (77), but the
modem dramatic performances lack the unifying context of the
Dionysian festival, the insistence the we "look together," that we
remain a city while observing a "mangled" world. Modem drama thus
re-enforces the chaotic world rather than controlling it.
The experience of play-watching is quite different when we consider
Machiavelli's comedy the Mandragola. It is not performed before the
citizens of a polis or the random audience of the modem theater. Its
political role is not to unity- or create a political community out of the
spectators. Performed in private, before a small group of young man,
the Mandragola is a subversive work not only in that it shows the
pleasing victory of what conventionally would by called a sin (adultery)
and praising that victory for making so many happy by it. It is even
more subversive, Flaumenhaft suggests, by the very fact that as a play,
it draws those watching it psychologically into the action. As such, the
members of the audience become co-conspirators with the actors,
subverting traditional political, social and religious values and delighting in the victory of that subversion.
The private comic theater is didactic, but not as traditionalists
might like. Flaumenhaft cites Bacon's claim that "poesy" teaches us
about the world as it ought to be and that history teaches about it as
it is. Flaumenhaft's argument is that the Mandragola performs just
the role that Bacon assigns to history, but the play goes even beyond
the didactic role of history of showing us the world as it is. It draws
the spectators into the subversive role that Machiavelli seeks to teach
to the young. These young men, so educated, will be able to transform
society according to Machiavellian principles. Drawn into the conspiracy they will cast off conventional assumptions and move forward
according to the Machiavellian teachings they have learned from the
comedy, teachings ever so much more acceptable when we as specta-
�SAXONHOUSE
99
tors have been co-opted to applaud their success in a comedy than
when we are confronted by their harshness in The Prince.
In her last chapter Flaumenhaft helps us understand how play
watching has changed in the modem day as she explores the different
textures of the two movie versions of Shakesperare's Henry V, a play
that. with its chorus, is explicitly self-conscious about its role as
representational. In particular, Flaumenhaft develops the differing
political contexts as a way, to illuminate the different aims of the two
directors-one eager to draw together a nation during wartime and
the other addressing an audience disillusioned by war after Vietnam
and the Faulklands. In Olivier's version we see the director aiming to
draw together a war-weary nation. The ambiguities to which Shakespeare's Henry V alerts us, about war itself. about nationhood and
national unity, about friendship and its relation to political responsibilities are muted by Olivier so that the king's exhortations to battle
for the glorious English nation can speak sincerely and directly to the
modem Englishman and urge him, as Henry had urged his man, to
go "once more unto the breach" (145). The director's role is here a
political one and those seetng the movie, captured by the brilliant
colors, motivated by Olivier's forceful portrayal of Henry, are swept up
by the patriotic, ennobling power of the play.
Not so with Branagh's version. The ambiguities of Shakespeare's
play are ever present; the uncertatnty of whether the war is justified,
the anguish of sendtng men to their death for a nation that may itself
have no legitimacy other than force, all these questions play vividly in
the close-up portraits of Branagh's face. Psychological introspection
marks this Henry produced for a population still struggling to make
sense of senseless wars. However much beauty and eloquence mark
Olivier's Henry, his movie seems dated and stilted at the end of the
century. It shone on screens before television brought tape'd versions
into our living rooms. The Branagh version, while certainly more
powerful on the large screen, does not suffer in the intimacy of the
living room. As a psychological tale of a king's anguish, it captures
the individual anguish that we too must suffer and that we sometimes
must cause others to suffer. As such, Branagh's version eschews the
political power of the other works Flaumenhaft has discussed and, as
such, captures the decline of the "civic spectacle" into a private.
internalized, and perhaps even isolating experience.
Flaumenhaft never lets us forget the didactic role that the theater
plays, but real strength of this book lies in the insistence that we can
only understand that didacticism if we attend to the context in which
we are observers of representations. That context reminds us, the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
observers, the producers, the directors, that representation is a
political act-whether we talk explicitly about what appears on stage,
the VCR, or in the retelling of stories in the courtroom. And as a
political act, it can build or it can undermine community, it can train
leaders as in the Mandragola or it can turn an almost random mass
into a nation as in Olivier's Henry V. Flaumenhaft's book keeps us
wonderfully alert to how much we can learn about ourselves, about
others, about the nature of communal life by studying the politics of
play watching.
�The Human Sense for Justice
I
Henry Higuera
Clifford Orwin is a political theorist who has written several articles
on Thucydides. With The Humanity ojThucydides*, his first book on
the subject, he establishes himself as one of the most solid and
profound political interpreters of Thucydides. Orwin makes the case
more compellingly than any other recent critic that Thucydides is an
original political theorist as well as an historian. Thucydides does not
have a theory about the best regime in the style of Plato's Republic or
Laws or Aristotle's Politics. Nor does he expound theories of the human
soul or the cosmos and work his way from these through ethics to
political norms. Nonetheless, Orwin persuasively argues that his work
is a penetrating examination of the limits of reason and the meaning
and status of justice.
In arguing that the History focuses on justice, Orwin must combat
the notion that Thucydides is only interested in "causes," i.e. nonmoral explanations. In perhaps his most crucial discussion Orwin
builds an intriguing case that the famous passage at !.123 about the
"cause" of the war should be translated as follows: "As to why [the two
sides] broke the treaty ... the truest a11egation (prophasin), although
least conspicuous in speech, I hold to be that the Athenians by
becoming great and provoking fear in the Lacedaemonians compelled
them to resort to war. As for the grievances ]aitiai ]openly spoken on
either side, ... they were as follows" (32: emphasis in original). In other
words, translating this passage as being about "the truest cause" of
the war versus the "pretexts given out" for it is a serious mistake.
Prop has is means "accusation" or "casus belLi" rather than "cause."
Aitia means "blame" before it means "pretext." In this passage Thucydides is talking about the blame for the war.
But, in a further twist, Thucydides is here silent as to whom the
truest allegation fingers as the culpable party. Is it the Athenians for
expanding, or the Spartans for acting on their fears? Thus this
statement actually sets up a mora[ problem about blame, and it is the
task of the rest of the history to solve it. In the greatest war known to
Thucydides, which side had justice on its side, and why?
Now this interpretation of 1.123, while impressively grounded in
both Greek and Thucydides' own usage, is based on a silence rather
*Clifford Orwin. The HumaniLy ojThucydides (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press, 1994}
Henry Higuera is a tutor at the Annapolis campus of St. John's College.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
than an explicit utterance. Accordingly one wishes that Orwin had
discussed at greater length why Thucydides is so muted in setting up
the problem, and in general one wishes that Orwin had provided more
analysis ofThucydides' rhetoric. His not doing so seems to result from
the very tight focus in his book on the difficult lessons Thucydides
wants to teach his n1ost perceptive and persistent readers, rather than
the effect he wants to have on the general reader. Still, this latter is
itself an ilnportant topic, and one feels somewhat deprived at not
having Orwin's take on these matters.
At any rate, according to Orwin the History addresses the problem
of true blame for the war primarily through an examination of what
he calls "the Athenian thesis." This thesis is a novel justification for
the Athenian en1pire, and indeed for any aggressive imperialism, via
"a particular interpretation of fimperialisnl] as disclosing a natural
necessitl.)" (86). !fit is right, the Athenians are exculpated for expand·
ing, and thus for the war. It is first propounded by the Athenian envoys
at Sparta just before the war and is repeated with important variations
at Dehum, at Melos, by Diodotus before the Athenian Assembly, by
Alcibiades at Sparta, and by the Athenian Euphemas and the
Syracusan Hermocrates in Sicily. At Melos it is made to include the
clairn that this compulsion justifies imperialism even in the eyes of
the gods, who "would not be so inconsequent" (106) as to punish a
con1pu!sion which they must recognize in themselves. By Alcibiades
it is further widened to include individuals.
To show that Thucydides takes the problem of justice so seriously
in his work, Orvvin must do so in his own. OIWin defends and criticizes
the Athenian thesis with admtrable intelligence and honesty. He has
a positive revulsion against an unthinking acceptance of justice; he
appreciates how cheap, i.e., unjust, that ultimately is. Again and again
one must adn1ire how he refuses easy ways out. He dOes not give up
on justice in a smug way after detailing some problems with it, nor
does he neglect to discuss difficulties after his most impressive
vindications of it. Three examples must suffice here to give some sense
of the range and seriousness of Orwin's discussions.
First, many have seen that the Athenian speeches at Sparta and
Melos, if taken to their logical conclusion, lead to Alcibiades: to
competition within the city and the destruction of the common good.
Many accordingly take Alcibiades as a refutation of the Athenian
thesis. But Orwin argues that this is a non sequitur. These speeches
might be right; if so, then Alcibiades and others like him are ine\~table.
The deleterious effects of Alcibiades' frankness about his opinions are
real enough. But again, the harm his frankness did was not in turning
�HIGUERA
103
all Athenians into versions of himself but in making the populace
distrust him more than was reasonable. This mistrust reflects a
political and theological conservatism deeply rooted in the nature of
the many.
Second, Orwin refuses to regard either the plague or the Sicilian
disaster as divine retributions. His discussions of these are very
complex and evenhanded, but he ultimately argues that the few
explicit things which Thucydides says about them are determinative;
and, as he shows, these go against regarding them as punishments.
He says dryly, "The sequence Melos [Book V]/Sicily[Books VI-VII] is
poetic, that is, more beautiful than true" (1 I 1). In fact, Orwin argues that
it was the Athenians' very piety that caused the Sicilian disaster-first
in turning from Alcibiades to Nicias, and then in the fatal delay of the
retreat from Syracuse.
Finally, Orwin gives due prominence to the moral debunking of the
Spartans' justice which Thucydides carries out-their behavior at
Plataea and during the siege of Melos, and above all their subjugation
of the Helots. He shows admirably how consistent these phenomena
are with the fact that the Spartans are extremely just and moderate
much of the time.
Ultimately, Orwin argues, much of the Athenian thesis is left
standing. As a whole, however, it meets an ironic fate, for Diodotus
and Hennocrates see things in it which, on one level, stand it on its
head. It is not true that cities pursue imperial imperatives out of
necessity. By natural necessity cities pursue what they take to be
imperial imperatives; and cities are, by that same necessity, very
foolish in interpreting those imperatives. Imperialism is a natural
compulsion for cities; but so is folly, the illusion that one is justified,
and the further illusion that one's justice guarantees one's success.
These last two illusions are cherished by the Athenian many, as
Thucydides states in connection with Sicily. They even affect the
envoys to Melos, as Orwin argues persuasively in a very sensitive
interpretation of their contempt for Sparta and their annoyance at the
Melians for refusing to be talked into surrendering.
Full understanding of the Athenian thesis leads to appreciating the
difference between true compulsions and the illusory yet irresistible
ones that always accompany the true ones. It destroys admiration and
eros for imperial cities and is ultimately incompatible with an intelligent individual's dedication to empire. Still, it mutes moral indignation
at the spectacle of imperialism. One cannot blame either Athens or
Sparta for causing the war, although one also cannot admire either
one very much for fighting it.
�104
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
Probably the most challengmg part of the book (a frustratingly brief
part) is Orwin's discussion of domestic politics. Domestic politics is
where justice is supposed to reveal its power and attractiveness and
indeed to reveal just what it is. Thucydides' position in general,
according to Orwin, is that the human sense of justice is not merely
conventional or artificial. Even the most dartng Athenians cannot
shake the feel1ng that freely-chosen and active concern for other
people's well-being is one of the noblest things and is also somehow
demanded of us-that it is justice, in short. But according to this part
ofOrwin's book, domestic justice forThucydides is not an absolute or
categorical imperative. It can be outweighed by other goods. Above all,
far from being master over our bodies, domestic justice depends on
them: 'There is no greater political misfortune for human beings than
to be freed from the constralnt posed by their bodies .... Society proves
to depend more fundamentally on our hopes and fears for our bodies
than ... on our capacity to overcome these" (182).
The hun1an sense for justiCe is also flexible: it can be changed under
pressure of necessity. That does not change the justice of the case,
however; Thucydides is not a relativist. Under necessity. as in the
plague or in stasis (civil strife), we lose our healthy feel1ng for justice
and honestly regard as noble what truly is not. Plague and stasis are
not uniquely revealing conditions for Thucydides the way the war of
all against all is for Hobbes: they are political pathologies and produce
pathological moral reactions.
What is the source of the healthy, correct feeling? Thucydides,
Orwin seems to indicate, gives no answer but human nature, because
he believes that there is no other powerful entity in the universe which
cares about justice the way we do. Perhaps the austerity of this
position is one reason why Thucydides has not be~n considered a
political philosopher. Most people who think that justice lacks cosmic
support conclude that it is artificial (i.e. cultural) and/or 1llusory: It is
much more picturesque to speculate about entities which support
justice, and, if one cannot find any of these, it seems deeper to reject
any stable standard of justice. Thucydides merely insists that healthy
human beings will always respond to what even the most hardened
Athenians did: that it is somehow demanded of them to make exertions, freely, for others. History, not metaphysical speculation, teaches
us this.
History also teaches us that some human beings achieve this
freedom or mastery over compulsion; Orwin cites Diodotus, for one.
The admiration people have for their cities is a confused divination of
truly admirable but very rare people. Hence the importance for Orwin
�HIGUERA
105
of to euethes, "noble guilelessness," and to po1ytropon, Odyssean
wiliness, the two virtues which suffered the most during the civil strife.
These old virtues are real. Thucydides' regret at their destruction by
stasis is genuine and deep. In their nobility they are akin to justice:
They can both help one rise above compulsion. Justice and freedom
are not wills o' the wisp; they are "demanded" of us in the sense that
we can all sense our inferiority to those fortunate few who possess
them. Hence, too, in the final analysis Athens really is higher than
Sparta. Sparta represents compulsory law-abidingness masquerading
as the whole of justice. Athens aspires to the real thing and is more
likely to exhibit it in her flnest individuals.
The Humanity ofThucydides is much too compact and some of the
explications just given are uncomfortably co'!iectural and vague. Still,
the book amply rewards extra effort in trying to understand it. Orwin is
trying to teach readers what he thinks Thucydides has taught him about
justice: The confrontation he sets up between us and one of the greatest
of all political thinkers is immensely challenging and enriching.
��
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Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Bojaxhi, Gjergji
Sachs, Joe
Kalkavage, Peter
Levine, David Lawrence
Gable, Jr., Harvey L.
Saxonhouse, Arlene W.
Higuera, Henry
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLIII, number three (1996)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beale Ruhm Von Oppen
Joe Sachs
john Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Gjergji Bojaxhi
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva T.
H. Brann, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions
are $15.00 for three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes
appear semi-annually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited
essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address
correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800,
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per
issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1996 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
Marcia Baldwin and The St.John's College Print Shop
��Contents
Forewords.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Occasional Speech
Dedicatory Toast: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Opening of the Greenfield Library
Elliott Zuckerman
Essays and Lectures
Meno's Paradox and the Zetetic Circle .
] on Lenkowski
Sun and Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eric Salem
7
.29
On Some Texts of Bacon and Descartes . . . . . . . 51
Andre Lalande
Translated by Pamela Kraus
Poetry
Four Poems
Andrew Krivak
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Reviews
Recollection and Composure
Douglas Allanbrook's See Naples
Eva T. H. Brann
. . . . . . . . . . 81
Reason's Parochiality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Carl Page's Philosophical Historicism and the
Betrayal of First Philosophy
Richard Velkley
To See the World Profoundly: . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
The Films of Robert Bresson
Shmuel Ben-Gad
��~
Forewords
St.John's College inaugurated its 300th anniversary year this past
May at the dedication of the Greenfield Library on the Annapolis
campus. To mark our anniversary, this issue of The St.John's Review
includes Elliott Zuckerman's dedicatory toast on that occasion. Mr.
Zuckerman's toast praises the library as a residence for the spirit of
the College-the spirit of books.
The spirit of books, in which and by which we learn, is given us
through their authors, and so it is appropriate to note another anniversary this year, the 400th birthday of Rene Descartes. Descartes is
often referred to'as a "founder" of modern thought. Here we reprint,
in translation, Andre Lalande's 1911 essay comparing excerpts from
the Discourse on Method to passages from earlier writings of Francis
Bacon, Descartes's near contemporary. Striking similarities between
them suggest that Descartes learned and benefitted from the books
of Bacon.
��j.· Dedicatory Toast:
~ The Opening of the Greenfield Library
Elliott Zuckerman
It is an honor to represent the Faculty with a dedicatory toast to the
Greenfield Library. By doing so I serve as successor to our late
colleague Hugh McGrath, who spoke at a similar consecration in
1969. Between the two events there is an obscure verbal connection
of the sort that I can't resist reporting. Many of us here, when we
think of Hugh McGrath, will also think of Falstaff, a role that Hugh
famously played in the early seventies. And when we thinkofFalstaff
we might remember one of the most beautiful details that Shakespeare tells us about him. It is that at the end of his life "he babbled
ofgreen fields."
The obese corrupter of the young may have ended his days with
pious thoughts about lying down in the green pastures of the twentythird psalm. A further detail about Falstaffs death leads us back not
to the Bible but to another of our great bibliographical beginnings.
He seems to have left this world gradually, from the bottom up: first
his feet turned cold, and then his knees, and so on upward-like
Socrates. I wonder whether Shakespeare wanted us to look for further
similarities between the two great teachers. And as I do that wondering, I realize that I am asking a question about a fictional character
who was based on a real person, a real person who was probably
fictionalized, and a playwright about whom we know practically
nothing and yet everything that is worth knowing.
This speech may not have begun so far out in left field as it may
seem. For a few years after the performance of Shakespeare and the
rededication of Woodward Hall, in another part of the campus, the
Admissions Office came up with a new way of enticing prospective
students to St. John's College. They announced that "the following
teachers will be returning to St. John's next year," and by the teachers
they meant, of course, an array of great authors. One of the versions
of the announcement is still being sent to prospectives. It appears at
the top of a large page, usable as a poster, that shows an attractive
collage of pictures of those returning teachers-poets, philosophers,
�4
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
and scientists. There are forty of them-I counted them myself. Most
of the pictures are reproductions of formal portraits or contemporary
drawings or etchings; but the ancient sages appear in the traditional
likenesses of sculpted busts, and, at the other extreme, there are a few
who are recent enough to have faced the camera.
As I looked at those faces, I began to think of what such a school
might be like. Think of having a teacher as amusing as Chaucer or as
articulate as Jane Austen or as clear and complete as Saint Thomas.
Think of being able to report to your friends what Montaigne had to
say this morning in Tutorial. Think of trusting the lab experiments
to Faraday himself, with or without a lab assistant. Imagine a paper
conference with the author of Middlemarch. Picture being badgered
to perplexity not by some neophyte imitating the Socratic Method,
but by the Silenus himself.
On the other hand, what ifimmanuel Kant himself were the only
source of enlightenment about the Transcendental Unity of Apperception? What would it be like to find oneself in a Seminar whose
leaders were Nietzsche and Wagner? What if Baudelaire were to take
an interest in what goes on in the dormitories. And would anyone
ever be able to recover from a Don-Rag Committee that included,
say, Calvin and Sigmund Freud?
Yes, we are fond of making lists of our ideal faculty. I remember
one such list of teachers which, because of an inadvertence, began
with the name 'job." I saw it for the first time, significantly enough,
on aT -shirt. Such a slip could only have occurred in a place where
we claim as our faculty not only the authors of books but the books
themselves. When I used to be asked what I teach, I would often avoid
a hard answer by saying that "the Books are the Teachers." The very
brochure that contains the pictures of all the teachers begins with the
assertion, in large letters, that "Great Books Make Great Teachers"
-and the writers of the Admissions Information are to be commended, for nowhere can I find a numbering of the Books. Although
for purposes of quick characterization we probably have to identify
St. John's as the Great Books School, we should, I think, refuse to
refer to the Hundred Great Books. For once we number the books
we are only one step away from Numbering the Ideas.
�ZUCKERMAN
5
Now "Job" is not only the name of a book but the name of its chief
character. And that suggests another group that has a claim to faculty
status, the very characters, fictional or semi-fictional, whose actions
sustain our interest and teach us what we ourselves might very well
be like. So now we have three sets of teachers: the authors, the books,
and the characters, and often enough-as we saw in the instance of
Falstaff and Socrates and Shakespeare and the Psalms-there is a rich
interrelationship among them. When we talk about Dante, do we
mean the Italian poet, or do we mean the Pilgrim who takes the
journey, or are we referring to the Comedy that got to be called
Divine? The players in Part. II of Don Quixote have read Part I and
are aficionados of the adventurer. The Platonic dialogues bear names
just as young men bear names. And think of those characters who
have separated themselves from the books they first appeared in, to
become perpetually available for purposes of example or comparison
and even gossip. Penelope and Natasha as wives. Cleopatra in a barge
and Huck Finn on a raft. Dimitri, Ivan, and Alyosha. Mister Moneybags and the Man with the Large Soul.
There are certain practical advantages in having as one's teachers
books, and their authors and characters. They do not have to be fed,
and the only new clothing required is an occasional rebinding. We
usually remove their jackets. Only when they get very old or very
decrepit or very precious do we have to place them in the glass cases
of a retirement home. Otherwise, no salaries, no health insurance,
no social security.
They do, however, need a place to stay-and now, two thirds
before the end of this little talk, you see where it has been heading.
For almost a century Woodward Hall housed our teachers well.
Through all the renovations, and repaintings, and extensions, and
deepenings, we had learned to love that abode. We had gotten to
know where everyone lives. Often enough, the catalogue could be
skipped, and we could go straight to a dwelling in the shelves.
Right now I can imagine myself standing at the entry of the King
William Room and knowing exactly what line I should follow in
order to get to Homer, or Sophocles, or Sappho. We all have known
where we could find Vico, or Pico, or Tycho. We will never forget
the cluster of shelves that provided us with Hegel and Schlegel and
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Schiller and Schilling and Schopenhauer and Schleiermacher. We
liked the search for art books where they dwelt, according to size, in
two tiers of apartments. We knew the order of music books from
A!lanbrook to Zuckerkandl. Sometimes we took out a book so
persistently that its habitual home became a shelf in our study at
home. But thanks to Call-in they periodically had to visit their proper
place, however briefly, like expatriots renewing their passports.
We knew where to hide for uninterrupted reading, and where to
read for the purpose of being seen. There were straight chairs and
armchairs and upholstered chairs that we could sink into, sometimes
unto threatening depth. There were desks and tables and carrels.
There were shelves of new books, and books newly acquired, and
there was access to an inner sanctum of books whose virginity was
reserved for a particular reader. There were places to talk and places
where talking was forbidden. Nowhere was there background music.
Above all, there were nooks and corners and alcoves and berths and
cubbyholes.
I have been praising the old in order to express our hope for the
new. For at last the time came to Move House. Our teachers were
transferred in sacks across the expanse of lawn, and it is fitting that
the' day ofthe moving turned out to be a celebration of our sense of
community. For along with those sacks, and along with the friendly
spirit that transported them, I hope all the strengths and delights of
the old library were transferred too.
I do not know the new building yet, but it seems to be happily
provided with surprising vistas and interesting alcoves. There will be
places to work and places to study and places to read. What is most
important will not change. We'll still be learning from the books and
the characters, and the great teachers will keep on returning to St.
John's College in a form that we can take out and take home, well
into the next century-or, as we can say at this privileged time, into
the next millennium.
Now at last you can raise your imaginary glasses. The Tutors and
their colleagues toast the Teachers and their entourage, at the Green
Fields of their new Place of Meeting.
�j
Meno's Paradox and the Zetetic Circle
!i
Jon Lenkowski
Author's Prefatory Note
This essay has undergone a number of metamorphoses over the
years. It first saw the light of day in the mid-seventies as a small part
of a chapter of a dissertation which, alas, never got finished. It was
initially excerpted and presented as a lecture to the philosophy club
at Rutgers University, where I was teaching at the time, and it was
subsequently presented a couple of times in Annapolis as a summer
lecture both before and after I came to teach at the College in 1979.
In 1980, I completely reworked the lecture and rewrote it in German
to present at a philosophy colloquium at the University ofKonstanz,
Germany. The present text is based on the German version and was
presented as a formal lecture in Santa Fe in 1988 and in Annapolis in
1989. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues, Lawrence Berns,
Robert Druecker, and Stewart Umphrey, for reading the German
version and offering discerning comments. Despite revisions great
and small, the fundamental ideas of the essay have remained unchanged for over twenty years. Since in recent years "revision" has
meant little more than changing a word here and there, it seems time
to let go of it.
Introduction
The following is intended to be a contribution to the theory of
science, widely construed, and to be, more particularly, a contribution to the theory of inquiry.
When one speaks of science, one should keep in mind that, despite
the peculiar technologization of contemporary science (by which I
mean the natural sciences and all those disciplines which have sought
to copy them) the very notion of science is itself ancient; in fact it
cuts across the division between antiquity and modernity. From this
perspective, a theory of science would mean a 9EmpEtV bttcr~iJfl.TJS
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
-a looking at or inspection of science-which entails the finding of
a position from which science can best be observed and questioned.
In our time particularly, there seem to be a number of competing
claims to have found just the appropriate point of view. Accordingly,
I would ask whether each and every theory of science is a philosophy
of science. All such attempts at a theory of science, however diverse,
are rightly called "metatheoretical." But perhaps not every
metatheoretical examination of science is a philosophy of science.
Under metatheory generally, I would distinguish at least the four
following orientations: First, the positive clarification of the presuppositions, the methods, and the objectives of the sciences; here I
would also include any positive logic of science. Secondly, an examination of the sciences from the viewpoint of what is called the
"history of ideas." Such an examination focuses on historical presuppositions for scientific development, historical reasons why science
developed-rightly or wrongly-in this or that direction, etc. Here
the clarification is far more historical than critical. Thirdly, when it
is undertaken from various political standpoints or postures,
metatheory becomes a critique of ideology. Here, although critical,
the criticism is focused much less on the question of truth, than on
the supposed political presuppositions which serve as the context
within which the particular content of science has been devised.
Fourthly, what I would call in the most precise sense a philosophy of
science-by which I understand an investigation which opens up
problems of a most fundamental kind. Here, in modern times, I take
Johann Gottlieb Fichte as the paradigm. In a writing which appeared
in 1794 entitled Uber der Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre1 ("On the
Concept of the Theory of Science"), in which he was still occupied
with the question of whether a theory of science was even possible,
he posed to himself four absolutely fundamental problems which
blocked the path to a theory of science that would be secure. Fichte
well understood (as had Aristotle most unmistakably in ancient
times, in Metaphysics, Book B) what the very first step toward the
establishment of science must be, namely, the uncovering, the opming up, and the laying to rest of absolutely fundamental problems
which would otherwise remain hidden and, as such, would establish
science in name only. This very first step I would call a philosophy
�LENKOWSKI
9
of science, which I understand, following Fichte, to be a prolegomenon to a theory of science proper. It is in this spirit that I present the
following essay.
Meno's Paradox and the Zetetic Circle
At SOdS Meno responds to Socrates' invitation to join with him at
last in the search for then' Ecr·n-the "what is"-of virtue or human
excellence (apE'tTj):
Kat 'tt va 'tp6nov I; TJ't'l\crn~. ili ~mKpa'tE~, 'to\l'to o J.1 il
otcr8a 'tO napcmav on £cr'ttv; no'lov yap iliv ouK otcr8a
npo8EJ.1Evo~ i;TJ't'l\crEt~; fi Ei Kat on JlUA.tma EV'tDXOt~
au'ti[>, 11:&~ dcrn O'tt 'tOU'tO £crit v 0 cru OUK filiT]cr8a;
But in what direction will you inquire, Socrates, about that
cifwhich you do not know at all what it is? For what sort of
thing, of all those you do not know, will you put forth and
search after? Or, even ifyou did happen upon it, how would
you know that thiswas the very thing you did not knoW.
Trying to put an end to the inquiry, Meno unknowingly puts his
finger on the very thing without which inquiry would not b~ at all
possible. Howcould one inquire, except by being in some way already
"in touch with"-"in contact with" (the word is 8tyyavro, 8tyE'lv) 2
the object of inquiry?
Every inquiry necessarily proceeds within a horizon of familiarity.
The peculiarity of the "what is" question in particular (as here in the
Meno) is highlighted by the fact that each interlocutor, when asked,
seems to, or presumes to already know the answer to the question,
and is quite baffled to discover he really doesn't. It is only on the
basis of what I will call this "prethematic familiarity" with something
that it ever becomes possible to thematize it and make it the object
of inquiry. At Republic VII, 524c, Socrates says:
Sight too saw large and small...although not separated but
mixed together .. .In order to unmix them, intellect ( v6T]crt~)
is also compelled to see (tliE'i:v) large and small, although
not mixed together but separated and distinguished-just
the opposite of what sight did ... Isn't it therefore from this
�10
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
that it first occurs to us to ask: what are the large and the
small? [italics mine]
The context comprising prethematic familiarity, on the one hand,
and inquiry, on the other hand, is a peculiar context, for it puts us in
relation to the object in two contrary ways at once. More particularly,
the possibility of inquiry presupposes our both knowing and not
knowing something at the same time. To reply to this simply by
saying that in one sense we know and in another sense we don't, does
not solve the difficulty; it rather emphasizes it. For now we want to
know: How is it possible to know in one sense and not know in
another sense the same thing at the same time? This circle of inquiry
presents to reflective understanding a genuine difficulty which cannot
be removed simply by pointing to Meno's obviously eristic argument.
fu the dialogues present it, the "what is" question is the paradigm
of inquiry. An understanding of the "what is" question would therefore seem to demand an understanding of this seeming paradox.
Whatever else it might mean, this prethematic familiarity implies
a relation between thinking or understanding and the object thought
or understood; and insofar as this prethematic familiarity is to serve
as the ground of inquiry, it must be understood as a relation in which
the object is already there for us in a very peculiar way. It would have
to be there under two aspects at once, for we must both "have" the
object already and yet see the necessity of searching after it. But
doesn't this present a problem? Mter all, if one has this prethematic
familiarity with something, why should the question ever have to be
raised about it? Why should an inquiry into it ever become necessary?
Why should there ever be a "question" at all? To understand how
this can happen, we must first understand the peculiar way in which
the object is there for us in that primary horizon of familiarity. To
say that the object would have to be there under two aspects at once
is to say that it would have to present itself as both incomplete and
complete, as both that which is anticipated and the fulfillment
thereof. But wouldn't that mean that the object has to be at once two
objects? And if the fulfilled object were given at all, how could the
inquiry into it ever begin, since the zetetic goal would be there
�LENKOWSKI
11
beforehand? And yet, if it were not given in this double way, no
inquiry could ever begin.
On the other hand, if the burden of difficulty were thought to lie
on the side of thinking, i.e., if inquiry were to be understood as our
"moving closer" to the object, the same problem arises, for why
would there be a desire to close the distance, unless both the starting
point and the goal were presented at once? The object would have
to present itself as at once both "far away" (else the inquiry would
have nothing to overcome) and "close" (for the inquiry could not
begin unless it presupposed its goal). But then the goal must be given
already. And then, again, why should the inquiry ever begin?
The further we think in this direction, the more does the phenomenon of inquiry take on the aspect of a circle. An integral and
essential part of that circle is the horizon of familiarity, which
presents to us a puzzle which we must work through in order to come
to an understanding of what inquiry is, what it involves, and how it
can be at all possible.
In modern times it is above all Heidegger who has squarely faced
the problem posed by the circle of inquiry-the zetetic circle-and
who has acknowledged the essential role that the horizon of familiarity plays in it. Let me, accordingly, turn to an examination of his
account of it.
In the Introduction to Sein und Zeit', there occurs a section
entitled "The Formal Structure of the Question of Being" (S.Z. pp.
5-8). Heidegger begins here by saying that in order to see the
distinctive character of the question of being, it is first necessary to
briefly explain what belongs to any question whatsoever. In other
words, this section about the structure of a question is offered as a
preliminary to his investigation of the question of being, the question
of what being is, or what "being" means. It seems to me-and I hope
to show this in what follows-that all of what Heidegger says here
about questioning in general, is preeminently true of the Socratic
"what is" question in particular, and that what he says in this section
about being in particular is equally true of all those eidetic wholes
(o:&. e'io11) taken up by the "what is" question in the Platonic dialogues.
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
Heidegger then goes on to distinguish four essential moments;
1. The guiding factor, contributed beforehand by what is sought
(die vorgangige Lei tung vom Gesuchten her)
2. What is asked about (das Gefragte)
3. What is interrogated (das Befragte)
4. What is to be discovered or found out (das Erfragte)
I shall now consider these four moments in a somewhat different
order and, in so doing, I shall go somewhat beyond Heidegger's own
presentation of them.
First, every question has what is asked about (das Gefragte )-its
theme or topic, the object which is a problem for it, and which must
therefore be questioned. It is this which in fact evokes (or, perhaps,
"forms") the question in the first place. The very questioning posture arises out of one's comportment to this object.
Secondly, every question has what is to be discovered (das Erfragte )-its anticipated answer, its goal. The very posing of a question
is at once the anticipation of its answer. Were there no cognizance
beforehand of this goal, no question would ever get formulated. The
very formulation of the question derives from the kind of answer
which is anticipated, derives from a precognition of what the answer
would have to be like; and this in turn derives from a precognition of
the problem-character of the object. If the object is an unclarity, the
kind of answer sought will be a clarification, and the question will be
formulated accordingly. If the object is a puzzle, the kind of answer
sought will be an unravelling, and the question will be formulated
accordingly-so inseparable are what is asked about and what is to be
discovered by the asking. This means that in the very formulation of
the question, the direction is already anticipated from which the
answer will come. In other words, there is already anticipated what
would count in ea~h case as cognitive adequacy. The formulation of
a question carries with it certain expectations.
Thirdly, every question has what is interrogated (das Befragte )-that to which the question is posed, that which is asked
concerning what the question asks about. This is that to which the
questioner turns in pursuit of the question. This moment is necessary in order that the question begin to move; and the choice of this
�LENKOWSKl
13
element is not at all arbitrary, but is determined by one's precognition
both of the object and of the anticipated answer. Where one first turns
is never merely by chance, but is dictated by an understanding of the
problem and the goal.
Fourthly and lastly, every question is guided beforehand by what
is sought. It is this fourth moment of the structure of the question
which is most puzzling, and yet it is this which unifies the three other
moments. In fact, it supplies the question as such with its integral
wholeness, for it is only under the condition that there is this
pre-given guidance that the following become at all possible: First,
that the object questioned about and what is to be discovered are
related as they are-and as they must be in order for there to be a
question at all. This fourth moment is not the same as that second
moment (viz. what is to be discovered), though it could be confused
with it, since both moments seem to imply a teleological structure to
the question; rather, it is in a sense the relation between the first and
the second moments, between what is asked about and what is to be
discovered. That is, it is not itself the goal, yet it relates the goal to
the beginning of the quest.
This pre-given guidance makes possible, secondly, that there is
any sense of where to turn to pursue the question. How could one
know to what to pose the question, were this not dictated and guided
by an understanding of the relation between the object and the goal?
And, thirdly, it makes possible that the question itself ever gets
posed in the first place. The very posing of the question is at once
the awareness of the problem-character of the object; but this awareness is possible only in light of an awareness, however dim, of that
object as complete or without the defect. Thus the posing of the
question is at once the recognition of the relation between the object
and the goal, which relation guides the formulation of the question,
as well as the direction the question is to take.
Let us listen to what Heidegger himself has to say about this fourth
moment, keeping in mind that, althpugh his own interest is in the
question of being, what he has to say may be of a more general
significance:
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
Questioning, as a seeking, must be guided beforehand by
what is sought. The meaning of being must therefore be
in some way already available to us. As already suggested,
we already move within an understanding ofbeing. Out of
this understanding grows the explicit question about the
meaning of being, as well as the movement toward its
concept. We do not know what "being" indicates. But
already, when we ask, 'Whatis being?', we are within an
understanding of the "is"-without, however, being able
to fiX conceptually what the "is" means. We do not even
know the horizon within which we ought to grasp and fiX
that meaning. This vague, everyday understanding of
being is nevertheless a fact.
Even if this understanding ofbeing may vacillate and come
and go, and even border on the merely verbal, the very
indefiniteness of this familiarity with being is itself a positive phenomenon, which demands clarification. (S.Z. pp.
5-6)
I would argue that all of what Heidegge'r says in this passage about
being is fully applicable to virtue as it is presented in the Meno, as
well as to those other eidetic wholes taken up by the "what is"
question in the other dialogues. Let me repeat just a part of this
passage:
Questioning... must be guided beforehand by what is
sought. The meaning... must therefore be in some way
already available to us ...we already move within an understanding...
I have already tried to indicate the necessity of what I've called the
"horizon of familiarity" within which alone any question can be
posed. There must already be a prethematic understanding of what
will become the object of the question, else the question could never
come to have an object-which is to say that the question would
never come to form itself. The entire posing of the question, arising
as the explicit expression of the problem-character of the object, takes
its bearings from this prethematic understanding. This prethematic
understanding may long remain inaccessible and thus inexplicit; and
the recognition of its problem-character depends on one's first
�LENKOWSKI
15
finding access to it. The transitiOn from this initial access to the
recognition of its problem-character-or, to use the language of the
Cave in the Republic, the transition from the shadows taken naively,
as independent, to the recognition of their mere shadow-character,
their dependence-though never simply automatic, never guaranteed, can occur only within the context of the Socratic conversation,
But none of this would be possible, failing that ever-present horizon
of familiarity. May I remind you that, for his conversation with the
slave boy, Socrates stipulates only two conditions: (1) that he has not
learned geometry, but (2) that he knows and speaks Greek. This
second condition is of supreme importance, because it means that
the boy has with Socrates a common world of experience (at least on
the pre-philosophical, human level) and it guarantees that the boy is
already familiar with squares and sides, though he may never in his
life have given a moment's thought to them.
Heidegger says:
We do nor know what "being" indicates, but already when
we ask, "what is being?" we are within an understanding of
the "is"-without, however, being able to fix conceptually
what the "is" means.
Can we fail to be reminded here of Meno's own response to his
torpor? He says: "Indeed, I have so often given so very many
speeches about virtue ... however I am now absolutely unable to say
what it is" (80b2-5). Meno, "numb and speechless," continues to
talk about virtue-not, of course, that he continues to give "official"
opinions about it (he is now bereft of these); but he still moves within
that everyday horizon of familiarity with virtue. His official opinions
can be taken from him, but this prethematic understanding of virtue,
which is quite different from those opinions and is yet their ground,
is something of which he can never be dispossessed. An extension
ofthe image of the midwife in theTheaetetus should make this clear.
Theaetetus must be "delivered" of his opinions, which suggests
that he is to be understood as a mere "carrier" or "bearer." In the
preliminary conversation with Theodorus, Socrates shows a much
keener interest in Theaetetus's father (144b8), than in Theaetetus
himself This signals what is to be his main interest in the midwife
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
passsage: Theaetetus, the "bearer," has been "impregnated" by
Theodorus and others. In order to gain access to these "fathers,"
Theaetetus (the "mother" who has nurtured these opinions) must be
made to give them up. He has been impregnated with opinions about
knowledge; they have been implanted in his "psychic womb," if I
may extend the figure. This "psychic womb" is his prethematic
understanding of what knowledge is. This is the only medium in
which those opinions could possibly take root; and this remains,
however many opinions he might be delivered of. This, like the
womb, is essentially his; it cannot be taken from him. Like the womb,
this prethematic understanding is "covered over" by the opinions (or
"offspring") which take root in it, covered over in such a way,
however, that the prethematic understanding becomes hidden from
himself, that the two become indistinguishable, that he naively takes
his own opinion to be the essential "what is." It is this very prethematic understanding, then, that guides the formation of opinion
which becomes superimposed upon it. In the same way that the
shape of the developing foetus is in some way guided by the shape of
the womb, so is the shape of whatever opinion is formed or implanted, guided by the "shape" of that prethematic understanding.
Thus it is that, no matter how extreme, or peculiar, or wrong one's
opinion about the "whatness" of something might be, it has always
recognizably something to do with that whatness-it is never absolutely
wrong; no matter how violently we might disagree with a Thrasymachus or a Callicles, we recognize clearly that his opinion arises out
of the same context of understanding as ours, that we are both talking
about what is essentially the same thing. It is this prethematic
understanding, this horizon of familiarity, which is the same for
everyone-for thought or intellect as such-that accounts for this.
The "therapeutic" function of Socrates' midwifery, then, is to remove
these opinions and thus lay bare that prethematic understanding, to
give one access to it for the first time, and that's the same as to say that
its function is to give one the opportunity to see for the first time the
merely doxic character of one's opinions, i.e., the difference between
the essential "what is" of something and one's opinion of it.
But what exactly is it that one then has access to when one has
access to this prethematic understanding? Or, to formulate the
�LENKOWSKI
17
problem from a slightly different point of view: Where does this
abandoning of one's prior opinion leave one? Ideally, not with
another opinion to replace the first one. Ideally, it leaves one with
nothing-but with a "nothing" that is a "determinate nothing." It leaves
one not with a void, but with the determinate absence of opinion.
Thus I would argue that it is not Socrates' sting, but Meno's own
emptiness that is his torpor. And it is just this absence of opinion
that is at once the raising of the "what is" question. Socrates' insistence that he and Meno now (i.e., once Meno has confessed his
emptiness) inquire jointly into what virtue is-that this joint inquiry
is now finally possible-shows just how closely connected are this
emptiness and the asking of the "what is" question. And this remains
true even ifMeno's own confession of emptiness can finally be taken
seriously only on the most superficial level.
Accordingly, one can translate the image of the Cave in the
following way: Strictly speaking, the transition is not from shadows
to things which would then replace those shadows; rather, it is from
shadows unrecognized as such, to shadows taken as shadows; more
literally, it is from a dependent reality unrecognized as such, to the
recognition of its dependence-character-i.e., to the recognition that
it depends on something else, whatever that something else may be.
In any case, it would be "the real," if only for its priviledged independence. But can it be determined any more concretely than that?
Can we answer the question: What is it?
We can better appreciate the difficulty this latter question presents
by recognizing that the independent is not given in the same way as
what depends on it is given. If it is only the dependent (even once
recognized as such) that one actually has before oneself, then how,
in what manner, is that on which it depends "given" (as it must be,
in order to be at all aware of the dependent character of the dependent)? Or, to ask the question differently: If the overcoming of
opinion is tantamount to the recognition of the essential difference
between knowledge and opinion, what is the character of one's
relation to that knowledge which one is now "aware of'? How is one
now aware of that knowledge, since one surely does not yet "have"
it? To answer this, we must see that a complete translation of the
image of the Cave necessitates an inversion of the relation between
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
the eikastic image and the presently beheld "reality"-i.e., a reversal
of our understanding of the direction in which eh:acria, imagemaking, the lowest section of the divided line, operates.
But first, a slight digression. In his commentary on the Meno<,
Jacob Klein coins the very happy expression, "dianoetic.eh:acria" to
designate a specific, higher function of eil<:acria. Ei.Kacria itself
names not merely our ability to see shadows and other such images,
but rather our ability to see images as images, to construe images to
be images, to construe them, therefore, as dependent. !nttvOta,
discursive thinking-the third part of the Divided Line (Republic
VI)-in reflecting on the visible and patently "real'' things of the
world, may at some time begin to give up the trust (1ticrn~) which it
ordinarily invests in them. When this happens, liuiv01ahas already
put eiKacria to work on its behalf, turning all the visibles into
"images" of something more real, i.e., into that kind of being that is
dependent on something else.
I will now go on to use this expression, "dianoetic eixacria "in a
slightly different way, which extends or at least varies Klein's use of it.
Dianoetic eiKacria reaches not backward or downward, but "forward" or "upward," and "brings together" the present opinion, now
suspended, and that on which this opinion depends. Or, we could
say, it brings that on which this opinion depends down to bear upon
this opinion, Republic, Book VI, SlOb sq., makes this clear: The
recognition of a D1t68ecrt~, a supposition, as a U1t68ecrt~ is the recognition of its dependence on a beginning (apxl]) which is really a
beginning, a "beginning free from hypotheses." These apxai are
identified at 511c6 as the VOTi~&, the thinkables or intelligibles.
Now, the Divided Line is presented to us in such a way that we
are naturally led to see its uppermost part, called "intellection"
(v6'l]crt~ Bk. VI, 511d8 sq.) or, later on, "knowledge" (e1ttcr~ill!Tt Bk.
VII, 533e8) as the last stage in one's ascent, indeed, as a way of
thinking and, correlatively, as a realm of objects (the VO'l]~&.),.which
is quite remote and difficult to gain access to. This must, of course,
be an accurate portrayal of philosophic or reflective thinking, insofar
as it traverses what the Republic calls the "upward way" to a genuine
apx11' and then descends again "through etli'l], ending in etli'l]." But
surely this can't be the whole story, for what about everyday thinking?
�LENKOWSKI
19
In terms of the Divided Line, everyday thinking is still thinking, and
would therefore have to be at least dianoetic. But it can't be only that.
All thinking, of whatever sort, embodies and is guided by the
7tpamxt apxm (first principles), expressible technically as laws of
identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, etc. But more particularly, all thinking embodies and is guided by ever so many abstract
concepts, whether these are general concepts (such as "man," "dog,"
"color," "spatial form," etc.) or purely formal concepts ( such as
"thing," "property," "object," "relation," "whole," "part," etc.).
Thinking can't occur without these concepts, though their role and
function is for the most part inexplicit, nonthematic, much like the
slave boy's understanding of squares and sides. This is, then, what I
meant by saying that the image of the Divided Line must be reversed.
Mental activity as such, always and from the beginning, is not only
dianoetic, but noetic as well, at least to the extent that dianoia must
have noetic underpinnings. This may be suggested by Plato himself
when, later on in Bk VII (534a2), he extends v61]<H<; to designate the
entire upper half of the Divided Line. Aristotle also seems to suggest
this at the end of the Posterior Analytics, Ch. 19: He shows that
knowledge of first principles comes, not through definition or demonstration, but only, and in an originary way, through intellection
(vo\l<;). The reason, of course, is that both demonstration and definition have to start somewhere. Otherwise stated: all discursive,
dianoetic activity of thought presupposes and rests on vo\l<;, on an
original v6T)crt<;, since all thinking discourses from something and
about something.
Thus, in revealing opinion as mere 06/;a, dianoetic Eil<:acrla
performs another, important, correlative function: It brings to us, to
our awareness, the VOT)'tov,i.e., that itself on which the dependent
depends. A passage in the Phaedo (72e) is helpful here: In perceiving
a likeness ofSimmias (e.g., in a picture), one is led automatically to
Simmias himself on whom the likeness depends. Thought brings
Simmias himself (av1:o\l 1:t[Lf1tOD) to mind, brings Simmias himself
to bear on the likeness of Simmias, and it is just this that makes us
see the dependent character of the likeness.
But does dianoetic Eilmcrla thereby bring to us thisVOT)'tOV fully
clarified, transparent, articulated and therefore understood? No.
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
What it brings to us is rather a prefiguration, or, better, an adumbration of the vorn:6v. I hesitate to call this adumbration, which is, after
all, something noetic, by the misleading term "image," though it is
based on this function of EiKacr\.a; let me instead call it a "noetic
schema." In choosing this language I am trying to be very cautious
about the way in which I think EiKacria is at work here; but the
language might also suggest something along the lines of Kant's
Schematism, especially ifwe consider his own example of the dog. You
will recall that in the Critique of Pure Reason the schematism is
introduced to solve a very particular problem, viz., how empirical
intuitions (i.e., experiences of concrete objects) can be referrable to
concepts, since intelligible concepts and sensible appearances are
utterly alien to one another. s It is the schema, as a special function
of imagination (Einbildungskrajt) that allows me to say that this fourfooted animal in front of me looks like the concept"dog." The schema
is not an image; it is rather the rule of the imagination which tells me
how to construct the image.
Perhaps this is also true in the example of Simmias. Perhaps the
picture of Simmias leads thought to form an image or schema of
Simmias himself, which mediates the picture and Simmias himself-a schema derived from Simmias himself and containing schematically those features of Simmias himself not adequated by the
picture. So understood, the schema or image would contain schematically the requirements of adequation tailored to the particular
defects of the picture.
This noetic schema is the schema of the requirements of the truth.
It seems to be in this way that that on which the dependent depends
IS gtven.
Let me return now to the other formulation of our question: If
the overcoming of opinion is tantamount to the recognition of the
difference between knowledge and opinion, how-in what manner-is one now aware of that knowledge, since one surely does not
yet "have" it? One now has that knowledge only adumbrationally or
schematically, i.e., in becoming aware of the defect of one's opinion,
one is at once becoming aware of what the requirements of the truth
would be. In becoming aware of the disparity between knowledge
and opinion, one is necessarily becoming aware of the knowledge-
�LENKOWSKI
21
character of knowledge. And that means that one has fallen into the
following paradox: One's knowledge that one doesn't have knowledge entails knowledge of what that knowledge is. This is the paradox
of knowledge of ignorance, or: Socratic ignorance which is identical
with Socratic wisdom. This paradox is the true perplexity and is thus
the beginning of philosophy. 6
It is the noetic schema, and not the fully articulated V01)~6v that
dianoetic EiKacria brings to bear; and it is as noetic schema that the
V01)~6v receives its most rudimentary and primary thematization.
But the noetic schema is itself only an adumbration, a mere "outline"
(~{mos). One has it, but what exactly is it that one has? To ponder
this is the "what is" question; and one will continue to pose it to
oneself as long as this aporetic attitude is sustained. It is only within
this "outline" that the "what is" question can genuinely arise.
Thus, one's prior opinion is replaced, but not by another opinion;
it is replaced by the noetic schema, which is at once a demand. The
bare recognition that there is such a "thing itself' (viz., the V01)~6v)
on which the dependent depends, immediately raises the question,
What is it? More precisely stated: this question raises itself, forms
itself.
The "what is" question is the philosophical question·par excellence, for it is the questing after the "real itself' on which the
dependent depends. Thus it is significant that Aristotle in Metaphysics Z, 1030a18-27, identifies the "what is" question as a question (~6
~i f.crn) with oucria.
Let me now return to my earlier question: What exactly is it that
one has access to when one has access to one's prethematic understanding? It is what I have now referred to as a noetic schema. This
is the demand for inquiry, for it is the posing of the "what is" question.
I have characterized the noetic schema as an adumbration, a mere
"outline." If it is to be identified with this prethematic understanding, then it is that "outline" or "horizon"within which we move
and think. It is from this that our thinking takes its bearings; we can
never move beyond the boundaries of this horizon.
Earlier I claimed that in order for our prethematic familiarity to
serve as the ground of inquiry, the object must present itself to us
initially in a paradoxical way, i.e., it would have to be understood as
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
double in character, since it would have to be there for us at once as
both anticipation (else the inquiry would have no beginning) and
fulfillment (else there would be no motivation forthe inquiry). This
necessarily double character of the object seemed to be both the
condition for inquiry as well as that which would make the inquiry
impossible, hence the paradox. But I now notice that a "noetic
schema" is a "pointing," and a pointing which is at once both ends of
the arrow, the "from which" and the "to which"; and that means: not
a single moment 1 but rather a "context" or "span," in which the two
essential moments of the anticipating and the anticipated are at once
present. To put this into Socratic language: the recognition of the
dependent as dependent is tantamount to a real change in the object,
such that the object is now no longer a mere unitary moment, but is
itself now opened up into a context or span in which the two essential
moments of dependent and ground are at once present. The picture
of Simmias, taken as a picture, seems to exemplify such a span. This
context or "span" or horizon would therefore be the noetic schema,
which is the same as the horizon of familiarity.
The object understood in this way as double-not that there are
two objects, but that the object itself has a "structure" or is a "span"
with two essential moments-can now help us to understand how
the inquiry can be guided beforehand by what is sought. For if it is
the object understood in this way that one has access to, when one
has access to that prethematic understanding, then I think I begin to
see how that prethematic understanding not only makes it possible
to begin an inquiry, but also makes it necessary. We can now
understand the way in which that prethematic "contact" (Stl;t<;,
Styeiv) functions as a demand, such that it not only provides the
zetetic object, but also provides the necessity of, or motivation for,
the zetesis. If VO'l]crt<; is understood as that "contact" (St/;t<;) which
mind (voil<;) always has with theVO'l]'tOV, and if that very "contact" is
understood as this demand, then otavotu, of which zetesis is a
precise expression, is the acceding to the demand posed by v61]crt<;,
understood as this "contact." It is, incidentally, tempting in this
context to ask of otavota: To what does the ota refer? Does
Republic VI, 511c1-3 help us with this? The text reads: ".... but by
means of ELO'l], it (viz., the upward way, now moving downward)
�LENKOWSKI
23
goes through EtliTt, to dliTt, also ending in EtliTt" Does the liux of
liu'tvota then refer to the dliTt? If so, it means that mind relates to
the very same thing (viz., the VOTt~6v) in two quite different ways-as
VDTtcrt<; (viz., as that unthematic contact, which is a demand) and as
liuxvota (viz., ~s the acceding to that demand).
Thus would this prethematic understanding account for how the
inquiry could, as it must, be guided beforehand by what is sought.
That this would be necessarily true not only of that paradigm of.
inquiry that Socrates constantly recommends to us, i.e, that which
would begin once all the opinions have been cleared away, but also
of the more negative, and, in the dialogues, certainly more usual,
elenchtic inquiry, should seem clear from the fact that the recognition of the error of a given answer has to take its bearings from
something.
There is, however, a further problem: Even if this prethematic
understanding is the horizon within which the inquiry occurs, and
even if this accounts for how the inquiry could be guided beforehand
by what is sought-if our access to that prethematic understanding
is itself the posing of the "what is" question, then the problem arises:
How can the inquiry ever begin? In whot direction could you move?
To ask this question, "In what direction could you move?", refers
us back to the remaining moment, to what is to be interrogated (das
Befragte). I will say in passing, though I will not dwell on it, that
Heidegger himself, in add-ressing this moment of the question's
structure, breaks out of the zetetic circle and in so doing destroys it.
This he does by not identifying this moment absolutely wi1\h the
other three. I.e. with this moment he turns away from Sein (Being)
to Dasein (human being), from the theme of the question to the one
who poses the question in the first place. This move is, of course,
connected in Being and Time with Heidegger's own particular brand
of transcendental philosophy. I.e, the transcendental move here is
from the question-as-posed, to the structure ofDasein as the condition for the posing of the question. Yet from the point of view of my
own particular interest in the.structure of inquiry, I view this move
as one which leads us away from an understanding of the zetetic
circle. I will try to provide something of an argument for this claim
in what follows.
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
To see that the zetetic circle is a necessary circle is to really
understand what the horizon of familiarity implies. I therefore
understand all four moments to be absolutely and uncompromisingly identical. In the case of virtue, e.g., what is asked about is virtue
itself; and what is to be discovered is what virtue is, i.e., virtue itself.
In identifYing absolutely these two moments, das Gefragte and das
Erfragte, I am, of course, denying any difference in itself between
virtue itself and what virtue itself is, i.e., its meaning or sense. As far
as I can see, the eidos "virtue itself' is nothing but a meaning or sense.
What guides the whole inquiry from the outset, what gives the
whole inquiry its bearings, its sense of direction, is virtue itself. And
finally, what is interrogated is necessarily virtue itself. Why? Because
it is only virtue itself that could possibly tell us what it is. It is
important to see that, while it is Meno who is put on the spot, Meno
is not the one interrogated. Hence Socrates' invitation to Meno to
join with him in interrogating virtue together, an invitation which I
believe to be genuine, despite Socrates' divination of the utter intransigence of Meno's soul.
It is this uncompromising identity of all four moments that keeps
the circle absolutely closed, and which therefore raises again the
question, How can one inquire? It essentially raises this question
because, if the question consists of only four structural moments, and
if these four moments are identical, then the question would seem
always to remain motionless, for there does not seem to be any
possibility of going anywhere. There is a passage in theMeno (79b-e)
which makes this problem utterly clear: Socrates chides Meno for
always responding in terms of the parts of virtue, when what is asked
for is virtue as a whole. He asks: "But do you think someone could
know what is a part of virtue, without knowing virtue itself?" (79c8).
Meno does not think so. Socrates then says: 'Well, then, oh best of
men, you must not think that while still inquiring into the 'what is'
of virtue as a whole, that you will be revealing it to anyone by
answering in terms of its parts, or in terms of anything else of that
sort-for it will be necessary to return again to the same question:
What do you say this virtue, which you are talking about, is?-or do
I seem to you to be saying nothing?" (79d5-e3). Meno answers:
"You seem to me to speak rightly."
�LENKOWSKI
25
From the point of view of the whole-part relation, then, the
problem is the following: The "what is" question asks about something as a whole. And in light of what I have said about the structure
of the question, we are, and must be, already in possession of that
whole. How, already having that whole, could we begin to pursue
it? The only other possible way of inquiring into the whole seems
to be by way of an examination of its parts or exemplifications. But a
knowledge of the parts or exemplifications as parts or exemplifications presupposes a knowledge of precisely that whole of which they
are parts or exemplifications, and the turn to them can therefore be
made only in light of a prior understanding of the whole, which
means that an inquiry into the whole, by way of the parts, is inadmissable. And yet this seems to be the only possible way, unless we
address ourselves directly to the whole itself. But how, if we already
have the whole, could we ever begin to pursue it? If this circle is a
completely closed one (and, after all, there is no such thing as an open
circle), then one implication or consequence of this is that, in just
the same way that one cannot escape it or get out of it, so also there
is not, and cannot be, any access to it from the outside: Insofar as one
already has a world and, correlatively, a mental life, one must always
be already within this circle. 7 In other words, the phenomenon of
the circle bespeaks a contact (Oi.~tS) which exists from the very outset.
Can we ever overcome this apparent immobility which the zetetic
circle seems to entail without destroying in the process its necessary
circularity? Socrates' own answer to this question in the Meno is that
all learning is really something called "recollection" (aVUJ.!V110'tS).
He says: " ... as all nature is akin ... there is no difficulty .. .learning out
of a single recollection all the rest, if one is manly and doesn't get
tired of searching" (81d1-5). This seems to mean that, insofar as our
thinking is led to turn inward toward its own proper objects (the
V011'ta), which objects are always at our disposal, always there for us,
it is also led to the possibility of paying attention to, and following up
on, the ways in which these V011'ta point to other such V011'ta, and
ultimately to all other such V011'ta, all of which are already really at
our disposal, really there for us. Through an effortful turning inward,
an effortful focussing of attention, our prethematic contact (ei.~tS)
with the proper objects of our thinking can be made thematic. We
�26
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
are always "open" to these objects, and we are always open to the
"paintings" that they have to one another. In pointing to one another
they show themselves to be interrelated systematically and to constitute a whole, a noetic or eidetic realm, and this too is something we
are always open to. In other words, in our turning inward, our
dianoetic posture, guided by v6rtcn<;, is always one of openness to
the whole. This is what the zetetic circle leads us to see.
It is the Socratic paradox of knowledge of ignorance which reveals
that inquiry is a necessary circle; for this self-aware knowledge of
ignorance exhibits a "contact" with the V01)'tU, a contact which is
always there and can never be broken. And it is, in turn, the zetetic
circle, precisely because it is completely closed, that leads us to
characterize all learning as recollection, and thus reveals to us our
openness to the whole.
Notes
1. Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Ober den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehr~ in
Fichte's Werke, Bd. 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971) 55sq.
2. Although it never once occurs in Plato, Aristotle does occasionally
(cf.Meta. 1051b24, 25; 1072b21) use this happy word to designate
the relation between intellection and the intelligible. It has the
advantage over such words as A.aflfl&.vnv, which Aristotle also
occasionally uses to designate this relation (e.g.Anal. Post. B,
93b15), that it is neutral with respect to the direction of the activity
involved. Whereas A.af.tfl&.vnv (literally, "to grasp") seems to
suggest that intellect is "active" upon its "passive" objects, a Bi~t<;
indicates merely "contact" or "being in touch with."
3. Martin Heidegger. Sein und Zeit (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1963).
4. Jacob Klein. A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1965) 112 sq.
�LENKOWSKI
27
5. Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason Trans. by N. Kemp
Smith (London: Macmillan, 1963) 180-187.
6. This is something I attempted to work out in detail in an essay
published earlier in this journal. See my "The Origin ofPhilosophy," St.John's Review, xxxvii, no. 2&3, Spring, 1986, pp. 81-92.
7. Just how one comes to "have" a "world" at all is a problem that
goes well beyond the scope of this present inquiry. It is a concern
central to the phenomenological philosophy ofEdmund Husser!,
and no one interested in the problem can afford to ignore him.
While all of his writings touch on this theme in one way or
another, it is most prominent in the following works: 1) Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Meiner, 1972); English translation
Experience and Judgment, Trans. J. Churchill and K. Arneriks
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973); 2) Ideen zu
einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie,
Zweites Buch: Phiinomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution
(Haag: Nijhoff, 1952; 3) Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Haag:
Nijhoff, 1966).
�28
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
�~ Sun and Cave
~
Eric Salem
For Charlie
Introduction
Near the end of book five of the Republic, and at the very center
of the dialogue as a whole, Socrates makes his famous-or infamous-claim: "Unless the philosophers rule as kings or those now
called kings and chiefs genuinely andadequately philosophize ... there
will be no rest from ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think
for human kind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech
ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of
the sun" (473d).
Fortunately for us, Glaucon and Adeimantus have the courage to
call Socrates' bluff. They demand that Socrates justify this claim and
he does, over the course of more than two books. In the middle of
his justification, between his account of the nature of the philosopher
and his account of the education proper to him, Socrates sets out
three strange and strangely haunting images. In the image of the
good, he posits a sun-like source that somehow yokes together
knower and known, and calls this source the good or the idea of the
good. In the image of the cave, he describes our nature and condition
in light of that source. In the image of the divided line, Socrates
characterizes the ascent to the good and the human powers required
for that ascent.
I want to think about-.or rather to think through-these images,
by first raising and then attempting to answer the questions about
them that I suppose any serious reader of the Republic would raise.
Eric Salem is a tutor at St. John's College, Armapolis. This essay is a slightly revised
version ofa-lecture delivered at Annapolis and at the Thomas More Institute in Nashua,
N.H. Quotations are from the translation by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.
�30
SALEM
Now doing this, confronting Socrates' images on their own terms,
will require me to abstract, for the most part, from the context I have
just sketched out. However, I want to urge you to keep this context
in mind. In particular, I urge you to keep asking yourselves what
light Socrates' images might shed on his central claim that the
philosopher is the solution to the problem of human community. I
myself will turn to this question at the end of my essay. There I hope
to show you that Socrates' strange and apparently apolitical images
form the true center of the Republic. That is, I hope to show you that
Socrates' images are the key to understanding why and in what sense
the philosopher should rule.
I. Questions
Socrates introduces his image of the good in book six with the
claim that the good is the chief and universal object of human desire,
that it is "what every soul pursues and for the sake of which it does
everything" (505d). Very near the end of book seven, while describing the final stages of the philosophers' education, Socrates further
claims that the good, once known, can serve as a pattern or paradigm
for the life of a man or a city: "Lifting up the brilliant beams of their
souls, they must be compelled to look toward that which provides
light for everything. Once they see the good itself, they must be
compelled, each in his turn, to use it as a pattern for ordering city,
private men, and themselves for the rest of their lives" (540a-b).
I find neither of these claims about the good particularly problematic. The claim that everyone somehow desires the good is at any rate
a familiar Socratic dictum, and one that seems to be amply borne out
by the drama of the Republic. Glaucon's longing to see the conversation continue, Cephal us's willingness to absent himself from it,
even Thrasymachus's angry wish to put a stop to it-all seem to be
rooted in a desire to secure the good for oneself. The drama of the
Republic also seems to support the claim that the good could serve as
a pattern for human action. For instance, viewed in retrospect,
Glaucon's desire to know whether justice is good can be seen as a
desire to know the good so that he might shape his life in accordance
with it.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
31
What I find puzzling, then, is not these claims themselves, but the
relation of the good as Socrates describes it to them. It would be one
thing if the good were, say, pleasure or knowledge. (These, by the
way, are the alternatives that Socrates explicitly rejects just before he
begins his own description.) I can easily convince myself that pleasure is what everyone desires most, and on some days I can almost
convince myself that the same is true of knowledge. I can also see
how thinking that either pleasure or knowledge were the chief good
would shape and inform a life. But what of the good as Socrates
describes it?· What would it mean to take what yokes together knower
and known as a pattern for the life of a city or a man? And even if
someone could do this, what sense could it make to say that it is the
chief object of desire for anyone "much less everyone"?
In different ways these questions both concern the applicability of
Socrates' image of the good to ordinary human concerns. Both
questions arise because Socrates' image confounds our ordinary
sense of what should count as an answer to the question, "What is
the good?" My next question is of a different sort. It concerns the
very existence of the good as Socrates describes it. As you may
remember, that description draws heavily on an analogy with sight.
Seeing and being seen, Socrates observes, differ from, say, hearing
and being heard in a decisive respect. Hearing, the capacity to hear,
depends only on the presence of something to be heard for its
completion, and vice versa. Put someone who can hear in the presence of a sound; he will hear and the sound will be heard. But put
someone with good eyes in a darkened room full of the most brilliant
colors and nothing will happen. Seeing and being seen depend on a
third thing or rather on two things: light and a source of light. So,
too, Socrates claims, in the case of knowing and being known. The
capacity to know and the capacity to be known depend on an external
source for their completion; this source, this yoke, as Socrates calls
it, is the good or the idea of the good.
Yet why, we might ask, should we suppose that knowing is
sight-like rather than hearing-like? Mter all, as Socrates himself
admits, seeing is the exception and hearing is the rule. That is, in
nearly all cases-and I suppose he is thinking particularly of smelling,
touching and tasting-no third thing seems to be required for the
�32
SALEM
completion of a capacity to do something and the corresponding
capacity to suffer. Why, then, does Socrates insist on putting knowing in the class defined uniquely by sight rather than in the common
class-the economy class-characterized by hearing? Is there some
feature of our experience which would allow us to infer that there
must be some mediating principle between knower and known? If
there is, Socrates does not mention it. Do we perhaps encounter this
principle directly in the ordinary course of our learning and knowing? Again, if we do, Socrates does not say so-and in any case, if
we did, it is difficult to see why he would resort to an image to bring
that principle into view.
Socrates' silence about this most basic matter is baffling, and our
bafflement can only increase as we enter further into the details of
his image. For Socrates does more than merely posit a principle that
mediates between knower and known. He likens the ability to see
to an overflow dispensed to us by the sun, and draws the corresponding consequence for our ability to know: the good is not only a
necessary condition for our knowing, but the very source of our
capacity to know. He then goes on to make parallel claims about the
objects of our knowledge. He likens the truth to light, and makes it
somehow a feature of those objects: "[T]herefore say that what
provides truth to the things known and gives the power to the one
who knows is the idea of the good" (508e ). And then, as a final step,
he claims that the good is responsible for the very existence of the
things we know: "[T)herefore say that not only being known is
present in these things as a consequence of the good, but also
existence and being are in them besides as a result of it" (509b ).
It seems to me that each of these additional features of Socrates'
image is worthy of question. I, at any rate, would have liked to hear
some reason given for each of them, some reason that is not dependent on the initial (and questionable) analogy with sight. However,
once again, this is just what Socrates does not provide. Yet suppose
we were to accept, in principle, every detail of Socrates' image of the
good. Suppose, that is, that we were to admit, as genuine, the
possibility that knower and known are yoked together by some
external source, that the knowable things are always aglow, lit up by
that source, and that we as knowers are somehow akin to these things
�THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
33
by virtue of our common heritage. It seems to me that just here we
encounter a difficulty at least as great as any I've described. We need
only reflect on our own experience as learners and knowers.
On balance it seems to me that we know-really know-very little
and that what little we do know we know only as the result of great
and unremitting labor. The things most worth knowing are not
luminous, not to us at least. Perplexity with respect to them is for
most of us the most we can manage, and in truth most of us prefer
the dull comfort of well-worn opinion to knowing that we don't
know. Is there room in this world of ours for the good as Socrates
imagines it? Is there room in Socrates' sun-drenched world for the
darkness of our own experience as knowers? It would hardly seem
so. And yet, the picture I have just drawn of our condition as learners
and knowers is largely in accord with another picture put forward by
Socrates, his image of the cave. The human-all-too-human preference for opinion over perplexity, the painfulness of that perplexity,
the arduousness of any ascent to true knowledge-these are all
features of Socrates' own image. To say that Socrates' image of the
good is not in accord with our experience is to say that it is not in
accord with his own image of the cave; it is perhaps to say that Socrates
is not in accord with himself. Are we willing to say this? Is there
some way to reconcile the two images with one another?
Here is a possible solution. Someone might argue that Socrates'
image of the good is meant only to characterize us and the world as
it is for us as knowers. But we are not simply knowers. And our
capacity to know is continually distracted, continually drawn away
from its proper objects by other parts of the soul, by what we like to
call our passions. As a consequence, we find ourselves bound in
darkness, our knowing part forced to content itself with shadows
rather than substance, with mere images of things rather than the
things themselves. Thus, according to this argument, there is no
important sense in which the image of the good is at odds with the
image of the cave. The one simply describes our initial-and for
most people, normal-condition; the other, the condition to which
we should aspire.
There is, I think something to be said for this argument. Socrates
himself seems to say that distraction is at the root of our ignorance
�34
SALEM
in these lines from his description of the cave: "[B]ut the present
argument indicates that this power [to know] is in the soul of each,
and that the instrument with which each learns-just as an eye is not
able to turn toward the light from the dark without the whole
body-must be turned around from that which is coming into being
together with the whole soul until it is able to endure looking at being
and the brightest part of being. And we affirm that this is the good,
don't we?" (528d) Still, the very way in which Socrates makes his
point, his spatial metaphor, points to the inadequacy of the solution
I have just sketched out. If coming to know is a matter of turning
around, if it somehow involves directing our vision aright, then there
must be parts of the world which are dark, dark beyond any human
making, and these dark regions must be somehow populated by
shadows, again not of our making. In short, although our ignorance,
the human condition, has something to do with the condition of the
soul, it also has to do with the condition, indeed the very structure,
of the world.
This is what I mean when I say that the image of the cave and the
image of the good are at least apparently at odds with one another.
The ordinary sun is sometimes present, sometimes absent. It rises
and sets. Here we have a perfectly satisfactory explanation of ordinary darkness. But the sun as good never sets; the lights are always
on in the world disclosed by Socrates' image of the good. How, then,
are we to explain the presence within it of the shadow-filled darkness
of the cave? Once again we must ask: Is there some way to bring the
images of the sun and cave together, a way that will also point us
toward answers to the other questions we have raised? Let us see.
II. Image and Original
Let us reflect, for a moment, on one obvious feature of Socrates'
image of the cave. The shapes which the inhabitants of the cave
delight in observing are shadows. What difference does this make?
What is a shadow? In the image of the divided line, Socrates puts
shadows first in his list of natural images; he thus suggests that
shadows constitute the lowest order of images. This seems reasonable. The shadow of a face reveals far less about a face than, say, its
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
35
reflection in still water or in a mirror. The shadow of a thing reveals
only the boundary of a thing. The interior of the thing, its texture,
its depth-all these are absent from the shadow. The darkness which
forms the interior of a shadow itself seems to be an image of its lack
of revealing power. And yet a shadow is an image. To know the
boundary or limit of a thing is to knciw something of that thing. The
inhabitants of the cave thus encounter the things that truly are in a
peculiar fashion. They dwell-we dwell-among the shades of things.
Here is something else that might seem to distinguish shadows
from other types of images. A shadow can only exist if at least three
other things are present. There must be a thing to be shadowed.
There must be light. And the light must be directed light: It must
stem from a source or at least a finite number of sources. Otherwise
the light will not be blocked and no shadow will be produced.
How peculiar are these conditions to the kind of images we call
shadows? (I am speaking here of natural images, the sort that Socrates
associates with the first level of the divided line, and by natural images
I mean not images of natural things, but images that do or can arise
without human intervention.) Clearly all images presuppose originals: an image is always an image if something. And clearly all visual
images presuppose light. By this I do not mean that there must be
light for them to be seen, though this is of course true. I mean that
light produces-or at least co-produces-say, the reflection of a tree
in water. Now it is less clear in such cases than in the case of shadows
that all visual images are also dependent on a source. On a cloudy
day, when light is diffuse, there are no shadows, but one can still see
reflections in water. Still, without a source oflight to be diffused, no
reflection can exist.
What, then, of images which are neither visual nor manmade? Do
they also depend for their existence on the equivalent of light and
sources oflight? Let me answer by turning the question around: Are
there such images? We can be deceived-or deceive ourselves-about the things we touch and hear and taste: we can mistake
the voice of an enemy for the voice of a friend; a bitter medicine can
be disguised by the taste of honey. But it is one thing to say this and
another altogether to say that there are natural images in the world
of smells, tastes and so on. My sense is that there are none or none
�36
SALEM
worth mentioning, and my guess is that Plato and Socrates would
agree with me. (I might mention here that in the Sophist, the only
dialogue I know of in which an explicit distinction is made between
natural and manmade images, the only examples given of the first
class are visual [Sophist 266b-c ]. Likewise in the divided line image.)
On the other hand, the world is full of visual images that are not
of human making. In fact, it is precisely when the conditions for
seeing things are most fully satisfied-when the sun is at its brightest
and things seem to be aglow of themselves-that the world is most
full of such images. Where there is sun, there is shade. And the
converse is also true-where there are natural images, where there
are shadows and reflections, there must be sun or at least some source
of light. Perhaps we can now see another reason why Socrates puts
shadows first on his list of natural images: They may -reveal least
about the things they image, but they are exemplary in the way they
display the dependence of such images on a source of light.
No doubt you have already seen where I mean to go with this
argument. The more we think about images-natural images-and
the conditions for their existence, the less strange at least two of
Socrates' claims sound. We wondered earlier why Socrates chooses
to liken knowing and being known to seeing and being seen and why,
in particular, he insists that knowing and being known depend t;pon
some external source, namely, the good. In a somewhat different
context, we found ourselves wondering how Socrates can both claim
that such a source exists and claim that most men spend their lives
absorbed in the play of shadows not of their own making. But if
within what we ordinarily call the world, ifwithin the world ofvisible,
tangible, audible things, all natural images depend for their being on
some third thing, beyond their originals and beyond those who perceive them, and if, in addition, things in what we ordinarily call the
world are themselves images of purely intelligible objects, then it
makes sense for Socrates to suppose that there must be an external
source of these images as well, a source other than those who perceive
them and other than their intelligible originals. Moreover, if within
what we ordinarily call the world, images arise only in those contexts
where the perception of the original also depends on an external
source (as in the case of sight), and if, furthermore, in these contexts
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
37
the source of the image is always also the source of the perceiving
and being perceived of the original, then it makes sense to say that
knowing and being known, intellection and intelligibility, depend on
a source external to themselves and it makes sense to say that this
source is the same as the source of the images we take to be things.
In short, the relation of seeing and being seen does make sense as a
paradigm for the relation of knowing and being known. It makes
sense to suppose that knowing and being known depend on an
external source-that is to say, it makes sense to suppose that the good
exists-and it also makes sense to suppose that this source is the very
source of what we ordinarily call the world. The cave is the offshoot,
the inevitable byplay, of the illuminating activity of the good. The
shadow-play that surrounds us, the unintelligibility that suffuses the
lives of most of us most of the time, is simply the price-high, but
non-negotiable-that must be paid for supreme intelligibility.
Clearly there are a number of "ifs" in this argument that require
further examination. What's more, there is at least one crucial
condition for the production of shadows that I have glossed over
entirely, a condition that strongly suggests that life in the cave is the
offspring of more than one parent: no shadow can exist in the
absence of a surface upon which it is cast. I haven't mentioned this
condition until now-and won't mention it again-because to consider it adequately would take us too far afield: at the very least we'd
have to think about the correspondence between the wall of the cave
and what's called the Other in the Sophist and variously called
Mother, Nurse, Receptacle and Place in the Tirnaios. Rather than
take upon myself this limitless task, I propose to spend much of my
remaining time looking closely at two of the assumptions I have made.
III. Poetry and Mathematics
The first supposition I want to look at is the claim that the things
around us, which most of us take to be freestanding, are themselves
images of intelligible originals ([loeta), that is, ideas or forms (fide).
Now since Socrates so frequently and so freely employs this supposition in the Republic and elsewhere, and since in certain dialogues,
notably the Parrnenides, the supposition appears to lead to great, if not
�38
SALEM
insuperable difficulties, we might expect to find a proof of it somewhere in the dialogues. But to my knowledge no proof of the
supposition is to be found, if by a proof is meant an attempt to reason
one's way to it from grounds that are prior to and clearer than it. I
can think of two reasons why this might be so.
First, it is at least suggested in certain dialogues that, however
problematic the supposition of intelligible originals may be, that
supposition is what first makes reasoning (and hence proving) possible. Or, as Parmenides puts it to the young Socrates, just after
subjecting the ideas to a devastating critique, anyone who denies the
ideas " ...will have nowhere to turn his thought," for that denial will
" ... utterly destroy the power of conversation" and hence philosophy
(135b-c). In other words, the ideas or forms are the always problematic, yet ever indispensable condition for the possibility of serious
inquiry. About them the philosopher could say: Can't think with
them, can't think without them.
A second reason for the avoidance of any attempt at proof emerges
from Socrates' own image of the cave. Life in the cave is so absorbing-our devotion to shadows is so complete-that the effects of the
cave linger long after an initial turning around. Witness the desire of
the man who's been turned around to flee back to his state ofbondage
and witness his tendency to regard what he's seen as less true, less
revealing, than the shadows he loves. Given this state of affairs, it is
difficult to see how a general proof, however certain, would do any
or at least much good. What seems to be needed instead are illuminating experiences, paths by which the potential learner might gradually find his way from the shadows he finds so absorbing-that is,
from his everyday experience of the world-to the intelligible originals upon which they depend.
What experiences are likely to provide this much-needed illumination? Socrates points to one answer through his image of the
divided line. Let me remind you of some of the details of that image.
Socrates has Glaucon cut a line unequally. He then has him cut each
of its parts in the same ratio as the whole was cut. (Thus A+ B:C+ D
:: A:B :: C:D) Socrates goes on to assign certain kinds of beings and
certain powers of the soul to each of the produced segments. The
larger segments produced by the first cut (that is, A+B and C+D)
�THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
39
correspond respectively to what is intelligible and what is visible. Of
the four segments produced by the second set of cuts, D corresponds
to the natural images we spoke of earlier, C to the things of which
these images are images, B somehow to mathematical objects, and A
to the forms themselves.
THE INTElliGIBlE
Forms
A
THE VISIBLE
Mathematical
Objects
Things
'
c
Images of
Things
0
Now perhaps the first thing we should glean from this image is
the following: To say that C+ D:A+ B :: D:C is to say thatthe visible
world has to the intelligible world the same relation that ordinary
images within the visible world have to their visible counterparts.
This is, of course, just the claim we are examining, the claim that the
things around us are somehow images. The second thing we should
notice is that B has to A, mathematical objects have to the forms or
eide~just this same relation. They are, in other words, the intellectual
equivalent of reflections or, perhaps better, shadows. Socrates partly
unpacks and partly amplifies this thought in his discussion of the
divided line.
Mathematicians and their objects have a curious relation to objects
in the visible world. As Socrates says, "Don't you know that [the
mathematicians] use visible forms and make their arguments about
them, not thinking about them but about those others that they are
like? They make arguments for the sake of the square itself and the
diagonal itself, not for the sake of the diagonal they draw and likewise
with the rest. These things that they mold and draw, of which there
are shadows and images in water, they now use as images, seeking to
know those things themselves, that one can see in no other way than
with thought" (510d-e).
Mathematical objects thus occupy an intermediate position between the eide or forms and things in the world. Like the eide they
are accessible only to thought. And yet the mathematician is constantly forced to see things in the world as images of them in order to
�40
SALEM
make the mathematical objects accessible to himself. They may be
mere images or shadows of the things that truly are. Still, shadowy
though they may be_:or perhaps precisely because they are shadowy-they. seem perfectly suited to introduce the learner to the
intelligible realm. Itiscfor this reason that Socrates goes on, in book
seven, to make the first education of the philosopher kings a mathematical education. For it is precisely through the study of mathematics that we first come to see the shadowy, the image-like character of
the things about us.
Or at any rate, mathematics is one way. I think that Socrates'
account of mathematical experience is right on the mark. One cannot
study mathematics seriously without at least wondering from time
to time whether the objects we draw and count-and by extension
all things insofar as they possess shape and number-are not images
of objects accessible only to thought. And yet my sense is that there
are other ways of arriving at this thought, and that Socrates knows it.
I will have occasion to speak about these alternatives later. But first
I need to address at some length a second sticking point in the
argument I sketched out earlier.
Someone might be willing to agree with Socrates' claim that the
things about us are somehow images. He might also be willing to admit
that the things about us can only be images if there exists some source
external to the originals of those images, an image-casting source. But
this someone might deny that the source is the good as Socrates
describes it and might also deny that the originals of the images we see
are the forms or eide-on the grounds that Socrates himself does!
For Socrates makes the shadows on the wall of the cave images of
artificial things carried about by human beings and he has them projected on the wall, not by the good itself, but by a firewithin the cave.
What are we to make of these peculiar features of Socrates' image?
What are the artificial things here? What is the fire? And who are the
human beings? I think it is very hard to say. At one point Socrates
himself interprets his image as follows: "Well, then, my dear Glau~
con, this image as a whole must be connected with what was said
before. Liken the domain revealed by sight to the prison home, and
the light of the fire in it to the sun's power" (517a-b). Ye'nhis
interpretation is very ~trange. How can Socrates suggest that we see·
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
41
only shadows or images of the things illuminated by the ordinary
sun? Whatever the status of the visible things turns out to be, we see
those things directly, don't we?
Another interpretation of this peculiar middle realm comes to
mind when we begin thinking, for instance, of Socrates' criticism of
Homer and other poets in books two and three of the Republic. There
are certain human beings-we might call them image makers or
opinion makers-who so dominate our thinking, our imagining and
our lives that we might almost be said to inhabit worlds of their
making. We can certainly be said to live in their shadows. What we
cherish and revile, what we weep about and laugh at-all are governed by the images they put before us. Might such men, poets of
the first rank and perhaps founders and great statesmen as well, not
be the human beings who occupy this middle realm? Indeed,
couldn't this be why Socrates himself suggests that we see only
shadows or images of the visible things-that we never see even such
things directly? The extraordinary influence of, say, Homer on our
thinking about moral and political affairs seems clear enough: I, for
one, can never think about courage and honor without being haunted
by the figure of Achilles. But in a certain sense that influence seems
to be equally present in our viewing of natural things: Who, having
read Homer, can look at the Mediterranean and not see wine or look
at the sunrise and not see rosy fingers?
If everything we see we see through the eyes of such image makers,
if the world is image for us in this sense, then much of what I've
been saying thus far would seem to be simply false. There might be
a good which somehow yokes together knower and known, but it
would not also be responsible for the images we take to be true things.
The casting of shadows would be a merely human affair. Moreover,
the very existence of the good would seem to be called into question
by this reading. At any rate, my attempt to argue from the image-like
character of the world about us to the existence of the good would
seem to have been misguided. Must we draw these consequences?
Or is there some way to incorporate what I am calling the middle
realm of Socrates' image into those earlier arguments about the good?
I think there is such a way, and I think that Socrates himself points
to it several times in the course of book seven. The first hint comes
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SALEM
at the very beginning of the book. Here Socrates notes, as if in
passing, that the entrance to the cave is both large and "open to the
light across the whole width of the cave" (514a). I take this curious
remark-echoed in myth of the Phaedo, where the many hollows or
caves are said to be more or less open to the surface of the true
earth-to mean something like the following. The light of the good
may not make its way into the cave; it may not be directly responsible
for the shadows we see or for our ability to discern them. And yet
the cave is not altogether closed to the light, not a self-enclosed,
self-contained whole. It is somehow open to the light, and open to
it at every point. Perhaps it would not be going too far to say that the
light of the good is potentially present throughout the cave, in this
sense: Every image, every shadow, is potentially an occasion for the
ascent from cave to sun. Less metaphorically, every opinion or image
put before us by the opinion or image makers, once seen as an
opinion or image, can be an occasion for the ascent to true knowledge.
Why this should be the case Socrates hints at elsewhere in book
seven. First, he suggests that the objects carried before the fire should
not simply be regarded as originals of the shadows that most men see.
They are themselves images. Indeed, at least some of the words that
Socrates uses to describe them-andrias, zoon (man-image, animalimage) and later agalma (image of divine being)-seem to underscore
just this, to emphasize that each object carried before the fire points
beyond itself, to some further original, presumably to some intelligible object (514c-515a; 517d-e). Moreover, Socrates suggests that
what holds for the objects carried before the fire holds for the fire as
well. For instance, in the very passage in which he identifies the light
of the fire with the sun's power, he claims that anyone who sees the
idea of the good must conclude that "this is in fact the cause of all
that is just and beautiful in everything-in the visible it gave birth to
the light and its sovereign, in the intelligible, itself sovereign, it
provided truth and intelligence" (517c). Again, in the passage I have
already cited from the end of book seven, Socrates seems to claim
that all seeing, all discerning-even the discerning of shadows that
takes place in the cave-ultimately depends on the light of the good:
the good is "that which provides light for everything" (540a).
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
43
If the originals of the shadows in the cave are themselves images
of the eide, and if the fire, the shadow-casting and shadow-discerning
source, is itself derived from and an image of the good, then it makes
sense to say that an ascent from cave to sun can begin anywhere.
What's more, it becomes possible to return to a modified version of
our initial conclusion that sun and cave form an elemental pair, with
each implying the existence of the other.
The modification consists, in effect, in the admission that the good
is not directly responsible for the shadows that surround us. The good
is present in the cave by proxy, as it were; it is present-somehow-in
the image-casting activity of image makers. Does this suggestion
make sense? Let me be clear, first, about what I do not mean to say.
I do not mean to say that the shadow casters portrayed by Socrates
knowingly imitate the good. Nor do I mean to say that the quasioriginals with which they cast shadows are known by them to be
images of the truly knowable things. On the contrary, I think we
are meant to see that most image makers are unwitting mediators
between the sun and the cave. A sign of this is the fact that the
human beings in Socrates' picture-! mean the ones who carry
objects before the fire-neither look at nor tend the fire. Instead
they scurry about, shifting their image-producing images from place
to place. The very condition of their activity-which is also the
condition of the activity of the prisoners in the cave-is as unknown
to them as it is to their prisoners
If the image makers portrayed by Socrates are not knowing mediators, in what sense can they be said to mediate? Perhaps this
question can best be addressed by way of another image, that of the
mathematicians of the divided line. As we saw earlier, Socrates
suggests through his image of the divided line that mathematical
objects must be regarded as shadows or images of the eide. Let me
now add to this that Socrates emphasizes in his discussion of the
divided line that the mathematicans, like the image makers, tend not
to be aware of this: They treat images of theeide as originals. Strange
as it may sound, this would seem to mean that when the mathematician inquires, say, into the relations between figures or between
numbers, he is in fact engaged unawares in a purely formal study of
the possible relations among the forms. In other words, something
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SALEM
like the possible structures of the eidetic realm are made visible in
shadow form in the more or less accessible speech of the mathematicians. Now, might something similar be said of those we've called
image makers? To found a regime or to craft a great poem is to
fashion a comprehensive vision of what is just and unjust, beautiful
and base, good and bad. But to do this, I am suggesting, is to figure
in speech a possible configuration of the eidetic realm; it is to make
visible the boundaries or limits, the shadowy outlines, of the just, the
beautiful, the good.
Perhaps you find disturbing my suggestion that poetry and mathematics are closely related. I find it a little disturbing myself. Still, my
sense is that Socrates means us to see their kinship with one another.
In fact my sense is that he means us ro see that the third section of
the divided line and what I have been calling the middle realm of the
cave are images of the same place, the proper home of mathematicians
and poets alike. Ifl am right about this, the occupational disease-or
rather, temptation-of those who dwell within this region would
seem to be the temptation to regard their activity and their objects as
freestanding, as originals, rather than as the images they are.
Let me explain why I speak here of an occupational temptation
rather than a disease. In part it is because Socrates himself seems to
envision the possibility of a mathematics that knowingly points
beyond itself, that invites its students to reflect on its formal foundations even as it moves them forward. That is, the harshness of his
critique of mathematicians at the end of book six seems to be offset
by his suggestion in book seven that mathematics is a necessary
preparation for the study of dialectic and the ascent to the good. But
in the end it is the figure of Socrates rather than his description of a
quasi-dialectical mathematics that inclines me to use the language of
temptation rather than disease.
What I mean is this: My sense is that if the Socrates of the
dialogues belongs anywhere on the divided line, it is on the third
level, with the mathematicians and the image makers. We rarely, if
ever, see him engaged in the pure dialectic he associates with the
highest!eve! of the divided line. And we certainly see him producing
a great number of images. Consider the evidence of the Republic
alone. The bulk of the dialogue is an elaborate image of a city, which
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
45
we are meant to see at the same time as an image of the soul. It
ends-after a harsh criticism of image making-with another elaborate image of the soul and its choices. And right at the center of the
dialogue Socrates sets out the very images we have been considering.
It is these images, above all, which display the possibility of a knowing
mediation between sun and cave. For here we see Socrates making
and conveying images-two of them "poetic," one, mathematical-which are intended precisely to point Glaucon and us beyond
the realm of images and human image making. The images of
Socrates announce themselves as images; they are transparent in the
highest degree. Such images could only be the work of a man aware,
supremely aware, that his image-making activity was itself an image
of a more fundamental, more original activity.
I will have more to say about Socrates a bit later. In particular, I
will want to bring the figure of Socrates to bear as we circle back to
the first set of questions I !raised about the good, namely, how the
good as Socrates describe~ it could be the good for us and could
furnish a paradigm for human action. But before we can treat this
first set of questions, we must return to Socrates' own characterization of the good.
IV. Weaving Together
We would do well to remind ourselves at the outset that the feature
of the good we have been focusing on for some time, its image-casting
power, is not at the heart of Socrates' description here. It is certainly
mentioned: the Sun, the image by which we are to glimpse the good,
is called "the child" as well as "most like" the good it images (506e).
But as I said, image-casting is not at the center of Socrates' description.
What is? The good yokes; it gathers; it brings things together-this
seems to be its primary feature. Now thus far we have been supposing
that the gathering of the good is limited, that knower and known are
the only things it brings together. But Socrates says nothing here to
make us think that he means to restrict the gathering power of the
good to this relation alone. And indeed, later on, as he attempts to
describe what it would mean for someone to dwell outside the cave,
he insists that the good is not only "in a certain way the cause of all
�46
SALEM
those things that the man and his companions had been seeing," that
is, somehow the source of shadows in the cave, but also "the source
of seasons and of years [outside it]," that is, the overarching source
of order among the intelligible objects (516b). The good, we must
now understand, is responsible for all collectedness, all being together, within the intelligible realm. It brings together knower and
known; but it also makes the known, the realm of intelligible objects,
a realm, an articulated whole rather than a heap of objects
What does the word "whole" mean here? The word "yoke," used
by Socrates in various forms three times in the course of his image,
might seem to imply the violent imposition of order, subjugation.
But this is clearly not Socrates' meaning (or, at any rate, not his
primary meaning). The good is a ruling source, anarch£, but its rule
is not arbitrary. Rather, as the example of knower and known makes
manifest, the good brings together, not indifferent elements, but
things that belong together. In other words, the collections it produces
are well-ordered collections, and the good is a source of wholeness in
at least this sense.
There is, however, another and perhaps more fundamental sense
in which the good is a source of wholeness. Once again, it is the
relation of knower and known that points the way. It is not the case
that the power to know is, as it were, somewhat better off for being
conjoined with a knowable object. On the contrary, the power to
know is, is wholly itself, only in the presence of what is knowable.
Or, as Socrates himself observes, the power to see is barely distinguishable from blindness in the absence of illuminated objects. In
other words, the very identity of the power to know would seem to
depend on its bei11g joined with a knowable object-and the same
might be said of the knowable object. Perhaps this is why Socrates
insists that the good is in some way responsible for the very existence
of knowable objects: In bringing knower and known together, in
making a pair of them, it makes each one just the one that it is. The
good, in this sense, might also be called the same, the source of all
identity-and indeed this may be just the name that is given to it in
the Sophist, in a discussion where the community and integrity of
the eide is at issue.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
47
Let me close this section by pointing out a final sense in which the
good is a source of identity. I have just suggested that the good is
such a source insofar as it brings together things that can be fully
themselves only in being together. But Socrates' image suggests that
the good is also the source of the very power of such things to come
together, and that it acts as a source by granting those things a share
of its own being. This is made particularly clear in the case of the
knower; through the analogy with sun and sight, Socrates characterizes the power to know as an overflow and gift of the good. That
a strict parallel to this is intended in the case of the objects of
knowledge becomes clear when we see that light-that is, truth-is
not here a medium through which we see. Instead the good "provides
truth to the things known" (508e). The eide do not simply reflect the
light of truth; they are radiant. They shine forth with a light that is
somehow their own. In the end, the yoking together with which we
began may amount to this: Out of the fullness of its being, the good
renders each being in the intelligible realm fit for the activity and
community which complete it.
Where are we in this picture? In what sense can this good be said
to be our good? And what would it mean to take this good as a
pattern for our lives or the life of our city?
Let me venture a first answer to the first of these questions.
Suppose we were all, at bottom, lovers of wisdom. Suppose the
longing at the bottom of all the great variety of human longing were
a longingto dwell, somehow, among the most knowable objects.
Then it seems to me that there might be two senses in which the
good would be our good. It would be the very condition for the
activity we prized most. For it would be that which fits us for the
activity of knowing and makes our objects fit to be known. That is,
the good would be the most beneficial or most needful thing, the
good for us in this sense. But as the source of the knowability, the
truth, the radiance, of the knowable things, the good would itself be
the most knowable, most radiant, hence most alluring of the knowable things. It would be the chief object of human desire, the good
for us in this sense.
It would be, that is, ifwe were all at bottom lovers of wisdom. But
are we? Would Socrates say that we are? His image of the cave would
�48
SALEM
seem to suggest that we are not. It is true that the inhabitants of the
cave take a certain delight in discerning and distinguishing the
shadows before them. Indeed, this activity of discerning and distinguishing seems to be in some sense at the center of their lives. And
yet, the violence with which they resist being turned around toward .
the truly discernible and distinguishable things suggests that something else, some other desire, is at the core of their being.
Not all human beings, then, are lovers of wisdom, and yet I still
think it can be said that the good is somehow the good for us. First
I must tell you what I think does lie at the core of human desire: I
think it is the desire to be complete, either by being a whole on one's
own or by participating in a larger whole. It seems to me that this
desire for completion is, for instance, the thread that binds together
the two great speeches about love by Socrates and Aristophanes in
the Symposium: The philosopher and the poet disagree about what
constitutes and makes possible human completeness; they do not
disagree about the depth of the desire for it. It also seems to me that
this desire is at the root of the resistance of the inhabitants of the cave
to being turned around: the cave is a dwelling, an oikesis; to give up
the cave is to give up a kind of home; it is to give up a kind of being at
home in the world (514a). Finally, it seems to me that this desire is just
what the image makers in the cave are serving and satisfYing through
their images. The image makers are ."t bottom homemakers. The
visions embedded in their poems and law, the visions of what is good
and evil, noble and base, right and wrong-these visions give order
to the lives of men. They make a common life possible. They make
human being a being together; it is no accident that the word nomos,
usually translated as law, also means song and at bottom means
distribution and order.
Do we not see just here at least one sense in which the good is
somehow our good, and at the same time glimpse an answer to our
other question, namely, how the good could serve as a pattern for
human and political action? The image makers are unwitting images
of the good in a double sense. As makers of images they imitate the
image-casting power of the good, and in this very activity they imitate
its community-making power. But in so doing, in making dwelling
places for men, they make possible-or at least aim to make possi-
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
49
ble-the satisfaction of what I am suggesting is the deepest human desire,
the desire to be whole or complete. The good, and such men as imitators
of the good, are good for us in just this sense.
But of course most human communities fall short. Most men
may find them homey enough to resist the ascent to the good. But
they fail to find in them the full satisfaction of their desire for
completeness. Thrasymachus's violent rejection of the claim that justice
is good, that being just is to one's advantage, is one sign of this lack of
satisfaction. The terrifYing tale ofpolitical strife and disorder that forms the
backdrop for the Republi£ -a tale narrated in part by Thucydides--is
another: Just think of what happens in Corcyra. As Socrates himself says
in the passage with which I began this essay, "there is no rest for ills for the
cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think for human kind ... "
Of course, Socrates goes on to complete this sentence by suggesting that
the ills of cities and mankind could be put to rest if only the philosophers
were to rule. We are now in a position to see what this would mean. The
philosopher, taking as the model for his activity as king the very thing that
makes possible his activity as a lover ofwisdom, would order the citizens of
his city in accordance with their natures. He would yoke them together
both by casting before them the right images and by rendering each of them
fit for the activity proper to his nature. In so doing he would bring to fruition
the definition ofjustice arrived at in book four: Each citizen would mind
his own business--literilly, do his own thing;-and in doing them achieve
the satisfaction ofbeingonewith himself in being one with the city
Now I say "would" here because by the end of book nine Socrates
and Glaucon see:n to have abandoned the possibility that such a city
could ever be founded "in deed." The pattern for it, Socrates says, is
laid up in heaven. Perhaps a man who looked to it could "found a
city within himself on the basis of what he sees" (592b). But the city
he spent nearly six books of the Republic talking about is just this, a
city in speech. In other words, the true city, the true community, is
the heavenly community presided over by the good; It is the community of the eide-or perhaps the community of the eide in communion with the one who knows them. Such a knower might be able
to shape his owh life and his own soul in the image of that city. But the
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SALEM
possibility that a human community might arise that was more than
the merest shadow of the true city-this possibility has been abandoned.
At any rate this is how things look ifwe focus only on the argument
of the Republic. If we look to its drama-and above all if we look to
the figure of Socrates himself-we see something quite different.
For in the Republic we see Socrates founding not one but two cities
in speech. There is the city he talks about with Glaucon and others.
But there is also the city--or at least the community-that arises in
the course of the talk about it. Here, as elsewhere in the dialogues
and like the dialogues themselves, Socrates is at work as the visible image
of the good, uniting within his own person, the person of the
philosopher, the powers of weaving together and image making
delimited in the Sophist and the Statesman. He gathers up and
distinguishes the young men around him, taming Thrasymachus,
spurring Glaucon andAdeimantus on, helping each to find his proper
place and work within their city in speech. He does this in part by
collecting and distinguishing in speech the forms of things, by
practicing the art of dialectic. But Socrates' casting forth ofwondrous
images lies at the center of his gathering, and at the center of these
images stand his images of sun and cave. Here his intellect, itself the
overflow from the sun's treasury, becomes the fire that illuminates
the cave. Here he lets the young men sitting around him see, if only
for a moment, what it would mean to stand up, turn around, and
make their ascent from the cave. If, then, we turn the words of
Socrates' central claim into a question, if we ask whether the "regime
traversed now in speech" can ever "blossom forth and see the light
of the sun," we can say ''Yes"-it can, it has, because the philosopher,
for a time, has become king.
�~
On Some Texts of
~ Bacon and of Descartes
Andre Lalande
It is common knowledge that Francis Bacon coined numerous philosophical aphorisms, such as the adage, "Knowledge is power," or the
saying admired so by Leibniz: "A little science removes us from God;
much science brings us back to Him." It is less known that we find
in his writings, "Man is a god to man" 1 before finding it in Spinoza,
and that Danton owed to him the celebrated saying, "Boldness, again
boldness, boldness always. "2 I presume that an attentive reading of
Descartes, of Pascal, ofMalebranche, ofLeibniz, would show them
to be even more nourished by his works than is generally supposed.
Without a doubt, Cartesianism handles the edifice of the sciences in
a way contrary to Bacon (at least to begin with, because Descartes
recognizes that very quickly it is necessary to proceed toward causes
from effects; and Bacon, on the other hand, makes all the rest of the
sciences depend on physics); but in the critique of previous philosophy, in the epistemological idea of the relation of the mind to things,
in the very plan of this edifice of the sciences which they traverse
differently, the resemblances remain close and numerous. The aim
of this note is to select from the Discourse on Metlwd alone (and
without doubt incompletely) the passages which appear to show
either a certain familiarity or a curious conjunction with the works
of Bacon. It seemed to me that it would be useful to collect these
comparisons, because they are not indicated in any of the annotated
editions of the Discourse that I have had in my hands; 3 nor in the
preface which M. Fowler has put at the beginning of his great edition
of the New Organon-a preface heavily documented, in which a
whole chapter concerns the Baconian influence, and where he has
brought forth much evidence-he cites but two small passages of
Translated by Pamela Kraus.
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
Descartes relative to "Verulamius," taken from letters to Mersenne
of 1631 and 1632.
For greater convenience I arrange these extracts in two columns.
Words from the context necessary for understanding the text are
added in square brackets.
1. Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world ... the diversity of our opinions does not arise
because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thoughts along
different paths and do not attend to
the same things .... The greatest
souls are capable of the greatest
vices as well as the greatest virtues;
and those who proceed but very
slowly can make much greater progress, if they always follow the right
path, than those who hurry and
stray from it. (I, 1)
1. For my method of discovering
knowledge places men's natural talents almost on a level, and does not
leave much to their individual excellence, since it performs every-
thing by the surest rules and
4
demonstrations.
(Novum Organum, I, 122)
But of these three, prudence and
soundness of direction,-that is,
the pointing out and setting forth of
the straight and ready way to the
thing which is to be done,-must
be placed first .. For the cripple in
the right way (as the saying is) outstrips the runner in the wrong. (De
Augmentis, ESH N, p. 284) 5 {ESH II,
2,p.486}
In fact, as is clear, the more
active and faster a man is, the further astray will he go when he is
6
running on the wrong road. Nov.
Org. I, 61).
�LAlANDE
53
2. I knew that ... memorable deeds
told in histories ... help to shape
one's judgment... that poetry has
quite ravishing delicacy ani sweetness; that mathematics contains
some very subtle devices which
serve as much to satisfY the curious
as to further all the arts and lessen
man's labours; that writings on
morals contain many very useful
teachings and exhortations to virtue; that philosophy gives us the
means of speaking plausibly about
any subject and of winning the admiration of the less learned; that
jurisprudence, medicine, and other
sciences bring honours and riches to
those who cultivate them. (I,7)
2. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile;
natural philosophy, deep; moral,
grave; l~c and rhetoric, able to
contend.
For I have no wish to prevent
those arts and sciences that now
flourish from providing food for
argument, adornment for conversation, employment for professors
and from being a source of profit to
those in business. (Nov. Org. , I,
128.)
3. [O]ne who is too curious
about the practices of past ages usually remains quite ignorant about
those of the present .... those who
regulate their conduct by examples
drawn from these works are liable
to fall into the excesses of the
knights-errant in our tales of chivairy, and conceive plans beyond
their powers. (I, 8)
3. [T]hat learning doth soften
men's minds, ... in making them too
curious and irresolute by variety of
reading, ... or too immoderate and
overweening by reason of the greatness of examples, or too incompatible and differing from the times by
reason ofthe dissimilitude of exampies; or at least that it doth divert
men's travails from action and business .... ( The Proficience and Advancement ofLearning, I in Francis Bacon: A
Selection of His Works ed. by Sidney
Warhaft, Odyssey Press, 1965, pp.
205-6) {ESH III, p. 268}.
�54
4. I compared the moral writings
of the ancient pagans to very proud
and magnificent r.alaces built only
8
on sand and mud. They extol the
virtues, and make them appear
more estimable than anything else
in the world; but they do not adequately explain how to recognize a
virtue, and often what they call by
this fine name is nothing but a case
of callousness, or vanity, or desperation, or parricide (I, 10).
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
4. So have these writers set forth
good and fair copies, and accurate
draughts and portraitures of good,
virtue, duty, [and felicity, as J true
objects [ for the will and desires to
aim at J. But though the marks
themselves be excellent and well
placed, how a man may best take
aim at them; that is, by what
method and course of education
the mind may be trained and put in
order for the attainment of them,
they pass over altogether, or slightly
or unprofitably (De Aug. VII, 1;
ESH V, pp. 3-4) {I, p. 713}.
Notwithstanding (to return to the
philosophers), if before they had
come to the popular and received
notions of virtue and vice, pleasure
and pain, and the rest, they had
stayed a little longer upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good
and evil, and the strings of those
roots; they had given in my opinion
a great light to those questions
which followed; and especially if
they had consulted with the nature
of things, as well as moral axioms,
they had made their doctrines less
prolix, and more profound; (De
Aug. VII; ESH V, p.6) {I, p. 716}.
�LALANDE
55
5. And it was always my most earnest desire to learn to distinguish the
true from the false in order to see
clearly into my own actions and pro ceed with confidence in this life. (I,14)
Cf [I] had acquired some general notions in physics .. .I believed
that I could not keep them secret
without sinning gravely against the
law which obliges us to do all in our
power to secure the general welfare
of mankind. (VI, 2)
5. For my part at least, constrained as I always am by the desire
for truth, I have committed myself
to the uncertainties, difficulties and
loneliness of the ways ... to the end
that I may provide, at last, more
trustworthy and safe guidelines for
present and future generations.
(Nov. Org., Preface to Magna Instauratio, p. 13) {I, p. 130}
6. [T]here is not usually so much
perfection in works composed of
several parts and produced by various different craftsmen [masters]
as in the works of one man. And
... since the sciences contained in
books ... is compounded and
amassed little by little from the
opinions of many different persons,
it never comes so close to the truth
as the simple reasoning which a
man of good sense naturally makes
concerning whatever he comes
across. So, too, I reflected that we
were all. children before being
men ... it is virtually impossible that
our judgements should be as unclouded and firm as they would
have been if we had had the full use
of our reason from the moment of
our birth... (II, 1)
6. The variety of errors and the
unity of truth compete. (Masculine
Origin ofTime). {III, p. 535}
No one has yet been found of
such steady and strict purpose as to
decree and compel himself to
sweep away common notions and
speculations, and to apply his understanding, swept clear and level,
to a fresh study ofparticulars. Thus
it is that human reason, as we have
it, is nothing but a medley, an unsorted collection, a mixture of
chance and credulity, along with
notions we imbibed as children. 9
(Nov. Org. I, 97)
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
7. But regarding the opinions to
which I had hitherto given eredence, I thought that I could not do
better than undertake to get rid of
them, all at one go, in order, to
replace them afterwards with better
ones, or with the same ones once I
had squared them with the standards of reason. I firmly believed
that in this way I would succeed in
conducting my life much better
than if I built only upon old faundations ... (II, 2)
Cf. below: ... to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions. (II,7)
7. There was thus but one course
left, namely to try the whole matter
afresh with better means of support,
and to bring about a great Instauration of the arts and sciences and all
the learning of mankind, raised
upon the proper foundations. (Nov.
Org. "Francis ofVerulam, .. " prefacing The Great Instauration, p.3 {I,
p. 121}
Another error is an impatience
of doubt and haste to assertion
without due and mature suspension
of judgment.... if a man will begin
with certainties, he shall end in
doubts, but if he will be content to
begin with doubts, he shall end in
10
certainties
(The Proficience, I,
Warhaft, p. 233-34) {ESH I, p.
461-2}
8. [I]t would be unreasonable for
... an individua1 to plan to reform a
state by changing it from the faundations up and overturning it in order to set it up· again; ...
These large bodies are too dif -·
ficult to raise up once overthrown,
or even to.hold up once they b'egin
to totter, and their fall cannot but be
a hard one. (II, 2) Cf. VI, 2.
8. In affairs of state, change, even
if for the better, is suspect because
of the disturbance it brings, since
civil affairs rest on authority, consensus, reputation and opinion, not
on demonstration; whereas arts and
sciences ought to be like mines,
loud on every hand with the sounds
of new operations and further pro 11
gress. (Nov Org., I, 90 ) See also,
Essays, XXIV.
�LALANDE
57
9. [A] majority vote is worthless as
a proof oftruths that are at all difficult
9. For in intellectual matters it is
the worst omen of all that an idea
to discover; for a single man is much
commands general consent, except
in sacred matters and in politics,
where there is the right- to vote.
more likely to hit upon them than a
group of people. (II, 4)
For, as I said earlier, nothing pleases
the multitude, unless it strikes the
imagination, or ties up the understanding in knots of common notions12 (Nov. Org., I, 77).
10. But in examining further [the
arts or sciences which seemed
ought to contribute something to
my plan] I observed with regard to
logic that syllogisms and most of its
other techniques are of less use for
learning things than for explaining
to others the things one already
knows or even, as in the art ofLully,
for speaking without judgement
about matters of which one is igno-
rant. And although logic does contain many excellent and true
precepts, these are mixed up with so
many others which are harmful or
superfluous that it is almost as difficult to distinguish them as it is to
carve a Diana or a Minerva from an
unhewn block of marble. (I1,6)
10. And this art which I present ... is
a kind oflogic, though the difference
between it and ordinary logic is great,
indeed immense. For the ordinary
logic professes to devise and prepare
means to help the understanding;
and in this one respect they agree.
(The Great Instauration, "Plan of the
Work" Nov. Org. p. 19) {ESH 1,
p.135}
For in the ordinary logic almost
all the. work is performed around
the syllogism .... For although no
one can doubt that propositions
that agree on a middle term agree
also with each other (this being a
mathematical certainty), neverthe-
less there is this underlying deception, that the syllogism consists of
propositions, propositions of
words, and words are tokens and
symbols of notions. Therefore if
the very notions of the mind ... are
defective ... then everything collapses. (Ibid., p. 19-20) {p.136}
�58
11. In doing this I was not copying the skeptics, who doubt only for
the sake of doubting and pretend to
be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole aim was to reach
certainty-to cast aside the loose
earth and sand so as to come upon
rock or clay. (III, 6)
Cf. above, citation 7: But regarding the opinions to which I had
hitherto given credence ...
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
11. It will be thought... that I support a kind of suspension of judge ment, and reduce the matter to
Acatalepsy. What in fact I have in
mind and propose is Eucatalepsy; for I
do not disparage the sense, but help
it; I do not disdain the understanding,
I govern it. (Nov. Otg., I, 126).
But no one should disapprove of
such a suspension of judgment in a
teaching that asserts, not that nothing
can be known at all, but that knowledge is only possible by following a
certain method and path; and yet
halts for the time being at certain
degrees of certainty for help and support until the mind may arrive at an
explanation of causes on which it can
13
stand. ( Great lnstauration "Plan,"
p. 29) {ESH I, p. 144}
�LAlANDE
12. But the most remarkable of
all these facts [the action of the
heart on the blood] is the generation of the animal spirits: like a very
fine wind, or rather a very pure and
lively flame, they rise continuously
in great abundance from the heart
to the brain, passing from there
through the nerves to the muscles
and imparting movement to all the
parts of the body. (V, 8)
59
12. The other difference between
the spirits is, that the vital spirit has
in it a degree of inflammation, and
is like a breath compounded of
flame and air... (The History of Lift
and Death, part 2; ESH V, p. 323)
{ESH II p. 215}
But this spirit, whereof I am
speaking, is not a virtue, nor an energy, nor an actuality, nor any such
idle matter, but a body thin and
invisible, and yet having place and
dimension, and real 14 (Ibid., p.321)
{p.213}
The spirits are the agents and
workmen that produce all the effects in the body. (Ibid. , p. 268)
The pulse of the heart and arteries
in animals is caused by an endless
and alternate dilatation and contraction of the spirits.
The voluntary motion likewise in
animals, which (in the more perfect) is performed by the nerves,
seems to have its root first in the
compression and then in the relaxation of the spirits. (The History of
Dense and Rare, Ibid., p. 358) {ESH
II, p. 263}
�60
13. This shows not merely that
the beasts have less reason than
men, but that they have no reason
at all. ( V, 11)
[I]t is nature which acts in them
according to the disposition of their
organs. In the same way a clock,
consisting only of wheels and
springs, can count the hours and
measure time more accurately than
we can with all our wisdom. (Ibid).
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
13. For the sensible soul-the
soul of brutes-must clearly be regarded as a corporeal substance, at-
tenuated and made invisible by
heat; a breath (I say) compounded
of the natures of flame and
air. .. clothed with the body, and in
perfect animals residing chiefly in
the head, running along the nerves,
and refreshed and repaired by the
15
spirituous blood of the arteries;
(De Aug., N, ch, 3; ESH, N, p. 398)
{I, p. 606}
For this soul is in brutes the prin-
cipal soul, the body of the brute
being its instrument; whereas in
man it is itself only the instrument
of the rational soul, and may be
more fitly termed not soul, but
spirit. (Ibid.)
�LAlANDE
14. Mter that I described the
rational soul, and showed that, unlike the other things of which I had
spoken, it cannot be derived in any
way from the potentiality of matter,
but must be specially created. And
I showed how it is not sufficient for
it to be lodged in the human body
like a helmsman in his ship, except
perhaps to move its limbs, but that
it must be more closely joined and
united with the body to have, besides this power ofmovement, feelings and apPetites like ours and so
constitute a real man. (V, last para.).
C£ Treatise on the Passions, Part I.
61
14. Let us now proceed to the
doctrine which concerns the Human Soul...The parts thereof are
tvvo; the one treats of the rational
soul, which is divine; the other of
the irrational, which is common
with brutes. I mentioned a little
before ... the two different emanations of souls, which appear in the
first creation thereof the one
springing from the breath of god,
the other from the wombs of the
elements. (Ibid) {p. 606-7}
With regard to the doctrine concerning the League or Common
Bond between the soul and body, it
is distributed into two parts .... [so
the description of this league ... consists .. of two parts] namely, how
these two (that is, the Soul and the
Body) disclose the one the other,
and how they work the one upon
the other.
The latter branch of the doctrine
of the league ... considers either how
and how far the humours and tern -
perament of the body alter and
work upon the mind; or again, how
and how far the passions or apprehensions of the mind alter and
work upon the body. (Ibid IV, 1;
ESH p. 375; 377) {p. 583; 584}
For there are many and great excellencies of the human soul above
the souls ofbrutes, manifest even to
those who philosophise according
to the sense. Now wherever the
mark of so many and great excellencies is found, there also a specific
difference ought to be constituted;
(Ibid., IV, 3; ESH p. 397) {p. 605}
�62
15. Here I dwelt a little upon the
subject of the soul, because it is of
the greatest importance. For after
the error of those who deny
God ... there is none that leads weak
minds further from the straight path
of virtue than that of imagining that
the souls of the beasts are of the
same nature as ours ... But when we
know how much the beasts differ
from us, we understand much bettcr the arguments which prove that
our soul is of a nature entirely inde pendent of the body, and consequently that it is not bound to die
with it. And since we cannot see any
other causes which destroy the soul,
we are naturally led to conclude that
it is immortal. ry, last para.).
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
15. Let there be therefore a more
diligent inquiry concerning this
doctrine; the rather because the imperfect understanding of this has
bred opinions superstitious and
corrupt and most injurious to the
dignity of the human mind, touching metempsychosis, and the puri fications of souls in periods ofyears,
and indeed too near an affinity in all
things between the human soul and
the souls of brutes. (Ibid., ESH, p.
398) {p. 606}
�LAlANDE
16. [I]n place of this speculative
philosophy which is taught in the
schools, one could find a practical
one, through which, kno·Ning the
63
16. Now of this philosophy Aristotle is by universal consent the chief,
power and actions of fire, water, air,
yet he left nature herself untouched
and inviolate, and dissipated his energies in comparing, contrasting, and
stars, the heavens and all the other
analysing popular notions about her.
bodies that surround us as distinctly
(Cogitata et visa translated as: Thoughts
and Conclusions, in The Philosophy <if
Francis Bacon, ed. Benjamin Far-
as we know the different crafts of
our artisans we could use this
knowledge in the same way for all
the purposes for which it is appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as
it were, masters and possessors of
nature. (VI,2)
rington. Chicago, 1964. p. 83)
{ESH, III, p. 601}
Now the only true and proper
goal of the sciences is to bring new
discoveries and powers to human
life. (Nov. Org. 81)
For the end I propose for my science
is the discovery not of arguments but
of arts; (The Great Instauration, "Plan,"
p.19) {ESH!p.135}
For man is only the servant and
interpreter of Nature and he only
does and understands so much as
he shall have observed, in fact or in
thought, of the course of Nature;
more than this he neither knows
nor can do .... So it is that those tvvo
objects of mankind, Knowledge and
Power, come in fact to the same
thing, and the failure of works derives mostly from ignorance of
causes. (Ibid. p. 29) { p. 144}
And for its value and utility it
must be plainly avowed that that
wisdom which we have derived
principally from the Greeks is but
like the boyhood of knowledge, and
has the characteristic property of
boys: it can talk, but it cannot generate, .. .In the mechanical arts we
do not find it so; they, on the contrary, as having in them some
breath oflife, are continually growing and becoming more perfect
(The Great Instauration, "Preface" p.
8) {p. 125}
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
64
17. This is desirable not only for
the invention of innumerable devices which would facilitate our enjoyment of the fruits of the earth
and all the goods we find there, but
also, and most importantly, for the
maintenance of health, which is
undoubtedly the chief good and the
foundation of all the other goods in
this life. For even the mind depends so much on the temperament and disposition of the bodily
organs that if it is possible to find
some means of making men wiser
and more skilful than they have
been up till now, I believe we must
look for it in medicine. (VI,2)
17.
[T] here is one thing still
remaining, which is of more conse -
quence than all the rest;-namely,
a true and active Natural Philosophy for the science of medicine to
be built upon (De Aug., IV, 2; ESH
IV, p. 390) {I, p. 598}
For the physicians prescribe
drugs to heal mental diseases, as in
the treatment of phrensy and melancholy; and pretend also to exhibit
medicines to exhilarate the mind, to
fortifY the heart and thereby confirm the courage, to clarity the wits,
to corroborate the memory, and the
like ... The root and life of all which
.
.
.
prescnpts 16 ... constst Ill t h at o f
which we are speaking, namely the
sympathy of the mind with the state
and disposition of the body (Ibid.
IV, 1; ESH, IV, p. 377) {p. 584}
And therefore the poets did well
to conjoin music and medicine in
Apollo; because the genius of both
these arts is almost the same; for the
office of the physician is but to
know how to stretch and tune this
harp of man's body that the harmony may be without all harshness
and discord (Ibid. IV, 2; ESH, IV, p.
380) {p. 588}
�LALANDE
18. It is true that medicine as currently practised does not contain
much of any significant use; but
without intending to disparage it, I
am sure there is no one, even
among its practitioners, who would
not admit that all we know in medicine is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be
known, and that we might free ourselves from innumerable diseases,
both of the body and of the mind,
and perhaps even from the infirmity of old age, if we had sufficient
knowledge of their causes and of all
the remedies that nature has provided (Ibid.).
I will say only that I have resolved
to devote the rest ofmy life to nothing
other than trying to acquire some
knowledge of nature from which we
may derive rules in medicine which
are more reliable than those we have
had up till now (VI, 12).
19. Those who gradually discover
the truth in the sciences are like
people who become rich and find
they have less trouble making large
profits than they had in making
much smaller ones when they were
poorer. Or they may be compared
with military comrrianders, whose
forces tend to grow in proportion to
their victories ... (VI, 4).
65
18. Medicine therefore (as we
have seen) is a science which has
been hitherto more professed than
laboured, and yet more laboured
than advanced; the labours spent on
it having been rather in a circle, than
in progression (De Aug., N, 2; ESH
N,p.383) {p. 590}
I will divide it into three parts,
which I will term its three offices;
the first whereof is the PreseiVation
of Health, the second the Cure of
Diseases, and the third the Prolongation of Life (Ibid.)
[This third part] .. .is new, and
deficient; the most noble of all. For
if such a thing may be discovered,
the business of medicine will no
longer be confined to humble
cures, nor will physicians be honoured only for necessity; but for a
gift to men-of earthly gifts per17
haps the greatest ...
(Ibid.; ESH,
N,p.390) {p. 598}
19. [O]nthecontrary,Iwhoconsider the mind not only in its natural capacity but in its connection
with things, cannot but believe that
the art of discovery may grow with
the number of new discoveries.
(Nov. Org., I 130).
�66
20. I do not wonder at the absurdities attributed to al1 the ancient
philosophers whose writings we do
not possess; nor do I conclude from
these attributions that their
thoughts were highly unreasonable. As they were some of the best
minds of their time, I conclude that
their thoughts have been misrepresented (VI, 6)
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
20. And therefore the greatest
minds in every age have doubtless
felt their force; ... and as a result, any
more exalted reflections that may
have gleamed forth were straightway buffeted and extinguished by
the winds of popular opinion. The
result has been that Time, like a
river, has brought down to us the
light and inflated, while it has sunk
the weighty and solid. (The Great
Instauration, Preface, p. 10) {ESH I,
p. 127}
21. We see too that it has almost
never happened that any of their
followers has surpassed them; They
are like the ivy, which never seeks
to climb higher than the trees
which support it, and_often even
grows downward after reaching the
tree-tops (Ibid.).
21. [A] II the tradition and succession of schools represent only the
characters of master and pupil, not
of inventors or those who bring any
distinction to things already invented .. .In fact, they sometimes
flourish most under their first
authors, only to decline thereafter. .. For it is hardly possible at one
and the same time to gaze with admiration upon authors and to excel
them, knowledge being like water,
which does not rise higher than the
level from which it descended. (Ibid.
p. 8-9; 11) {p.126; 128}
These sentence by sentence comparisons give a less clear idea of
he relation between Bacon and Descartes than can a parallel reading
>f their works. Often a paragraph of the latter appears as a vigorous
ummary, with a development which is richer but more diffuse and
~ss coherent than that of his predecessor. Such is the case, for
xample, with chapters ofDe Augmentis, N, 2, on medicine, or VII,
, on ancient morals. Likewise paragraphs 2 and 6 in the sixth part
f the Discourse on Method are comparable taken as a whole to the
�LALANDE
67
general "Preface" to the Great Instauration. I have limited myself, in
the case of these similarities, to citing some characteristic sentences.
Similarly, because I did not find in the Discourse on Method a text
of some few lines to which to oppose them, I had to leave aside the
repeated declarations in which Bacon insists on the unity of science.
It would have been necessary to transcribe extensively, in order to
place in parallel columns, the whole plan of the sciences which
occupies paragraphs 2-4 of the fifth part. But since nothing is more
familiar than this idea, which some have even wanted to make a
discovery proper to Descartes! 8 I will cite here only the Baconian
texts which fit with it.
"And generally let this be a rule; that all divisions of knowledges
be accepted and used rather for lines to mark or distinguish, than
sections to divide and separate them; in order that solution of continuity in sciences may always be avoided. For the contrary hereof has
made particular sciences to become barren, shallow, and erroneous;
not being nourished and maintained and kept right by the common
fountain and aliment."19 (DeAug., IV, l; ESH, IV, p. 373) {I, p. 580}
* *
*
"And therefore the speculation was excellent in Parmenides and
Plato (although in them it was but a bare speculation), 'that all things
by a certain scale ascend to unity.' So then always that knowledge is
worthiest which least burdens the intellect with multiplicity; and this
appears to be Metaphysic, as that which considers chiefly the simple
forms of things (which I have above termed forms of the first clasi0 );
since although few in number, yet in their commensurations and
co-ordinations they make all this variety." (Ibid, III, 4; ESH, IV, p.
362) {pp. 567-8}
* * *
"However, let no one expect much progress in the sciences-especially in their practical aspects-unless natural philosophy is extended to particular sciehces, and particular sciences in turn lead back
�68
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
to natural philosophy. This is the reason why astronomy, optics,
music, many of the mechanical arts, medicine itself and, more
surprisingly, moral and political philosophy and the logical sciences
all lack depth .... Small wonder, then, that the sciences fail to grow, cut
off as they are from their roots. (Nov. Org.I, 80)."
I believe that in works of Descartes other than the Discourse on
Method one would find material for analogous comparison. The
celebrated comparison of the system of the sciences to a tree is found
in De Augmentis.21 The notion of the simple natures, explained in the
Regulae, in particular in Rule XII, recalls very nearly the use of this
expression in the second book of theNovum Organum, and the theory
which is connected with it. And I have already noted, in a previous
work, a text from this very rule which reproduces almosf word for
word a passage from Valerius Terminus. The analogy is all the more
curious as this passage is precisely the statement of the method of
geometrically interpreting sensible phenomena, which holds such a
great place in the Cartesian philosophy at the epoch of its full
development. Is this a simple coincidence? Or can one allow that
Descartes had knowledge, in manuscript form, ofValerius Terminus,
which was only published in 1734 by Robert Stephen in The Letters
and Remains ofLord Chancellor Bacon? Certain scientific works, at this
epoch, circulated in more or less faithful copy, often fragmentary,
before passing on to press. Or still yet, must one see in this method
of geometric translation, an idea transmitted orally from the one to
the other? When one remembers what discussions the concern with
the experiment at Puy de Dome gave rise to, one feels less inclined
to resolve the matter easily.
It will be noted on the other hand that the Valerius Terminus is not
only a first sketch of the New Organum,22 but also marks a time-unhappily indeterminate-when Bacon was attached to the idea of a
universal mechanism in a much more radical way than he was in his
later works; he even sees in it at that time a sort of philosophic secret
which one should communicate only advisedly and under all sorts
of reservations. It is not that he ever returned to "pure" philosophy,
nor that he had put into doubt the value of his interpretation of
�LALANDE
69
natural phenomena; quite the contrary, in the Latin text ofDe
Augmentis, published in 1623, he introduced a sign of this attachment, which does not exist in the Advancement of Learning of 1605
(perhaps in virtue of the same esoteric principle) and which presents
color as having "form," understood in the last analysis as a certain
figured disposition of material elements. It is impossible, as I have
tried to show elsewhere in detail, to be content with the classic
prejudice, in great measure founded on misinterpretations and on a
partial reading of his writings, which makes Bacon a continuer of
scholasticism, a strangerto the great mechanistic idea which was then
at the point of taking over the direction of the sciences. I will recall
only the importance which at all times in his life he attributes to the
progress of mixed mathematics. All that one can legitimately presume
of him is that, as he advanced in age, he saw in the mechanical
interpretation an ideal less near, less immediately realizable, than he
had thought at the beginning. Perhaps also he feared imitating the
defect with which he had reproached the ancients, that of formulating ex cathedra a definitive theory of nature. There is much, in his
work, of that which will be called later a "positivist spirit," less
attached to conclusions than to method. Descartes, a more absolute
character, believed he could reveal the secret of the world in a
categorical fashion; but it is precisely here that discredit came to his
system, and almost to his name, in the very period which was the
most inspired by his epistemology.
P.S. I reproduce here below, to spare readers whom this question
may interest the research, the passage of the Rules and that of the
Valerius Terminus to which I made allusion above:
"So what troublesome consequences could there be if-while
avoiding the useless assumption and pointless invention of some new
entity, and without denying what others have preferred to think on
the subject-we simply make an abstraction, setting aside every
feature of colour apart from its possessing the character of shape, and
conceive of the difference between white, blue, red, etc., as being like
the difference between the following figures or similar ones?
�70
THE ST. JOHN'S REVI.EW
The same can be said about everything perceivable by the senses,
since it is certain that the infinite multiplicity of figures is sufficient
for the expression of all the differences in perceptible things." 23
"All bodies or parts of bodies which are unequal equally, that is in
simple proportion, do represent whiteness ...Absolute equality produceth transparence; inequality in simple order or proportion produceth whiteness; inequality in compound or respective order or
proportion produceth all other colours, and absolute or orderless
inequality produceth blackness; which diversity, if so gross a demonstration be needful, may be signified by four tables: a blank, a chequer, afret, and
a medley; whereof the fret is evident to admit a great variety."24
[M. Lalande's article appeared in Revue de metaphysique et de morale
v. 19 (1911): 296-311. All tra;,_slations of The Discourse on Method are
from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, v. 1, trans. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987). Citations are by part and paragraph
number. TranslationsfromNovum Organum are fromNovum Organum With Other Parts of the Great Instauration, trans. and ed. by Peter
Urbach and John Gibson (Chicago: Open Court, 1994). Citation
is by Part and Aphorism number. Other citations, unless otherwise
indicated, refer to The Works ofFrancis Bacon ed. by James Sped ding,
Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Den on Heath (London, 1872),
hereafter abbreviated ESH. References to the English in parenthesis
by volume and page number; citations following, in braces, are to the
�LAlANDE
71
Latin, cited by Lalande. I wish to thank Mr. Chester Burke and Mrs.
Irena Datchev for their help.-Trans.]
Notes:
1 "Tantum sane ut merito hominem homini Deum esse, non
solum ex auxilio et beneficia, sed ex status comparatione dici
possit." Cogitata et Visa, ESH, III, p. 611. Ex status comparatione,
as is clear from the context, is applied to that which man owes to
humanity taken as a whole, that is to say, to the progress of
civilization. [Since "the whole substance of the Cogitata et Visa is
reproduced in the first book of the Novum Organum" (ESH, I, pp.
78-79), here follows the relevant passage in translation from that
work: "... the difference [between the life of men in "the most
civilized province of Europe, and in the most savage and barbarous part of New India"] is so great as truly to justifY the saying
'Man is a god to men,' not only for the help and benefits he can
bring, but also by comparing their conditions."-Trans.]
2 Mter reminding us of Demosthenes' saying that the first quality
of the orator is action, the second, action, and the third, action,
Bacon adds: 'Wonderful like is the case of Boldness in civil
business; what first? Boldness; what second and third? Boldness."
Essays, XII. ["Of Boldness." The French cited by Lalande in the
text is as follows: "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours
l'audace."-Trans.]
3 Charpentier, Brochard, Landormy.
4 Cf. also, II, 12, [Discourse on Method-Trans] the example of the
child who, having calculated a sum, knows as much about it as
anyone. "In short, the method which instructs us to follow the
correct order, and to enumerate exactly all the relevant factors,
contains everything that gives certainty to the rules of arithmetic."
�72
5
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
[The work referred to here is the 1623 De Dignitate et Augmentis
Scientiarum. Lalande refers to the work as De Dignitate; I have used
the more familiar designation, DeAugmentis, i.e., The Advancement
ofLearning. This writing is a Latin translation and expansion of a
work published in 1605, in English, usually referred to as The
Proficience and Advancement of Learning-Trans.]
6 The metaphor is found already in Seneca, De vita beata, 1. Many
similarities between Bacon and Descartes must derive from common readings.
7 I cite the Essays according to the Li'tin text titledSermonesfideles,
which is the final form Bacon gave them. But was this Latin text
published separately before the edition of Opera moralia et civilia,
produced by Rawley in 1638? This is doubtful. [Here·follows the
English text, cited above -Trans.] Baudoin, who made a French
translation of the Essays in 1619 under their first form, published
a second edition in 1626 conforming to the text of 1625, and a
third edition in 1633.
8 Cf. "Francis ofVerulam reasoning thus with himself...," prefacing
the Great Instauration: "[T]hat entire human reasoning that we
apply in the investigation of Nature is poorly put together and
constructed, but is like some magnificent great pile without any
foundation." Novum Organum p.3. {ESH I, p, 121}
9 Bacon opposes to this a few lines further the following: "But if a
man of ripe years, unimpaired faculties, and a mind well purged
should apply himself afresh to experience and particulars, from
him we can expect better things." See the last lines of part 2 of
the Discourse: "I thought I ought not try accomplish it until I had
reached a more mature age than twenty-three, as I then was, and
until I had first spent a long time in preparing myself for it. I had
to uproot from my mind all the wrong opinions I had previously
accepted, amass a variety of experiences to serve as the subject.
matter o[ my reasomngs .... "
�LAlANDE
73
10 It was already the opinion of Gassendi (De logicae finae, chap. vi)
that the destructive part of philosophy is the same in Bacon and
in Descartes.
11 It is necessary to note that in Novum Organum I, 127, Bacon
declares that the method is applicable in principle to the moral
sciences- Logic, Ethics, Politics, no less than to the sciences of
nature. But this is not otherwise in Descartes: "[P]eoples
who ... have made their laws only in so far as they were forced to
by the inconvenience of crimes and quarrels, could not be so well
governed as those who from the beginning of their society have
observed the basic laws laid down by some wise law-giver." II, 1.
12 This is evidently in Bacon an echo of Seneca, De vita beata, 2:
"Human affairs are not so happily ordered that the majority prefer
the better things." The psychological explanation of the matter is
only added to it.
13 Cf. The whole Scala intellectus where Bacon explains in what
respect his doubt resembles that of the sceptics, and in what it
differs. (ESH, II, pp. 687-89).
14 There exists a first kind of spiritus in all chemical bodies (spiritus
mortua/is, or spiritus crudus); it plays a role analogous to that of
matiere sub til in Descartes; furthermore, there exists a second kind
in living bodies (spiritus vivus, or spiritus vitalis). Hist. vitae et mortis,
Canon IV, (ESH, II, p. 214) [English translation in ESH V, p. 322
-Trans.].
15 Bacon indicates further on that this doctrine is that of Telesius
and of his disciple, Doni us. It would be interesting to know if
Descartes knew them directly. Elsewhere Ellis remarks that with
regard to Doni us, the affirmation is not at all exact, and that in
reality, in a discrete manner, he rejected the rational soul altogether. (ESH I, p. 606, n. 1).
�74
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
16 This phrase ends an enumeration of ritual prescriptions, ancient
or Christian, which have the purpose, according to him, of acting
on the dispositions of the soul through the medium of the body.
The end of the paragraph is dedicated to showing that this
dependance does not disprove immortality of the soul.
17 In the remaining part of this chapter, he develops at length "all
the remedies with which nature has provided us." Cf. also The
History of Life and Death
18 'We can no longer deny, in an age when we aim at the constitution
of a general physics, that Descartes, the great geometer who
discovered the principle of the unity of mathematical methods,
was also the great speculative physicist who, the first since the
schools of antiquity, gave us a glimpse of the unity of the physical
world and taught the meaning of a mechanical explanation of
phenomena." Renouvier, "La physique de Descartes,"Critique
philosophique, 3e annee, I, p.2
19 Natural philosophy or physics. Cf. Descartes: "Thus the whole
of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk
is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the
other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones,
namely medicine, mechanics and morals." Principles, Preface,
para. 12. In the passage cited, Bacon intends medicine and the
"knowledge of ourselves."
20 These "forms of the first class" are all the "schematisms" or
"motions," as Bacon has just said in the previous paragraph; and
he adds " ... (like letters of the alphabet) are not many and yet make
up and sustain the essences and forms of all substances." On the
true meaning of form in Bacon, see Quid de mathematica, vel
naturali, vel rationali, senserit Bacon Verulamius. Latin thesis, Paris,
Alcan, 1889.
�LAlANDE
75
21 "But since the divisions of knowledge are not like several lines
that meet in one angle; but are rather like branches of a tree that
meet in one stem (which stem grows for some distance entire and
continuous, before it divide itself into arms and boughs); therefore it is necessary before we enter into the branches of the former
division, to erect and constitute one universal science, to be as the
mother of the rest, and to be regarded in the progress of knowledge as portion of the main and common way, before we come
where the ways part and divide themselves." De Aug. III, 1; ESH,
IV, p. 337 {ESH I, p. 540}. It is true that in this passage the
common trunk is not physics but First philosophy, a kind of
metaphysical logic oflittle interest.
22 The complete title is: "Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation
of Nature, with the annotations of Hermes Stella."
23 Rules for the Direction of the Mind, XII
24 Valerius Terminus, XI, (ESH, III, p. 237) [In Lalande's text there
follows a French translation of this passage.~Trans.]
�76
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
�77
KRNAK
Pluck it, and the initial conditions result
in a pattern on the string, moving back
mid forth in waves.
Nor can I walk.
I move back and forth in waves between
the places I have charted and the seawall.
Height, breadth, depth, length and frequency...
The seawall. At the water's edge I saw
what the symbols meant, shown how in nature
the equation balanced first, long before
the sciences forced their rule. I remembered,
and I have taken for my creed that
... the directions in which nature allows us movement
can be described in mathematics like a name in stone.
I believed I understood then. I understand now.
When we walk we measure our steps
like a child with two cups strung
window to window.
When we swim we kuow
the waves that emanate from the face with their
brief sections of order hold a power prophets
have watched dwindle in exhausted ripples
from Beth-zatha pool.
What nature has allowed
is still etched in the stone of our mathematics.
Conditions I once described in strides
return unadulterated by my steps.
So I am deriving the wave equation still,
for my behaviour betrays suspicion
of descriptions, solutions, and time.
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Approaching Inertia
Solstice, Christmas, Saint Sylvester,
Epiphany-they're all behind us,
and the days keep stretching longer
by unreadable degrees.
This is the lag time, the motionless
long haul, the case of cabin fever,
at one time meditative,
conducive to work and sobering,
but now gone on too long.
The year begins to write itself
into a thirteen line sonnet,
five feet short of a final couplet
and one lasting impression of loss.
It is as quiet here as the streets
on New Year's day, but not from any
touch of mine. This end that feigns
beginning is the worst culprit,
tiring right from the start, like waking
up with unresolved trouble
on the mind, motes in one eye,
boards in the other, indifference
(the rule) stirring halfWay between
bed and the bath, where the honest
mirror flicks back the truth that Newton
failed to see, but the steam engine
and a snowing paperweight
proved centuries later: You can't
get something for nothing. And what
is given up falls short of every
need. What makes the train budge?
Who lifts the stone?
The heat that rises from the log
consumed to ashes now is gone,
and nowhere is there more created
to replace it. I don't dream
oflistless whiskey rocker porches,
but I don't favor the cold. And I
believe a man should be allowed to fear.
�KRNAK
79
Always After Shooting
Always after shooting we return
by way of the barn that blazed the summer
our cousin and his wife-to-be loved,
smoked, and slept, and brought down everything
around them in ashes. They got out,
singed and frightened, but the animalscows, chickens, rabbits and a goat-burned,
and I can't say if our uncle ever thought
his gtandson was an even trade.
The man broke away from the family
like the stones on the wall along the drive.
The fields gtew head high, went to seed,
spilled, and were left wild. Only Matthew
and I ever step foot on this land anymore,
and then only to empty shotgun shells
into skeet and boxes propped against
the rise above the pond.
Some years ago,
in the fall, we unloaded our chambers
into a flock of passing doves and brought
down three (one we had to shoot again).
The exhausted sky kept echoing the blasts,
and the gtound seemed to cringe each time
we took a step toward our kill. We reached
the carcasses that were· strangled deep
within the gtass from the momentum of their
fall, and with a barely audible "christ"
from underneath our breaths we started kicking
dirt and the remains into a hole
we dug with our heels. Then we walked out.
As we passed the charred foundation walls
of the barn, I thought about the night
of the fire, and the fragile balance
of the living on this farm, tipped
so easily with a dirty finger.
It was a while before we went back,
but we did. The fields and gtass gtew thick
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
enough in one month to cover up our
old paths. Animals carried away the rest.
�j
~
Recollection and Composure
Eva T. H. Brann
Douglas Allan brook came to St.John's, Annapolis in 1952, in hi s early
thirties . It was here that his two sons were born, Tim othy and John,
to whom this memoir* is dedicated. Here he has been teaching for
four and a half decades, here he composed his musical oeuvre, and
here too, seemingly out of the blue, he wrote an accornplished
autobiographical book. In it he ref1ects urt Lhc difference between
composing music and recollecting a life:
It is a consolation that in music there are no pcop le, no facts,
no places, nor is there, in any comprehensible way, any
meaning, while in our own stories we arc stuck with
intractable memories which only the holdest fiction can
unite into a whole. When a piece of music is composed, it
is complete, all wrapped in a tight cocoon, awaiting its
release into the sunlight of performance. For the listener
it is a portable memory that can be run through again and
again, a vicarious and safe experience, so utterly uitlerent
from the course of a life, which seems hardly a whole ,
composed as i~ is of pathos and shameful bits, of brief joys
played out agamst the backdrop ohvars and politics (p . 41).
It wa~ at_this college, then, that the composition, the cocoonin g,
not of ~m hfe but of a decade of his life, was accomplished and here
that thts one decade was fitted into the whole and made "a portable
rnemory" for the reader.
This p~ace, the college, is mentioned only twice in passing as an
obscure httle safe-harbor whose life, looked at from a distanct::, is
bizarre and out of the way: "When work and marriages and children
begin, the lights dim, the landscape becomes habitual" (p. 2G7). Such
dimming is a phenomenon familiar to everyone whose life has been
front-loaded by history. All that matters seriously, all day-hy-day
responsibilities and permanent attachments, extensive in time and
local in place-the "long plateau" (p. 268) of human reality- arc
muted compared to the vivid flashings of retrospection into a more
Eva T. H. Brann is Dean at St. John's College.:, Annapolis.
*See Naples: A Memoir by Douglas Allanbrook, A Peter Davison Book, liou~hton
Miffiin Company, New York and Roston, 1995, 269 pp.
�82
THE ST.JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
intense and dangerous time. Yet it is in this relative safety of habitual
reality that imagination and memory accomplish their joint work of
fixing the throng of memories into this one memoir. Here experience
is recollected if not in tranquility then at least in domesticity, the
evidently transferable craft of composition is perfected, the private
readings and the public studies that give memory a frame are pursued.
The book acknowledges this ordinary and orderly ground of its
genesis tacitly but to my sense powerfully.
The decade so emblazoned on the composer's memory is that of
his twenties, his European years. He was a gifted, already welltrained and well-read, receptive and very young American, abroad in
a frightful war and again in a post-war time that was especially golden
for Americans. Whether he found himself in a hell or in an idyll, this
musician, as soldier and veteran, allowed things to happen to him.
Hence the surface texture of the book is thick-woven not only with
incidents, involvements, and vignettes, but also with returns, resolutions, recursions, delightfully trivial and heartrendingly significant:
On the troop transport to Mrica, Private Allanbrook's cherished
watch, his father's gift, is stolen, only to be miraculously retrieved by
a protective buddy at a crap game inland from Oran. A repulsive
fascist major provokes his own bullet-riddled death while in bed with
his mistress, and his wife later turns up, the keeper of an open house
for Allied officers, as the neighbor of the writer's Florentine friends.
There are parallel river and bath idylls, classical in their nude disportings, in Texas and in Tuscany. There are the three cosmopolitan Fates
that preside over the Fulbright Fellow's return, his Neapolitan landladies: the Vesuvius-hating Hungarian witch, the Polish snob, and
the desparate and decent Swiss spinster, Erika of fond memory.
Then there are the deeply wished for resolutions and recursions.
For eighteen years, back in Annapolis, the composer has carried a
restless guilt for the abrupt dumping of Laura, his "Neapolitan Bette
Davis," a high-strung and wilful girl, who was superseded by his
wife-to-be, the placid nymph, Candida. Finally he sets forth to seek
out Laura's solid and straight sister, who puts two decades of doubt
to rest with the casual and candid words: "She had a bad character,
you know. We were so afraid you would marry her!" (p. 42).
�BRANN
83
But above all, there is the ever-returning sight ofVesuvius erupting and the sound of Leonard calling.
Is this book a memoir or a fiction, then? It is a work of genuine
memory, such as is possible for those to whom life is an occasion for
art, for life always supplies amenable incidents to its receptive composers. Does the consummating imagination rectify or falsifY? The
question is pitched too low: The imagination actualizes the merely
real; it makes a fact into an event.
Nonetheless, this book is a prodigious feat of detailed memory.
No doubt this or that aide memoire was to hand: regiment~! records,
maps, perhaps letters, but much of the work has the bright clang of
exactly recalled fact.
Particularly notable is the musician's remembering ear for the
ritualistic obscenity and pungent accuracy of G. I. speech. Here is a
caution to stay out of the shipboard crap game, given to young
Allan brook by the protective Sergeant Kovacs: " ... You'd be skunked
and them punks would find some way to screw you once they seen
your honest little puss (p. 91)." The reader will find said visage on
the frontispiece and take the sergeant's point. It should 'be noted that
the writer's own cadences can be eloquent and his turns mordantly
witty: "Carnal knowledge of our own likely demise ... became part of
our soul's equipment" (p. 127).
The order of telling mimes the associations of memory, whose
contiguities are not of time but of theme. One might say that the
format is Proustian, were it not, for all its artfulness, far less contrived.
For example, one of the most tpemorable incidents is the officer's
gazelle hunt in Mrica before the Italian invasion, to which Private
Allanbrook is detailed as liaison with the Arab guide. The o(ficers
blast away from jeeps with Browning automatic rifles (a weapon no
good in true combat), and the telling of the slaughter immediately
puts the writer in mind of a later gratuitous lethal sport, the gunning
down of an escaping carabiniere sergeant running like a rabbit before
some Partisan boys and Allan brook's own fellow-soldiers.
But the memory does not only project the present onto the future.
It also paints a backdrop of history for the current event. The hated
Colonel Fry has established regimental headquarters at the Cistercian
Abbey ofFossanova, where there is also a field hospital in which very
�84
THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
young soldiers lie dying, and that brings to mind a different death:
Here Thomas Aquinas ended his life, having lived it.
For me the most moving overlay of remembered and present
sights occurs one hazy morning, when the regiment, having stumbled (among the first to arrive) into Rome by night, sleeps by the
Tiber, and the soldier wakes up to see across the river the sepia print
of Castle Sant' Angelo that hangs in his parents' living room in
Melrose. Everyone of a certain age knows that print and can envision
that veduta, in which the Eternal City is seen through a mist of home
and history class.
For all the artful interleaving of time, the central sequence of
events largely occupies the middle six chapters of the book's ten:
induction, training, passage, the Italian campaign, and its often
bloody aftermath. The mood is stark and darkly comic, and this part
of the account has more the air of factual truth. The reason is that
here the memoir serves as memorial for the many dead fellow
soldiers and for a few good officers.
Douglas Allanbrookwas a real soldier, who earned the four stripes
of a staff sergeant, was not above coveting the six of a master sergeant,
and took a proper pride in his bronze star medal. His loyalty is with
the men and his perspective that of a GI. It is the strong bond of the
faithful and friendly "we" (p. 78), for Allanbrook the Intelligence and
Reconnaissance platoon to which his able map reading assigned him.
His soldier's honor is that ofloyalty to his friends. The one circumstance that exhausts his always liberal sympathy is the German
POW's ready and detailed betrayal of their comrades' positions.
Their incomprehensible lack of honor taints all Germans for this
soldier who has no independent conception of Nazism.
The account of the campaign, otherwise so grim, abounds in
affectionate portraits of all his American fellow-soldiers, each a
highly personal realization of a recognizable ethnic and local type.
It is also suffused with a kind of abashed pleasure that this nearsighted, slight, musical, well-read youngster takes in the affectionate
esteem of his buddies.
But then there are the "them,"-a rogues' gallery of stupid, bigoted, pathetic, posturing officers, not least among them the General
Clark who got them to Rome first-at a terrible cost in casualties.
�BRANN
85
The redeeming figures are some fatherly, competent noncoms, and
the ami-hero, the trusted and sidelined Major Melcher, "a prudent
manager, not a 'leader'; but all of us, in a pickle, would h ave chosen
to follow him and not our fearless colonel" (p. 168); the colonel goes
on to become a general, while the major is kept on, humiliated, after
returning from a three-day breakdown. This is a passage that should
be requi red reading in the services' leadership courses.
Though the horror of the march through Italy does not abate;
because the protective carapace of body and soul wears ever thinner
and never thickens with time , there are redeeming moments of wild
absurdity and comic relief. One is particularly close to my heart
because I recognize it. A package reaches Allanbrook i11 a cold
Christmas season on the Apennines, sent by his mother who is a
teetotaler. It is a moldy fruit cake with a bottle of Scotch secreted
within; no sooner was it sent than she grew anxious lest he get drunk
and wander into enemy lines . My brother was also a foot soldier,
who uncannily resembled Dougla..<> in point of youth, slightness of
build, near-sightedness, musicality, literariness, and in winning the
affectionate regard of his buddies-and even as I write I hoid in my
hand the very same combat infantryman's badge that Douglas is
wearing on the frontispiece. I sent him-was he stationed in Panama
or already fighting in Korea?-a similar camout1aged package (only
it was gin) and then worried similarly about the effects.
Another saving grace was music, both as a respite from war and as
a way to male friendship and female companionship. At the infamous gazelle hunt, the cultivated Arab guide discovers Allanbrook
reading an inscribed Stravinsky score sent by his legendary teacher,
Mlle. Boulanger, and a sudden friendship flares up. Wherever a
piano is to be found, Bechstein or unstrung upright, the Gl goes
straight for it, carried out of the present by the music, but not entirely
unaware of the eclat produced by a creditable rendition of the
Waldstein played by one of the uniformed liberators better knov·lll
for their high spirits than their cultivation.
For all the interludes, death is eve r-present in this central section
on war and therefore, unavoidably, present in the framing sections
on peace. The book is not only a memorial to the many dead but also
an exorcism, half a century later, of some particular ghosts . It appears
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
to have succeeded at least in dispersing a recurrent nightmare: like
a Charon forever ferrying but never successfully landing the dead on
the far side of the Styx, the dreamer sails back and forth to Naples on
the Atlantic betwixt wake and sleep, war and peace, quick and dead;
he feels himself to belong in some part of body and soul to the world
of the dead.
The book has a noble dust jacket, maroon, black and gold, framing
a painting of Vesuvius erupting some century and a half before the
writer's first sight of it. That is how the book begins: Private
AJlanbrook and his friend whom he alone calls Leonard-given
names are rare in the army-together on the deck of the troop
transport, watching an obliging Vesuvius erupting and further illuminated by the brilliant crisscross of anti-aircraft fire. Leonard and
Jack, the radio repairman's bosom buddy, are the first "definite
killings" (p. 135) of the platoon, shot by a distinguishable enemy,
dead early, got at from behind. Vesuvius flaring up and Leonard
calling to. AJlanbrook to come in the night-these are the visual and
auditory images that haunt the book. They are signals from the
undercurrent offeeling on which all the incident is borne along. The
feeling is regret, the regret of insufficient response. Rich as the book
is in involvements and affairs, strong as its young protagonist was in
event-eliciting receptivity, it is this sense of incomplete love that
moved the writing of the memoir and tethered its memories: "Remorse was the fixative" (p. 103), but, the writer asks, for what? Was
it all in the imagination? There is so powerful, so near-theological a
sense of the sins of omission-moral sloth, apathy, narcissism, "communion ... rejected" (p. 104)-notjust toward this friend but toward
other friends and lovers, men and women, that the question is rightly
set aside. No baseless regrets for fancied young failures could have
given the book its poignant gravity.
Although the dates are deliberately out of order, there is a clear
temporal progress to the tale. It is to be found in the three successive
completions of the title "See Naples." First: See Naples-and Die;
that is in 1944when Vesuvius is the gate to living hell and likely death.
Second: See Naples-and Live; that is in 1952, when Vesuvius greets
the Fulbright Fellow returning to the golden and event-laden time
that post-war Europe could then offer a young American in Naples.
�BRANN
87
Third: See Naples-and Recollect; those are the ensuing four decades
of revisiting in search of resolution and remembrance lasting until the
final composition of the memoir and the achievement at least of
resignation and lucidity: "I see Naples clearly now I am old" (p.268.)
Yet there is a hint of further consolation. In his forties, the
revenant, on his way back from the settling of Laura's ghost, made a
pilgrimage to Elea, the city of Parmenides. And, by one of those
felicitous coincidences of his life, he overhears on the beach what he
is listening for, a message of Being. A teacher walks to and fro with
his pupil, discoursing, it seems, ever more emphatically on "essere"
(p. 44). This event is recalled at the close of the book:
What a solace it would be if some timeless essence, clear
and lucid, were standing in back of our time-ridden
lives, if all of our shifting loves were grounded in some
apprehensible reality (p. 266).
The sentence is written, to be sure, in the conditional mood, but
the book itself sounds a more affirmative music. For it intimates that
some like solace may be found in artfully composing the passages of
life into a "coherent and passionate whole" (p. 41).
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THE ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE REVIEW
�i
~
Reason's Parochiality:
On Carl Page's Critique ofHistoricism
Richard Velkley
I
That human reason is in some sense parochial cannot be seriously
doubted. Carl Page's thoughtful and significant book, Philosophical
Historicism and the Betrayal of First Philosophy* takes on the task of
defining that sense through a careful critique of one of the most
prominent philosophical tendencies of the past century: the assertion
of reason's radical parochiality as historical.
Before examining his argument, I note some of reason's parochialisms. The limiting qualifier "human" signifies that we know we are
not divine reasoners, while the sort of reason we possess may or may
not be akin to that of other beings as yet unknown to us. One of the
great puzzles is how a power that has a grasp on universality manifests
itself so locally in the universe. Why do only some beings possess it?
Why these rather than others? And why as species with a plurality of
members? Such questions relate to the problem of understanding the
human being as a whole: How do this being's peculiar rational
powers belong essentially (if they do) to its peculiar sentient, living,
and bodily aspects? Neither ancient nor modern philosophy has
answers to these questions. Aristotle tells us that we are wholes and
yet the principle of this wholeness is very elusive: Are the ends of
humans as living beings and the ends of thought the same ?1 The
question "What is the origin of this peculiar human kind?" cannot
even be asked on the basis of his metaphysics.
The "return to the ancients" is a siren song that may deafen us to
the relevance of modern physical, biological and evolutionary inquiries to these questions. The relevance of such "empirical" investigations points to a certain importance of history for philosophy, as well.
Since "nature loves to hide," the outcome of natural inquiries is
unforeseeable. The uncovering of nature's secrets has been crucially
Richard Velldey is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stonehill College.
*The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
assisted by advances in techniques of widening human powers, the
"technology" affording otherwise impossible access to Jupiter's
moons, viruses·, X-rays, quantum effects and black holes. No doubt
the Baconian and Cartesian revolutions have in a fundamental way
altered irreversibly our account of nature; but the alteration is not the
result of philosophical thought alone. The unanticipated and indeterminate course of human discovery (which may at some point
include the encounter with other intelligent forms oflife) is a form
of human history projected by modern principles. There has to be a
certain rightness in the claim that Plato could not see some truths
relevant to understanding our situation, and that time itself limits
knowing. But perhaps "history" in the historicist sense of the context
of moral and political beliefs dominant at a given time is not the most
pertinent consideration. One suggestion, which may even be not
un-Platonic in spirit: The fluctuating natural order of galactic expansion and contraction may be seen as a sort of instrument for extending
human insight about nature, a Technik der Natur. If the natural order
is not simply permanent and regular, can there be an absolute divide
between nature and art? Veritas filia temporis. 2
The Socratic turn to logoi, the phenomenological examination of
the human lifeworld, the articulation of enduring features of human
experience, will not solve the problem of the biological localization
of reason, although such inquiries are necessary to prevent reductionist and narrow views of the explanandum, human reason. This
points to another dimension of the parochiality of our reason (with
which I end this preliminary meditation). Human reason pursues,
and in a sense thus already possesses, certain kinds of wholeness that
have no evident parallels in natural processes. This pursuit of wholeness (or eros) is available to us only on the phenomenological level;
the Socratic question is how that pursuit relates to "the whole" as
such. Humans are fated to try to understand themselves and all beings
in the light of wholes that exist only in speech or in the idea, thus in
the light of what humans qua natural arenot. 3 The turn to thelogoi
then is not merely provisonal, since it is only through them that the
never-to-be-realized character of human reason comes into view.
When, how, and even whether the self-understanding of reason will
become part of a complete account of nature is a Socratic question
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91
still alive in contemporary debates about whether and how "objective" natural sciences can account for the "subjective" realm of
consciousness. One must start with an acceptance of a difference
(perhaps never to be bridged) between consciousness and other
natural phenomena, for if the former had no ontological peculiarity
there would be no puzzle needing a solution~
Both of these points (the investigation of nature as an indeterminate, open-ended history, and the problematic relation between
human self-awareness and accounts of nature) bear a great deal on
the theme of Page's book, Philosophical Historicism. The progressive
and "revolutionary" character of modern scientific inquiry has certainly promoted modern accounts of human reason as historical. But
at the same time, the turn to history that is characteristic of thought
called "historicist" is motivated in good part by a desire to protect the
human experience of moral and political life from disruptive intrusions from that science. It has done so in accordance with doubts
about the groundability of this experience in accounts of nature. I
shall return to these considerations later in this review.
II
The parochialism of reason stipulated by philosophical historicism
(henceforth PH) is not a statement of aporia (such as the problems
of the relation of reason to life and the body) but an attempt to resolve
the question of the ends or purposes of human reason. Its solution
however generates newaporiai. The stipulations are familiar: human
reason is limited to the hie et nun, it cannot transcend the contingent
temporal starting-points of inquiry, and thus it is "differentiated by
history without remainder" (Page, 44). PH insists on reason's inevitable temporal parochiality or historicity. Hence PH must regard the
tradition of First Philosophy (henceforth FP) as in pursuit of
chimerae, for FP is based on "the conviction that the human intellect
is in principle and by nature adequate to reality and its primary
principles," i.e. principles of a transtemporal order (3). Besides such
primacy, FP upholds the noetic ideals of universality and Socratic
self-knowledge. Yet PH is the heir of this tradition insofar as itoffers
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a comprehensive critique of reason's powers. Indeed it is the direct
successor to the modern critique of reason which rejects the possibility of noetic adequacy to reality, but retains allegiance to FP's
search for a universal self-accounting of reason. The critique of
reason retains the ideal of reason's noetic adequacy to itself
Unlike the pre-Hegelian critique of reason, PH temporalizes the
categories of the understanding thus historicizing Kant's quaestio juris
(59-60, 117); all the same it undertakes a comparable 'justification"
of reason (52-55). Page on a number of occasions employs the
expression "the spirit ofFP," as distinct from FP proper, to indicate
points of contact between PH and FP (preeminently in the case of
Heidegger; see 128, 143). Thus PH is not a mere break with FP, but
an internal betrayal, claiming to provide a genuine renovation (not
dismissal) of philosophy. Page puts his leading question as follows:
"As an interpretation of the relationship between historicity and
reason, the single most important question PH must face is that of
its adequacy as an account of human reason's actuality" (6). Here is
a difficulty: if PH should happen to have an adequate account of
reason, would it not be genuine FP (indeed, the only true FP)? And
if its account is inadequate, then why is it a "betrayal," rather than
just an imperfect form of FP?
Page precedes his account and critique of PH proper with a
review of other varieties of the "historicist gesture": Karl Popper's
account of historicism as the "demonization of history," the conditioning of cultural knowledge by history in the classical historicisms
of Friedrich Meinecke and Ernst Troeltsch, and Karl Mannheim's
sociology of knowledge. None of these doctrines is genuine PH
since their particularist or procedural approaches to history do not
undertake to show (or in Popper's case, to criticize) the conditioning
of all powers of reason by history. Page's aim in presenting them is
to underline the self-conscious comprehensiveness of genuine PH,
of which three recent representatives are closely scrutinized: Joseph
Margolis, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Richard Rorty. A general critique of PH as self-refuting emerges from this examination. Yet
behind these figures looms the great figure of Martin Heidegger; to
him Page must turn for a "rehabilitation of historicism's motivating
�VELKLEY
93
insights" (128) of which Page intends to make a "determinate negation" preserving what is valid in PH (6, 128).
Still further behind Heidegger is Hegel, the second figure of the
"rehabilitative" inquiry which closes the book; these two thinkers
offer "the most powerful ontologies of historicity that have been
elaborated to date" (132). Notably Page's review of genuine PH does
not include discussions ofDilthey and Nietzsche, who surely belong
in a complete account. This is because Page in fact does not seek to
give a full genealogy; Page's purpose is strictly philosophical, and his
choice of figures is made for the sake of his. argument. The focus on
Hegel and Heidegger is adequate, in his view, to disclose the motives
of historicist ontology. But a study of Nietzsche can shed invaluable
light on some basic motives; I shall say more on this later. And as a
smaller cavil, I think some of the space accorded to the unphilosophical historicists (Meinecke, Troeltsch, Mannheim) might justly
have been allotted to Dilthey, as the leading figure in the methodological debates about natural science andGeisteswissenschaften. For in
his "typology of world-views," Dilthey clearly discloses the practical
motivation for the turn to historical Grundwissenschaft: the failure of
natural science to offer accounts of human purpose or visions of the
ends oflife.
Page adduces three recent figures (Margolis, Gadamer, Rorty) as
evidence for the "emerging consensus" in Anglophone and Continental philosophy around "the conviction that what is now called
practical rationality is the ruling form of all human understanding
and that its virtues are the highest virtues of the intellect" (47). In the
Anglo-American scene the primacy of practical rationality runs
through anti-foundationalist accounts of knowledge (H. Putnam, C.
Taylor), Nco-Aristotelian classical scholarship (M. Nussbaum),
Kant scholarship (0. O'Neill, S. Neiman), and ethics (B. Williams,
A. Macintyre), although historicist approaches are not the rule in
these areas. Kant, pragmatism, and (and only once mentioned by
Page) the later Wittgenstein's view of language as the repository of
cultural practices determinative of meaning, are pervasive sources,
probably more than major historicist philosophers. Indeed it may be
said that PH is a more radical version of a much broader tendency.
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III
With his three figures as his departure-point, Page develops subtle
variations on the theme of PH's self-refutation. Contrary to the
explicit conclusion of reason's inevitable parochiality, PH's mode of
arguing is a comprehensive rational self-account, without which it
cannot present a binding limitative thesis about knowledge. But if
reason is necessarily constrained by contingency, it should be unable
to make universal claims about such constraint. Or to use words ofEmil
Fackenheim cited by Page, "the reduction to historicity, were it total,
could not come to consciousness" (108). The fact that PH has "no right
to its universal idiom" (110) precipitates the freefall into nihilism so
evident in Rorty's writing, where the only constraints on thought arise
from the "vocabularies" we happen to use. Ifthis is all we have, how can
Rorty say others should alter their vocabularies to suit his? More
moderate "conciliatory pragmatists" like Margolis wish to assure
thought of a common "interim stability" without reduction to chaos,
but lacking any grasp of the universal they cannot carry this off
Yet Page does not finish off PH as quickly as this suggests.
Interestingly, he does not pursue the suggestion of Strauss that PH
must implicitly, to avoid blatant self-refutation, assume a quasiHegelian absolute moment of comprehensive insight. But he attributes to PH a more subtle third possibility, a Kantian type of strategy
which I believe is more to the point. PH need not, it seems, grant a
special exemption giving knowledge-status to its own universal claim
if that claim presumes only that the universal constraint on reason is
intelligible, while not knowable. The universal claim is then a "regulative ideal" grounded not in theoretical insight but in alleged practical necessity. There is then no outright self-contradiction in PH if
it makes a "distinction between the historicist scenario and human
knowledge of the scenario" (93). Inevitable parochiality militates
against universal knowledge-claims, but not against universal practical-regulative claims. Surely something like this has to be the ground
for the striking fact that historicists have not been much disturbed by
all of the talk since Husser! of their apparent self-refutation. But this
does entail that ultimately PH is based on a "leap of faith" to its
universal claim (96).
�VELKLEY
95
This "practical faith" at the basis of PH is a fatal weakness in Page's
eyes. His argument against it, at one point, is similar to Hegel's
argument against Kant's claim that practical reason has primacy. In
other words, Page is at times inclined to refute the claim that rational
necessities are available to us through self-knowledge without noetic
adequacy to reality. Indeed Page's strong sympathy for Hegel is quite
apparent. Hegel's thought, of course, is not an instance of PH since
he regards reason's historical parochiality as only provisional. Hegel,
unlike PH, has more right to the universal idiom that stipulates
reason's being conditioned by time and history; he has a metaphysics
of time that can undergird such an idiom. Absolute knowing avoids
the vitiating effects of inescapable contingency. As when Hegel
criticizes Kant, Page argues against PH that its assertion of a limit to
reason implies that it knows something beyond that limit. Or, limitdrawing implies a metaphysical stance (absolute knowledge of reason's nature) that PH tries, at the same time, to disavow.
But perhaps the real point is this: One cannot allege the necessity
of a universal practical-regulative idea without having some knowledge of reason as requiring it. This knowledge (contra Hegel) may
imply only knowledge of some feature of human reason without any
more comprehensive metaphysics, thus without absolute knowledge
of human reason. But it is knowledge of a universal all the same, and
to rely on it contradicts historicist claims of pervasive contingency.
PH, it could be said, inconsequently grafts a universal Kantian
regulative idea on unrestricted cultural relativism. Its alleged "leap of
faith" is a practical ideal that makes sense only as a rational insight
about reason's nature, which PH should be unable to allow itself. On
the other hand PH will not refute itself if it makes a true leap offaith
with respect to something radically particular (insight about particular deities, say). But then it will also not be a philosophical doctrine
about knowledge and reason.
N
In my view the most interesting and effective part of Page's
account of PH is his challenge to it on the non-Hegelian ground
(without any move toward FP as the claim of noetic adequacy to
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
reality) that it simply misrepresents human reason. The critique is
grounded in self-knowledge. At these points Page indicates that the
issue revolves around the practical imperative' governing PH and
distorting reason's potentiality. What is that imperative? Injunctions
against trying "to escape history" come up most frequently (50, 66,
71). These are related to calls to "avoid fatuous abstractions of
rationalistic and transcendental thinking" (84) and to proposals for
"taming reason" in its drive for metaphysical knowledge (77). Gadamer states the broad theme with learning and eloquence when he
counsels philosophical thinking to strive for "the sense of what is
feasible, possible, correct, here and now," in connection with the
Enlightenment's misguided critique of prejudice (63, 68).
Such pronouncements show that recent manifestations of PH
continue the efforts ofVico, Hume, Burke and Herder to reconcile
theory and practice by appeals to the primacy of custom, tradition,
and folk-wisdom against the disruptive speculations ofFP. In reality,
those efforts were continuing the modern cause of Bacon and
Descartes by other means: to bring philosophical speculation
down to earth through harnessing theory to the relief of man's
estate. The reaction in many eighteenth century authors against
the new mathematical natural philosophy and attendant distortions
of moral and political discourse was not, however, a rejection of
the basic universalist and humanitarian telos governing modern
philosophy. By attempting to make that project politically more prudent
and "responsible," thinkers like Hume and Burke turned to "history"
as the proper realm of action, the true "home," for human reason.
A further element in PH since Hegel, however, is the absorption
of the Idealist notions of freedom originally inspired by Rousseau,
with their claim to satisfy the deepest longings of FP. Absolute
unity and totality of knowledge is, in Kant's formulation, attainable
only through an account of reason as the spontaneous power of
self-determination that projects ultimate ends. This emphasis on
freedom as the only possible source of ends is what gives the postIdealist tradition of PH its particular radicality and stringency, and
what enables it to pose as the "renovation" of philosophy: practical
reason is the true metaphysics. Hegel is the figure who brings this
new account of freedom as the highest point of metaphysics into full
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97
identity with history as the self-development of Geist. Thus in his
account of political life as Objective Spirit or Sittlichkeit, Hegel
reconciles the counterrevolutionary critique of "abstract thinking"
in Burke and others with the revolutionary implications of autonomy
in Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte.
To draw together these historical reflections, one could say that
historicist thinking arises out of a twofold failure in the original
modern effort to reconcile theory and practice, centering on its
account of nature: The new account of nature failed as a basis for
"phenomenological" accounts ofhuman moral-political practice and
discourse, and it failed as a source of "metaphysical" concepts of
ultimate ends for reason. Both failures could be viewed as teleological
deficiencies in the modern account of nature.
While Page does not explore this philosophical background to
speculative Idealism, the reconciliation of theoretical reason with the
requirements of practice is central to his reading of Hegel. This
philosopher "seeks to reconcile reason's moment of negativity, its
infinite freedom from the given with the bounds ... of the here and
now"(155); Hegel confronts the "uncanny restlessness" of reason,
"the immediate negativity of reflective, critical intelligence" that
"produces a sense of homelessness" (161). By embedding critical
reason in an historical context it cannot transcend, and arguing that
spirit gradually evolves a context for complete self-knowing, Hegel's
doctrine produces a profound sense of reason being at home in the
world. Unlike PH, which ties reason inescapably to contingency, the
"noetic adequacy" of Hegel's logic can consistently ground the coincidence of reason and history. Page all the same questions that claim
to adequacy, or Hegel's assertion of knowing that philosophy is
necesarily concordant with the fate of the political community in
which it arises (199-200).
This critique of Hegel brings to the fore the heart of Page's
argument with PH. This is not PH's self-contradiction, or its failure
to attain a noetically adequate account of reality. What PH shares with
Hegel (who lacks PH's metaphysical weakness) is the effort to
domesticate the infinity of reason. On this issue even Hobbes has
things better, for he grasps the character of human "rational imagination" distinguishing it from animal sensitive imagination: "the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ability to picture as yet unrealized possibilities" (110). Drawing the
same lesson about reason from mathematics, Page argues that it is
"incoherent to combine finitude as inevitable parochiality with the
capacity to envision a totality of possibility" (111-112). But another
aspect of infinity comes into focus, for which Plato, not Hobbes, is
the authority, when Page asserts "there is no escape from the imperative toward illumination, toward seeing by the light of the Good"
(123); simply to think the better "is to have an idea that creates an
infinite distance, since the good thus becomes intelligible" (153; also
79). In sum, reason and speech institute a human distancing on the
world which in principle has no limits. Such potential for distancing
is never exhausted by the concrete actualizations of reason in history.
The "betrayal of First Philosophy" is, it turns out, PH's evasion-for
the most part-of this potential, not its rejection of metaphysics of
first causes of being.
Indeed, if I understand Page correctly, this infinity of reason is
incompatible with attaining the ideal of noetic adequacy to reality.
The version ofFP Page defends is hence not "Platonistic," but more
truly Platonic (131, 154) .5 This enables Page to speak highly of claims
in PH about "the hermeneutic character of human experience, the
openness of inquiry and the nonalgorithmic character of progress,
the value of discourse's nontheoretical ends, and the rationality tacit
in tradition" (128). In the final analysis, Page is actually closer to
Heidegger than to Hegel. Page thus credits Heidegger with having
an acute sense of the negativity of reason or the radical freedom of
philosophy, which places Heidegger poles apart from Gadamer's
"good-natured optimism" about philosophy's accommodation with
the present. Heidegger is more Socratic in avowing an element of
irremovable homelessness in reason (150-155).
Yet Heidegger also is not true to his own insight when he insists
on "fated" constraints over reason's openness, such that man as the
site of Being's dual concealment-unconcealment loses any destiny
of his own in Heidegger's later thought (152). Page expresses admiration for Being and Times transcendental regress to the conditions
of experience in the temporality of care, but questions the move
already in this work toward regarding all objects of care as finite,
temporal and mortal (147-149). Why must Heidegger suppress the
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99
infinity of reason with the demand that every chosen fate be "local"?
Heidegger encounters a clash of two imperatives: the infinite striving
for the Good (the imperative to question the given), and the refusal
to escape history (the imperative to affirm the given). His choice
finally is for the second. What is the ground for that choice?
In my estimation the sentence that sheds most light on this matter is
Page's reflection (with reference to Plato's Phaedrus) that Heidegger
"reserves for philosophers the role of poet-prophet, following essentially in the footsteps of Nietzsche, who conceived the strategy of
hiding philosophy's negativity in art.Amorfoti is the evident progenitor of Gelassenheit, though it serves a more vigorous sense of
purpose" (152). This suggests that the deepest (hence less prevalent)
level of PH is not the turn to practical reason that evades the infinity
of reason, but the turn to art that would both transform and conceal,
but not deny, infinity. Nietzsche and Heidegger suppose that only
as poetic can philosophy be at home with homelessness, with philosophy's radical freedom. The parochiality of poetic dwelling is then
the necessary mask (but not the whole point) of philosophy; the
philosopher sees through and past this mask in the very act of
assuming it. Yet one may still inquire: is then the philosopher-poet's
insight not universal and in the spirit of First Philosophy?
Notes:
1. See S. Rosen, The Question of Being: A Reversal ofHeidegger (New
Haven, 1993), p. 37: "Strictly speaking, Aristotle's doctrine of
thinking casts no light on how individual human beings ('substances' in the earlier terminology) are able to cognize the forms
that (in some sense or another) are universally enacted, not by
their particular intellectual faculties, but Gy the propertyless or
formless nous."
2. See G. Gentile, Giordano Bruno e il pensiero del Renascimento
(Florence, 1925), 224-248; Machiavelli,Discorsi I, 3; Bacon,Novum Organum I, 84; Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des
Himmels, III; compare with Plato, Statesman 268d-274e. From
Fontenelle'sDigression sur les anciens et les modernes(1688) Gentile
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100
quotes a passage that shows how such reflections may relate to
later notions ofhistory as self-actualizing Weltgeist: "U n bon esprit
cultive est, pour ansi dire, compose de tous les esprits des siecles
precedentes; ce n'est qu'un meme esprit qui s'est cultive pendant
tout ce temps-!a."
3. L. Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 145-46:
"Human nature is one thing, virtue or the perfection of human
nature is another. The definite character of the virtues and, in
particular, of justice cannot be deduced from human nature.
Human nature 'is' in a different manner than its perfection or
virtue."
4. See amongmanyT. Nagel, "~ubjective and Objective," in Mortal
Questions (Cambridge UK, i979);]. Searle, Mind, Brains, and
Science (Cambridge MA, 1984). For recent entries in this debate,
see H. Putnam's review of Galen Strawson,Mental Reality, in
London Review of Books, 18/3 (8 February, 1996).
5. Also as regards the ideal of noetic self-adequacy, Page might
acknowledge more difficulty in its attainment on non-historicist
grounds. For some thoughts on this see P. Dews, "Modernity,
Self-Consciousness and the Scope of Philosophy: Jiirgen Habermas and Dieter Henrich in Debate," in The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy (London, 1995).
�i._·_
~
To See The World Profoundly:
The Films Of Robert Bresson
Shmuel Ben-Gad
Learning to see-habituating the eye to repose, to
patience, to letting things come to it; learning to
defer judgement, to investigate and comprehend
the individual case in all its aspects. This is the
first preliminary schooling in spirituality...
Friedrich Nietzsche
That a filmmaker can lift us to these levels of
contemplation and speculation is proof of that
filmmaker's greatness.
Andrew Sarris
Despite awards and high critical praise, the films of French minimalist Robert Bresson are screened much more rarely in the U.S. than
those of many other directors of art films. However, there seems to
be something of a Bresson boom oflate.In 1994,L'Argent (1983), an
adaptation of a Tolstoy short story, became available in subtitled
video; that was followed by Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945),
based upon a work by Diderot, and Lancelot duLac (1974) in 1995;
and in 1996 we have seen the similar release of Une Femme Douce
(1969). He has made fourteen films in all, among which are two
based upon works by Dostoevsky and two upon works by Georges
Bernanos. He first attained his mature style in his fourth film, Diary
of a Country Priest (1950), a style which he refined until it reached
rarified heights in L 'Argent.
What sets Bresson's work apart from that of virtually every other
director is his insistence on filming only "real things." As he himself
has written in his Notes sur le Cinematographe(1975), "To create is not
to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships
between persons and things which are, and as they are." (Italics are
Shmuel Ben-Gad is a librarian at George Washington University and the author of
"Robert Bresson: A Bibliography ofWorks By and About Him, 1981-1993," which
appeared in the Bulletin ofBibliography.
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THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
in the original.) His minimalism is really a way of not "deforming"
reality but of allowing us to concentrate on the real persons and things
he presents to us. Indeed his films are a series of images of remarkable
purity. Because he eschews mood music, as well as expressive camera
angles and movements, and pares away inessential elements from his
compositions and dialogue, he achieves what he calls "insignificant
(non-significant) images."
Wyndham Lewis can, I think, help us understand what this means.
In his book Men Without Art, Lewis defends what he calls an "external"
approach to art, in particular, to literature. He writes that if authors
who relate their narratives internally-that is, by letting readers "into
the minds of the charatters" (like James Joyce or Henry
James)-were painters, their works would consist of "plastic
units ...suffused with romantic coloration." They would be overcharged with literary symbolism; their psyches would have got the
better of their Gestalt-the result a sentiment, rather than an expressive form." These imagined paintings by James and Joyce are the
exact opposite of Bresson's films. In Bresson's minimalistic stylization-which is nothing if not rigorous form-there is an intense
concentration on essential images but no symbolism, no romanticism, no spectacle. Instead, carefully chosen, spare images follow one
upon the other and affect one another. It is precisely through this
method that Bresson's rigorous formalism is ultimately moving. He
achieves emotional resonance not through expressive "coding" or
rendering of images that provide the audience with cues both for
interpreting and reacting to the images, but through a cool yet
intense presentation of uncluttered compositions of images and
natural sounds in a certain order.
Br.esson also insists on realism in a less subtle way, namely, in his
avoidance of acting. He does not use actors, and refers to the people
who appear in his films as "models." Through extremely precise
direction of speech, movement, and gesture, and also much repetition before shooting scenes, he manages to have his models move
and speak in an automatic way, that is to say, without attempting
either to project or suppress emotion. \lllhile Bresson recognizes the
legitimacy of acting in the theater, he does not approve of it in films,
where he regards it as "inventing" or "deforming" persons. According
�BEN-GAD
103
to him, it violates the particularity and purpose of the cinema-the
most realistic of the arts-which is to show realities. Turning to his
"Notes" once again, we read: ''What our eyes and ears require is not the
realistic persona but the real person." And again, concerning models:
"Movement from the exterior to the interior. (Actors: movement from
the interior to the exterior.)" Acting is the projection of simulacra of
emotions that the actor does not feel. It is a simulation meant to make
visible and obvious what the character is supposedly thinking and feeling.
There is a credibility to Bresson's models: They are like people we meet
in life, more or less opaque creatures who speak, move, and gesture.
Bresson believes, and I concur, that the words he has his models utter
and the movements and gestures he has them make in an automatic,
non-intentional way, invariably, if subtly, evoke human depths because
the models, after all, are human beings. Acting, on the other hand, no
matter how naturalistic, actively deforms or invents by putting an overlay
or filter over the person, presenting a simplification of a human being and
not allowing the camera to capture the actor's human depths. Thus what
Bresson sees as the essence of filmic art, the achievement of the creative
transformation involved in all art through the interplay of images of real
things, is destroyed by the artifice of acting. For Bresson, then, acting is,
like mood music and expressive camera work, just one more way of
deforming reality or inventing that has to be avoided
Bresson's filmic universe is one of real, simply presented persons,
objects, and sounds (no one uses the soundtrack more effectively
than he), and each thing that is observed or heard is granted its own
integrity; yet it is also wrapped up in the same mysterious realm as
all the other items. It is a part of the genius of Bresson, through his
composition of images and ordering of their presentation, that he
discovers and captures the subtle strangeness of the mundane. His
spare presentation of objects manages to reveal their essences and the
mystery attached to them. As a whole, the universe he presents is a quiet,
austere, mysterious one with the pervasive mysterious atmosphere
evoked by the lack of acting and also ofany other clues to, or explanations
of, psychology and motivation, as well as by the remarkably unyielding concentration on bodies and objects. His universe seems cold
and indifferent and also pregnant with possibilities, dominated by
fate and with room for human freedom. It is, in fine, as ambiguous,
�104
THE ST.JOHN'S REVIEW
because as opaque, as the people in his films. In its ambiguity it is
both frightening and awe-inspiring. Regarding story line, unlike
Antonioni and the later Godard, Bresson's films have strong plots,
although they are presented elliptically. Yet, ultimately, plot is in
service of the minimalistic style, not vice versa.
While recognizing full well that Bresson's films are not at all
didactic, it seems to me that in them Bresson provides us with a way
of seeing, of relating to, the world. Bresson's filmic art, in fact, is a
way of seeing. Whatever his personal belief concerning what may lie
behind the images the world presents to us (and Bresson, a Christian,
presumably believes in invisible realities as do, among others, more
traditionally-minded Jews), in his films he has a profound respect for
this "surface", if you will, of r eality. That his austere, "external," and
1
minimalistic style creates films of such passion (however restrained)
and authentic interiority indicates, it seems to me, the only way for
us to try to understand the world, to try to see it most profoundly.
We do this not by avoiding or annihilating or even seeing through
the images the world presents to us; we do it, on the contrary, by
paying the closest attention to those images, by concentrating on
seeing them with supreme clarity, and by doing so without any prior
assumptions, which tend to cause us to discover only what we already
think we know. (In an interview in which he discussed his deliberate
decision not to explain, or even hint at, motivations and psychology
of characters in his films, Bresson acutely remarked, "The psychologist discovers only what he can explain. I explain nothing.")
Bresson's art has often been called "spiritual," but I am inclined to
think of it as highly materialist in that, as I have noted, it is most
respectful of material reality. (What I mean may be illustrated by a
notable instance in which his adaptation of the plot of his source
material coincides with his materialist techniques. In the novel
Diary of a Country Priest by Bernanos, the central character has a
religious vision while walking alone. Shortly after that he faints and
is assisted by a girl from his catechism class. In his film version,
Bresson conflates the two incidents so that a vision never occurs. The
priest faints and thinks he is having a supernatural visitation, but it
turns out to be the girl kindly helping him in his need.) We know
what ·we see. The more intensely and clearly we see, the more deeply
�BEN-GAD
105
we know. What I call Bresson's materialist art, with its emphasis upon
unadorned, undramatized images, is very far from a playful postmodern celebration of the superficial that provides striking images
and spectacles in order to tease or overwhelm the visual sense. Rather,
his precise, ordered presentation of carefully chosen and composed
non-significant images invites the viewer to what Andrew Sarris calls
"contemplation," though not a contemplation of vague, spiritual
notions. It is rather, at least at first, of physical realities like faces and
hands, doorways, and axes. If anything-"spiritual" or otherwise--exists beneath or behind material reality, if physical reality is
in fact a surface, then the only possibility ofknowingthis other reality
will be through a profound gaze at this surface. I want to be clear
·here that I am not claiming, or even trying to describe or explicate
Bresson's own philosophy. It may be that he thinks the only way to
indicate supernatural realities in filmic art is through an intensely
materialist method, but believes some other ways of perceiving such
realities exist in life. Yeti believe that a work of art does have a certain
autonomy from its creator and thus I am trying here to understand
and explicate what Bresson's films show us as films, not what
Bresson the man may believe.
In Bresson's films (and the purer his art has become the more this is
true) persons and objects are neither explained nor interpreted; nor is
the universe which comprises them. We are presented tales whose
meanings are left as unexplained as are the motives of the people in
them. As Tom Milne, the fine English film critic, has said of one of
Bresson's greatest films, Une Femme Douce, "By the end, in a sense, one
is no wiser than before. Was it because he [the husband]loved her too
much or too little, because he gave her too little money or too much,
because he felt she was too good for him or not good enough? The
extraordinary thing about the film is that any or all of these interpretations can be read into it ... " (This first of his films in color is based
upon a Dostoevsky tale which deals with the suicide of a young wife)
I have said that in my opinion Bresson's films provide us with a
way of seeing, of relating to the world, and I have already discussed
what I think that way of seeing is-namely, careful, contemplative
attention to the essence of physical realities without prior assumptions.
But relating to reality, as shown in Bresson's films, also involves, I think,
�106
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
clearly recognizing the deeply enigmatic nature of what is real. To
interpret is to impose meaning rather than to perceive it. I dare say
that in Bresson's filmic universe there are no interpretations, only
facts; in it, to perceive is to become aware how enigmatic is the
universe and the human beings who dwell therein.
In addition to being considered a spiritual director, Bresson is also
considered a dark, pessimistic one (and this is not, of course, a
contradiction). The obvious reason for this is that conventional
happy endings are rare in his films. Yet it seems to me that his
rigorous minimalism and materialist method, which amazingly yield
the most credible sense of mystery, are also causes. In an interview
Bresson replied to the characterization of his films as pessimistic by
saying, "The word 'pessimis~' bothers me because it is often used
instead of the word 'lucidity'.' Many people are uncomfortable with
lucidity. Many wish to interpret the sense of all-encompassing
mystery in Bresson's films as intimations of an invisible reality
behind the material universe and thus as offering hope. Yet I think
it must be recognized even by such viewers that, if indeed there are
such hints of the invisible in the films, both the hints and the realities
are grand and awesome, not mawkish or easily comforting, and that
the way to knowledge of them can be quite terrible. It is a widespread
and natural phenomenon for people to seek some escape from
materiality and its concomitant, death, and to look for hope in
spiritual realities. But, in my opinion, to avoid materiality in this
search is to fall into sentimentality at best and lunacy at worst. (It is
interesting, at least for me, to recall that in the Jewish religious
tradition speculations about redemption are quite varied but that one
of them, and it is perhaps the oldest, portrays redemption in rather
material terms: Jewish sovereignty over the entire Land oflsrael and
the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.) Bresson's art, it seems
to me, is rooted in the material and lucidly recognizes the importance
of this "surface" of reality. It recognizes the resulting inescapably
enigmatic nature of the universe to human beings. Bresson, an artist
of the very highest order in my judgement, does not offer meanings,
explanations, or answers but rather lucidity, reality, and profound
mystery. Indeed I am bold to say that Bresson's films are not merely
the most lucid made, they are, in essence, lucidity itself.
�
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLIV, number two (1998)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm Von Oppen
foe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Anne McShane
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Harvey
Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions
are $15.00 for three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes
appear semi-annually rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays,
stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspon~
dence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per issue, from the St.
John's College Bookstore.
©1998 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or
in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
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��Contents
Essays and Lectures
Infinite Reflections
1
Peter Suber
Euripides among the Athenians .
61
Michael Davis
Ugolino's Tale: .
Eating the Flesh
83
Victor Lee Austin
The Comedy of Christian Existence:
On Kierkegaard' s Resolution of
Hegel's Paradox
97
Johann A. Klassen
Reviews
Making the Consititution
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Robert A. Goldwin's From Parchment to Power
Murray Dry
�I
I
�i
~
Infinite Reflections
Peter Suber
Galileo' s Paradox
Here's a paradox of infinity noticed by Galileo in 1638. It seems
that the even numbers are as numerous as the evens and the odds
put together. Why? Because they can be put into one-to-one
correspondence. The evens and odds put together are called the
natural numbers. The first even number and the first natural
number can be paired; the second even and the second natural can
be paired, and so on. When two finite sets can be put into
one-to-one correspondence in this way, they always have the same
number of members.
Supporting this conclusion from another direction is our intuition that "infinity is infinity," or that all infinite sets are the same
size. If we can speak of infinite sets as having some number of
members, then this intuition tells us that all infinite sets have the
same number of members.
Galileo' s paradox is paradoxical because this intuitive view that
the two sets are the same size violates another intuition which is
just as strong. Clearly, the even numbers seem less numerous than
the natural numbers, half as numerous to be precise. Why? Because we can obtain the evens by starting with the naturals and
deleting every other member. Needless to say, when we delete
every other member of a finite set, the result is a set which is half
as numerous as the original set.
If the evens and the naturals were finite sets, then these two
verdicts would form a strict contradiction. If two finite sets can
be put into one-to-one correspondence, then they have the same
number of members; but if one can be produced by deleting every
other member of the other, then they do not have the same
Peter Suber is Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College.
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
number of members and cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence. So do we have a strict contradiction here?
The evens and the naturals are not finite bur infinite sets. By
this I only mean that counting them one at a rime will never cqme
to the end; there is no greatest even number, and no greatest
natural number.
At this point let's intr6duce the technical term cardinality to refer
to the number of members in a set. For example, the set of fingers
on one hand has cardinality five. The set of faces on Mr. Rushmore
has cardinality four. The set of Stooges has cardinality three.
In the language of cardinality, we may say that any two sets that
can be pur into one-to-one correspondence are equal in cardinality;
they have the same number of members. This is easily verified for
finite sets, and we will regard it as the definition of equal magnitude
for infinite sets. Using the same language of cardinality, our intuition
has given us two additional propositions: (1) that all infinite sets are
equal in cardinality, 1 and (2) that if one set can be obtained by
deleting members of another, then they have unequal cardinalities.
The latter verdict can be paraphrased rhus: some infinite sets have a
larger cardinality than other infinite sets, or not all infinite sets are
equal in cardinality. Therefore, these two verdicts of intuition directly
contradict one another and cannot both be true.
Let us introduce one more technical term, our last for a long
rime. One set is a subset of a second set if all irs members belong to
the second set. It is a proper subset if all irs members belong to that
second set and if it omits or excludes some of the members of that
second set. The evens are a proper subset of the naturals because they
form a .subset of the naturals which omits some naturals, namely,
the odds. The set of Moe and Larry makes a proper subset of Stooges
because Moe and Larry are some bur not all the Stooges; they omit
a Stooge, namely, Curly. With this terminology, we can offer one
more paraphrase of the second verdict of intuition: a set must have
a larger cardinality than irs proper subsets.
If we add Curly to the set of Moe and Larry, then the set grows
in cardinality from two to three, What would happen if we added
�SUBER
3
the odd numbers to the set of the even numbers? Would the set
grow in cardinality, or would it retain the same cardinality as the
set of evens alone? This is the original question in a new form.
Thefirst verdict of intuition says no; all infinite sets are equal in
cardinality, so adding the evens to the odds would not increase
cardinality. The second verdict of intuition says yes, for this
verdict is just another way of saying that adding new members to
a given set, and especially adding an infinite number of new
members, will always increase cardinality.
So which verdict is correct? Before we answer this question,
note that we cannot have it both ways. Either all infinite sets are
equal in cardinality, or all infinite sets have a larger cardinality
than their proper subsets, but not both. Therefore, the truth on
this question will violate at least one of our intuitions. For my
purposes here, this lesson is at least as important as the mathematical details of the correct answer, for it implies that we should
not trust our intuitions in this domain, nor should we expect to
confirm mathematical results about infinity with our intuitions.
Some true results will violate our intuitions and some false results
will be ratified by them.
Now we can point out that both the verdicts ofintuition are false.
First, it is false that all infinite sets are equal in cardinality. We can
prove that some infinities are larger than others (for example, see
Theorems 3, 4, 5, and 16 in the Appendix). Second, it is false that
all sets have a larger cardinality than their proper subsets. We can
prove that some additions to a given set, even infinite additions, do
not increase the cardinality of the given set (for example, see
Theorems 1, 2, 7, 14, 15, 19, and 22 in the Appendix).
In his original statement of the paradox, Galileo did not use the
even numbers; he used the perfect squares, 0, 1, 4, 9, 16 .... 2 Like
the evens, this set is infinite and the set of its natural number
omissions is also infinite. But it seems much less likely than the
even numbers to equal the naturals in cardinality because, as we
move along the series of squares, the interval between members
becomes increasingly large. In fact, as we move outward the ratio
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of perfect squares to natural numbers approaches zero. The evens
never peter out, but the squares become infinitely sparse.
Nevertheless, we can put the natural numbers and the perfect
squares into one-to-one correspondence. Every distinct natural
number has a distinct perfect square; and every distinct square
number has a distinct natural number as its square root. Hence every
member of one sequence has a unique counterpart on the other,
and vice versa. (The same is true of the evens and the naturals.)
This fact is the key to the solution. If the two sets can be put into
one-to-one correspondence, then they have the same cardinality, by
definition. One intuition ratified this result (namely, that all infinite sets are equal in cardinality) and one opposed it (namely, that
all infinite sets have a greater cardinality than their proper subsets).
Both intuitions are false in general, but one was accidentally true in
this case. The lesson for intuition is: get used to it.
Galileo' s paradox is paradoxical only in the weak sense: it
violates our intuitions. It is not a contradiction. It is weird and
amazing; it is literally counterintuitive; bur it is not contradictory.
We were able to choose between the competing intuitions and
eliminate the appearance of contradiction once we held fast to the
definition of equal cardinality for infinite sets provided by the
principle of one-to-one correspondence.
This innovation is due to Georg Cantor, as is set theory itself,
the theory of infinite sets, and the modern concept of infinite
cardinality. Cantor lived from 1845 to 1918, and worked out his
theory of infinite sets from roughly 1870 to 1895. Cantor's verdict
is that the set of even numbers, the set of odd numbers, the set of
perfect squares, and the set of all the natural numbers have the
same cardinality. The key to this solution is simply to define equal
cardinality through one-to-one correspondence, and then to show
that these sets can be put into one-to-one correspondence with
one another. Similarly, we can prove that some infinite sets have
a larger cardinality than others by showing that they cannot be
put into one-to-one correspondence.
�SUBER
5
You may know that many mathematicians and philosophers
have objected to the very idea of a completed or actual infinity, as
opposed to a potential infinity. Cantor's mathematics, however,
boldly posits complete infinities. The natural numbers make a
potential infinity when we think of counting them out, and never
coming to an end; we could always add one more and keep going.
They constitute a completed or actual infinity when they are all
bundled together and said to form a set of some definite cardinality. Cantor not only flew in the face of the traditional objection
to completed infinities, he used completed infinities in the form
of infinite sets as an intrinsic part of his solution to the classical
paradoxes of the infinite.
There are many other classical paradoxes of the infinite. But
Galileo' s is enough to get us started. The infinite has been a
perennial source of mathematical and philosophical wonder, in part
because of its enormity-anything that large is grand, and provokes
awe and contemplation-and in part because of the paradoxes like
Galileo's. Infinity seems impossible to tame intellectually, and to
bring within the confines of human understanding. I will argue,
however, that Cantor has tamed it. The good news is that Cantor's
mathematics makes infinity clear and consistent but does nothing
to reduce the awe-inspiring grandeur of it.
I'll offer reflections on just a handful of the specific questions
mathematicians and philosophers have asked about infinity over
the centuries. Has modern mathematics allowed us to speak
coherently of "complete" or "actual" infinities, as opposed to
merely "potential" ones? Is the very idea of an infinite set (which
can be put into one-to-one correspondence with some of its proper
subsets) self-contradictory? Can infinite collections can be "imagined" or only "conceived" or not even that? Do we have an idea
of infinity or only the idea of finitude and its negation? I will
discuss how we go about "unlearning" some intuitions, cultivated
in our experience of the finite, which make some consistent and
demonstrable results about the infinite literally counterintuitive.
Finally, I will examine why the deep explorers of the infinite, even
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in its strictly mathematical forms, recurringly find it to be (in
Kant's term) sublime.
If I could presuppose that all of you knew the basic theorems
of Cantor's transfinite arithmetic, then this essay could either be
shorter or' deeper or both. But I don't want to spend my time
summarizing them for you in place of the fascinating philosophy
that reflects upon them,; My solution is to summarize only a few
of the mathematical proofs about infinite sets, and otherwise to
refer to the basic theorems without proof. I will will leave in an
appendix all the theorems I cite and their proofs.
Contradictory or Counterintuitive?
Cantor forces us to see that the intuitive notion of a set's size is
ambiguous. When we say that one set is smaller than another set,
we might mean two distinctly different things. First, we might mean
that the "smaller" set is a proper subset of the "larger" set. Second,
we might mean that one set has a smaller cardinality than the other
set in the sense that one-to-one correspondence between them fails.
These two notions of size are distinct and independent. A set
may be smaller than another set by one measure and not smaller
by the other measure. Galileo' s paradox is a perfect illustration.
The set of perfect squares is a proper subset of the set of natural
numbers; in that sense it is a "smaller'' set. However, the two sets
can be put into one-to-one correspondence; in that sense, it's not
smaller at all but the same "size."
With finite sets, these two notions of size always and necessarily
agree; that may be why they are so easy to confuse with one
another when we are dealing with infinite sets. I believe that all
the classical paradoxes of the infinite rest on just this confusion
of the two notions ~fa set's size, a symptom of the unwarranted
eJ<pectation that infinite magnitudes should behave like finite
magnitudes. The classical paradoxes set up two infinite sets which
are unequal by one test, but equal by the other, and present this
counterintuitive but consistent possibility as a contradiction or
impossibility. The classical objections to completed infinities3 rest
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on the same confusion. Those who argued that completed infinities are self-contradictory appeal to the apparent contradictions
contained in the classical paradoxes like Galileo' s. When we
recognize the two distinct and compatible notions of size which
are at work in these paradoxes, then, we show that the apparent
contradiction is not a real one, we dissolve the paradox, and we
answer the objections based on it against completed infinities.
To repeat, then, for the sake of explicitness: Cantor's solution
to Galileo' s paradox is that the set of perfect squares and the set
of natural numbers have the same cardinality even though one of
these sets is a proper subset of the other.
It follows-have courage!-that some infinite sets can be put
into one-to-one correspondence with proper subsets of themselves. This can never happen with finite sets. But it happens, for
example, with the natural numbers and its proper subset, the even
natural numbers, and again with the natural numbers and its
proper subset, the perfect squares.
The very idea that a set can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one of its proper subsets is deeply counterintuitive. If
you're feeling a barrier of resistance, this is probably the cause.
For example, an infinite set with this property will not grow in
cardinality as we add members to it, one at a time (see Theorem
7 in the Appendix), and will not shrink in cardinality as we
subtract members from it, one at a time (see Theorems 8 and 9 in
the Appendix).
For the sake of future discussion, let us say that a set that can
be put into one-to-one correspondence with at least one of its
proper subsets is self-nesting. (Unfortunately, mathematicians
have given no name to this property, so I have to invent one.)
Self-nesting sets seemed impossible or contradictory as soon as
they were conceived. In the sixth century, John Philoponous of
Alexandria argued that if the world were infinitely old, then an
infinite number of months would have passed. But thirty times as
many days would also have passed. But either the infinite number
of months and the infinite number of days are equal or unequal.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
If equal, then in our terms the infinite set of past days is self-nesting and can be put into one-to-one correspondence with its proper
subset, the infinite set of past months. If unequal, then there
would be· infinities of different sizes. Because Philoponous
thought both options contradictory, he concluded that the world
must be finitely old. 4
Cantor's theory faced,intense opposition in the late 19th century,
from mathematicians as well as from philosophers and theologians.
It wasn't just denied and disbelieved; it was hated. Yet despite this
heat, no opponent of the theory has been able to show that selfnesting is contradictory for infinite sets. The objections that selfnesting is contradictory for finite sets, or counterintuitive for
infinite sets, are clearly beside the point. Today, Cantor's theory is
standard mathematics even though there are still a few holdouts.
Beyond consistency, it has the virtue of eliminating the apparent
contradiction from puzzles like Galileo's paradox.
When a theory with these virtues is opposed by intuition, the
remedy is not to deny the theory but to unlearn our old intuitions.5 In the task of re-educating our intuitions, I've found three
·
strategies to be helpful.
First, study the proofs for the basic mathematical results. When
your intuition is opposed only by someone' s say-so, like mine or
a teacher's, then intuition can easily win-and perhaps in that
case, it ought to win. When it is opposed by an articulate chain
of reasoning, then it starts to give-and it ought to give.
Second, remember that our intuitions were cultivated by our
experience of finite sets: sets of fingers, sets of coins, sets of people.
And for finite sets, self-nesting is a flat contradiction. When we
deal with infinite sets, we must accept the fact that most of our
"common sense" or "rules of thumb" will either be inapplicable
or false, evolving as they did for the more tractable domains of
finite experience. This is not a license to disregard or negate our
intuitions, which are often valuable clues to mathematically coherent theories. It is simply a reason to put them to one side when
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they conflict with a consistent theory supported by strong proofs
which solves otherwise insoluble mathematical problems.
In the same vein, it is helpful to remember past cases in the
history of mathematics in which we mistook counterintuitive
ideas for contradictory ones. The preeminent examples are incommensurable quantities and instantaneous velocities; however, we
could also cite negative numbers, the denial of Euclid's parallel
postulate, and, more recently, incomputable numerical functions.
With the passage of time, the acceptance and utility of these ideas
have only increased, and their consistency has been more firmly
and clearly recognized, while the opposing intuitions have faded
away with the world-views which cultivated them.
Third, remember that our intuitions would not be satisfied any
better by rejecting Cantor's self-nesting solution to Galileo's
paradox. If we didn't accept Cantor's view that Galileo's two sets
had the same cardinality, then we'd have to accept the view that
they had unequal cardinalities. But this result would contradict
the intuitive principle that one-to-one correspondence establishes
equal cardinality. When we are at an impasse for intuition, then
intuition is no longer a helpful guide, since it pulls as much (or
as little) for one side as for the other. That is when we should be
looking for another guide, not clinging to the guide which has
disqualified itself.
Imagination v. Conception
We've seen that intuition disqualifies itself in this domain by
endorsing contradictory conclusions. Cantor's conclusions are rigorously proved, and so far (despite some strenuously motivated
effort), rigorous proof has not endorsed contradictory conclusions
about the infinite. This is one good reason to prefer proof to
intuition. The distinction between intuition and proof as reasons
for accepting a theory, and the inadequacy of intuition for dealing
with the infinite, ·have many consequences for the philosophy and
mathematics of the infinite. For example, even after acknowledging
the consistency of Cantor's theory, many people will still insist that
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
we know nothing about infinity. What they seem to mean is that
knowing requires some intuition, imagination, or visualization.
I think I understand the origin of this objection, but I also
believe it is easily answered. Just as our intuitions about sets,
subsets, and cardinality are cultivated by finite sets, where selfnesting is impossible, our ordinary knowledge of objects is limited
to finite numbers of objects of finite size. (In a moment I will look
at the question whether we ever experience anything that is truly
infinite.) We can vis.ualize objects of finite size and we can
visualize finite numbers of them. This means that virtually all of
our ordinary knowledge of objects is accompanied by this possibility of visualization. It's natural that we would come to expect
that anything we can know, we can also visualize.
Even if this expectation is legitimate for the finite, it is entirely
illegitimate for the infinite. Just as intuitions cultivated for the
finite are likely to be inapplicable or false of the infinite, so is the
expectation that we be able to visualize.
Descartes asks us to imagine, that is, visualize, a chiliagon or
1 ,000-sided regular polygon. 6 Can you do it? Try it right now.
Chances are, you are either visualizing something like a· 20-or
30-sided polygon and pretending it has 1,000 sides, or you are
visualizing a circle and pretending the sides are too small to see
with your mind's eye. We know exactly what a chiliagon is; we
can even compute the interior angle of its sides and, for a given
edge, its area and perimeter. But we cannot visualize one.
One reason I like Descartes's example is that it is finite. Philosophers who think the infinite utterly beyond human understanding often fail to notice that their arguments, once made
specific, also apply to very large finite magnitudes as well. We
cannot visualize infinitely many cherries in a tree, but neither can
we visualize a billion. Does that disqualify us from using billions
intelligibly and accurately?
To Descartes, the chiliagon thought-experiment proved that we
have at least two avenues to knowledge: imagination (which I've
been calling visualization) and conception. We can conceive the
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chiliagon, although we cannot imagine it. Once it is pointed out
with a concrete example like the chiliagon, this is undeniable and
we start to see other examples everywhere. To Descartes, the
distinction is more important in theology than in mathematics.
The greatest obstacle to true faith, he thinks, is the attempt to
imagine God when we can only conceive God.?
Let me return to set theory. The power s;t of a given set is the
set of all its subsets. For example, ifi have a set of Three Stooges,
then its power set is the set of all the subsets of Stooges I can make
from that set of three. There is the set {Moe, Curly}, the set {Moe,
Larry}, and the set {Curly, Larry}. There is also the set of {Moe}
alone, {Curly} alone, and of {Larry} alone. For technical reasons,
we say that every set is a subset of itself, and the null set is a subset
of every set. Hence we throw in {Moe, Curly, Larry} and {} to
boot. This makes eight. Any set of three objects-any set with a
cardinality of three-will have a power set of cardinality eight.
We can imagine-visualize-ma~y methods for systematically
drawing out all the subsets of a given finite set. These methods will
be extremely cumbersome for sets of cardinality 1,000, say, but each
method contains an algorithm that we can visualize working out.
Contemplate the set of natural numbers. Here is a set of infinite
cardinality. What is the cardinality of its power set?
We saw that the evens had the same cardinality as the naturals,
despite appearances to the contrary. We might cautiously generalize that all infinite sets have the same cardinality, but here we
find a counter-example. Cantor found an elegant proof that the
power set of any set, finite or infinite, possesses a greater cardinality than the original set; this important result is simply called
Cantor's Theorem.
It has a short proof of marvelous beauty. The proof is negative,
which means that Cantor assumed the negation of his conclusion
and derived a contradiction from it. Since the theorem works for
any arbitrary set, let's apply it to the set of natural numbers. So,
to set up the negative proof, let us assume that the set of natural
numbers and its power set have the same cardinality. If so, then
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
they can be put into one-to-one correspondence. Let us suppose
we have done so (even though we have no idea how to do so).
Now, by hypothesis, each natural number is paired with exactly
one set of natural numbers, and vice versa. Some numbers will be
paired with sets which happen to contain them. For example, 2
might be paired with the set of even numbers. Let us call such
numbers happy, and all other numbers sad. Now the set of all sad
numbers is a bona fide set of natural numbers, and so has been
paired with some natural number in our infinite list of correspondences. Let's say it has been paired with x. Is x a happy number
or a sad one? At this point, I know you'll start to get a little dizzy.
That's good; it means you're following along. If x is sad, then
because it has been paired with the set of sad numbers, it has been
paired with set that includes it; but that means it would be happy.
But if x is happy, then it would be a member of the set to which
it has been paired; but because it has been paired with the set of
sad numbers, that means it would be sad. Hence, if x is happy,
then x would be sad, and if xis sad, then x would be happy. Our
assumption implied this contradiction, and so must be false. But
to deny our assumption is to conclude that the set of natural
numbers and its power set have different cardinalities. (See Theorem 4 in the Appendix.)
In my view, there are two great counterintuitive results in the
mathematics of the infinite. The first is that some infinite sets are
self-nesting. (It turns out that all are; see Theorem 10 in the
Appendix.) The second is that some infinities are larger-have a
greater cardinality-than others. (See Theorems 3, 4, 5, and 16
in the Appendix.) Now we have seen proofs for both results. The
first was proved by one-to-one correspondence, the second by a
technique that has been called diagonalization.
Cantor's Theorem is not very remarkable if we think only of
finite sets. Ofcourse for every finite set the power set is bigger than
the original. But for infinite sets Cantor's Theorem is the astounding proposition that for every infinite cardinality, there is a larger
one-namely, the power set of the first one. So if the cardinality
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of the set of natural numbers is one infinite number, and the
cardinality of its power set is a distinct, larger infinite number,
and the cardinality of its power set is a distinct, larger infinite
number, then it's clear that what Cantor has really proved is that
there exists an infinite sequence of infinite cardinal numbers.
Of this remarkable theorem and its remarkable proof, David
Hilbert said, "This appears to me to be the most admirable flower
of the mathematical intellect and one of the highest achievements
of purely rational human activity."
Infinity as a Positive Idea
Let us grant, then, that imagination and intuition are too feeble
to grasp infinity. It does not yet follow that conception is strong
enough, or indeed that any human faculty is strong enough. We
might understand infinity the way medieval Christian philosophers thought we understood God: via negativa, that is, by understanding what God, or infinity, is not. For example, I know what
it is like for a row of trees to come to an end. This exemplifies my
concept of finitude. Ifi say that an infinite row of trees is just like
the finite row "except that it never comes to an end," then I am
merely negating my concept of finitude.
Descartes, again, thought we did have a positive idea of infinity-three centuries before Cantor. This was important to him
because he thought that finite human resources could not suffice
to give us the idea of infinity, and therefore that the idea could
only have been given to us by an infinite being; in short, it was
part of another of his arguments for the existence of God. 8 He has
two theses here: first, that we do possess a positive idea of infinity,
and second, that we could not have obtained this idea from our
own finite experience or creativity. If both are true, this would be
important for just the reason he thought. But are they both true?
In a moment I will take up the question whether we ever
experience anything infinite. On the question whether we know
infinity positively, or just via negativa, Descartes is very short. He
argues that he would not know that he is finite or imperfect unless
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
he had prior, positive ideas of infinity and perfection.9 There are
many follow-up questions a skeptic would like to ask at this point,
but Descartes does not pause for them.
Descartes does pause to ask himself the question: Is it possible
that I am an infinite being, don't know it, and could therefore be
the source of my idea of infinity? 10 Although this is a terribly
interesting and important question, he is also very short with it.
After a brief!ook, he answers like Steve Martin in a Saturday Night
Live routine, "Naaaa!'
Etymologically, the word "infinite" is "non-finite." This supports that view that perhaps finitude is the primary notion here
and our concept of infinity is the negation of our concept of
finitude. But we can't get any mileage from etymologies in this
inquiry. Etymologically, the word "independent" is "non-dependent" as if unfreedom were the primary concept and freedom
derivative. But the word "unfreedom" is "non-freedom" as if
freedom were the primary concept after all. Similarly, the continuum is one of the premier examples of infinity in mathematics,
but it differs from other infinities like the rational number series
in being "unbroken" or "without gaps." This suggests that we only
know the continuum via negativa, by negating the idea of gaps;
but etymologically the terms "continuous" and "discontinuous"
suggest the opposite, that continuity is the primary concept here.
More telling than etymology is this exercise: define finitude. I
often teach a course at Earlham with a unit on the mathematics
of infinity, and every now and then I'll throw "finitude" or "finite
set" onto a quiz, as a term to define. Invariably, students lose more
points trying to define it precisely than they do when defining
various infinite cardinalities.
Do try this one at home, however. Define finitude with clarity
and precision. There are ways, even brief ways, but they usually
don't occur to people with no training in mathematics.
Infinity, by contrast, at least since Cantor, is easy to define with
clarity and precision. Remember that Cantor proved that some
infinite sets are self-nestin~, or can be put into one-to-one corre-
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spondence with at least one of their proper subsets. It's not hard
to prove that all infinite sets, in fact, are self-nesting. (See Theorem 10 in the Appendix.) And we already knew that only infinite
sets are self-nesting, or that no finite sets have this property.
Consequently, we can define infinite sets as just those which are
self-nesting. Correspondingly, we can define finite sets as just
those which are not.
Note the neat turning of tables here. Infinite sets have the
positive property of self-nesting; finite sets do not. Finitude is
defined via negativa. 11
Charles Peirce, in 1885, and Richard Dedekind, in 1888,
proposed to define infinity through self-nesting. 12 According to
this proposal, we don't know that infinite sets are self-nesting
because of some proof; we know it because infinite sets are defined
as those which are self-nesting. However, we tan prove that the
Peirce-Dedekind definition is equivalent to a more traditional one
by which we know infinitude rather than finitude via negativa, l3
and for me that fact makes the controversy about logical priority
or primacy merely scholastic.
What is not merely scholastic is that we have now reduced the
question whether we have a positive idea of infinity to the question
whether we have a positive idea of self-nesting. I suggest that we
do have such an idea, or can, if we study Cantor's transfinite
arithmetic. In my own experience, to understand self-nesting at
all is to understand it positively. I'm quite sure I don'tunderstand
it via negativa or as the negation of something else like "the failure
or impossibility of self-nesting." The failure or impossibility of
self-nesting definitely carries for me the status of a derivative idea,
one that never comes to mind when I think about self-nesting
unless I make a great effort.14
I realize that my reason derives from my experience putting sets
into one-to-one correspondence with proper subsets of themselves, and studying the works of others who have done the same;
therefore it begs the question somewhat. I'm saying that if you
study the mathematics of infinite sets, this positive idea will come,
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
although perhaps not quickly or in a form you could communicate
easily to those who have not undertaken a similar study. But if
you haven't studied Cantor this looks like hand-waving. I know
that cultists of every stripe say virtually the same thing: study' the
book of our inspirational founder and you too will see the light,
and until then shut up with your criticisms.
So let me try to do,·better. I think I can show that we have a
positive idea of infinity, in the form of self-nesting, and even that
self-nesting can be made somewhat intuitive or visualizable. I owe
the following idea to Josiah Royce, !5 one of the first philosophers
to make use of Cantor's mathematics. Imagine a perfect map of
England, say, somewhere in London. By a "perfect" map I mean
one which shows not only the cities and roads, but also the houses,
furniture, pennies behind the sofa cushions, bacteria, quarks-in
fact, every last particle of matter. Now if the map is perfect in this
sense, and if it is located in London, then somewhere on the map
there will be a perfect image of the map itself. Again, by "perfect ·
image" I mean that every detail of the outer map will appear on
the inner map. But if this is true, then like a hall of mirrors the
map within the map will also contain a perfect image of the map,
and so on ad infinitum.
To use Royce's term, the map will be self-representing. Of course
we can't actually make such a map, and it is useful to think of the
reasons why. One obstacle in our way is the fact that the pixels we
must use are larger than the smallest particles of matter we wish
to represent. It may seem that this fact would not stop us from
making a perfect map of England, but only require that the map
be larger than England. But if the map were larger than England,
then it could not be located inside England, and therefore could
not be self-representing or "perfect" in our sense.
Another obstacle in our way is that we can only arrange a finite
number of pixels to make a picture. Such a 'finitist' map could be
self-representing only imperfectly; if it didn't represent London
as a mere dot, it would represent the map within London as a mere
dot, or the map within the map within London. With only a finite
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number of pixels to use in composing our picture, we will inevitably run out of pixels before we run out of information. This
would not be a problem with an ordinary or non-self-representing
map. If we had as many pixels at our disposal as there are quarks
in England, then we could (in principle) arrange them to make a
perfect map of England down to the quark level-even if the
resulting map were larger than England. But once the map itself
is put inside England and becomes one of the landmarks to
represent on the map, then to be perfoct the map would have to
be perfectly self-representing and therefore infinitely nested; suddenly the number of pixels needed rises from finite to infinite.
Now what if we could make a picture using dimensionless
points as pixels, and use an infinite number of them? It is strange
and wonderful that Leibniz posits just these two conditions in the
Monadology (1714). In that work he outlines a new atomic theory
in which conventional atoms are replaced by monads, "the true
atoms of nature."l6 Monads differ from conventional atoms in
many ways, but the most important for our purposes is that they
have zero size. They are dimensionless points. And of course there
are infinitely many of them. This allows a set of monads to
represent England perfectly even if there are infinitely many
particles smaller than quarks which would have to appear on the
map. It also means that in Leibniz' s world it is physically possible
for some chunk of matter to achieve perfect self-representation,
the way England does in Royce's scenario. It might contain within
itself a perfect representation of itself, and hence an infinite series
of nested microcosms. But it might do better still: it might be a
perfect representation of the universe as a whole, including itself
as. one of the parts, and therefore contain infinitely many nested
perfect representations of itself and the universe. Leibniz thought
this was not only possible, but that every chunk of matter of every
size is a perfect mirror of the universe, of itself, and of all the other
perfect mirrors, in just this wayY
You don't have to agree with Leibniz that the world is really set
up this way-however, if truth is beauty, and beaury truth, then
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
there is a lot to be said for the idea. You only have to admit that
you grasp his theory, or Royce' s. 18 If you do, then you grasp the
essence of self-nesting, which is the essence of infinite cardinality.
You need no longer approach it via negativa.19
Do We Experience Anything Infinite?
So we agree with Ddscartes that we do possess a positive idea
of infinity. If Descartes is correct in his second thesis that we could
not have obtained the idea from our finite experience and creative
resources, then we feel the pressure he felt to posit an infinite
being. So let us face directly the question whether we experience
anything infinite.
The words "infinite" and "infinity" are often used loosely in
street English to suggest that we do experience infinites. For
example, we may say that a film is infinitely clever, a coral reef has
an infinite variety of wildlife, a spouse has infinite patience, or
that a vinyl upholstery cleaner has infinitely many applications.
(That's why it's called a miracle product.) Before cameras were
automated, they had a focal-length setting called "infinity," presumably for photographing the arrow Lucretius shot into the edge
of space. In these cases we speak loosely, and "infinity" means very
many or very large, perhaps indefinitely many or large. 20 On a
clear day the sky may seem infinitely deep, but it's really just a
wild blue yonder-an indefinitely deep "out there." 21
Do we ever experience something which is literally infinite? If
time, space, or matter are infinitely divisible, then to experience
a finite chunk of any one of them is to experience its infinity of
parts. Having said this, I would like to put to one side the question
whether time, space, or matter really are infinitely divisible. Not
only is it very thorny, it is unnecessary to answer the question on
the table. For even if time, space, and matter are infinitely divisible, we experience their infinite parts bundled into chunks most
of whose parts are indiscernible to us. When a movie runs at 24
frames p~r second, it appears continuous, its separate frames
indiscernible to us. We certainly experience 24 chunked frames,
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but not the 24-ness, or even the finitude, of the chunking. Once
the eye is fooled into seeing continuity, the number of frames per
second could increase to a billion, or to an infinite number, and
we would not notice the difference. 22 This is the sense in which
we could experience something infinite without experiencing its
infinitude. Similarly, if time, space, and matter were continuous
and infinitely divisible, ,then the spectacle of life would be like a
movie run at an (uncountably) infinite number of frames per
second; but while we would experience expanses, durations, and
objects with infinitely many parts, but we would not experience
the infinitude of those parts.
As the movie shows, the same is true offinite divisibility. If my
car has (say) 5,000 parts, I experience it as an object with many
parts; but I don't experience the 5,000-ness of the parts.
Motion seems to introduce new issues. If I open a pair of
scissors and close them again, then the blades produce an infinite
number of different angles, and in a sense I saw them all. But when
we think about it we realize the we are dealing with the same issues
all over again. First, an infinite number of distinct angles is
produced only if time and space are both continuous; if either one
is composed of irreducible quanta, then only a finite number of
angles is produced. Second, even if time and space are continuous,
and the angles infinite, we don't experience the infinitude of the
angles. This is shown by the fact that we cannot tell from the
experiment whether time and space are continuous; that is, we
cannot tell whether we saw an infinite or merely a huge finite
number of distinct angles.
Similarly, if space is continuous, then walking any distance at
all is to traverse an infinity of spatial units. Or if time is continuous, then it is to traverse an infinity of temporal units. But even
if so, we only experience the chunked, finite meter we traversed,
in the chunked finite second, not the infinitude of dimensionless
points inside them.23
When Descartes said we experience nothing infinite, I think he
meant that we see nothing infinite in any given scene, and nothing
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
infinite in a lifetime of scenes. But how do we know this? Because
we only live a finite time? Actually, it depends on how you count.
If you count in years or months or days or seconds, then yes, the
duration of our lives spans only a finite number of those units.
But if we divide time into dimensionless points, such as points on
a time line, then we live an infinite number of them-and we
would still do so even if we lived for only one second.
The same holds spatially within a given scene. Whether a scene
is finite depends on how we divide it. No panorama covers an
infinite number of miles or meters or nanometers. But every scene,
even a pinhead, covers an infinite number of dimensionless points
of space. Hamlet was thinking of something else at the time, but
he made this point very well when he said, "0 God, I could be
bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space .... " 2 4
Still, while the spatial points would be infinite, our experience
would never notice or recognize their infinitude.
Past time might be infinite. But even if it is, living in the present
would be like treading water over an infinite depth. We would not
experience the infinitude except in the form of buoyancy-which
could, of course, have a finite explanation. The time in which we
exist may rest upon, and be continuous with, an infinite prior
time, but we will never know whether this is so simply from our
experience of present time.
Performing an infinite number of tasks in finite time has always
been a mathematician's dream. If I could count one· number in
half a second, the next number in the next quarter second, the
next number in the next eighth of a second, and so on, then I
could count an infinite number of numbers in one second flat. So
far nobody has managed to pull this off. However, a mathematician at Bell Labs, named Peter Schor, has come close by showing
that the kind of parallelism possible on a quantum computer is
indefinitely large if not infinite.25 We could in effect perform an
infinite number of simultaneous computations using only finite
hardware, allowing us to compute otherwise intractable functions.
Schor proved that quantum indeterminacy makes this kind of
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parallelism mathematically possible; but notably, it has not yet
been realized in a physical machine.
An analog signal as opposed to a digital signal contains an
infinite amount of information. But when we make an audio
recording of a single piano keystroke, the digital nature of the
molecules of air carrying the waves, and the digital nature of the
molecules of the magnetic coating on the tape, mean that we can
preserve and send to the ear only a finite subset of the information
which the keystroke would have registered in a continuous medium. 26 And even if we could hear the note played back after being
perfectly recorded in a continuous medium, we would at best hear
an analog signal with an infinite amount of information in it; we
would not experience the infinitude of that information.
This is precisely why Leibniz posits a continuous medium (a
plenum of monads) rather than discrete molecular air to mediate
causal influences like the propagation of sound waves.27 Leibniz
thinks we are continuously bombarded by an infinite amount of
information from the universe at large, and that we register all of
it, although not all of it consciously. This is his famous doctrine
of minute perceptions.28 Without going into its details here, we
can at least see that it unabashedly implies that we do experience
something infinite; in fact, we do so continuously.
Until we got to Leibniz, there was a pattern in these examples.
There are several ways in which the objects or theaters of our
experience might be infinite. But we can't tell from our experience
whether they are or are not infinite, and this means at the very
least that we don't experience their infinitude. By positing minute
perceptions, Leibniz posits the experience of infinitely faint influences. He admits, even insists, that not all of these experiences are
conscious, 2 9 but likewise insists that without them conscious
experiences would not exist, just as finite line segments would not
exist without their constitutive dimensionless points.
Elegance is the chief reason to believe Leibniz's theory. After
positing an infinite number of infinitesimal monads a priori,
Leibniz surprises us by making the theory remarkably subtle and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
adept at explaining the world and experience. If Kant is right,
however, we should hesitate to affirm or deny infinities a priori.
In Kant's diagnosis, Leibniz fell victim to a natural, even
rational temptation. It's extremely tempting to think that time,
space, and matter really are, in themselves, apart from the limitations on human knowledge, either infinitely divisible or finitely
divisible. We may not,know which one they are, and we might
not perceive their internal infinitude if they are infinitely divisible,
but they must really be one way or the other. Kant argued that
this is a mistake; in fact, this assumption leads to a special kind of
contradiction which he called an antinomy,3° It also leads to
contradiction or antinomy to assume that past time is really either
infinite or finite, or that space is really either infinite or finite.3 1
There are two reasons, briefly, why these assumptions lead to
contradiction: first, they treat the world as a thing in itself, rather
than as a phenomenon partly constituted by the act of knowing
it; second, they are a priori claims, based on no empirical evidence,
and the opposite a priori claims are equally compelling to reason.
Kant concludes that to avoid these contradictions, we must regard
the extent of space, the depth of past time, and the divisibility of
time, space, and matter as indeterminate. We know them as far as
we have inquired into them, and tomorrow we may know more.
We must speak of the world (time, space, matter) as growing in
extent, duration, and divisibility as we find it to be larger, older,
or finer; to say that the world consists of something in and of itself
which fixes its size, age, and ultimate particles is a demand of
reason but ultimately a contradictory one. This is one place where
reason must be reined in, disciplined, or subject to critique.
What follows from all this is, for Kant, the strange-sounding
doctrine that in its spatial extent, temporal duration, and material
divisibility, the world is neither finite nor infinite.3 2
For myself, I find that I am attracted to the view that time and
space are continuous; at the same time I suspect that the question
whether time and space are continuous cannot be settled empirically. When I am inclined to soar in the sky of unfettered conjec-
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ture, I am attracted by the elegance of Leibniz' s theory of minute
perceptions, which arguably follows from the view that time,
space, and matter are continuous; when I am inclined to discipline
my conjectures and hold them inside the bounds of verification,
I heed Kant's admonition. I'm no closer to a resolution than this.
So if we have a positive idea of the infinite, how do we obtain
this idea? We make this question harder to answer, not easier, if we
say that the world is neither finite nor infinite, or that if it is infinite,
then w<:: do not experience its infinitude. My disappointing, pedestrian answer is that we may not possess the positive idea of infinitude
until we study self-nesting, and during that study, we get the
positive idea of infinitude from the exercise of putting an infinite
set into one-to-one correspondence with one of its proper subsets.
This exercise, I should add, is a finite experience. We take the first
few even numbers, 2, 4, 6 ... for example, and pair them off against
the first few natural numbers, 1, 2, 3 .... We know that each
sequence is rule-governed, because we know exactly how to generate
the next member of each. Hence, we know that the nth member of
one sequence will have a partner in the nth member of the other,
no matter how large n is, or no matter how far, out we take the
sequences. This is the finitistic way to put infinite sets into one-toone correspondence. But if one set is the proper subset of the other,
then we have established self-nesting, which is impossible for finite
sets. Until we undertake this exercise, and think about what it
means, our notion of the infinite may well be nothing more than
the negation of the idea of finitude.
While we do not experience the infinitude of time, space, or
matter, even if they are infinite in extent or divisibility, neither
do we experience large finite magnitudes. I've seen estimates of
the number of sub-atomic particles in the universe which range
from 1065 to 10 8 5. But to be conservative, let's say that nothing
in the universe, including the universe itself, has more than 10100
parts. The name for 10 100, or 1 followed by 100 zeroes, is a googol.
So even if there are more than googol of ultimate particles, it's fair
to say that no collection of physical objects that we have ever
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THE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
experienced-grains of sand on a beach, snowflakes in a storm,
stars in the sky-has more than a googol of members.33 If true,
then we did not obtain our idea of a googol from experience. But
it does not follow that we must posit a very large finite being-Googolzilla-to be the source of our idea. We know exactly
what a googol is as a concept, even if we have never experienced
it manifest in a sensatidn or image. We can list the million natural
numbers which are its closest neighbors, we can do arithmetic
with it, and we know infallibly whether an arbitrary natural
number is larger or smaller than it. If we may export the lesson of
this to the infinite, then we may suggest that while we have no
experience of the infinitude of anything, we have a perfectly good
concept of infinity, and that the ultimate explanation of this fact
lies not so much in anything special about infinity as in the
distinction between concepts and images.
The Sublimiry of the Infinite
I am profoundly grateful that understanding infinity does not
deprive it of its majesty. If the infinite were only interesting
because of the paradoxes it generates, and the absorbing academic
issues raised by the need to resolve them, then it would not be
studied any more than self-reference, a prolific but more pedestrian engine of paradox. But the infinite is also majestic, one might
say infinitely majestic.
An hour under a clear sky at night, looking up, gives some sense
of this. The depth of space is a wild blue yonder, not a true,
perceived infinity. 34 But it inspires contemplation of the true
infinite, and the slightest brush with that idea is breathtaking,
invigorating, expanding, lifting, calming, and also agitating, alluring, and also distant and magnificently indifferent. One reason to
study mathematics is that you can get these feelings in broad
daylight or indoors.
There are many ways to become precise about these feelings,
and many ways to praise al)d honor the infinite. I'd like to use
Kant's term: it is sublime.35
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Just for comparison, Cantor had a different set of numinous
feelings about the infinite. He was not only a great mathematician,
but a very religious man and by some standards a mystic. Yet his
mysticism was supported by his mathematics, which to him was
at least as strong an argument for the mathematics as for the
mysticism.36 Apart from claiming divine inspiration for his work,
we don't know exactly what spiritual views he linked to his
mathematics, but his theorems37 give support to the following.
Measured in meters, we are tiny specks compared to the universe
at large. But measured in dimensionless points, we are as large as
the universe: a proper subset, but one with the same cardinality
as the whole. Similarly, measured in meters, we may be off in a
corner of the universe. But measured in points, the distance is
equally great in all directions, whether universe is finite or infinite;
that puts us in the center, wherever we are. Measured in days, our
lives are insignificant hiccups in the expanse of past and future
time. But measured in points of time, our lives are as long as
universe is old. We are as small as we seem, but simultaneously,
by a most reasonable measure, coextensive with the totality of
being in both space and time. This is truly (as Blake put it) "[t]o
see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold
infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."3 8
Kant's theory of the sublime does not rest on these Cantorian
theorems. His chief thesis for our purposes is that, "That is sublime
in comparison with which everything else is small. "3 9 Clearly the
infinitely large is a perfect fit for this definition.4D
The sublime is not an easy notion, and the best approach to it
may be via negativa, showing how it differs from something
familiar, the beautiful. Sticking only to those differences which
bear most on the sublimity of the infinite, Kant says that the
beautiful concerns a bounded object while the sublime object can
be unbounded; the beautiful is compatible with charms while the
sublime is not; the beautiful attracts the mind while the sublime
both attracts and repels it; and the beautiful "seems as it were
predetermined for our power of judgment" while the sublime is
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"incommensurate with our power of exhibition, and as it were
violent to our imagination, and yet we judge it all the more
sublime for th:at,"41
The infinitely large meets these criteria almost by design. The
infinitely large is unbounded, incommensurate with our powers of
imagination, and to engage and satisfY us it no more needs charm
than spring water needs sugar. It is so large that some of its proper
subsets are just as large, a property shared by no finite magnitude.
What triggers the feeling of the sublime most is immensity.
Immensity in turn makes us feel a tension between two aspects of
ourselves. On the one hand it makes us feel the inadequacy of our
senses and imagination. On the other it makes us feel that there
is more to us than senses and imagination, whose adequacy cannot
be brought into question by immensity, no matter how spectacular or infinite. This second dimension of ourselves is not conception but moral vocation. While physically the immensity dwarfs
us into insignificance, this very fact highlights that within us
which is not dwarfed. As long as we are physically safe when
viewing the sublime immensity, Kant argues, it helps us know our
moral dignity and nonphysical invulnerability undiminished,
even accentuated, by our forceful acknowledgement of our physical smallness and frailty.42
Conclusion
Properly understood, the idea of a completed infinity is no
longer a problem in mathematics or philosophy. It is perfectly
intelligible and coherent. Perhaps it cannot be imagined but it can
be conceived; it is not reserved for infinite omniscience, but knowable by finite humanity; it may contradict intuition, but it does not
contradict itself. To conceive it adequately we need not enumerate
or visualize infinitely many objects, but merely understand selfnesting. We have an actual, positive idea of it, or at least with
training we can have one; we are not limited to the idea of finitude
and its negation. In fact, it is at least as plausible to think that we
understand finitude as the negation of infinitude as the other way
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around. The world of the infinite is not barred to exploration by
the equivalent of s,ea monsters and tempests; it is barred by the
equivalent of motion sickness. The world of the infinite is already
open for exploration, but to embark we must unlearn our finitistic
intuitions which instill fear and confusion by making some consistent and demonstrable results about the infinite literally counterintuitive. Exploration itself will create an alternative set of
intuitions which make us more susceptible to the feeling that Kant
called the sublime. Longer acquaintance will confirm Spinoza' s
conclusion that the secret of joy is to love something infinite.43
Mark Twain came to love mathematics as an adult and always
regretted that he didn't have a stronger foundation for it. He once
said that if he could live forever, he'd spend 8,000 years studying
mathematics. I've never been able to decide whether this remark
shows his wit or his weak foundation in mathematics. If he could
live forever, then he could spend infinitely many years studying
mathematics, and have infinitely many years left over for other
pursuits. That's the way I'd like to do it.
Bibliography
Blake, William. The Viking Portable Blake. Ed. Alfred Kazin. Vtking Press, 1946.
Cantor, Georg. Contributions to the Founding ofthe Theory of Transfinite
Numbers. Trans. Philip E.B. Jourdain. Dover Publications, 1955. (franslation originally published 1915.)
Copeland, Jack. Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. Basil
Blackwell, 1993.
Dauben, Joseph Warren. Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of
the Infinite. Princeton University Press, 1979.
Dedekind, Richard. Essays on the Theory ofNumbers. Trans. Wooster
Woodruff Beman. Dover Publications, 1963. (Translation originally published 1901.)
Dedekind, Richard. Was sind und was sollen die Zah!en? 6th ed.,
Braunschweig, 1930 (original1888).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Descartes, Rene. Philosophical Essays. Trans. Laurence J. Lafleur. Bobbs-Merrill,
1964. (Discourse on Method, originai1637;Meditations, original1641.)
Fraenkel, Abraham A. Abstract Set Theory. North-Holland Pub. Co., 1953.
Hofstadter, Do.uglas R. Giidel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books, Inc., 1979.
Galilei, Galileo. Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. Trans. Henry
Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. Dover Publications, 1954 (original trans.
1914; original work 1638.)
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of]udgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett
Pub. Co., 1987 (original1790).
Kant, Immanuel. Critique ofPure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith.
St. Martin's Press, 1968 (original1781).
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations ofthe Metaphysics ofMorals. Trans. Lewis
White Beck. Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1959 (original1785).
Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling ofthe BeautifUl and Sublime. Trans.
John T. Goldthwait. U niversiry of California Press, 1960 (original 1763-64).
Keyser, C.J ., "Charles Sanders Peirce as a Pioneer," Galois Lectures (Scr.
Math. Library, No.5, 1941) 87-112
Kleene, Stephen Cole. Introduction to Metamathematics. North-Holland
Pub. Co., 1988 (original1952).
Kleene, Stephen Cole. Mathematical Logic. John Wiley & Sons, 1967.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Understanding. Trans.
Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge University Press, 1981
(original1704).
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Papers and Letters. Ed. and
Trans. by Leroy E. Loemker. D. Reidel Publishing Co., seconded., 1969.
(Discourse on Metaphysics, original 1686; Monadology, original 1714.)
Lloyd, Seth, "Quantum Mechanical Computers," Scientific American, (October 1995), pp. 140-145.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. Peter H.
Nidditch. Oxford University Press, 1975 (original1690).
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Maar, Eli. To Infinity and Beyond· A Cultural History ofthe Infinite. Princeton University Press, 1991 (originall987).
Moore, A.W. The Infinite. Routledge, 1990.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers. Ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul
Weiss. Vol. III, 1933.
Pickover, Clifford A. Keys tq Infinity. John Wiley & Sons, 1995.
Royce, Josiah, "The One, The Many, and the Infinite," Supplementary
Essay in his The World and the Individual, First Series, Dover Publications,
1959 (original!899), pp. 473-588.
Rucker, Rudy. Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy ofthe Infinite. Birkbiiuser, 1982.
Rucker, Rudy, "One of George Cantor's Speculations on Physical Infinities," Speculations in Science and Technology, (October 1978) pp. 419-421.
Schor, Peter, "Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Log and
Factoring," Proceedings ofthe 35th Annual Symposium on the Foundations
of Computer Science, IEEE Computer Society, 1994, pp. 124ff. This paper
is available by FTP from the menu of papers at the Quantum Information
Page, http://vesta.physics.ucla.edu/-smolin/.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Edward Hubler. New American Library, 1963 (originai!600).
Spinoza, Benedict. Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation ofthe Intellect, and
Selected Letters. Trans. Samuel Shirley. Hackett, 1992. (Treatise, original
date unknown, posthumously published; Ethics, originall675.)
Vilenkin, N. Ya. In Search ofInfinity. Trans. Abe Shenitzer. Birkbiiuser,
1995.
Notes
I. Locke argued for this verdict of intuition thus: "[I)f a Man had a positive
Idea ofinfinite ... he could add two lnfinites together; nay, make one Infinite
infinitely bigger than another, Absurdities too gross to be confuted." Locke,
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), 222.
2. Galilee, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638), 31-33.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
3. Here I mean the classical mathematical objections. In this paper I put to
one side theological objections such as that completed infinities contradict
the doctrine that God is both infinite and unique.
4. See Moore, The Infinite (1990), 48. Many ancient and medieval scholars,
however, accepted the view that infinite sets permit self-nesting; Kleene,
Mathematical Logic (1967) 176,n.l21 cites various authors who point to
Plutarch in the first century of the common era, Proclus in the fifth, Adam
of Balsham in the twelfth, and Robert Holkot in the fourteenth.
5. When a theory of lesser virtue is opposed by intuition, the remedy is not
as clear. For example, when Zeno argued through his four paradoxes that
motion and change were impossible, and hence illusory, his conclusions were
opposed by everyone's intuitions about the realiry of motion and change. In
this case it's not clear whether we should trust Zeno's logic more than our
intutions, or vice versa.
6. Descartes, Meditations (1641), 126-127 (Meditation VI).
7. Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), 28 (Fourth Discourse); see also
his Meditations (1641), 64, 69, 71, and 73.
8. Descartes, Meditations (1641), 101-102 (Meditation III). Note that this
argument would work just as well with very large finite magnitudes.
9. Descartes, Meditations (1641), I 02 (Meditation III).
10. Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), 26 (Discourse IV), and Meditations (1641), 103.
II. Descartes, who thought we had a positive and not merely a negative idea
of the infinite, draws the same conclusion: "(M]y notion of the infinite is
somehow prior to that of the finite .... " Descartes, Meditations (1641), 102
(Meditation III).
12. Peirce, Collected Papers (1885), 210-249, 360; and Dedekind, Essays on
the Theory ofNumbers (1888), at p. 109 (theorem 160). Bernard Balzano
may have been the first to suggest this idea in his Paradoxien des Unendlichen,
§20, published posthumously in 1851.
13. For a proof that the Peirce-Dedekind ("reflexive") definition of infiniry
is equivalent to a more traditional ("inductive'') one, see Fraenkel, Abstract
Set Theory (1953), 41-42.
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14. One might argue that "the failure ot impossibility of self-nesting" is
simply a negative way of describing Euclid's positive principle that the whole
is always greater than its (proper) parts, and that therefore the idea of
self-nesting is equivalent to the negation of the positive Euclidean idea. While
this is true, it remains the case that self-nesting, at least after Cantor, has taken
on a positive life of its own and may be thought in its own terms, directly,
and no longer as the mere failure of the Euclidean logic of parts and wholes.
15. See Royce, "The One, The Many, and the Infinite,'' (1899), esp. 503-507.
16. Leibniz, Monadology (1714), §3. For Cantor's physical speculations on
similar topics, including his views on mass-monads (which were infinite but
not continuous) and aether-monads _(which were infinite and continuous),
see Rudy Rucker's translation of Cantor in Rucker, "One of George Cantor's
Speculations on Physical Infinities," (1978). Cantor's views are briefly summarized in Rucker, Infinity and the Mind (1982), 90.
17. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), §§8-9, 14, and Monadology
(1714), §§62-68.
18. Leibniz is not alone in arguing for the truth of this vision, as opposed to
its mere possibility or consistency. Royce, "The One, The Many, and the
Infinite," 538-554 argues that the entire "realm of reality" is a self-representing system, just like England conceived as the home and subject of its
own perfect map.,
19. The positive idea of self-nesting not only frees us from the indirectness
and incompleteness of knowing infinity via negativa, but as a bonus it
decisively answers one line of objections to the idea of a completed infinite.
This line of objections asserts that the very idea of a completed infinite is
unattainable by finite human beings, or incoherent and conti'adictory, or
meaningless. The positive idea of infinity, if it exists and we possess it, and
its consistency, are standing refutations to this line of thought.
20. The examples show that sometimes we want terms ofindefinite largeness
rather than infinitude. That is why the American Indian expression that a
promise will hold as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow is more
accurate and credible· than a declaration for eternity, even if it is still an
overstatement.
21. When Kant speaks of the human person as a being of "infinite worth,"
is this another figurative or exaggerated use of the term "infinite"? A tool may
be used as a means to an end, and nothing more, without violating its dignity;
the reason is that a tool has only "finite worth." As Kant is wont to say, a tool
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
has a price, while a person has a dignity. Kant, Foundations (1785), 53. If we
measure the "worth" of these entities with a unit of finite size, such as the
dollar, then the tool has finite worth. But it's not clear whether the person
has infinite worth or whether the person is beyond measure the way she is
beyondprice. To say that a person is worth an infinite number of dollars may
be as much a category mistake as to say she is worth a finite number of dollars,
and just as far from capturing Kant's meaning: This is why I don't use the
human person as an exarriple of something we experience which is literally
infinite.
22. At 18 frames per second, old silent films look jerky. The jerkiness alerts
us to the fact that we are viewing a rapid succession of frames, not a
continuously changing image. But our abiliry to discern !/18th second
intervals of time, and see the jerks, is not the same as the ability to discern
that we are seeing 18, rather than 17 or 19, frames per second. It is, however,
enough to tell us that we are experiencing a finite number of frames per
second. But once the speed increases to the point where the jerkiness
disappears, and the appearance ofcontinuity sets in, we cannot know whether
the underlying pace of frames is infinite or finite but huge.
23. Several of Zeno' s paradoxes of motion are best solved by using the
commonplace notion of the calculus that we can traverse an infinite number
of spatial units in a finite time. Note, however, that those who object to the
use of completed infinities cannot answer Zeno in this way, for it is to appeal
to a completed infiniry of spatial units successfully traversed.
24. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.258. The quotation continues: "... were it not
that I have bad dreams."
25. Peter Schor, "Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Log and
Factoring," (1995). See also Seth Lloyd, "Quantum Mechanical Computers," (1995).
26. One unexpected reason why this matters is that if potential brain inputs
through the senses are only finite, then artificial intelligence is defmitely
possible; that is, we could in principle create a computable function which
duplicated the brain's operation flawlessly. Whether AI is possible when
potential brain inputs are infinite is still unsettled. See Copeland, Artificial
Intelligence (1993), pp. 233-238.
27. Leibniz, Monadology, §§8, 61-62.
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28. Leibniz, New Essays, 53-58.
29. In my view, Leibniz is the first thinker to posit unconscious experience.
It is important, then, that his theoretical motivation is not to explain
memory, dream, or neurosis, but the infinitely small sensory influences which
constitute all sensation and the infinitely large number of sensory experiences.
30. Kant, Critique ofPure Reason (1781), B.462.
31. Kant, Pure Reason, B.454
32. Kant, Pure Reason, B.533. The world would be either finite or infinite if
it were a thing in itself, B.532. Here is one way to paraphrase Kant's view
here. There is no empirical way to ascertain whether time and space are
infinite, or whether time, space, or matter are infinitely divisible. So on
empirical grounds we can say neither that they are infinite nor that they are
finite. To try to decide these questions on a priori grounds is precisely what
leads to contradiction. Hence, on a priori grounds as well, we can say neither
that they are infinite nor that they are finite.
33. Even if this is not true of a googol, it is true of 1Ogoogol The point is that
there is some large finite number which is larger than the cardinaliry of any
collection we've ever experienced.
34. Kant, Critique ofjudgment (1790), 124: "[T]he infinite .. .for sensibiliry
is an abyss." C£ pp. 115, 130.
35. In this section I will speak only of the infinitely large.
36. See Dauben, Georg Cantor (1979), 288-291; 294-297.
37. See Theorems 12, 13, 18, 20, 21, 23, and 24 in the Appendix.
38. William Blake, Auguries ofInnocence, lines 1-4, in Viking Portable Blake
(1946) 150. Also see his Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of
perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of
his cavern," ibid. 258.
39. Kant, Critique ofjudgment (1790), at p. 105. The italics are Kant's.
40. Kant, judgment (1790), 114: "The infinite, however, is absolutely large
(not merely large by comparison). Compared with it everything else .. .is
small"-at least if "everything else" is limited to finitely large objects. Here
Kant mistakenly assumes that all infinities are equal, a common mistake
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
before Cantor. If one were larger than another, then the latter, although
infinite, would indeed be small in comparison with something. In Kant's
defense we may offer Moore's view that Kant was one of the first thinkers to
acknowledge that it is no contradiction to suppose that one infinity can be
larger than another; Moore, The Infinite, 90. (Moore does not make clear on
which passages in Kant he bases his reading.)
41. Kant, judgment (1790}, 98-99. In an earlier work Kant says the sublime
brings "enjoyment" bur sometimes with "horror," while the beautiful is a
"pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling"; "[n]ight is sublime,
day is beautiful"; the sublime "moves," the beautiful "charms"; the face of a
person feeling the sublime is "earnest, sometimes rigid and astonished" while
the face of a person experiencing the beautiful shows "shining cheerfulness
[and] ... smiling features"; Observatiom on the Feeling of the BeautifUl and
Sublime (1763-64), 47.
42. These mixed feelings are in tension. Unlike the beautiful, the sublime
does not yield pleasure. Because the mind is both attracted and repelled, it
responds more with admiration than liking, which Kant calls a "negative
pleasure," judgment, 98; c£ pp. 129, 131. It includes a note of displeasure, with
our inadequate sensory and imaginative resources, pp. 114, 116, leading Kant
to call it "a pleasure that is possible only by means of a displeasure," p. 117.
43. Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation ofthe Intellect, 235.
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~ Appendix:
~
A Crash Course in the Mathematics oflnfinite Sets
Don't be surprised if this is easier than you thought. Set theory
requires no algebra or calculus. It is much more primitive than those
branches of mathematics, and rests on very simple notions. Moreover, the proofs will be unusually short and uncomplicated.
What will be difficult? Most of the results we will prove depend
critically on those that came before; but I cite the needed prior
theorems by number to make this kind of back-tracking easier.
The notation may be new, and for many people unfamiliar notation raises the hair on the back of the neck. But most of the
notation may be ignored; I include it mainly so that if you read
further on this subject, you will be equipped. I honestly don't
think the compressed exposition needed for a crash course increases the difficulty-in part because I've been more longwinded than most mathematicians, and in part because some
compression and conciseness helps keep all the relevant ideas in
the head at the same time; which aids comprehension. Some of
the proofs, short and simple as they are, will make you dizzy. But
that's part of the amazing phenomenon to be savored, not a
difficulty to lament.
To begin:
Almost a definition. Intuitively, a set is a collection of elements.
• The intuitive notion of a set leads to paradoxes, and there is
considerable mathematical and philosophical disagreement about
how best to refine the intuitive notion. Fortunately, none of the
disagreements or refinements matters for our purposes here. I only
bring up this complexiry so that you'll accept the intuitive notion
in place of a refined definition for the purposes of this crash course.
•
Notation. When we want to list the members of a set, we use curly
brackets. So if set S contains elements A, B, and C, then we say S
={A, B, C).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
• The nul! set is the empty set or the set with no members. Notation:
0. Hence, 0={}.
Abbreviation. For ifand only ifi will sometimes write simply
iff
Definition. Set A is a subset of set B iff all the members of A are
also members of B.
• Notation. A
~
B.
• It follows from this definition that every set is a subset of itself.
Definition. Set A is a proper subset of set B iff all the members of A are
also members of B, but not all the members of B are members of A.
•
Notation. ACB.
•
It follows from this definition that no set is a proper subset of itself.
Definition. The cardinality of a set is the number of members it
contains.
• Notation. The cardinality of setS is lSI. For example, ifS ={A, B,
C), then ISI=3.
•
Hence while S is a set, lSI is a number. When S is an infinite set,
lSI will be an infinite number.
• Technically, lSI is a cardinal number, as opposed to an ordinal
number. This doesn't matter for what follows, but it might help
you remember the term cardinality. A cardinal number answers
the question how many? An ordinal number answers the question
which one? Natural numbers are used both ways in different
contexts. For example, 3 is used as a cardinal number when we say
there are "three blind mice" or "three bags full," but it is used as
an ordinal number when we say "the third pig built with brick"
or "curtain number three." Sets have cardinality, that is, size or
magnitude: they have some definite number of members. But they
do not have ordinality: their members are not in any particular
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order; for example, {A, B, C) = {B, A, C). In this brief exposition,
I introduce the mathematics of infinite cardinal numbers and
ignore the infinite ordinals.
Definition. Two sets can be put into one-to-one correspondence iff
their members can be paired off such that each member of the first
set has exactly one counterpart in the second set, and each member
of the second set has exactly one counterpart in the first set.
•
Notation. If sets A and B can be put into one-to-one correspondence, then we say A"" B.
Putting two infinite sets into one-to-one correspondence is an
infinite task, and we don't pretend that we can do it (that is, finish
it) in finite time. To show that an infinite set, like the even
numbers, can be put into one-to-one correspondence with another, like the odd numbers, we need only produce a rule-governed sequence for each set which runs through the members
without omission or repetition, for example, 2, 4, 6 ... and 1, 3,
5 .... If we can do so, then we know that the nth term of one sequence
will have a counterpart in the nth term of the other, and vice versa,
guaranteeing one-to-one correspondence all the way out.
We will soon see that there are infinite sets larger than the set
of natural numbers (Theorem 3 below), and for them no such
sequences can be constructed. However, for cardinalities of that
magnitude, most of our proofs will show the absence or failure,
rather than the presence, of one-to-one correspondence.
Definition. Two sets have the same cardinality iff they can be put
into one-to-one correspondence; or, if A""B, then IAI=IBI.
• This definition applies to infinite as well as to finite sets.
• It follows from the last three definitions that set A has a larger
cardinality than set B iff both (I) a proper subset of A and the
whole of B can be put into one-to-one correspondence, and (2)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the whole ofA cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with
any proper subset of B.
Definition. The power set of a set S is the set of all the subsets of S.
•
Notation. The power set of S is *S.
•
For example, if S ={A, B, C), then *S = {{A,B,C}, {A,B}, {A, C),
{B,C}, {A}, {B), {C), 0}.
• The power set of a given set always contains the given set itself and
the null set.
•
Note that while the members of S may be any sort of things
(bugles, baseball teams, Byronic poems), the members of *S are
other sets.
•
j*Sj is the cardinality of the power set of S. As you can see from
the example above, when S has 3 members, then *S has 23 or 8
members. In general, when S is finite, then j*Sj = 21s1.
• We will ass.ume the power set axiom, i.e. that all sets have power sets.
Reminder. The natural numbers are the whole positive numbers (somerimes called the "counting numbers"), including zero: 0, 1, 2, 3 ....
•
This is really a definition, bur by calling it a "reminder" I'm hoping
to get on your good side.
• Notation. The set of natural numbers is designated by N.
•
Notation. The number of natural numbers is designated by \'{ 0 •
"\'{" is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, pronouncedAleph.
"\-{ 0 " is pronounced Aleph-null or Aleph-nought. We will justifY
the zero subscript when we prove that no infinite set has a smaller
cardinality than the set of natural numbers (Theorem 6).
•
Hence \-{ 0 = jNj, by definition.
•
Now you know how many natural numbers there are:\'{,. Bur this
is not profound. So far we've only invented a name (numeral) for
the number of natural numbers.
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Definition. A set is countable iff its cardinality is either finite or
equal to ~ 0 • A set is denumerable iff its cardinality is exactly ~ o.
A set is uncountable iff its cardinality is greater than ~ O·
• The null set is countable. The finite set, {A, B, C}, is countable. The
infinite set, N, is countable and denumerable. Sets with a larger
cardinality than N are uncountable.
Definition. A transfinite number or transfinite cardinal is the cardinality of some infinite set.
•
If we use the term "infinite" in a restricted and precise way, then
"transfinite" is just a synonym for it. We could avoid fancy new
terms to prevent confusion. However, "infinite" has many impre-
cise and non-technical uses-for example, the infinite setting on
a camera's range-finder-so it often helps to use a technical term
to avoid ambiguity.
Reminder. The integers are the natural numbers plus their negative
counterparts, ... -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 ....
·• Notation. The set of integers is designated by Z.
Reminder. The rational numbers are the integers plus the rational
fractions (those which can be expressed as the ratio of two integers).
• Notation. The set of rational numbers is designated by Q.
•
For example, 0.75 is a rational fraction because we can express it as the
ratio of two integers, namely, 3/4. Therefore it is a rational number.
• The irrational numbers are the fractions that are not rational
numbers, both positive and negative. For example, we can prove
that pi (3.14159 ... ) cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers.
Therefore it is an irrational number.
Reminder. The real numbers are the rational numbers plus the
irrational numbers.
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THE ST. JOHN"S REVIEW
Notation. The set of real numbers is designated by llt
We started with the natural numbers, then added infinitely
many negative whole numbers to get the integers, then added
infinitely many rational fractions to get the rationals, and then
added infinitely many irrational fractions to get the reals. It's
tempting to conclude that with each infinite addition we increased
cardinality, or in short:
INI < IZI < 101 < IIRI
But is this true? Here we encounter one of the first points at which
the mathematics of the infinite violates our intuitions. If each
addition did increase cardinality, that would violate our sense that
"infinity is infinity"-or that all infinite sets are equal in cardinality. But if any of these additions did not increase cardinality, that
would violate our sense that the cardinality of a set grows when
we add members. Before we learn the truth, and see how it violates
our intuitions, it's wise to remember that its negation would also
have violated our intuitions. At the very beginning, therefore, we
should not demand conformity with our intuitions so much as
clear definitions and rigorous proofs.
Foreshadowing. Both the intuitions mentioned in the preceding paragraph are false. (I) Not all infinities are equal in cardinality, and (2)
some additions, even infinite additions, do not increase cardinality.
The string of inequalities, INI < IZI < 101 < IIRI, is also false.
Theorem I. The set of integers has the same cardinality as the set
of natural numbers, or
INI = IZI.
• Proof If we try to list the integers, we note that they trail off with
three dots in two directions: ... 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3.... Left in that
form they would be hard to put into one-to-one correspondence
with the natural numbers. But if we alternate one positive and one
negative integer, then they form a single infinite sequence, 0, 1,
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-1, 2, -2, 3, -3 ... , and we can easily put them into one-to-one
correspondence with the natural numbers, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ....
This method of alternating the members of two infinite sequences in order to make a single sequence is called interlacing.
Cantor used it often and so will we.
Theorem 2. The set of rational numbers has the same cardinality
as the set of natural numbers, or INI = 101.
•
It's much harder to find a method for putting the rational numbers
into one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers than it
was for the integers. The reason is that the rational numbers are
dense, that is, between any two of them there is a third. For
example, between 123/987 and 124/987 there is 123.5/987,
which resolves into 247/1974. This means, in fact, that between
any two there are infinitely many others. It also means that for any
given rational number, there is no such thing as the next greater,
or the next lesser, rational number. But Cantor found a very clever
method for laying out the rational numbers so that they can be
put into one-to-one correspondence with the naturals.
•
Proof The following table shows Cantor's method for putting the
rationals and naturals into one-to-one correspondence:
Denominators
I/1
2/1
311
4/1 ...
112
212
3/2
412 ...
I/3
2/3
3/3
4/3 ...
I/4
214
3/4
414 ...
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The two shaded axes list all the possible natural number numerators, and all the possible natural number denominators. The
interior part of the table uses the axes to compose all the rational
fractions, which are all the rational numbers. Now we read off the
rationals in this order: starting with the 1/1 in the upper left
corner, we move right to 2/1, then diagonally down and to the
left, then down, then 'diagonally up and to the right, and so on,
eventually passing through every cell in the grid. The first 10
numbers in our journey are: 1/1, 2/1, 1/2, 113, 2/2, 3/1, 4/1, 3/2,
2/3, 114 .... But as the following table shows, this sequence can be
put into one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers:
Rationals
l/1
Z/1
1/Z
l/3
2/Z
3/1
4/1
3/Z
Z/3
1/4...
Naturals
0
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9...
This method of enumerating the rationals includes each rational number more than once. For example, it will include 111,
2/2, 3/3 ... , each of which is equal to 1. In fact, every rational
number will be represented infinitely many times. Technically,
this violates the conditions of strict one-to-one correspondence.
But in fact we can leave the duplicates in the enumeration without
harming the proof, for we are then proving that the rationals plus
the duplicates is still no greater in cardinality than the naturals.
This means that the rationals are at most as numerous as the
naturals. We already know that the rationals are at least numerous
as the naturals (because the naturals are a proper subset of the
rationals}. Therefore, the rationals are exactly as numerous as the
naturals.
(Can you see why if some setA is at least as numerous as another
set B, and at most as numerous as B, then it must be exactly as
numerous as B?)
In Theorems 1 and 2 we saw that two kinds of infinite addition
to an infinite set did not increase the cardinality of the original
set. But we cannot generalize too quickly and say that such
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SUBER
additions will never increase the cardinality of the original set.
Our next theorem shows that some sets can indeed be larger than
the natural numbers, and in Theorem 16 we will see that the
additions to the naturals required to generate the real numbers do
indeed create an uncountable set.
Theorem 3. The power set of the set of natural numbers has a
greater cardinality than the set of natural numbers, i.e. it is
uncountable; or I*NI>INI.
• Proof We give a negative proof, and assume that the natural
numbers can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the sets
of natural numbers. Let this hypothetical pairing off be represented by the leftmost two columns of the following table.
The nat. nos. in 1-1
correspondence with the
sets thereof
(hypothetically)
0 ..... evens
1 - odds
2 - evens
In the shaded row of the table we again enumerate the natural
numbers. The "yeses" and "noes" in the body of the table below
them tell us whether the natural numbers in the shaded row above
them are members of the sets to the left of them. For example, take
the "yes" which appears in italics. It is in the column of natural
number 1, and in the row of the set of odd numbers; it says "yes"
because 1 is indeed a member of the set of odd numbers. In this
way, we represent every set of natural numbers (down the left
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
column) as an infinite string of "yeses" and "noes." Conversely,
we can read any string of"yeses" and "noes" as code for a particular
set of natural numbers.
From the "yes" in the upper left corner of the block of"yeses" and
"noes," move diagonally downward and to the right, following the
arrows. Toggle eacl?- "yes" we encounter to a "no" and vice versa.
The resulting infinite string of" yeses" and "noes" is demonstrably
different from every row of the infinite table, for it differs from the
first row in the first term, from the second row in the second term,
and so on. When we read it as set of natural numbers, the set it
represents is for the same reason demonstrably different from every
set yet listed on the table. But this contradicts our assumption that
we had exhaustively listed and paired off all the sets of natural
numbers. Therefore our assumption is false, and the natural
numbers cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with the
sets of natural numbers.
We're almost done. If the naturals and the sets of naturals cannot
be put into one-to-one correspondence, then one has a larger
cardinality than the other. The power set of the naturals must have
the greater cardinality, for one of its proper subsets, {{0}, {1}, {2},
{3} ... }, can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the naturals, 0, 1, 2, 3 .... Therefore there are more sets of natural numbers
than natural numbers.
This technique of moving down the diagonal of a table, changing every row in some way, and thereby constructing a new item
which differs from every row in some definite respect, is called
diagonalization. It is one of Cantor's most ingenious methods for
gaining leverage on infinite sets. We'll use diagonalization often.
To establish Theorem 3, we used a negative proof In a negative
proof we assume the negation of the desired conclusion and show
that that assumption leads to a contradiction; then we conclude
that assumptions is false, which is the same thing as to conclude
that the desired conclusion is true. It is a special case of the rule
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of inference, called modus to/lens, by which we infer that any
statement that implies a falsehood is false. Since it is so hard to
grapple with infinite sets directly, negative proofs are common in
this branch of mathematics. However, the most important skeptics of Cantor's results, called intuitionists, refuse to use negative
proofs in dealing with infinite sets-although they are willing to
use negative proofs in'' other areas of mathematics. The issue
between Cantor and the intuitionists is whether this refusal is
arbitrary, or whether we should distrust negative proofs in those
domains where there is no possibility of verifYing our results
through intuition.
Theorem 4. The cardinality of the power set of an arbitrary set has
a greater cardmality than the original arbitrary set, or I*A!>IAI.
• This is called simply Cantor's Theorem. It generalizes the previous
theorem, in which we proved that the power set of a particular set,
N, had a greater cardinality than the original. The present theorem
is trivial for finite sets, but is fundamental for infinite sets.
• Proof LetA be an arbitrary set of any cardinality, finite or infinite.
Again we supply a negative proof, and assume that the members
of A can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the subsets
of A. Take any one of the supposed ways of pairing off the
members of A with the subsets of A. Let us say that if a member
of A is paired with a subset of A of which it happens to be a
member, then it is happy; otherwise it is sad. LetS be the set of sad
members of A. Clearly S is one of the subsets of A. Therefore S is
paired off with one of the members of A, say, x. Is x happy or sad?
If x is happy, then x is a member of the set to which it is paired,
which is S, but that would make it sad. If x is sad, then x is not a
member of the set to which it is paired, which isS, but that would
make it happy. So if xis happy, then it is sad, and if it is sad, then
it is happy. Our assumption implies a contradiction and is therefore false. So the members of A cannot be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the subsets of A.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But if A and *A cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence,
then they cannot have the same cardinality. If so, then the larger
one must be*A, for A can be put into one-to-one correspondence
with a proper subset *A. For example, if the members of A are AI>
A,, A3 ••• , then they can be put into one-to-one correspondence
with this subset of*A: {{A1}, {A2}, {A3} .•• }.
Many profound consequences follow directly from Cantor's
theorem. But we make the most important of them explicit in the
next theorem.
Theorem 5. If S is a set of any infinite cardinality, then its power
set has a greater infinite cardinality, or I*SI>ISI.
• This follows directly from Cantor's Theorem (Theorem 4). Cantor's theorem applies equally to finite and infinite sets; this corollary focuses on the important consequence for infinite sets.
•
If we follow die notation for finite sets, and say that a set of
cardinality a has a power set of cardinality 2•, then this theorem
asserts that 2' >a, for each transfinite cardinal a.
•
This theorem asserts that for any infinite cardinality, there is a
larger infinite cardinality, namely, the cardinality of its power set.
Hence, there is an infinite series of infinite cardinal numbers. We
will meet some of the infinite cardinals larger than N shortly.
• This theorem also implies that, for every set, there is a greater set.
It follows that there is no set of all sets, or no set of everything.
It follows from Theorem 5 that "infinity" is not synonymous
with "totality," a clarification which alone dispels many of the
ancient conundrums and paradoxes surrounding the infinite.
Speaking of the infinite series of infinite numbers which Cantor
proved to exist, David Hilbert said (in 1910) that, "No one shall
drive us from the paradise which Cantor created for us," and (in
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1926), "This appears to me to be the most admirable flower of the
mathematical intellect and one of the highest achievements of
purely ration~al human activity."
Now that we have proved there is an infinite series of infinite
cardinals, it is well to prove that \'{ o truly designates the smallest
of them.
Theorem 6. No infinite set has a smaller cardinality than a denumerable set, e.g. the set of natural numbers.
• Proof LetS be a set of any infinite cardinality. Clearly we may take
away one of its members, call itS~> without emptying S. We may
take another, S2 , and another, S3 , and so on, each time without
emptying S. In this way we may carve out a denumerable proper
subset from S, namely, {S~> S2 , S3 ••• }. But S had any infinite
cardinality. Hence all infinite sets have at least one denumerable
proper subset. Hence the cardinality of a denumerable set is not
greater than any transfinite cardinality; or, it is the smallest transfinite cardinality.
We know from the proof of Theorem 6 that every infinite set
has an infinite proper subset which consists of the original set
minus denumerably many members. This fact has a beautiful
implication. If the "largeness'' of an infinite set is measured by its
cardinality, then the smallest infinite set is a denumerable set or
one with a cardinality of\'{ o. But if the largeness of an infinite set
is measured by the largeness of its proper subsets, then there is no
smallest infinite set: they nest downward ad infinitum without
ever losing infinite cardinality.
\'{ o designates the cardinality of the natural numbers by definition, which is demonstrably the smallest infinite cardinality
(Theorem 6). This justifies the zero subscript. \'{ 1 is by definition
the next greater infinite cardinality after \'{o, just as \'{2 is by
definition the next greater cardinal after \'{ 1, and so on. As we will
see in the section on the continuum hypothesis below, even though
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
there is an infinite series of infinite cardinals (Theorem 5), it is
impossible to say, in standard set theory, which one of them is l:{ 1,
which one is l:{ 2, and so on.
Theorem 7. A denumerable set plus a new member is still denumerable, or l:{ o+ 1= l:{ O·
• Proof If we add element A to the set of natural numbers, giving
us {A, 0, 1, 2, 3 ... }, then the resulting set can still be put into
one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. A would be
paired with 0, 0 with 1, 1 with 2, and so on.
• As a corollary it follows that we may add a second member, and a
third, and so on.
integer n.
•
l:{ o+2=l:{ 0 , l:{o+3=l:{ 0 , l:{ 0+n=l:{o for every positive
In fact we may add denumerably many new members, A, B, C ...
to the original denumerable set without increasing its cardinality.
The enlarged set, {A, B, C ... , 0, 1, 2 ... }, can be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the natural numbers if we interlace its members thus: A, 0, B, 1, C, 2.... (See Theorem 1.) Therefore,
l:{ o+ l:{ o= l:{ O·
Theorem 8. A denumerable set may have denumerably many
members removed (in certain ways) without reducing the cardinality of the original set.
• Proof We need only regard the given denumerable set as two
denumerable sets interlaced, then 'unlace' them, then discard one
of them. If {A" A2, A3 ... } is the original denumerable set, then we
can separate out the set of even-numbered members, {A2 , ~.A,; ... },
from the set of odd-numbered members, {A" A3 , A5... }, each of
which is denumerable. If we discard one of the resulting sets, the
other one has the same cardinality as the original.
• Note that this theorem only applies to the removal of certain
denumerable subsets from a given denumerable set. For if the
denumerably many members we subtracted happened to comprise
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the entire membership of the original denumerable set, then
clearly the result would not be a denumerable set. So we cannot
conclude in general that l-{o-l-{o=l-{o.
Theorem 9. If we remove denumerably many members from an
uncountably large set, the result will have the same cardinality as
the original.
• Proof Let U be any uncountably large set. We know from Theorem 6 that U has at least one denumerable proper subset, say D.
And we know from Theorem 8 that we can remove denumerably
many members from D, in certain ways, without reducing the
cardinality ofD. If we do so, then we thereby remove denumerably
many members from U without reducing the cardinality ofU.
Theorem I 0. Every infinite set can be be put into one-to-one
correspondence with at least one of its proper subsets.
•
Proof Let S be a set of any infinite cardinality. If S is. countable,
then Theorem 8 tells us that we may produce a proper subset of
S without reducing S's cardinality. But ifS and that proper subset
have the same cardinality, then they can be put into one-to-one
correspondence. If S is uncountable, then we have the same result
using Theorem 9 instead of Theorem 8.
• Together with the trivial truth that no finite set can be put into
one-to-one correspondence with any of its proper subsets, this
theorem establishes the important result that all and only infinite
sets possess the property that they can be put into one-to-one
correspondence with at least one of their proper subsets. It follows
that this property is a necessary and sufficient condition for being
an infinite set.. It may therefore be taken as the defining condition
of infinite magnitude, and its absence as the defining condition of
finitude.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
Definition. Let us say that a text is a finitely long string of symbols,
whose symbols are chosen from a finite set (or alphabet).
•
For our purposes here we needn't even say that the string conforms
to the rules of some grammar. When interpreted, the text may be
a name, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a book, or a library.
Theorem II. There are only countably many texts.
•
Proof By definition there are only finitely many symbols in the
"alphabet" from which we may compose texts. List them exhaustively in any order. To the first symbol, assign the numeral "10."
To the second, assign the numeral "100." To the third, assign
"1 000" and so on. In general, to the nth symbol in the alphabet
we assign the numeral in which" 1" is followed by n zeroes. Now
in each text, replace the symbols with their corresponding numerals. Concatenate the numerals so that, for example, "1 0 100 1000
10" becomes "10100100010." We now have a method for converting every distinct text into a distinct natural number. But there
are only ~ o natural numbers. Therefore there are at most ~ o texts.
This theorem has deep consequences. We will soon prove
(Theorem 16) that there are uncountably many real numbers. But
by the present theorem, there are only countably many names for
anything. Hence, only a countable subset of the real numbers can
be named. Or conversely (by Theorem 9), uncountably many real
numbers cannot be named.
This theorem also means that there are at most countably many
theorems in any axiom system (in which theorems are finitely
long). But we know from Theorem 3 that there are uncountably
many sets of natural numbers. If there is at least one truth of
number theory for each set of natural numbers (e.g. that some
number n belongs to that set), then there will be uncountably
many truths of number theory. Therefore, there are uncountably
many more truths of number theory than there are texts. It follows
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that every axiom system intended to capture number theory is
doomed to incompleteness.
Theorem 12. The number of points on a finite line segment is the
same as the number of points on an infinite ray.
C
D
A/
B
• Proof Let segment CD be parallel to ray AB. From point C we
can draw a line through any point of AD, except D itself, and the
line we draw will intersect AB somewhere; in this way we can pair
any point on AD with exactly one point on AB. Conversely, from
point C we can draw a line through any point of the ray AB, and
the line we draw will intersect AD somewhere; in this way, we can
pair any point onAB with exactly one point on AD. But this means
the points on AD, minus D itself, and those onAB can be put into
one-to-one correspondence. Hence they contain the same number
of points.
We have yet to say how many points are on AD (minus D itself)
or the infinite ray AB, but we know it will be some infinite
cardinaliry. Now since any infinite cardinal plus one equals the
original infinite cardinal (Theorem 7), we may add back the point
D, which we omitted above, without changing the cardinaliry of
the set of points on the segment.
Theorem 13. The number of points on a finite line segment is the
same as the number of points on an infinite line.
• The proof is a simple variation on the proof for Theorem 12.
Imagine the mirror image of the figure used in Theorem 12 (a
"backward Z"), with a new point, D', to the left of C, and a new
point, B', to the left of A. We would then prove that rwo line
segments (AD and AD') together contain the same number of
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
points as the infinite line. But the two line segments together make
one longer, though still finite segment. Therefore, the number of
points in a finite segment equals the number of points on an
infinite line.
Definition. The number of real numbers is the same as the number
of points on an infin'ite line; or in the jargon, the numerical
continuum has the same cardinality as the linear continuum.
•
Notation. Let c (lower-case "c'' for "continuum'') designate the
cardinality of the continuum-or equivalently, the cardinality of
the set of real numbers. Hence c = iJRI by definition.
Theorem 14. c+c =c.
• Proof One finite line segment of arbitrary length has c points
(Theorems 12 and 13). A second of arbitrary length has c points.
Together they make a longer, though still finite line segment,
hence one which has c points.
• Therefore we have as corollaries, 2c = c, 3c = c, and nc = c for every
positive integer n.
Theorem 15.
l'{o • c =c.
• Proof Think of an infinite line as marked off into unit segments,
like a ruler. Clearly the segments could be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the natural numbers. Hence there are denumerably many, or \-{ 0 , such segments. But from Theorem 13 we
know that each segment has c points. But the whole line also has
c points (by definition of c). Hence the whole line has as many
points, c, as the number of segments, \-{ 0 , times the number of
points per segment, c.
Theorem 16. The· set of real numbers is uncountable, or
•
Equivalently, this theorem asserts that c > \-{ 0 •
IIRI > \'{ o.
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• Proof Again we use a negative proof. Assume that the real
numbers can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the
natural numbers. Take the set of real numbers between 0 and 1.
Express terminating decimal fractions as non-terminating decimal
fractions; for example, 0.5 becomes 0.4999 .... Now under our
assumption pair off the natural numbers with the reals between 0
and 1, thus:
0 1 2-
O.d d d d ... where dis some digit
O.d d d d .. .
O.d d d d .. .
Now starting with the upper left d, move diagonally down and to
the right, changing each d we encounter to some other digit-for
example, incrementing it by one, and changing 9 to 0. In this way
we construct a new decimal fraction which is demonstrably nowhere on our list, for it differs from the first one in the first decimal
place, from the second in the second place, and so on. But this
contradicts our assumption that we have exhaustively listed all the
real numbers between 0 and 1. Therefore the assumption is false
and the reals cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with
the naturals. But the reals are at least as numerous as the naturals
and cannot have the smaller cardinality. Therefore, the cardinality
of the set of real numbers is greater than the cardinality of the set
of natural numbers.
Now we have only to prove that the number of reals between
0 and 1 is the same as the number of all the reals. But this follows
directly from Theorem 13.
Theorem 17. The power set of the set of natural numbers has the
same cardinality as the set of real numbers, or
I*NI=IlRI= c.
• Proof We know from the proof of Theorem 3 above that every set
of natural numbers can be represented as a denumerable string of
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"yeses" and "noes." These denumerable strings, in turn, can be put
into one-to-one correspondence with the denumerable strings of
"1 's'' and "O's." These strings, in turn, can be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the real numbers between 0 and 1 if we put
a decimal point at the lefi: end each denumerable string of 1's and
O's, and regard the r~sult as a fraction in base two. (We can purge
this set of numeral strings of repetitions without reducing the
cardinality of the set; if you don't believe me, see the post-script
below.) Finally, these real numbers between 0 and 1 can be put
into one-to-one correspondence with all the reals, as we saw in
Theorem 13.
•
Post-script. To convert a string of 1's and 0' s into a binary fraction,
just tack a decimal point (or a zero and then a decimal point) onto
the lefi: end. For example, Ill 000 ... becomes 0.111 000 ... , which
equals 112 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 0/16 + 0/32 .... Some of these fractions
will equal others, for example, 0.1000 ... = 0.0111.. .. (For clarity,
remember that in base 10, 0.5000 ... = 0.4999 ... , as we saw in
Theorem 16.) There are at most countably many such repetitions.
We know this because if we take all the fractions which consist of
"000 ... " at some point in their expansions, and cut off the trailing
zeroes, we will produce distinct, finite strings of 1's and 0's. But
there are at most countably many such finite strings, according to
Theorem 11. Now we know from Theorem 16 that there are
uncountably many r.eal numbers between 0 and 1. Hence to delete
the countabiy many repetitions would leave us with the same
uncountable cardinality we srarted with, according to Theorem 9.
•
Remembering that INI=~o (by definition), we may use the notation introduced in Theorem 5 to restate this theorem thus: c =
2" ~ o (which means 2 to the power of ~ 0).
Theorem 18. The set of points in a square has the same cardinality
as the set of points on one of its edges (namely, c).
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SUBER
• Proof We know from Theorems 12 and 13 that the number of
points in a finite line segment is c. Now we need only show that
the number of points inside a square is also c. First, think of left
and bottom edges of the square as collinear with the x andy axes
of a Cartesian coordinate system. Every distinct point inside the
square, therefore, hasa distinct pair of real numbers to identifY it;
one is its position on the x axis, the other its position on they axis.
Now interlace these two numbers as we did in Theorems 1 and 7.
For example, if the x axis position is 0.125000 ... and they axis
position is 0.333 ... , then interlace these two decimal fractions digit
by digit to make 0.1323530303030 .... We now have a single real
number, rather than a pair of real numbers, to correspond to each
point inside the square. Each of these new, interlaced numbers is
a real number between 0 and 1. We know from Theorem 16 that
there are at most c of these. But since they correspond to the points
inside a square we also know that there are at least c of them.
Therefore, there are exactly c of them.
•
Intensively for the three years from 1871 to 1874 Cantor labored
to prove this theorem false. Then he surprised himself by proving
it true. "I see it, but I don't believe it," he wrote to Dedekind.
Theorem 19. c • c
=
c.
• This theorem follows directly from Theorem 18.
• AB corollaries of this theorem, we have c • c • c = c, and c • c • c •
... • c = c, or in short, c•
=
c when n is any positive integer.
Theorem 20. The set of all points in a cube has the same cardinality
as the set of all points in one of its edges (namely, c).
• The proof is a simple variation of that for Theorem 18. In fact, it
is equivalent to one of the corollaries of Theorem 19. Each point
inside the cube will have three coordinates, not two. Hence we
interlace three decimal fractions, not two. The rest of the proof is
the same as for Theorem 18.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Theorem 21. The set of all points in an infinite plane has the same
cardinality as the set of all points in a finite line segment (namely, c).
• Proof Think of the plane as marked off into an infinite number
of square cells, like graph paper. First we show that there will be
denumera:bly many, or ~ 0 , such square cells. Pick one cell arbitrarily, and number jt 0. Go to the cell above it and number that
cell 1. Go one cell to the right and number it 2. Continue in this
way to circle the "0" cell. The result will be a spiral which would
eventually cover the plane. Yet each cell con tams a natural number.
Hence the cells and the natural numbers can be put into one-toone correspondence. Second we note that each cell contains c
points, under Theorem 18. Therefore, the number of points in
the infinite plane is the number of cells, ~ 0 , times the number of
points in a cell, c (by Theorem 18), which we know is equal to c
(by Theorem 15).
Theorem 22.
~o·~o = ~o.
• The proof of this theorem was already encapsulated in the proof
of Theorem 21 when we showed that there were denumerably
many, or ~ 0 , cells in the infinite graph paper of the Euclidean
plane. But another way to ascertain the number of such cells is to
take the product of the 'length' of the plane (in cells) and the
'width' of the plane (in cells). But the plane is ~ 0 cells 'high', and
~o cells 'wide'. Hence the number of cells is ~ 0 ·~ 0 ; however, we
already know the number of cells (from Theorem 21) to equal ~o.
Theorem· 23. The set of all points in infinite, 3-dimensional,
Euclidean space has the same cardinality as the set of all points in
a finite line segment (namely, c).
• The proof is a variation on that of Theorem 21. We divide the
space into cubes, rather than the plane into squares. Our spiraling
path which puts the natural numbers into one-to-one correspondence with the cubes will be more complex, but perhaps you can
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visualize it. The rest of the proof is the same, except that we use
Theorem 20 rather than Theorem 18.
Theorem 24. The set of all points in ~a-dimensional space has the
same cardinality as the set of all points in a finite line segment
(namely, c).
• Proof If the set of all points in 3-dimensional space is c3, then the
set of all points in ~ 0-dimensional space is cA ~ o. But under
Theorem 17, the latter number equals (2A~··,)A~ 0 , which in turn
equals 2A(~ 0 •~ 0 ), which (by Theorem 22) equals 2A~ 0 , which
(by Theorem 17) equals c.
Definition. The continuum hypothesis (CH) asserts that there is no
cardinal number a such that ~ 0 < a < c.
• Since by Theorem 17, c =I*NI=IIRI, we could use any of the latter
two expressions in place of c in stating CH.
•
From CHit follows that the next largest transfinite cardinal after ~ o
is c. Hence it also follows that c ~ ~I· Since we already know (from
Theorem 17) that 2A~ 0 = c, CH allows us to say that 2A~ 0 = ~ 1 •
• The commonly heard assertion that c = ~ 1 assumes CH. The
widespread acceptance of the assertion by mathematicians therefore attests to the general acceptance of CH in the profession.
(Without CH we have essentially no idea which Aleph corresponds to c, and we would know the cardinality of the naturals,
integers, and rationals, but not the cardinality of the reals.)
• Cantor formulated CH, and spent the last years of his career
unsuccessfully ttying to prove it. His failure obsessed him and
caused recurring bouts of serious depression. To prove or disprove
CH was the first problem on David Hilbert's famous 1900 list of
important unsolved problems in mathematics.
• Similarly, attempts to prove or disprove CH, or to prove it undecidable, consumed most of Kurt Giidel's 36 years at the Institute for
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Advanced Study. But he did produce an important partial proof
In 1938, Godel showed that CH cannot be disproved from the
axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel (ZF) set theory, the closest thing we
have to "standard" set theory. This meant that the negation of CH
(notation: ~CH) could not be derived from the ZF axioms. And this
in turn entailed that CH could be assumed and used in standard set
theory without introducing any inconsistencies which were not already there. Godel in effect proved that CH was as harmless as the less
exotic propositions which already comprised set theory; that is the
main reason why most mathematicians accept CH today.
•
In 1963 Paul Cohen showed thatCH cannot be proved from the
ZF axioms. Together, Godel and Cohen's results show thatCH
is independent of the ZF axioms: neither it nor its negation can be
derived from them. Among other things, this means that CH is
undecidable in ZF. After Euclid's parallel postulate, CH was
probably the first major conjecture to be proved undecidable by
standard mathematics. Its independence also means that ~CH is
just as consistent with standard set theory as CH irsel£ This has
allowed set theorists to develop set theory with and without it, just as
geometers can develop geometry with or without Euclid's parallel
postulate. Set theory with ~CH rather than CH is usually called
Non-Cantorian set theory.
Definition. The generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) asserts
that 2A IS,; IS, 1 for every positive integer a.
• When a;O, GCH yields the ordinary CH.
• GCH implies that, starting with IS 0, we can march through the
transfinite cardinals with the power set operation, and will not skip
any. It follows that for every infinite setS, if IS I; IS"' then I*SI;IS.,.,
or that the only transfinite cardinals are INI, I*NI, I**NI, I***NI, ....
Bibliographic note. Most of the theorems and proofs in this crash
course were discovered by Georg Cantor (1845-1918) and publish-
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ed in a series of monographs starting in 1870. He published two
summary statements of his results in 1895 and 1897, which have
been translated into English by Philip E. B. Jourdain as Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, Dover
Publications, 1955. My exposition of Cantor's results is indebted
to three more recent authors: Stephen Cole Kleene, Introduction
to Metamathematics, North-Holland Pub. Co., 1952; Abraham
Fraenkei,AbstractSet Theory, North-Holland Pub. Co., 1953; and
Geoffrey Hunter, Metalogic, University of California Press, 1971.
List of symbols and abbreviations with the page numbers of their
first occurrence.
{... }, set brackets, 35
0, the null set, 36
iff, "if and only if," 36
£, subset, 36
C, proper subset, 36
ISj, cardinality of setS, 36
A"" B, one-to-one correspondence, 37
*S, power set of setS, 38
N, the set of natural numbers, 38
~ o, Aleph-null, the number of natural numbers, 38
'l. the set of integers, 39
IQ. the set of rational numbers, 39
JR. the set of real numbers, 40
c, the cardinality of the continuum, 52
x"y, xr or x to the power of y, 54
CH, the continuum hypothesis, 57
GCH, the generalized continuum hypothesis, 58
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�~ Euripides among the Athenians
~
Michael Davis
According to Aristotle, Euripides appears to be the most tragic of
the poets. 1 Since "plot is the first principle and like the soul of
tragedy," and the most beautiful plots involve reversal and recognition, and, in the best of these, recognition comes to be "from
the events themselves," it is not surprising that Aristotle should
cite the plot of Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians as exemplary.2 The "most tragic of the poets" perhaps ought to have
written the best of the tragedies, and the Iphigeneia appears to be
Aristotle's candidate. Yet Aristotle also says that in the most
beautiful tragic plot a better-than-average man moves from good
to ill fortune. 3 In the Iphigeneia, Athena arranges things so that
all ends happily for Orestes, Iphigeneia, and even for the captive
Greek women who make up the chorus. Is this a movement from
good to ill fortune? How can this play be the best of tragedies?
How can it be a tragedy at all? Of course, not having read Aristotle,
Euripides may have been ignorant of what he was supposed to do.
But didn't Aristotle read Aristotle? How could the celebrated
celebrator of plot have been so filled with praise for a tragedy with
the story of a fairy tale? That "Iphigeneia among the Taurians is
usually regarded as an exceptionally well-made play, more transparently coherent and unproblematic than, say, the kindred
Helen or Ion" only deepens the puzzle. 4 An unproblematic and
coherent tragedy is only problematically tragic.
The Iphigeneia among the Taurians opens with a speech in
which Iphigeneia reveals that she, presumed to have been sacrificed by Agamemnon at Aulis so that the Greeks could sail against
Troy, was in reality whisked away by Artemis at the last minute
Michael Davis teaches philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW.
and replaced by a deer. Iphigeneia was brought to Artemis's
temple in Scythia among the Taurians (the present day Crimean
peninsula), where either the goddess or Thoas, the local king, (the
Greek admits of either reading, 34) made her priestess and responsible for preparing human victims for sacrifice. Iphigeneia has just
had a powerful dream in which, once more in her room at Argos,
she was awakened by an earthquake and ran outside, only to see
her home collapse, At the end one pillar alone remains standing.
Auburn hair grows from its top, and it speaks in a human voice.
Iphigeneia then sprinkles it with water, as she does in her office
as priestess to prepare victims for sacrifice. She now interprets this
dream to signifY the death of her brother Orestes. In the mean
time, Orestes and his cousin and brother-in-law, Pylades, arrive
on the Taurian shore where they have been sent by Apollo to steal
the statue of Artemis from the temple and take it to Athens.
Success will release Orestes from his labors; he will no longer be
pursued by the Furies for the killing of his mother (1453-56).5
After conducting a ritual funeral for the "dead" Orestes,
Iphigeneia is brought a report that two men have been captured-she does not yet know that they are Orestes and Pylades.
Iphigeneia is to prepare them for sacrifice. A long scene follows
in which she first discovers the prisoners to be Argives, questions
Orestes about affairs at Argos, and offers to free him if he will
carry a letter to someone there. He agrees on the condition that
not he but his friend Pylades be the one to go. When Iphigeneia
makes Pylades swear an oath that he will deliver the letter, he asks
what he is to do if it is lost at sea. Iphigeneia makes him commit
the letter to memory, and in the process its addressee (Orestes)
and its content (that she was not really sacrificed) are revealed.
Pylades immediately meets the conditions of his oath by handing
the letter to Orestes, who reveals who he is and offers some proofs.
How all three will escape is now the problem. Iphigeneia determines to tell Thoas that Orestes and Pylades are matricides who,
before being sacrificed, must be purified in sea water, as must the
statue tainted by their touch. After using her authority to ensure
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63
that everyone else, will remain indoors, Iphigeneia takes Orestes,
Pylades, and the statue of Artemis down to the sea, They are about
to escape in Orestes' ship when the wind turns against them,
Thoas is just sending men for their recapture when Athena intervenes. She instructs Orestes to set up a new temple of Artemis at
Halae (on the island of Euboea) where each year a ritual human
sacrifice will be performed-hosias hekati (for the sake of the
holy). Iphigeneia is to become the priestess at Artemis's temple at
Brauron (about twenty miles from Athens on the shore across the
gulf from Halae); when she dies she will be buried there and
offerings will be made to her of the fine clothing of women who
have died in childbirth. The Greek slave women who have made
up the chorus will also return home (which may be Delos, the
island on which Apollo and Artemis were born-1 094-111 O).
Thoas agrees because to disobey a god is crazy, and so, with the
possible exception ofThoas, all live happily ever after. Or do they?
At some level Iphigeneia among the Taurians is clearly about two
things-the difference between Greek and barbarian and the
significance of human sacrifi~e. The first word of the play is Pelops,
the name of an ancestor to whom Iphigeneia traces the origin of
her Greekness. Tantalus, king of Lydia and Pelops's father, was
said to have murdered his son and served him to the gods as dinner
in order to test their divinity by seeing if they could discern that
they were eating human flesh. All the gods but Demeter knew
immediately; she, apparently brooding over the loss of
Persephone, was inattentive and took a bite of shoulder. Tantalus
was punished severely. The gods reassembled the pieces of Pelops
(with an ivory shoulder) and brought him back to life, after which
he went to Greece, married Hippodamia of Pisa, founded the
Peloponnesus and fathered Atreus, father of Agamemnon.
Iphigeneia thus begins the play by reminding us that Greeks were
originally Asians, albeit Asians reassembled as a result of a divine
rejection of human sacrifice. The Iphigeneia also begins by reminding us that beneath the problem of human sacrifice lies the
still darker problem of cannibalism. Sacrifices to an Olympian god
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
involve offering the fat and bones of the sacrificed animal to the
god but eating the meat. 6 Iphigeneia repeatedly understands the
distinction between Greek and barbarian in terms of human
sacrifice even though the originator of her line served his son to
the gods for dinner (386-91), her grandfather similarly served his
brother's children to him out of revenge (179-90, 811-17), and
her own father meant"to sacrifice her to Artemis as the price for
setting sail for Troy (6-27, 203-228). The chorus, too, emphasize
their exile from Europe (135) to barbaric Asia (180). And Thoas
distinguishes barbarians from Greeks on the grounds that no
barbarian would dare commit matricide (1174).
According to an ancient law in the city where "barbarian Thoas
is lord among the barbarians," Iphigeneia now prepares for sacrifice any Greek man who comes to the Taurian land.? She calls it
a festival "only the name of which is noble (kalon)." Out of fear
she remains silent as to the rest-the unspeakable things done
within the temple (28-41). Later Iphigeneia doubts that the gods
could demand such sacrifices and even doubts the stories about
her ancestor Tantalus. 8 It must be "those killers of men here" who
attribute their own baseness to the goddess (385-91). Just before
putting her escape plan into action, Iphigeneia prays to Artemis:
Mistress {potnia), who saved me in the glens of Aulis
from the terror of a hand of a murderous father9, save
me also now as well as these men; or because of you
the utterance of Loxias is no longer true for mortals.
But kindly (eumenes) go from a barbarian land to
Athens. For it is not fit for you to dwell here when
you have a happy city available.IO (1 082-88)
Were Artemis, who once saved Iphigeneia from being sacrificed, to
be perfectly consistent she ought to save her now as well. It is because
they practice human sacrifice that the Taurians are not fit to keep
Artemis's temple. Iphigeneia effectively identifies the barbarity of the
barbarians with the fact that they practice human sacrifice.
On the other hand, presumably because she is a Greek, she finds
the suggestion terrible (deinos) that she and Orestes, as visitors,
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kill a host/stranger (xenophonein) even to effect their escape
(1021).1 1 And yet Iphigeneia initially characterized her own art as
killing strangers (xenoktonon, 53). Of course, this means that she
has been killing Greeks. Iphigeneia seems to think it less barbarous to kill her own who are strangers than to kill strangers who
are her own.
Given the importance of human sacrifice in the play, the
ambiguiw surrounding its practice by lphi:geneia is doubly puzzling. Beginning with her interpretation of her dream, she regularly collapses the distinction between anointing those who are
about to be sacrificed and actu41ly killing them. She says her art
is to slay strangers (53), even though others in fact cut rhe throat
of the sacrifices .. But is even this true? The queerest of the puzzles
of the play emerges in Iphigeneia's conversation with the herdsman from whom she hears ofthe capture of Orestes and Pylades
and to whom she says that "never yet was the altar of the goddess
made red with streams of Greek blood" {258-59). In her dream,
Iphigeneia makes much of the auburn (xanthas) hair that grows
out of the cornice of the one pillar that remains standing after the
fall of her ancestral home (52). In the immediate sequel, Pylades
remarks that the cornice of the altar is auburn from blood- (73).
This would seem to settle the matter, and yet directly after
Iphigeneia makes her puzzling rem_arks about never having spilled
Greek blood, the herdsman introduces into his story the fact that
the capture of Orestes and Pylades occurred near a shelter for those
fishing for porphura, the fish from which purple dye is made (263),
and then goes on to tell of how they sounded an alarm by blowing
on kochloi, shellfish from which purple dye is also made (303). All
of this might be thought to be included only for adding local color
to the description were it not for the fact that in the Iliad (17.361)
and in Aeschylus's Persians (317) porphureos refers to the color of
blood stains. We thus have a blood stained altar (73), a claim that
no blood has been spilled (258-59-this seems to follow from the
fact that the ancient law specifies the sacrifice of Gree\<: men) and
finally the gratuitous introduction of material for making dye the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
color of blood (263, 303). We seem to be meant to wonder
whether the human sacrifice practiced by the Taurians might be
an elaborate hoax.l2
That said, we must immediately answer that this cannot be.
Iphigeneia· has a letter written for her to Orestes by a captive who
pitied her and held that the law, not her hand, was responsible for
his death. This can only be the law that prescribes the death of
Greek men. So one Greek at least has died. Euripides seems to
have made it impossible for us to solve this difficulty on the level
of the plot. On the one hand, and contrary to our initial impressions, no sacrifice has been performed; on the other hand, at least
one sacrifice has been performed. But perhaps the contradiction
is the point. By being made to wonder whether a human being
has been sacrificed, we are made to wonder what it would mean
for a human being to be sacrificed. When Agamemnon sacrifices
Iphigeneia he is fullfilling an oath to sacrifice "the most beautiful
thing a year would bear" (23), much as Abraham is told to sacrifice
his "only son Isaac, whom [he loves]." 13 Human sacrifice has
meaning insofar as we are offering up our ownmost-what is of
the greatest importance to us. Piety demands that the gods be
given what we value most. A lamb may be dear, but a human being
is more dear. Understood in this way, killing one's child is a sign
of great piety. At the same time, the very moment a human being
is placed on the sacrificial altar his humanity is diminished. It is
for this reason that Euripides has Iphigeneia go voluntarily to the
altar in the Iphigeneia at Aulis (1368-1401) and in this play has
her stipulate that Orestes and Pylades must be untied before they
can be fit sacrifices (468-71). An unwilling human sacrifice strips
a human being of humaniry. Still, even a willing sacrifice involves
a devaluing of the worth of a human being.
On the one hand, the greatest piety requires human sacrifice;
on the other hand, to sacrifice a human being is to render it less
than it was-no longer the greatest sacrifice but just another
animal to be burned and eaten. The gods place an impossible
demand on us. No sacrifice is sufficient unless it is a sign that we
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67
give what is most our own, and yet in the act of sacrificing it, our
own ceases to be our own. 'The Iphigeneia among the Taurians is
ambiguous with regard to the question of human sacrifice because
human sacrifice is, by its very nature, ambiguous. To perform it
is not to perform it; human sacrifice is impossible.
The Iphigeneia begins by acknowledging that what was thought
to be a human sacrifice was not; at the last minute a human being
turned into an animal. The Greeks, altogether unaware of the
change (perhaps human flesh tastes like venison), have to be
taught its significance. This play, the instrument for their education, will make them fully Greek. Iphigeneia herself still confuses
the intent, acknowledgement, or meaning of sacrifice with the act
itself. She does not carefully distinguish her office from that of
those who cut animals' throats, and she assumes that, because her
dream showed her performing the rites ofher,office over what she
took to be Orestes, this is tantamount to the death of Orestes. She
never hears the chorus's account of Zeus's amusement when the
young Apollo comes (o demand that Earth, from whose daughter
Themis Apollo had seized the oracle at Delphi, be forced to stop
supplying dreams as an alternative to sacred oracles for "articulating the things before and the things after-whatever was to
happen" (1264-65). If it is characteristic of Greeks to worship
Olympian gods, this seems to mean distinguishing between dream
and reality.
Not sufficiently understanding the distinction berween the
significance of a deed and its reality, Iphigeneia makes a typically
barbarian mistake; it is as though everyone were like Thoas, whose
name describes· his most significant feature-as though the swift
of foot were all named Swift, and all Carpenters were workers in
wood (2, 31-33). It is probably significant that neither the verb
sCmainiJ, "to signifY" or "give signs," nor any word cognate with
it appear in the Iphigeneia until line 1203. Thereafter, they occur
eight times. 14 At the beginning of the play Iphigeneia characterizes
her art as the killing of strangers-she is defined by where she is,
and, accordingly, Greeks are strangers. By the end of the play she
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
resists Orestes' suggestion that they kill Thoas in order to escape
because it is terrible to kill strangers (1021). Only by thinking of
herself as a stranger in the land in which she lives can Iphigeneia
understand the distinction between significance and reality.
But by distinguishing the meaning of a deed from its reality
might it not be possible to preserve the lofty piety of human
sacrifice without indulging in the low savagery of the deed? "For
the sake of the holy"-hosias hekati (1461 )-would then take on
its idiomatic meaning, "for form's sake." The Iphigeneia, which
is, after all, about thwarted human sacrifices, would in reality be
about the superiority of ritual, fake sacrifices.
That Euripides has the duality of reality and significance in
mind is also clear from our first glimpse of Orestes and Pylades.
As the two enter cautiously, Pylades twice speaks of looking
around in a double way.
I am looking (horo), and in turning my eyes in every
direction, I am inspecting (skopoumai). (68)
But looking round with my eye (egkuklounta ophthalmon), I must inspect (skopein) well. (76)
Pylades tacitly distinguishes between seeing what is present and a
metaphorical seeing that involves understanding the meaning of
what one sees. Similarly, when the herdsmen first encounter
Orestes and Pylades, while there is no argument with respect to
what they see, there is an important disagreement about what it
means. To some the strangers are gods (daimones, 267) or images
(agalmata, 273) ofa god; to others they are simply wayward sailors
(276). This duality gets resolved only in madness or in dreams.
For Orestes, who mistakes the dogs and cattle of the Taurians for
the Furies (whose sounds are said to be mimemata of the sounds
of cattle and dogs, 293-94), and Iphigeneia, for whom anointing
her brother is killing him, vision is not double.
Had Orestes made the distinction between ritual and reality,
he might have understood Apollo's instructions quite differently.
We do not know the precise words of the oracle, only Orestes'
versions of them:
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You said for me to come to the boundaries of the
Taurian land where your sister Artemis has altars, and
to take the image (agalma) of the goddess which those
here say fell into this temple from heaven. (85-88)
There, sounding a voice from his golden tripod, Phoebus sent me here to seize the image (agalma) fallen
from Zeus and set it in the land of Athens. (976-78)
It is possible, of course, that Apollo told Orestes to go to Scythia
to fetch his sister, which in Greek might be indistinguishable from
the sister. 15 Both Iphigeneia and the agalma of Artemis fell from
the sky (29). This ambiguity is perfectly expressed at the end of
the play when, to effect their escape, Orestes lifts Iphigeneia into
his ship while she is holding the agalma of Artemis (138185)-the act of rescuing Apollo's sister is the same as the act of
rescuing his own sister. Agalma has a variety of meanings in Greek
(delight, honor, glory, gift, image, statue, etc.), as Euripides
reminds us when he has one of the herdsmen, upon first seeing
Orestes and Pylades, suggest that they are agalmata of Nereus
(273). They are surely not thought to be statues hut rather
something like favorites. Used in this way, Iphigeneia could easily
be understood as an agalma of Artemis. Of course, were she simply
an agalma of Artemis, she would be little more than a statue. As
priestess, she performs the duties of her office, but she asserts her
humanity by doubting her patroness, blaming Artemis's "sophisms" in accepting human sacrifices while keeping from her altars
any who are stained by murder or by touching a woman in
childbirth or a dead body (380-83). A human being can no more
be an agalma than a sacrifice. Iphigeneia is and is not an agalma
of Artemis. None of this ambiguity gets through to Orestes,
however. He thinks only that he has been sent to fetch a statue;
finding Iphigeneia is a stroke of luck, but it does not occur to him
to see one event as an image of the other. Neither Orestes nor his
sister sees double.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Yet there is reason to believe that for Euripides seeing double
is the defining feature of human beings. Iphigeneia begins the play
by lamenting the death of her kin, Orestes. Although she can
scarcely have known him-when last she saw him he was an
infant-·Iphigeneia places all her hopes in Orestes. Accordingly,
he is her friend in name only; before she learns Orestes' name she
is content to see him die. On the other hand, Orestes and Pylades
are philoi in a deeper sense. The herdsman reports that while the
Taurians attacked the mad Orestes, Pylades protected the dear
man (phi/on andra) at the risk of his own life (310-14). This
account leads Iphigeneia to assume that the two are "a pair of
brothers [born] of one mother" (497). Orestes responds that they
are brothers in love (philothi) but not in blood (498). The
friendship of the two men is confirmed when, having been offered
a chance to save himself by taking Iphigeneia' s letter to Argos,
Orestes wants Pylades to go in his stead because he is his philos
(597 -608). Pylades, lamenting this as misfortune ("unenviable is
the death of friends to friends," 650) wishes to die with Orestes,
for he is his friend. It would be shameful for him to do otherwise
(674-86). Orestes replies that this would pain him even more; he
asks Pylades to suffer the shame of abandoning him so that he,
Orestes, will not have to suffer it and calls Pylades the dearest of
his friends (philtaton ...phil8n, 708). Friends seem to be those who
identifY their friend's good with their own; they are as one.
Why has the Iphigeneia suddenly become preoccupied with the
issue ofphilia-kinship or friendship? For Orestes to love Pylades
as a brother is possible only because Pylades is not his brother.
Philia in the highest sense can become manifest only when two
human beings bound together by mutual consent behave as
though they had been bound together by something altoghter
beyond their consent, like birth. And yet to be bound together by
necessity is precisely not to be friends. At its most powerful, will
appears to be necessity, at which point it ceases to be will.
Accordingly, in the Iphigeneia, the word daimon and words compounded from it are used sometimes to mean fate or destiny (157,
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202-4) and sometimes god (267, 391, 570).16 Orestes says he and
Pylades are brothers in love but cannot mean what he says, for,
were they brothers, there would be nothing special in behaving
like brothers. But philia is special. Its metaphorical meaning is
thus the measure of its real meaning. Metaphorical brotherhood
is real philia. It requires that we understand ourselves as being
something we are not in~ order to understand what we are; we must
see double. Significance (the two are brothers) must be at odds
with reality (the rwo are not really brothers) to be the measure of
reality (we might say of two brothers that unlike most brothers
they are really brothers).
At first it seems as though the metaphorical level of our lives is
interpreted in terms of a more fundamental reality, but the metaphor turns out to be the reality of our lives. Ritual is not a
reminder of a deeper reality; it constitutes a "deeper" reality that
it then interprets. The plot of the Iphigeneia serves as an example.
Iphigeneia overinterprets her dream to mean that Orestes is
dead-she cannot know that he is the last male of her family since
she neither knows that her father is dead (543-45) nor that Orestes
was the last of her mother's children (compare 917-19). She then
stages a funeral during which she sprinkles libations, cries and
would put her auburn hair on his tomb if she could (158-78). Her
misinterpretation of the dream thus leads to a ritual that could
itself be the meaning of the dream. A dream is interpreted as a
ritual which is then interpreted back into what it is a ritual of.
Iphigenia says that a dream about sprinkling libations over a pillar
with a red top is an image of her doing her priestly function, and
so represents death. This then causes her to perform a ritual burial
that can, in,turn, be understood as the true meaning of the dream
she first interpreted-she saw herself sprinkling libations over
Orestes, who is really alive.
Fraternity among real brothers could show itself only after the
rejection of the blood bond that ties them together; fratricide is a
perhaps exaggerated version of this rejection of the merely animal
connection. But in the Iphigeneia, to be willing to kill your brother
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
seems to be the prerequisite for loving him simply as a human
being, for only in this way can you be sure that you love him for
himself and not because he is your brother. The plot of the
Iphigeneia reflects this difficulty. Iphigeneia literally comes to
know her brother as her own by planning to kill him,l7 But she
also demands that Orestes separate himself from one who is
phi!taton philfJn for the sake of his own escape (595). To know
what you love you must forsake it, and yet to forsake it is to deny
your love. Friendship no less than piety makes impossible demands on us and for the same reason. The significance of both
depends on a reality that undermines their significance.
Iphigeneia among the Taurians is a story about what happens
when the reality of things is replaced by their significance. The
fundamental "fact" of the play is that although Iphigeneia did not
die at Aulis, the Greeks were allowed to sail to Troy. The Trojan
war required not her death but its significance-something like
acknowledging the harsh cost of war before going to war. 18 Ironically, a real sacrifice would not serve this purpose so well. Ritual
forces us to acknowledge that we are really concerned with the
meaning of the action we are imitating, not its reality. By separating the significant from the real, it forces us to acknowledge the
presence of the significant within the real. It is like dreaming,
which seems almost a natural ritual-an experience of the separation of experience from reality that induces us to look for a
meaning within reality,l9 The Taurians seem to have sacrificed
strangers before Iphigeneia dropped into their midst (39), and it
is not clear that they sacrifice only Greek men since Iphigeneia is
told to prepare for the sacrifice of Orestes and Pylades before she
asks what land they have the look of (241-46). What is clear is
that the Taurians have come to interpret their practice as just
reprisal for Agamemnon's "sacrifice" oflphigeneia at Aulis (33639). But once a practice is acknowledged to exist for the purpose
of expressing something else-not simply the hatred of strangers
but the symbolic avenging oflphigeneia-then it no longer really
has to be done. If the practice has as its purpose to make a point,
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then there would be no reason why in any particular case you
couldn't just let a Greek or two go. But if one, why not all? The
symbolism, not the deed, is what is important.
Greeks differ from barbarians in that they are aware of this
primacy of significance. In the Iphigeneia, Euripides experiments
with the complete rationalizing or Hellenizing of the Greeks; the
play is a declaration of their utter independence from Asia. For
there to be no stain of savagery on the Greek war against Troy (the
deed that more than any other constitutes them as a people), the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia has to be denied (for the same reason,
Iphigeneia is moved to deny the story of Tantalus and
Pelops-386-390). If Iphigeneia was not killed, then the murder
of Agamemnon was not justified, and if Clytemnestra was altogether in the wrong, Orestes was altogether right. The Tantalids
begin to look squeaky clean.
Still, there are problems. The play begins with a reference to
the origin of the Greeks in Asia; these Greeks-Iphigeneia, Orestes and Pylades-institute a plan designed to free them, like
Pelops, from Asia. The scheme involves the sort of untrustworthiness that Iphigeneia attributes to Greeks (1204) and the messenger
to women who happen to be Greek (1298). This is no idle charge.
Iphigeneia's escape plan involves taking advantage of the Taurians' naive piety. 20 But to use the purification of the statue of
Artemis as a ruse to reach Orestes' ship means that they do not
treat the statue as a sacred object. What they do reminds us of
what Artemis did at Aulis; both involve manipulating the holy for
ulterior motives. There are several other events of this sort in the
play. When Iphigeneia realizes that she lacks away 0fbeing certain
that Pylades will take her letter to Argos, Orestes asks her what
she is perplexed about (amechanein, 734). She asks that Pylades
swear an oath. Pylades does (749), but then says that they have
forgotten something (753), to which Iphigeneia replies that it
doesn't matter because they can just swear a new oath (754). Oaths
are apparently subject to ongoing revision at the convenience of
the oath taker. Here the gods are no more than devices-mecha-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
nai. But when god becomes a deus ex machina used to extricate
characters from difficult situations, it is not really any longer a
god to be worshipped. Does the substitution of a deer for
Iphigeneia at Aulis demonstrate the power of Artemis or her
irrelevance? To understand Artemis as an agalma one must understand the power she has. For that she must be taken deadly
seriously; she must be' thought real. But then she will no longer
be understood as an image-as what she stands for. The significance of Artemis is at odds with her reality or power; she both
does and does not want to be called by the name Artemis. Perhaps
the tragedy of the Iphigeneia among the Taurians is that its "happy
ending" points to the vanishing of the sacred. The triumph of
guile or significance (Greekness) means that all constraints are
negotiable. Ritual seems at first to establish the primacy of significance over reality, but it is a curiously insignificant significance.
Ritual preserves the significance of something done without
preserving the doing itself. The blood on the knife of the rite
performed at Halae each year stands for human sacrifice without
being human sacrifice. Ritual is pure significance, but once the
actual doing is taken away, it risks losing its significance. It is
initially done hosias hekati, for the sake of the holy, but it ends by
being done hosias hekati, for form's sake. It is done because it is
done. The very end of the Iphigeneia points to this problem. The
escape of Iphigeneia, Orestes and Pylades is about to fail when
Athena saves them. But if now, why not at the beginning? All the
action of the play is rendered meaningless in light of the end; it is
simply for form's sake. The knife is at their throats, but Athena's
intervention deprives it of reality. Had they known she would save
them, their efforts would have been like the ceremony at Halae, a
ritual, but that is to say tongue in cheek-for form's sake. The
cleverness of the Greeks thus threatens to undermine the very
meaning that distinguishes them from barbarians. The Iphigeneia,
as the story of the complete triumph of ritual and Greekness, is
thereby also an account of the death of Greekness.
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This dependence of the Greek on the barbarian comes out in a
curious way after Iphigeneia discovers that Orestes is her brother
(869-99). She first tacitly compares her daring in almost sacrificing Orestes to the daring of her father (862, 869) and later to
Orestes' own daring in killing his mother (924) and then laments
Orestes' present plight.
By discovering what way (poron) for you, away from
the city will I send you back again from murder to the
Argive fatherland before sword comes near to your
blood? This, this, unhappy soul, you must discover.
Will you go overland, not by ship, but by swiftness of
foot? Then you will draw near to death, marching
through barbarian tribes and ways that are not ways
(hodous anodous). Yet going through the narrows
(stenoporou) of the dark rocks is a great journey for
escapes by ship. Wretched me, wretched me. With
respect to these things, who, what god or mortal or
what of the unforeseen, by finding a way out of
trouble (poron aporon) will bring to light a release of
evils for the only two offspring of Atreus? 2 1 (876-99)
The issue is how to leave Asia and the barbarians behind. Orestes
cannot go by foot for that would take him through barbarian lands
where there are ways that are not ways-hodous anodous. Now,
anodos means not only no way but also a way up. So the barbarian
way is both a dead end and an ascent. Similarly, when Iphigeneia
asks what god, mortal or whatever of the immanifest things will
find a way out of the problem, "way" is poros and problem is
aporon-lack of a way. 22 Without realizing it, Iphigeneia thus calls
for a wayless way. She asks for a solution to their problem which
in not being a solution will provide a solution and likens this to
making a way up, an ascent, out of the non-way of the barbarians.
But this is just a description of a peculiar kind of ritual-tragedy.
The aporon of the barbarian, when displayed and made self-conscious, becomes the poros of the Greek. What seems no way is
really a way up. The experience of the savagery of human sacrifice
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
by way of ritual is like the experience of tragedy. Tragedy civilizes,
for to be civilized is to be a ritualized barbarian.
Tragedy sketches a problem, an aporia, in all its intractabili~y.
Then it represents it in such a way as to make the experience of
the problem a solution. Yet the success of this procedure is
incomplete. Insofar as tragedy, as play, undermines the seriousness
and reality of what it is about, it tends to commit suicide and thus
paves the way for forgetting the problem that it describes. It is like
ritual cut free from the reality of which it was an image; its
Greekness is so complete as to be utterly non-barbaric. But a
problem that has come to be a solution soon ceases to be understood as a problem and therewith ceases to be a solution. When
we become convinced that the irrational attachment to family is
a necessary feature of human nature (we all have mothers), it
becomes something evetyone has to "cope with." Yet then it no
longer has a sufficiently powerful hold on us to make possible a
tragedy based on it and revealing it. When Oedipus and Electra
simply need therapy to take care of the complexes bearing their
names, tragedy is no longer possible. But when tragedy is no
longer possible, these complexes are no longer intelligible. Perfect
Hellenization is thus impossible; to be Greek means to retain the
memory of what it is to be a barbarian. The Iphigeneia begins with
a reference to Pelops and constantly reminds us of the Greek
origins in Asia. We are all lapsed barbarians.
The plot of the Iphigeneia among the Taurians presents the
replacement of actual human sacrifice by ritual sacrifice. 2 3 This
involves the movement from Scythia to Athens, from Asia to
Greece. The action of the play is made possible by Iphigeneia' s
clever use of the agalma of Artemis to effect their escape. The
significance of the change involved in this ruse is made·manifest
in the expression hosias hekati; what was for the sake of the holy
gradually becomes for form's sake. On one level, the Iphigeneia is
a story about the superiority of Greeks to barbarians. Euripides
celebrates the fact that, unlike barbarians, Greeks recognize common humanity; they do not sacrifice human beings. Instead, they
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ritualize such behavior, distilling its significance-the sacrifice of
what is most dear-into non-barbaric action. On a deeper level,
however, the Iphigeneia points to the fragility of all ritual. Its
success is its failure, for insofar as it suppresses its barbaric origin
it becomes unintelligible. Accordingly, the Iphigeneia provides
accounts of the forgotten "realities" at the source of at least three
Athenian rituals. 24 Orestes tells Iphigeneia that when he stopped
over in Athens he was not denied hospitality, but, because the
Athenians did not wish to drink from the same cup as a matricide,
each man drank from an individual small cup. He says that this
has since become a rite at Athens-the Choes, or pitcher feast
(947-60). At the end of the play, when Athena instructs Orestes
and lphigeneia on what they are to do, she is in fact offering
accounts of already existing rituals at Athens. She speaks directly
to Orestes (1446), telling him to hear her epistolai-her message.
The word can also mean letter and was used by lphigeneia to
describe the message written for her by the Greek whom she
sacrificed (589). What might the two "letters" have to do with
each other? Iphigeneia' s says that she did not die; her sacrifice was
only an illusion-a symbol. Athena directs Orestes to establish a
symbolic Taurian land in Athens. He is to set up a temple at Halae
for the statue of Artemis, who will henceforth be called tauropolos.
This was an epithet of Artemis at Athens prior to the Iphigeneia
among the Taurians; it could mean either "worshipped by the
Taurians" or "hunting bulls." Starting with an already existing
temple, Euripides settles the ambiguities surrounding it and provides a story to give it significance. Similarly, although with a
significance less obvious, Athena instructs Iphigeneia to become
a priestess at Artemis's temple at Brauron. When she dies,
Iphigenia will be honored with agalmata-the finery of women
who have died in childbirth. This, too, seems to be an existing
ritual for which Euripides is creating a "reality."25
Euripides has thus written a tragedy that restores an awareness
of the original reality to rituals that have become so much for
form's sake that it is no longer clear why they are practiced. But
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
if the reality underlying ritual is its barbaric origin, it would be
fair to say that Euripides' tragedy rebarbarizes rituals that have
become so civilized as to cease to be significant. In fact, this is
what the whole of the Iphigeneia is meant to do. Tragedy is a ritual
restoration of the reality that underlies ritual. This is the truly
distinguishing characteristic of the Greeks. They do not simply
shake hands; they prdvide stories adequate to restore our awareness that shaking hands was originally a sign that men thereby are
refraining from drawing their swords. If this is not to be simply a
bit of quaint, antiquarian knowledge, these stories must reproduce
the fear that swords might indeed be drawn. They must rebarbarize us. Similarly, the ritual of human sacrifice at Halae is unintelligible apart from the terror of human sacrifice that a tragedy
like the Iphigeneia is meant to inspire.
Isn't this still a happy ending? Tragedy goes one step beyond
ritual. In this play, Euripides provides an imaginary context for
an existing ritual so as to rebarbarize us in thought, and thus in
reality civilize us. He provides a model for bringing together
reality and significance by providing us with a poetic (that is to
say, false) reality to bolster the significance of the rituals of our
day to day life. Tragedy reveals to us the phusis underlying our
nomos, and by doing so causes us to wonder again at what we have
come to take for granted. For, as Aristotle says, "the lover of myth
is somehow a philosopher." 26 As a result, we get knowledge without
suffering-a perfect coincidence of significance and reality.
In the end, however, even this solution is incomplete. On the
obvious level, Athena's intervention is not simply a happy ending
because Iphigeneia is not allowed to go home. She and Orestes
must remain separated. Orestes was sent to the land of the Taurians to accomplish two things that looked like one thing. He was
to rescue his sister and ste~l the statue of Artemis. Reality and
significance were adroitly confused. In the end, the statue of
Artemis, the image of the sister, is to be housed in a temple at
Halae where a ritual is conducted each year. A man will be brought
to the temple as if to be sacrificed, and when the knife is brought
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near his throat a drop of blood will be drawn hosias hekati. This
ritual, a fake, is meant to remind us of the significance of human
sacrifice. Iphigeneia, the real sister, will, on the other hand, be
housed at Brauron, across the Euboean Gulf from Halae. After her
death, ritual offerings will be made to her to acknowledge the real
sacrifice that mothers make so that their children can be born. In
the first ritual, the death is intended but unreal; in the second it
is unintended but real. The first ritual is used to make the
significant real; the second is used to make the real significant.
While the two are similar, their separation at the end of the play
suggests that Euripides knew that the togetherness of reality and
significance would mean the disappearance of both. In the end,
tragedy, too, is a ritual, the significance of which must be lost in
time. Iphigeneia among the Taurians is Euripides' self-consciously
imperfect attempt to provide a ritual for its renewal. Perhaps this
is why Aristotle called him the most tragic of the poets.
Notes
I. Aristotle, Poetics, 1453a29. Quotations from the Poetics are from Aristotle: Poetics, ed. D.W. Lucas (Oxford: 1986). Translations are my own.
2. Aristotle, Poetics 1450a38-39, 1452b30-31, 1452a16-17 and 1455a16-19.
3. Aristotle, Poetics 1453a7-12
4. See Christian Wolff, "Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Tauriam: Aetiology, Ritual, and Myth," Classical Antiquity, 1112 (1992), 307.
5. The play thus constitutes a correction ofAeschylus'sEumenides (967-75).
6. See Hesiod, Theogony 507-560 and Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Greek Relig!on," in Religions ofAntiquity, ed. Robert M. Collier (New York: Macmillan,
1989), 176-81.
7. All quotations from Iphigenia among the Tauriam are from Euripidis
Fabulae, ed. J. Diggle (Oxford: 1986), Vol. 2. Translations are my own.
8. Our surest source for the story of Tantalus and Pelops is Pindar (Olympian I) who relates it, like Iphigeneia, only to deny that it could be true of
the gods.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
9. Patroktonoswith the accent on the antepenultima is a genitive and means
"of a father who kills." Patroktonos with the accent on the penultima means
"father-killer."
10. In the plural potnia (potniaz) is often used to refer to the Furies (Sophocles' Oedipus at Co/onus 84; Herodotus Inquiries 9.97) who, of course, are
given the name Eumenides or Kindly Ones in Aeschylus's play of that name
when they acquiesce in the aquittal of Orestes and take up residence at
Athens. Here Iphigeneia urges her potnia Artemis to be eumenh and take up
a new home in Athens. The plot of the Iphigeneia makes clear that Orestes
has not yet been cleansed. Euripides means to revise Aeschylus's version of
the story. Orestes has not yet come to terms with what it means to have killed
his mother for killing his father for killing his sister. Iphigeneia remains as
unfinished business since Orestes seems to have taken her death rather lightly.
Another Fury has to be made kindly. Aeschylus and Euripides seem to agree
that this is what distinguishes Greeks from barbarians.
11. This is, of course, a version of the issue of the status of strangers at stake
in the Trojan war.
12. It is worth remembering that on the level of theatrical representation
they are, of course, certainly a hoax.
13. Genesis 22.2
14. They are twice urrered by Thoas describing Iphigeneia's activiry (1203,
1211), twice by Iphigeneia (once referring to implements of purification-1233, and once bidding that a messenger be sent to what she now
refers to as the polis-292) and four times by the messenger reporting the
deeds of their escape to Thoas (1305, 1312, 1372, 1410).
15. Moses Hadas, Introduction to Classical Drama (New York: Bantam
Books, 1966), 108.
16. At 1486, Athena tells Thoas that "necessiry is stronger than both you and
the gods.~'
17. When she is finally convinced of who he is she says, Most dear one
(philtatos), nothing else, for you are most dear (philtatos). I hold you, Orestes,
darling, far from Argos our fatherland, dear one (philos) (827-30).
18. Euripides thinks through a parallel problem in the Helen where we are told
that not Helen but her name (43) or her phantom or eidOlon (582) wentto Troy.
She spent the whole war in Egypt. So not the realiry of Helen, but her
meaning-her beaury-was what was necessary to launch a thousand ships.
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19. See 1234-82.
20. See also Euripides' Helen 1049-66.
21. There is yet another puzzle here. How can Iphigeneia say here that they
are the only two remaining and fourteen lines later (912-14) ask how Electra
is doing?
22. This seems to be a refleqion by Euripides on Sophocles' Antigone 353-75.
See also Seth Benardete, "A Reading of Sophocles' Antigone: l," Interpretation
4/3 (Spring 1975), 193-96.
23. The problem is actually somewhat more complex since all sacrifice is
ritual. The Taurians do not simply kill their enemies; they make such killing
symbolic. Ritual sacrifice is thus twice removed from the "real." This would
have to be the case since barbarians, as human beings, would have to in some
sense see double.
24. See the whole of Wolff s "Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians:
Aetiology, Ritual and Myth," for a discussion of these three.
25. There is another strand of the play that needs to be thought together
with the questions of barbarism and human sacrifice. When Iphigeneia says
that she and Orestes are the last of their family (898), she forgets Electra,
about whom she moments later will inquire (912-14). If she suspects that
Electra has married-indeed, that is Orestes' response to her inquiry
(915)-then perhaps this accounts for her curious omission. Electra is no
longer a part of their family. Marriage (in which Artemis has some interest)
would then have something to do with a woman sacrificing herself for the
sake of children. Iphigeneia, of course, came to Aulis thinking that she was
to be married to Achilles. Does Euripides mean to connect human sacrifice
to a woman's position in marriage?
26. Metaphysics 982b18-19.
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�i
~
Ugolino's Tale:
Eating the Flesh
Victor Lee Austin
In the penultimate, thirty-third canto of the lnftrno, Dante hears
the story of a man whom he met at the conclusion of the thirtysecond-a man who was gnawing the head of another man come
'1 pan per fome si manduca, "as bread is chewed for hunger"
(32.127). 1 It is difficult to overstate the dramatic powers of the
poet who unveils this hideous yet fascinating sight just as one
canto comes to its end, then allows the thirty-third not to be the
last (as it will be in the higher worlds), but adds one further canto.
In that extra canto, there lies the center of darkness, the center of
gravity, the heart of Hell: three-faced but one-headed, Satan
eternally champing upon, and flaying with his teeth, three traitors
forever trapped in his mouths. Behind lies most of Hell; above it,
earth; and on the other side of earth, Purgatory. And "above" it
all, Paradise.
This man chewing the head of another is placed in that deepest
and smallest circle of hell, the "well" reserved for traitors. Here
there are four subdivisions, subcircles for those who treacherously
betrayed (1) kindred, (2) country, (3) guests, and (4) lords and
benefactors. This man is in the second. The poet has him reveal
his name, but permits him to leave obscure the sense ofhis betrayal
of his country.
Tu dei saper ch'i'fui conte Ugolino,
e questi e l'arcivescovo Ruggieri:
or ti diro perche i son tal vicino.
Che per l'effitto de' suo' mai pensieri,
fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso
e poscia morto, dir non e mestieri.
Victor L. Austin is rector at The Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Hopewell
Junction, New York.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thou hast to know that I was Count Ugolino, and this
the Archbishop Ruggieri; now I will tell thee why I am
such a neighbour to him. That by the effect of his ill
devices I, confiding in him, was taken and thereafter
put to death, it is not necessary to say (33.13-18).
Modern scholarship, as summarized by Charles S. Singleton, has
identified a triple pohtical betrayal by Count Ugolino: of his
political party, the Ghibellines; of the rival party, the Guelphs,
who had entrusted him with the rule of the traditionally Ghibelline city of Pisa; and of his own grandson, a rising Guelph
politician in Pisa. The political intrigue was complex. At one
point, Ugolino, who was sharing rule of the city with his grandson
Nino Visconti, plotted with Archbishop Ruggieri to have Nino
driven out of the city. Ugolino diplomatically left the city so as to
be away when the plan was executed. Ruggieri invited him back,
but would not let him claim total rule. When Ugolino brought
his thousand soldiers within the city, the Archbishop incited the
crowds against him. Ugolino, with two sons and two grandsons
(not including Nino}, was imprisoned in the tower in which he
eventually died. 2
All this goes unsaid, lurking behind Ugolino's words to Dante,
that of this it is not necessary to speak. That of which Ugolino
does speak, and speak with singularly moving passion, is of the
manner of his death, contrived it seems by the archbishop whose
head he is now gnawing. He and his four "sons"-for so he calls
them, although two of them were grandsons, and all of them were
older than depicted3-had been locked in the castle for "many
moons"4 when he had a dream (apparently shared by his "sons")
of being chased and eaten by hounds. The next day they heard the
door to the tower being nailed shut; no food was brought to them
that day, or the next, or ever again. The dawning of their realization that they will starve to death is hauntingly told by the poet,
who shows the children offering their own flesh to their father out
of pity for him. Padre, assai ci fia men doglial se tu mangi di noi:
tu ne vestisti! queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia. "Father, it will give
�AUSTIN
85
us much less pain, if thou wilt eat of us: thou didst put upon us
this miserable flesh, and do thou strip it off' (33.61-63). Ugolino
berates the "hard earth" for not having opened and swallowed
him. On the fourth day, the first son died with words which have
been heard to echo Jesus' cry on the cross, thus also echoing Psalm
22: Padre mio, chi non m 'aiuti? "My father! why don't you help
me?" (33.69).5 By the sixth day, all four sons were dead. Ugolino
concludes his tale:
... ond' io mi diedi,
gia cieco, a brancolar sopra ciascuno,
e due dl li chiamai, poi che fur morti.
Poscia, piu che 'l dolor, pot! 'l digiuno .
. . . whence I betook me, already blind, to groping
over each, and for three days called them, after they
were dead; then fasting had more power than grief
(33.72-75).
And, finished speaking, Ugolino seizes again the skull of the
archbishop, and resumes champing with strong teeth, like a dog
on a bone.
Ugolino has voiced the longest speech of the Inferno, an uninterrupted seventy-two lines, and what is striking about them is
their power to take us far from the charge of his betrayal of his
country. Like Francesca and Ulysses, the two earlier characters
who uttered extended speech, Ugolino seems to step out of the
precisely defined circles and subcircles of punishment.6 Working
from within the poem and not as modern historians, we must
accede to the rightness of the divine justice that has placed him
here, and, consequently, we are not permitted to wonder if,
perchance, Ugolino had a sly and undisclosed motive of drawing
us to pity his placement in hell. Indeed, Ugolino does not bemoan
his eternal destiny in the nether well. If he accepts God's justice,
why should we question it? Yet it is to pity that we are moved-we,
and with us Dante the character, who, in the next dozen lines,
cries out against the injustice of Pisa and asks why mercy could
not have been shown at least to the children.
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Yes, we are moved to pity, to identifY with Ugolino locked in
the castle with his children; we are forced to imagine what it would
be like to starve to death and, in the process, watch one's children
also starve; we can't forget the child's offer of his own flesh-a
horrible thought which, nonetheless, will not leave the mind. We
see the blind U golino grope over the corpses of his children for
two days. And we understand why, at such extremity, a man might
well succumb to the eating of his children's flesh. As Dorothy L.
Sayers translates the line: "Then famine did what sorrow could
not do." 7
Yet here we come to what John Freccero has described as "a
scandal in the history of Dante criticism."8 For with vehemence
and near unanimity, modern critical scholars deny that this line
means that Ugolino resorted, in his great extremity, to cannibalism. Sayers's gloss on the line is pure brevity: she says simply, "i.e.
kill him." The 1900 Dent edition notes that verse 75 "has given
rise to much controversy" but immediately adds: "The meaning
obviously is, not that Ugolino was forced by the pangs of hunger
to feed on the bodies, but that hunger brought about his death."9
And Singleton, perhaps the most esteemed modern commentator,
writes to the same purpose:
Some commentators have held the curious view that by
this last line of Ugolino's narrative Dante meant to
imply that the count, in the extremity of starvation, did
actually attempt to prolong his life by feeding upon the
bodies of his sons, as they had begged him to do while
they were yet alive (vss. 61-63)-that "hunger" prevailed over "grief" in that sense. But such a view of the
meaning here is hardly worth a serious rebuttal. I 0
But to say "obviously" and to call something "curious" is not to
make an argument; one feels that Singleton's dismissal could
profit by being a more reasoned and less ex cathedra utterance. 11
John Ciardi, at least, feels an argument is called for. Translating
the line as, "Then fasting overcame my grief and me," he writes:
�AUSTIN
87
i.e., He died. Some interpret the line to mean that
Ugolino's hunger drove him to cannibalism.
Ugolino's present occupation in Hell would certainly
support that interpretation but the fact is that cannibalism is the one major sin Dante does not assign a
place to in Hell. So monstrous would it have seemed
to him that he must certainly have established a special
punishment for it. Certainly he could hardly have
relegated it to an ambiguity. Moreover, it would be a
sin of bestiality rather than of fraud, and as such it
would be punished in the Seventh Circle.I2
But Ugolino could have committed cannibalism yet be punished
for treason; indeed, there may be a deep connection (unexplored
by Ciardi) between the two. And let us remember the true picture
that Ciardi delicately describes as Ugolino's "present occupation":
he is gnawing the flesh of the archbishop, "as bread is chewed for
hunger." There are other supports for the interpretation of cannibalism that Ciardi does not mention. One is Ugolino's dream, in
which "the wolf and his whelps" (called later "the father and his
sons") are chased by hounds; growing weary, their flanks were
"torn by the sharp teeth" (33.28-36). Although Ugolino takes the
dream as prophetic, he may miss its point when he sees it as
foretelling their death-and not as a warning of something worse
having to do with the ripping of flesh with teeth.13
Cannibalism is also suggested by dramatic location. In Canto
33 we are in the canto which in the later books will tell the
summit: in Purgatorio, the earthly paradise; in Paradiso, the beatific vision of God. Here it is a negative summit, we might say,
although still one canto shy of the dread vision of the negative
trinity. I believe that Canto 33 is best understood as a foreshadowing of that dread vision.
In the ultimate canto of the Inferno, as we have already noted,
the three-faced single head of Satan is beheld in the vision of
eternal chewing upon the basest traitors of all time. This occurs,
we might say, at the "bottom" of the universe-literally, at the
center of the universe's gravity. Superimposing this vision upon
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Ugolino would suggest that Ugolino's story takes us, somehow,
to the "bottom" of things. While it would be dreadful to watch
one's children starve and then to die of starvation oneself, utterly
hopeless and helpless to save them, still it would be even worse so
to lose control of one's appetites in that extremity that one even
ate the flesh of one's children. That second reading, suggested by
the numerous literary devices already noted, thus corresponds
with a psychological understanding of what it means to plunge to
the "depths" of evil, to the "bottom" of reality.
By such a path the reader is brought to face a consequence
which the critics, with their denials, avoid facing. It is literary
identification: to look at the Ugolino horror and say, as in another
context St. Francis did, "There but for the grace of God go I." Or
as the Greek said, "I am human, and therefore nothing human is
alien to me." If the reader, hearing Ugolino's story, is moved to
pity, the reader must realize that even the eating of one's children's
flesh is not an alien depth.
Nonetheless, it is a depth to which the critics are apparently
unable or unwilling to descend. One wonders how far they have
followed Dante into Hell. And here John Freccero offers his most
startling thesis: that the critics' own struggle with Infirno 33.75
becomes a revelation, for us, of the significance ofUgolino' s story.
Take the children. We have noted already that Dante combines
Ugolino's sons and grandsons into "sons'' and presents them as
younger than they were. The poet thus accentuates their youthful
suffering. Freccero leads off his essay with the observation that the
suffering of children is "the most radical instance of the irreducibility of evil." 14 Dante's recasting of the historical facts thus
encourages us to think of children's suffering in general. The
opposite of that is the blessed children enjoying the presence of
God, children who, when Dante sees them, will raise for him the
questions of divine justice (Para. 32.40ff.), and who, Freccero
notes, are in "a structurally corresponding place" to the children
of Ugolino-the penultimate cantos of their respective canticas.
�AUSTIN
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What is the significance of the suffering of children? In Dante's
cry against the city of Pisa, following Ugolino's speech, he says
the children should not have been killed for their father's crime:
Che se '! conte Ugolino aveva voce
d'aver tradita te de le castella,
non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce.
For if Count Ugolino had the fame of having betrayed
thee of thy castles, thou oughtest not to have put his
sons into such torture (33.85-87).
He condemns the city for putting the children to such a "croce":
the poet as traveller through Hell connects the suffering of children with the cross.
Indeed, as Freccero suggests, the language used for these children
throughout is christological. 15 Their suffering is a cross. The first
one to die asked his father words like those of Jesus on the cross:
Father, why don't you help me? And earlier, seeing their father bite
his hands for grief, they offered him their flesh. Freccero:
It must not be supposed that the allusions to Christ's
passion are merely pietistic embellishments to contrast with the infernal horror story; they are in fact the
key for the whole dramatic interpretation. The point
of the language here is that the suffering of the children is of a sacred order, carrying with it a redemptive
possibiliry.16
But that "redemptive possibility" is precisely what Ugolino
rejects. When his sons offer him their flesh (as quoted earlier)... Padre, assai ci fia men doglia
se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti
queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia.
-Ugolino calms himself, so they won't become more unhappy (he
says), and for two days they all remain mute. Ugolino's senses are
dying, one by one: when the door is nailed, he becomes stony within
(33.49); when his sons make their offer of flesh, he turns distant
and silent; by the last one's death, he is blind (33.73). These are
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
signs, for those who have eyes to see and a heart not of solid stone,
of spiritual vacuiry. Freccero maintains that "there can be little
doubt that [Ugolino] is condemned by Dante not only as a traitor
but also for his inability to grasp the spiritual meaning in the letter
of his children's words." 17 That inability is itself a kind of treason.
And as Ugolino takes his children's words literally, so do the
critics take his words' only to the letter. He does not say he ate
their flesh; Dante does not say so; why should we believe it? Yet
much that is of importance in human life, as in divine, cannot be
said; and much that could be said is better left unsaid. Francesca's
speech-the first of the extended tales of which Ugolino's is the
third and last-begins with the love which binds her to her lover
for eternity, then describes how they fell in love.
Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.
Per piu fiate li occhi ci sospinse
quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso;
ma solo un punto fu que! che ci vinse.
Quando leggemmo il disi'ato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
!a bocca mi bascio tutto tremante.
Galeotto fo 'llibro e chi lo scrisse:
que! giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.
One day, for pastime, we read of Lancelot, how love
constrained him; we were alone, and without all suspicion. Several times that reading urged our eyes to
meet, and changed the colour of our faces; bur one
moment alone it was that overcame us. When we read
how the fond smile was kissed by such a lover, he, who
shall never be divided from me, kissed my mouth all
trembling: the book, and he who wrote it, was a
Galeotto; that day we read in it no farther (5.127-138).
This is the conclusion of her speech, a conclusion so powerful that
it made Dante faint with pity; yet what has she said? "[T]hat day
�AUSTIN
91
we read in [the book] no farther." She gives no details of passionate
embraces, no details of the outcome (besides the earlier indication
that they were killed together). For those who have eyes to see and
a heart to feel, the letter leaves much unsaid.
The critics, who are not so hardened as to be unable to grasp
Francesca' s meaning, yet stumble over the same literary device,
reticentia, 18 when used'by Ugolino. If it is the case that he is
condemned, as Freccero believes, for his failure to grasp the
redemptive possibility in his sons' words, what is that failure? It
is, first, his failure to see their Christ-likeness. Their innocent
suffering puts a spiritually-attuned person in mind of the Cross.
They offer him their flesh; one dies with an echo of Psalm 22 on
his lips. But what is the "redemptive possibility" contained in this?
Freccero suggests we recall another instance in which an offer
of flesh was taken literally-and rejected. The account is found in
the sixth chapter ofJohn's gospel. Jesus has fed the multitude from
five loaves and two fish, an event which John does not call a
miracle but a sign (6: 14). In the ensuing dialogue Jesus chides the
crowd for not seeing the sign (6:26). There is an escalation on
each side, as Jesus makes increasingly exalted claims for his authority while his interlocutors seem to misunderstand him more and
more. Finally Jesus says,
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of
the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life
in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has
eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day
[6:53-54; RSV].
This is a typically Johannine incident. Jesus speaks of spiritual
truths, while those who hear him make the mistake of taking him
literally. Like Nicodemus, who queries how he, a grown man, can
possibly reenter his mother's womb; like the Samaritan woman,
who chides Jesus for offering her water when he has no bucket and
nothing to draw with; here, in John chapter 6, the people somehow
imagine Jesus is telling them they must flay his flesh and sink their
teeth into it. But unlike the Samaritan woman (and possibly unlike
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Nicodemus too), many of these people refuse to see beyond the letter,
and their refusal causes them to abandon Jesus (6:66). AB Paul says
of written law, so may we say of literal interpretation generally: "the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6; KJV).
So when he heard these words, "Father, it will give us much less
pain, if thou wilt eat of us," the count "calmed" himself, "in order
not to make them more unhappy," and spoke no words "that day
and the next." He sees only the literal fact of their unhappiness, and
sees no possibility of lessening it through speech or action-or
prayer. He draws into himself, calming himself so as to reveal to
them nothing by expression or motion or verb. He does not see the
innocent offer of a way of"much less pain," a way ofhope; the letter
appalled him, and he remembered not the story of his savior.
It was not U golino' s last chance to show some iota of faithfulness
to the saving story. The silence which he had brought upon their
room is broken on the fourth day by his first son to die, who asks
him why he won't help him. Even Ugolino's withdrawal has a
spiritual significance; even his failure can find a parallel in the story
of redemption. His son suggests that he see himself as the distant
Father of the dying Son; but Ugolino's heart is hard, and the letter
kills. Within five days he is doing that unspeakable act concerning
which he said to Dante, "fasting had more power than grief."
Far above this bestial scene, Francesca and her lover are blown
in the winds. They are in Hell, apparently, because of their belief
in the futility of resisting love's passion (v.l 00-1 07). But they are
in the uppermost parts of Hell, I believe, because of their capacity
to read the spirit in the letter. As Francesca tells it (see page 90
above), they fell in love while reading; the lettura (translated
"reading,'' cognate to lettera, '<letter"). "urged'' their eyes to meet
(which of course it did not do literally); the book became "a
Galeotto," i.e., a go-between. 19 Thus Francesca explicitly describes a process whereby the letter was transcended by the human
spirit, and although she is in Hell (for not every spiritual interpretation leads to Paradise), she nevertheless soars over those who are
chained by the letter.
�AUSTIN
93
What is at stake in the Divine Comedy is nothing less than the
possibility of being human. Dante's geography shows that for
most of us (those of us who are not great pagan philosophers) there
is no stationary middle ground between bestiality and divinity;
every human spirit is moving either downwards by heaviness to
gravity's center or upwards by light to the rose of Paradise. It is
perhaps a prosaic conclusion, to realize that Satan does not preside
over hell with wicked enjoyment of shrieks and wails and gnashing
of teeth. T. S. Eliot admitted, "I tend to get from Dante the
impression of a Devil suffering like the human damned souls." 20
Eliot did not like that impression, feeling that Satan's suffering
should be different in kind; he suggested, however, with sure
instinct, that one can understand the end of the Inferno by turning
to the end of Paradiso.
For by the time we reach the end of Hell three strands of
thought have come together: treason, cannibalism, and (perhaps
to our surprise) literalism. The traitor succumbs to cannibalism
because he hears his sons literally and is deaf to the spiritual
suggestions in their words. The reader who does not see this,
through a failure to attend to the spirit, reenacts Ugolino's error
and thus moves towards that which is not seen. But the reader
who sees with the spirit and the heart sees indeed cannibalism and
feels-in the midst of the horror-pity, and in that pity moves in
the opposite direction. As treason denies the soul and as cannibalism takes man as meat, so literalism takes the letter without spirit.
When we come to these lowest depths, the depths of Hell, human
beings are nothing but meat and bone for chewing. The spirit has
gone out of the letter.
If we turn upward from this tiny dark pit to the vast heavens,
we see that the opposite of cannibalism (and of treason and
literalism) is communion. Here the children rejoice together
beyond all possibility of suffering. Here, in communion, saints
and angels are united in an expansive symphony which has countless variations but no treachery. The spirit gives life. The anti type
of the Trinity, three-faced but single-headed Satan, yields to the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
positive vision of Paradiso 33: the Trinity beyond glory, containing in super-luminescence a glorified human figure; the Trinity
whose life is given to us by means of a sign when we eat the Son's
flesh "as bread is chewed for hunger," the Son who once asked his
Father why he had abandoned him.
Notes
1. All translations from the Infirno in this paper not otherwise attributed
are from the 1900 edition (reset 1932) published in London by J. M. Dent
& Sons Ltd; the translation therein is J. A. Carlyle's as revised by H. Oelsner.
Quotations from the Italian are from Charles S. Singleton, trans. and
commentator, Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy: Infirno, vol. 1 [Italian
Text and Translation], corrected edition, Bollingen Series 80 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977).
2. Charles S. Singleton, trans. and commentator, Dante Alighieri: The
Divine Comedy: Infimo, vol. 2 [Commentary], corrected edition, Bollingen
Series LXXX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) 607-612 (note
on 33.17-18).
3. This is attested by many commentators. See for instance Singleton,
comment on 33.38, p. 614.
4. 33.26. Singleton dates their imprisonment in the tower from late July
to their death in early February. See also, comment on 33.26, p. 613.
5. Both Singleton and John Freccero (but none of the other critics consulted
for this paper) note the parallel with Christ's words.
6. John D. Sinclair writes insightfully in elaboration of this point. "The
famous Ugolino episode ... stands in marked and intentional contrast and
correspondence with Francesco's stoty in the fifth canto, hers the record of
a great love, his of as great a hate. Her love and his hate hold her to her lover
and him to his enemy forever in an association which makes their last earthly
memories an eternally present agony; each 'speaks and weeps together', and
the companion of each suffers· in a silence which adds strangely to the
poignancy of their stories. These two episodes, with that of Ulysses in the
twenty-sixth canto, are the greatest examples of dramatic imagination in the
whole poem. Francesca, Ulysses, and Ugolino each tell their own rales, of
love, of daring, of agony and hate, and in each case, by the power of
�AUSTIN
95
imaginative sympathy, Dante penetrates to the heart of the sinner so that his
sin is forgotten and he is, as it were, restored for his sheer human worth to
the human fellowship." To this insightful commentary I would offer but a
slight disagreement. Although Sinclair describes Ugolino's tale as a record
of a great hate, it strikes me, on the contrary, as a poignant interlude ofspeech
within an eternity of hateful gnawing upon his enemy. Ugolino's tale is so
remarkably free of his hatred that the reader easily forgets the archbishop
under his jaws. John D. 'Sinclair, trans. and commentator, The Divine
Comedy of Dante Alighieri, vol. 1, Infirno (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1939; reprint, 1961), 415
7. Dorothy L. Sayers, trans., The Comedy ofDante Alighieri: Hell (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1949), 33.75, p. 280.
8. John Freccero, "Bestial Sign and Bread of Angels," in his Dante: The
PoeticsofConversion, ed. RachelJacoff(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 153. This essay was first published in Yale Italian Studies
1 (1977): 5 3-66.
9. Infirno, The Temple Classics, trans. ]. A. Carlyle, rev. H. Oelsner
(London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1900; reset, 1932), p. 380.
10. Singleton, p. 617.
11. Joseph Gallagher first drew my attention to John Freccero's remarkable
essay that refutes Singleton. Joseph Gallagher, To Hell & Back with Dante
(Liguori, Mo.: Triumph Books, 1996), 61.
12. DanteAlighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. John Ciardi (New York: W.
W. Norton and Company, 1977), 175.
13. See Freccero, 160-161. Below we will take up the theme ofUgolino's
literalism and its role in his damnation. The image in the dream was not
unusual: wolf-hunting was common in Dante's day and place. Singleton,
Infirno, vol. 2, 613 (commentary on 33.28-36).
14. Freccero, 152.
15. Freccero, 156. Even the language by which Ugolino calls his dream a
prophecy-"it rent for me the curtain of the future" (33.27) -might suggest
(since the future is suffering, the cross, "croce") the rending of the temple
veil at the crucifixion. So Freccero, 160.
16. Freccero, 156-157.,
17. Freccero, 158.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
18. See Freccero, 162.
19. Singleton, Inftmo, vol. 2, 94-95 (commentary on v.137).
20. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, new ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1950), 212.
�The C:omedy of, Christian. Existence:
On Kierkegaard s Resolution of
Hegel's Paradox
I
Johann A. Klaassen
Cet homme est occupe d'un probleme
auquel il revient comme une mouche:
toutes ces choses opposees, il voudrait qu' elles se touchent
quandm~me.
II voudrait que ce Dieu qui les a faites
tout juste au milieu d' elles s'arretecet homme qui infiniment s' entCte,
c' est Ia poete.
- R.M. Rilke, "L'Homme Ent~te"
There is an important sense in which humor or comedy must
interact with our religiousness, if we are to remain religious past
a certain point in the development of our culture. Hegel thought
that the category of the comic must come before Christianity
could be fully realized, because the comic pointed out to people
the absurdity of our religious expectations: we can't expect our
God to have a human form, or, in fact, to be individuated in any
meaningful sense. For Hegel, the comic insight implies what kind
of God exists: it finally leads Christianity to realize that the
community of believers is God. I will begin with an examination
of Hegel's notion of the development of a truly Christian consciousness, and show that Hegel's version of Christianity develops
out of his view of the paradoxes presented by his contemporary
religion and society. Hegel responded to these paradoxes by attempting to defose them by asserting a larger unity into which they
Johann A. Klaassen is a graduate of St. John's College, 1992. He is completing a
Ph.D. in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, specializing in ethical
theory and moral psychology.
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all fit harmoniously-ultimately, a Universal Spirit in which we
all take part. In contrast, while for Kierkegaard the comic is a
prerequisite for spiritual maturity, it does not lead to religiousness.
To be able to see the contradiction implied by our conceptions of
God and religion not as a tragically harmful incommensurability,
but, instead, as a beautiful separation, is to have a Kierkegaardian
sense of humor; to become a Christian is to be willing to be
regarded as foolish. And so for Kierkegaard, the comic is an
indication of the individual's maturity, and ability to accept the
paradox of his relation to God: the comic is only possible when
we have understood the meaning of the absurdity of our religion,
and the God it rests on. Thus, after looking at Hegel, I will turn
to an examination of Kierkegaard's view of the Christian spirit,
and show that Kierkegaard, presented with much the same societal
conditions, responded to the paradoxes of individual existence by
celebrating them, declaring them to be the ultimate goal of the
existing individual, the "Absolute Paradox" of his Philosophical
Fragments. In this essay I do not hope to give a full and perfect
characterization of the religious understandings of either Hegel or
Kierkegaard, as either task would probably require several volumes;
instead, I explore the essentials of Hegel's and Kierkegaard' s understandings of the religious, and of the relation of the religious to the
comic (and related notions like humor and irony). I hope to show
that Kierkegaard, noticing the emphasis Hegel places on comedy,
picks up the same notion, turns it inside out, and takes aim at
"speculative thought" and its systematic Christianity, using the comic
to point out the existential chinks in Hegel's systematic armor.
Hegelian Christianity
The Unhappy Consciousness appears at the end of Hegel's
section on self-consciousness in his Phenomenology of Mind 1 as
one of the survivors of the struggle for recognition, having passed
through the moments of Stoicism and Scepticism. As a form of
self-consciousness, the Unhappy Consciousness recognizes that it
is both immediate and mediated, that it bears both essential and
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inessential moments within itself, that it is simultaneously
particular and universal; but it does not yet understand how it
can contain both these moments explicitly and without contradiction. It learned from Stoicism that it was essence, the
immediate, particular Ego; from Scepticism it learned that
everything other than thought is dubitable, that everything
external to the immediate Ego is inessential, and that the
universals of knowledge themselves were dubitable. Stoicism
was comforting to self-consciousness, in that its self-understanding was strong and stable; Scepticism was disconcerting, in
that it called into question almost everything, including that
former stability. And the self-consciousness which tries to hold
these two forms together is the Unhappy Consciousness, made
unhappy by its understanding of its own predicament:
In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the bare and simple
freedom of itself. In Scepticism, it realizes itself, negates the other side of determinate existence, but, in
so doing, really doubles itself, and is itself now a
duality .... Hence the Unhappy Consciousness, the Alienated Soul which is the consciousness of itself as a
divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory
being. (no6, pp. 250-51)
Because it knows itself in its self-contradiction, the Unhappy
Consciousness attempts to clarifY for itself its own essential nature. Seeing in itself the "aimless fickleness and instability" of the
alterable ('!"205, p. 249), it attempts to define itself in those terms
by casting the unalterable out into "the remote beyond" ('!"212, p.
255), hypostasizing that unchangeable as God.
The Unhappy Consciousness is, therefore, led to religiosity in
an attempt to rectifY its own internal conflicts of reason. But
because this God is imagined by the particular consciousness, the
Unhappy Consciousness, it is taken also to be a particular consciousness, though one which bears the universality and immutability the Unhappy Consciousness found within itself. Thus, this
God retains the particularity of the Unhappy Consciousness:
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the unchangeable consciousness also preserves, in its
very form and bearing, the character and fundamental
features of diremption and separate self-existence, as
against the particular consciousness. (,.212, p. 254)
This absolute particulariry, while impossible to avoid, does not
serve the purpose for which it was imagined; that is, the "image"
of an immutable particular existing "over against" the Unhappy
Consciousness does not serve to unify the incompatible aspects of
the self-consciousnes of the Unhappy Consciousness. On the
contrary, it does not bring the infinite, the unchangeable, any
closer, but serves, in fact, only to push it further away, further into
the "beyond." The Unhappy Consciousness's only response is to
attempt to negate its direct bonds with the God it has imagined,
and to take up the notion of the immutable in particular
form-that is, as an embodied self-consciousness like itself:
the direction its effort henceforth takes is rather that
of cancelling its relation to the pure unchangeable,
without shape or embodied form, and of adopting
only the relation to the unchangeable which has form
and shape. (,.213, p. 255)
This is the Christ, the mean proportional between God and Man;
in this form the unchangeable comes into contact with the Unhappy Consciousness. But because the Unhappy Consciousness
has not yet reconciled itself as a thinker with pure thought, it can
come no closer to the unchangeable than this kind of mediated
contact; moreover, because of the way in which it originated in
consciousness, the Christ must be "a thing of the past, something
that has been somewhere far away, and absolutely remote it
remains" (n14, p. 255). As a consequence, the Unhappy Consciousness cannot completely reconcile its rwo essences, and takes
up a stance of emotional reverence toward the Christ, as its symbol
of the immutable:
it takes up toward its object an attitude which is not
that of thought; but rather ... it, so to say, merely gives
itself up to thought, devotes itself to thinking, and is
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the state of Devotion. Its thinking as such is no more
than the discordant clang of ringing bells, or a cloud
of warm incense, a kind of thinking in terms of
music ... Hence we have here the inward movement of
pure emotion.{'!"217, p. 257)
Moving through this stage of devotion {with its passive reflection),
a state of extreme activity {with its frantic attempts at constructing
the unchangeable), and a life of asceticism {which reflects on every
activity, only to reveal "a personality brooding over itself' ('!"226,
p. 264)), the Unhappy Consciousness comes to need another
mediator, one to take the place of the Christ who was too far from
the Unhappy Consciousness to bring it into contact with the
immutable God. This new mediator is the Church: the Unhappy
Consciousness
puts away from itself... the substance of its will, and
throws on to the mediating term, or the ministering
agency, its own proper freedom of decision, and herewith the guilt of its own act. This mediator, being in
direct communication with the unchangeable Being,
renders service by advising what is just and right.
('!"228, p. 265)
Having given up its freedom to choose and to act, the Unhappy
Consciousness gives up also its material wealth and even its claims
to understanding its religious experience. But in thus relinquishing all claim to anything which might be considered its own, even
its own self-consciousness or Ego, 2 the Unhappy Consciousness
puts off that unhappiness-in relinquishing its particularistic
claims to all things, it has gained the union with universality which
it sought from the first.
For giving up one's own will is only in one aspect
negative; in principle, or in itself, it is at the same time
positive, positing and affirming the will as an other,
and, specifically, affirming the will as not a particular,
but universal.. .. Hence its will certainly becomes, for
consciousness, universal will, inherent and essential
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will, but is not itself in its own view this inherent
reality. ('230, pp. 266-7)
The consciousness that has passed through the moment of unhappiness comes to place itself in the cradle of the community, in the
embodiment of Rational Spirit; but it does not yet understand that
it is the community that bears the important ingredient of its happiness, nor that its own reason drives the reality of even the community,
and is, therefore, not yet in possession of Absolute Knowledge.
The structure of the religious experience of Unhappy Consciousness first appears in a clear formalization in '210 (p. 253)
of the Phenomenology:
The first unchangeable is taken to be merely the alien,
external Being, which passes sentence on particular
existence; since the second unchangeable is a form or
mode of particularity like itself, it, i.e. the consciousness, becomes in the third place spirit (Geist), has the
joy of finding itself therein, and becomes aware within
itself that its particularity has been reconciled with the
universal.
This statement implies a pattern of development which the U nhappy Consciousness follows in its search for reconciliation with
the unchanging universal. This pattern shows how the understanding of Christ as a mean proportional mediates between the
radical particular and the immutable; in the particular's search for
self-understanding, it places the universal outside itself in an
abstract God who is beyond its reach (and presumably also its
comprehension). But in its recognition of Christ's (impossibly,
Kierkegaard will say) combining universality-his Godlinesswith particularity-his Humanity-it comes to understand that
a reconciliation between the unchangeable and the changeable is
possible; however, as a "thing of the past," the Christ is "absolutely
remote" ('214, p. 255), and the particular self-consciousness is
left without a connection to God. Its response is to turn over every
aspect ofits life to the mysteries of the Church, to entrust its future
to the community of believers, but without the understanding of
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that community as a rational community, as a form of Spirit. In
consequence, the religious spirit that helps the Unhappy Consciousness transcend its unhappiness falls short of full self-consciousness, though it introduces "the idea of Reason" (~230, p.
267), and makes possible (and necessary) further development.
As the Unhappy Consciousness appears out of the bankruptcy
of the conflict between Stoicism and Scepticism, so also what I
will call Hegel's Christian Consciousness takes its start from the
spiritual wastes of the Greco-Roman Pantheon. The "perfectly
happy consciousness, that of comedy" (~752, p. 752), has served
a vital purpose: in its application of the rational categories of
thought to the sphere of the divine, comedy "removes the contingency of shape and form from the divine Being ... [and]lifts these
into the simple Ideas of the Beautiful and the Good" (~746, p.
747), showing that the divine must be purely self-consciousness,
which religious consciousness has required since the Unhappy
Consciousness lost itself in the Universal. That is, the Unhappy
Consciousness is able to give itself up: in its relinquishing its
particularistic claims, "self-consciousness empties itself of itself
and makes itself into the form of 'thing,' or makes itself universal
self' (~755, p. 755). But the Unhappy Consciousness cannot yet
understand the converse: Reason, through the medium of Comedy, is required to show how the substantial (and thus thing-like)
conception we have of divinity "empties itself of itself, and becomes self-consciousness" (~755, p. 755). Moreover,
It is thus that self-knowing spirit has arisen; it has
arisen through the knowledge of immediate consciousness ... The immediate inherent nature of spirit,
which takes on the form of self-consciousness, means
nothing else than that the concrete actual world-spirit
has reached this knowledge of itself. It is then too that
this knowledge first enters its consciousness, and enters it as truth. ('757, p. 757)
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And with this new self-consciousness of Comedy and Reason, the
"spirit"3 has become capable of renewed reflection on the divine
Being, and on its own religious consciousness.
With the appearance of a strictly self-conscious spirit, the
Christian Consciousness is able to reform its idea of divinity: "In
this form of religion the Divine Being is ... revealed. Its being
revealed obviously consists in this, that what it is, is known"
(F59, p. 758). When the Unhappy Consciousness projected its
God out beyond its own comprehension, into a completely alien
"other," it "concealed" a very important aspect of the divinity, its
direct relation to the consciousness; as Terry Pinkard puts it,
Our conception of ourselves as thinking, acting agents
did, [Hegel] thought, commit us to an ontology of the
divine, but this was satisfied by seeing God as the human
community organized into religious communities. 4
Or, in Hegel's own words,
Spirit is known as self-consciousness, and to this selfconsciousness it is directly revealed, for it is this same
self-consciousness itself. The divine nature is the same
as the human, and it is this unity which is intuitively
apprehended. ('l759, pp. 759-60)
God is recognized in the human community, in the Spirit of the
religious community- but this is not, unfortunately, explicit for
that community. The spirit of the Christian Consciousness, deriving as it does from the aesthetic consciousness of the religions
of art, is still caught up in the representational mode of thought,
"picture-thinking" (despite the wisdom of comedy), and as a result
draws a standard picture of an external God, a God with particular
(though, paradoxically, universal) existence of its own. Again the
Absolute Spirit in the form of this God is set up over against the
particular human self-consciousness; again the Christ is taken as
the mediation between the universal and the particular. But, in
this instance, the Christ's mediate form is closer to the truth of
his immediate origin, and thus also closer to our own:
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this unity of being and thought is self-consciousness
and actually exists; in other words, the thought-constituted unity has at the same time this concrete shape
and form of what it is. God, then, is here revealed, as
He is; He actually exists as He is in Himself; He is real
as Spirit. ('!761, p. 761, my emphasis)
The unsuccessful mediation that dashed the hopes of the Unhappy
Consciousness has been transcended, and the Christian Consciousness finds in this existing Christ the embodiment of the
"hopes and expectations of preceding ages" ('J761, p. 761)-that
is, the particular Christian Consciousness sees in the Christ a
picture of itself as the absolute universal. With the death of this
individual Christ, then, the Christian Consciousness seems to
undergo a period of confusion, in which the idea of the Christ
must be transformed: for at the death of the mediator between the
particular consciousness and the universal spirit,
a consciousness which sees and hears Him by sense, is
one which is itself merely immediate consciousness,
which has not yet cancelled and transcended the disparateness of objectivity, has not withdrawn it into
pure thought, but knows this objectively presented
individual, and not itself, as spirit. (!763, p. 763)
In order to place that into the Spirit which the Christ exemplified,
the Christian Consciousness has, in fact, to do the seemingly unthinkable: it has to dethrone that very Christ who was until recently its
only contact with the universal it seeks. As Kojeve puts it,
Christian Man can really become what he would like
to be only by becoming a man without God-or, if
you will, a God-Man. He must realize in himselfwhat
at first he thought was realized in his God. To be really
Christian, he himself must become Christ.5
In other words, the Christian Consciousness must come to see the
historical Christ simply as a manifestation of his own communiry' s spirit, as a "God-Man" far out of his own proper time-frame,
since "the authentic teachings of Jesus of Nazareth amounted to
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the rejection of the metaphysics that it took philosophy [and
religion] about 2,000 more years to formulate for itself." 6 And in
doing so, despite the seeming blasphemy, the Christian Consciousness must implicitly place himself in the center of the
spiritual community, and understand himself in terms of the spirit
of the church:
Spirit remains the immediate self of actual reality, but
in the form of the universal self-consciousness of a
religious communion ... it is not the individual subject
by himself, but the individual along with the consciousness of the communion, and what he is for this
communion is the complete whole of the individual
spirit. ('!763, p. 763)
And in the course of this process, the Christian Consciousness has
replaced the transcendent God with the immanent community of
believers, and placed itself solidly in the center of that community;
in finding its position in the universal, the community, this particular consciousness gains also its "identity." Kojeve comments,
In its perfection, the [existential] ideal reveals itself
through the idea of Individuality-that is, of satisfaction by the real or active synthesis of particularist and
universalist tendencies of human existence.?
But despite this conclusion, the Revealed Religion falls somewhat
short of Absolute Knowledge, primarily because of the limitations
imported into the self-understanding of the Christian Consciousness by his imaginative rendering of the ideas of religion: that is,
because the Christian Consciousness mediates the self-understanding afforded by religion through "picture-thinking," it falls
short of pure self-consciousness (see ~765, p. 763). The abstract
moments of the development of the religious consciousness, portrayed in the medium of representation, take those vety representations to be accurate depictions-the spirit of the religious
community mistakenly takes those pictures for the immediate
content of its religion. The picture thinking of the Christian
Consciousness brings it, therefore, to the brink of Absolute
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Knowledge, but cannot take it any farther: not until the Christian
Consciousness has reached that stage
where the absolute Substance is not intuitively apprehended but conceptually comprehended and where
consciousness is for itself brought to the level of its
self-consciousness. ('!765, p. 764)
can it be said to possess Absolute Knowledge, and the ability to
understand the process of development which it has gone through.
The developmental structure of the religious experience of the
Christian Consciousness is much like that of the Unhappy Consciousness: both originally take the standpoint of the particular and
set themselves in artificial opposition with the universal, then find
that the meditation of the Christ allows an insight into the unity of
these seemingly disparate concepts, and come to a recognition of
that unity in themselves. But where the Unhappy Consciousness
was left with a kind of happy unfreedom, in giving its all to the
religious community, the particular Christian Consciousness finds
itself in a true reconciliation with the universal community. Here,
as in the Unhappy Consciousness, the Christ acts as mean proportional between Man and God; but while the Unhappy Consciousness could not grasp the mediation, the Christian Consciousness
can, though only pictorially, as embodying the Spirit of the religious
community. And in thus coming to terms with the universal as the
community's spirit, the Christian Consciousness comes to the truth
behind Absolute Knowledge, though unconsciously.
In the last chapter of the Phenomenology, Hegel presents the
final version that the self-conscious self-knowledge discovered in
Revealed Religion takes. The spirit of the community finally
begins to take the lesson of Comedy seriously, to cast away the
"picture-thinking" that has held it back; removing the pictorial
element from the pattern drawn up by the Christian Consciousness's understanding of its development, the Individual comes to
see that not only is this pattern the content of religion, but also is
the essence of itself, of Spirit.
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Thus, then, what was in religion content, or a way of
imagining (Vorstellen) an other, is here the action
proper of the self.. ..
This last embodiment of spirit-spirit which at
once gives its complete and true content the form of
self, and thereby realizes its notion, and in so doing
remains within its own notion-this is Absolute
Knowledge. ('!797-98, p. 797)
In Kojeve' s words,
Perfect Man-that is, Man fully and definitively satisfied by what he is-being the realization of the
Christian idea of Individuality, the revelation of this
Man by absolute Knowledge has the same content as
Christian Theology, minus the notion of transcendence: it is sufficient to say of Man everything that the
Christian says of his God in order to move from the
absolute or Christian Theology to Hegel's absolute
philosophy or Science. 8
In Absolute Knowledge, Spirit thus finds itself in its own roots,
discovers that it is necessary to bear this very Knowledge in order
to explain its existence; and the search for an answer to the question
"What is Absolute Knowledge and how is it possible?" shows itself
to be "a kind of 'self-bootstrapping,' self-grounding activity."9 In
coming to the end of the Phenomenology, we come again to the
beginning; as Hegel says in the Preface ('16, p. 79), "the general
idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out,
facilitates the comprehension of this process." And indeed, as
Kojeve notes, "Hegel starts with Spirit, which he says is a 'result"'10-so the selfcc~nscious self-understanding, the Absolute
Knowledge for which the search of the Phenomenology is carried out,
is to be understood as guiding the action from the beginning. And
this Absolute Knowledge reaches back through the rest of the book,
through the history of forms of consciousness presented there, and
discovers itself everywhere: every mediation and transcendence
along the way is an image of this Absolute Knowledge.
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For Hegel, the great failing of the Christian Consciousness, the
one thing that has kept it from being Absolute Knowledge, is its
inability wintegrate the wisdom of the comic: although the comic
consciousness pointed out that while divinity must be purely
self-consciousness it need not have any substantial being, it need
not take the form of a Divine Being. Thus, while the Christian
Consciousness intuitively recognizes its God in the Spirit of the
community, it continues to expect its God to appear as some
individuated existence, perhaps even as an "old man in the sky";
this pictorial representation keeps the Christian Consciousness
from fully realizing the self-consciousness which was its goal. As
Mark C. Taylor says,
The development of Greek religion culminates in
dramatic comedy for which "actual self-consciousness
exhibits itself as the fate of the Gods." Hegel maintains that the comic denial of the [objective] reality of
the divine is at the same time the affirmation of the
absoluteness of the self)!
It is only when the Christian Consciousness has come to "conceptually comprehend" this, the lesson of comedy, that it can attain
that self-consciousness which it seeks, discover the truth of its
religion, and gain Absolute Knowledge.
Kierkegaardian Christianity
Kierkegaard' s version of the ideal form of the Christian religion
is far from Hegel's, though it bears some striking resemblances,
and is formulated in anti-Hegelian terms- the vety titles of the
two works in which he most fully develops his views, the Philosophical Fragments and its Concluding Unscientific Postscript, express his rebellion against Hegel's "systematic" presentation of
religion as a part of human "science." Where Hegel wanted
religion to be one of the three highest forms of Knowledge (the
others being art and philosophy), Kierkegaard places religion
completely outside the realm traditionally claimed by "objective"
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Knowledge. Similarly, when his philosophical task is to define
truth, Kierkegaard identifies it not with any objective correspondence between thought and being, but with subjectivity; in fact,
Kierkegaard thinks that any real definition of truth
must also contain in itself an expression of the antithesis
to objectivity... Here is such a definition of truth: An
objective uncertainty, held fast through the appropriation
with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the
highest truth there is for an existing person.l2
Therefore, that seemingly self-contradictory belief which the existing individual takes up most passionately, with which his very
existence is most intimately connected, is the "highest" kind of
truth available to any human being. In the same way, Kierkegaard
rejects Hegel's "objective" approach to religion as well, preferring
the subjective: "there is not a question of the truth of Christianity
here .... No, the question is about the subject's acceptance of it"
(CUP, p. 129).
And Kierkegaard goes on to link this subjective definition of
truth with Christian faith, to identify them in a very strong sense:
But the definition of truth stated above is a paraphrasing of faith .... Faith is the contradiction between the
infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty. (CUP, p. 204)
The objective uncertainty Kierkegaard refers to here-is the uncertainty we must have about the existence of God: for although he
believes we have some knowledge of God (through revelation),
that knowledge cannot help us to prove God's existence. This
objective uncertainty leads us from this simple paradox to what
Kierkegaard called the "Absolute Paradox" in Philosophical Fragments. Because God is that which is "absolutely different" from
any human being, we can gain no knowledge of God through our
own efforts.
At this point we seem to stand at a paradox. Just to
come to know that the god is the different, man needs
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the god and then comes to know that the god is
absolutely different from him. 13
While the existence of God is not in itself paradoxical, the existing
human individual's relation to that divine (and therefore utterly
different) existence is paradoxical-but nonetheless absolutely
necessary.l4 To make this even more paradoxical, we may conceptualize that paradoxical relationship in existence as a human individual: we need only think of the Christ, the "eternal, essential
truth," as an existing human being, to find the relationship of God
to humanity in its most paradoxical form. Thus, Kierkegaard' s
Absolute Paradox is
that God has come into existence, has been born, has
grown up, etc., has come into existence exactly as an
individual human being, indistinguishable from any
other human being. (CUP, p. 210)
The existing human individual can react to this paradox in two
ways: either the individual understanding is willing to accept this
paradoxical relationship to the paradox, and takes up the attitude
of faith, or it is unwilling to accept this relationship, and takes up
the attitude of "offense" (PF, p. 49).15
Here Kierkegaard and Hegel differ dramatically: in their responses to this paradox, Kierkegaard turns down the path of faith,
while Hegel opts for .a sort of offense. 16 Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness is, in subjective terms, caught right here, at this paradox; because it cannot conceive of the Christ except as something
"absolutely remote," it stops trying, putting its emphasis on its
relationship to the Church, the community of believers. Hegel
correctly identifies the difficulty inherent in the Christian religion-faith in an "impossible" Mediator-but responds to this
difficulty by attempting to make it easy, by inserting a "new kind"
of Reason and the wisdom of comedy, to show the Unhappy
Consciousness that Reason and the Spirit can combine to transcend this "seeming" Paradox. The "objectivity" of Hegel's system
forces the Unhappy Consciousness to look "beyond" the Paradox,
to look for the underlying unity that will remove the under-
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standing's stumbling block. The Unhappy Consciousness's turn
toward the community of believers is completed, and God is
redefined as the Church; described by Hegel now as the "Christian
Consciousness," it feels better, for it has traded the terrible,
incomprehensible Paradox for something it can understand. In
fact, however, by placing its trust in the objective, the Unhappy
Consciousness has isolated itself from the very possibility of
decision, since
As soon as subjectivity is taken away ... there is no
decision whatever, whether on this issue or any other.
All decision, all essential decision, is rooted in subjectivity. (CUP, p. 33)
In contrast, Kierkegaard thinks that we must be willing to
accept the Paradox wholeheartedly:
If the paradox and the understanding meet in the
mutual understanding of their difference, then the
encounter is a happy one, like erotic love's understanding-happy in the passion to which we have as
yet given no name. (PF, p. 49)
The name for this passion, as we have already seen, is faith. Faith
is the ultimate conflict between the understanding's struggle to
comprehend and the absolute intractability of the Paradox; the
subjectivity of the individual is fully expressed in the passionate
grasp, and the Paradox is the height of objective uncertainty. In
fact, Kierkegaard says,
Subjectivity culminates in passion, Christianity is
paradox; paradox and passion fit each other perfectly,
and paradox perfectly fits a person situated in the
extremity of existence. (CUP, p. 230)17
It seems to me that Kierkegaard's faith is, then, at least similar to
what the reaction of the Unhappy Consciousness might have been
if it had not been trained to look for a new level on which all
paradoxes are consistent-if the Unhappy Consciousness were not
a part of Hegel's system. In Kierkegaard' s view, Hegel's focus on
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the objective truths of Christianity (whether the Christ ever
actually lived, whether we could prove the existence of God, what
properties the Christian God possesses) obscured his view of the
subjective problem of Christianity, how the individual can relate
to the religion:
the issue is not about the truth of Christianity but
about the individual's relation to Christianity, consequently not about the indifferent individual's systematic eagerness to rearrange the truths of Christianity
in paragraphs but rather about the concern of the
infinitely interested individual with regard to his own
relation to such a doctrine. (CUP, p. 15) 18
So Kierkegaard places all the emphasis on the subjective relationship between the existing individual and the Paradox, the
eternal existing in time; but this faith, this holding to the objective
uncertainty with the infinite passion of inwardness, is not something easily done. On the contrary, it is difficult and fraught with
"risk"; because faith requires objective uncertainty,
if I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see
to it that I hold fast to the objective uncertainty, see to
it that in the objective uncertainty I am "out on 70,000
fathoms of water" and still have faith. (CUP, p. 204)
That is, Kierkegaard thinks it would be vety easy for the existing
individual to give in to his (Hegelian?) Reason's pressure to
attempt a proof of God's existence, to attempt to come to an
understanding of the existence in time of the eternal. It takes all
of the individual's subjective passion to resist that urge, and
remain at risk; but "without risk, no faith" (CUP, p. 204). To
resist the urge to employ our rational understanding in our relationship with the Paradox is, in fact, to "believe against the
understanding" (CUP, p. 565), and is absolutely vital to the
continued faith of the believing individual: as speculative understanding is concerned with calculating objective probabilities, the
subjective individual who has chosen the path of faith
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is always in mortal danger in that the collision of the
infinite and the finite is precisely a mortal danger to
one who is composed of both. The believer cares so
little for probability that he fears it most of all, since
he knows very well that with it he is beginning to lose
his faith. (CUP, p. 233)
The difficulty the existing individual necessarily confronts in
trying to hold on to faith in the face of rational desires to
understand makes becoming a true Christian nearly impossible, in
Kierkegaard' s view:
To become a Christian then becomes the most terrible
of all decisions in a person's life, since it is a matter of
winning faith through despair and offense .... By Baptism,
Christianity gives him a name, and he is Christian de
nomine; but in the decision he becomes a Christian and
gives Christianity his name. (CUP, p. 372-73)
For Kierkegaard, then, Christianity (that is, true Christian faith)
is more than just a belief in certain propositions about a man called
Jesus. As the definition given earlier implies, the "contradiction
between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective
uncertainty" is a state of being an "existence-contradiction and
existence-communication" (CUP, p. 383),19 something which can
be described, talked about, but never explained in the Hegelian
sense. Though it is to be a communication, it cannot be a direct,
objective communication, and must be subjective and indirect;
hence "Objectively the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the
emphasis is on how it is said" (CUP, p. 20).20 And though it is in
some sense a state of being, it is also not a static state that is reached
once and for all: although the moment of decision in favor of faith
seems like a final step, it is in fact only the beginning of the
constant struggle to live in accordance with the decision, as
the subjective "how" is transformed into a striving
that is motivated and repeatedly refreshed by the
decisive passion of the infinite, but it is nevertheless a
striving. (CUP, p. 203)
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The infinite passion of acceptance of the Absolute Paradox which
constitutes faith is difficult to achieve, and difficult to maintain
once achieved. It requires an infinitely passionate belief in the
complete isolation of the existing individual from God, and at the
same time a similar acceptance of the actual mediation of the
Christ-and, thus, the distance from God to humanity is not
cause for tragic moaning, but is a separation which makes possible
all the beauty and majesty of the Christian religion. As Mark C.
Taylor describes it,
The sheer facticity of the God-Man establishes Christ
as "an exclusive individual man ... from whom all are
closed off." Yet precisely this splendid isolation enables the God-Man to illuminate the nature of spirit
and the distinctive character of human existence.Zl
In Kierkegaard' s view, as in Hegel's, comedy is a requirement
for the expression of the ideal religiosity; but for Kierkegaard,
rather than playing any kind of necessary part in the development
of our attitude toward God or the community of believers, comedy is an indicator of the depth of inwardness, the spiritual
maturity of the existing individual. The strength of subjectivity
that the true Christian faith requires as a foundation, a prerequisite for the inner striving of faith, is also the foundation of
comedy-and of a sense of the relation between the comic and the
tragic, which Kierkegaard calls humor. 22 "Humor is the last stage
in existence-inwardness before faith" (CUP, p. 291), Kierkegaard
says, though it "does not have anything to do with the decisive
Christian category of becoming a Christian" (CUP, p. 602). It is
the stage of existence that Johannes Climacus (Kierkegaard' s
pseudonym) claims for himself: "I...am neither a religious speaker
nor a religious person, but just a humorous, imaginatively constructing psychologist" (CUP, p. 483).
Comedy is a reaction to be expected in two very different
circumstances. On the one hand, to the faithful individual the rest
of the "Christian" world, taken as a reflection of the Hegelian
religiosity, will be comical: that is, if the faithful individual sees
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another among the crowd of nominal Christians trying to relate
himself to an objective certainty, trying to believe in some set of
official Church doctrines, especially if that individual is actually
trying to believe with the passion he needs for true faith, that
unfortunate individual
becomes comic. He becomes comic not because he
is infinitely, inipassionedly interested-this is indeed the good thing about him-but he becomes
comic because the objectivity is incongruous with his
interest. (CUP, p. 43)
And, in fact, Kierkegaard says, "everyone is comic who is not
infinitely, impassionedly interested and yet wants people to think
that he is interested in his eternal happiness" (CUP, p. 54-55).
On the other hand, those nominal Christians will find the truly
faithful individual comical, in that the faithful insist on keeping
their eyes on the Paradox, and refuse the comfort of the systematic
release from paradox, for "wherever there is contradiction, the
comic is present" (CUP, p. 514)-but Kierkegaard replies, saying
"Christianly understood, the boundary of Christianity is to become a fool in the world" (CUP volume II, p. 157), reminding us
of Paul's injunction to the Corinthians: "We are fools for Christ's
sake." 23 But this vision of the faithful individual as comic is
immature, and to call it comic is in fact not warranted: since
Kierkegaard thinks "the comic is rooted in the mis-relation of the
objective" (CUP, p. 55), in such a case it is again the nominal
Christian, attempting to base his Christianity on objective speculation, who is truly comical. Since he agrees with Aristotle that
"the comic is painless contradiction" (CUP, p. 514), Kierkegaard
claims to know that the continual, difficult striving of the faithful
individual makes him a victim of suffering, and therefore an example of the tragic, not of the comic. That is, Kierkegaard thinks
that the comic is excluded in religious suffering, that
it is inaccessible to the comic, because suffering is
precisely the consciousness of contradiction, which
therefore is tragically assimilated with pathos into the
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religious person's consciousness, and thereby the
comic is excluded. (CUP, p. 483)
But a sense of humor is compatible with Christianity, indeed
necessary to the development of an appropriate depth of spirit.
And although humor in itself is not necessarily Christian, the
humorist is vety close to becoming a Christian, since he
joins the conception of God together with something
else and brings out the contradiction-but he does
not relate himself to God in religious passion .... He
changes himself into a jesting and yet profound transition area for all these transactions, but he does not
relate himself to God. (CUP, p. 505)
The humorist is intellectually mature enough to see the futility of
objective thought, and has given himself over to the subjective,
but has not (yet) made the full turn from the external and objective
to the internal and subjective. 24 A Kierkegaardian (non-Christian)
humorist, then, is continually looking back over his shoulder at
the past (no longer a part of himself) and at others (in no way a
part of himself)-if he were to turn his attention to the future,
and to the inner, he might indeed become a Christian, 25 but there
is no Hegelian "necessity" to make him do so, since there is
nothing untenable in such a way of life. "The comic is always a
sign of maturity," Kierkegaard says, and a sign "that a new pathos
is beginning" (CUP, p. 281)-a pathos that makes possible the
inward turn required for the infinite inwardness of Christianity.
Conclusions
Both Hegel and Kierkegaard considered comedy to be an
important part of their religious thought, as we have seen. Hegel
placed the vety possibility of a self-conscious self-understanding,
"Absolute Knowledge," in the care of the comic by making comedy a necessity for the development of the Revealed Religion. That
is, the Unhappy Consciousness's nearsighted vision of an individuated God could only be overcome, and the revelation occur,
through the comic juxtaposition of human and divine-without
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that comic bridge, humanity and the divine could not have
touched, and an irresolvable contradiction would have held us all
back from the "scientific" system Hegel delineates. But since
comedy came along and showed humanity that divinity was in fact
its own production-as is anything which claims universality26-Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness can make the Absolute
turn, and place on himself (in the form of the Absolute Spirit) all
the divinity formerly predicated of God.27 Kierkegaard was confronted with a similarly sticky situation, which he termed the
Absolute Paradox: the eternal Son of God being embodied in time.
But instead of trying like Hegel to overcome this contradiction,
Kierkegaard grasped the paradox firmly, placing the treasure of
Christian faith in its keeping, and guarded it jealously from the
invasive and destructive tendencies of a Hegelian, objective reason. For Kierkegaard, the comedic character of the Absolute
Paradox is not enough in itself to raise human consciousness into
religion. While comedy is certainly a necessary step to attaining a
religious-specifically a Christian-consciousness, Kierkegaard
insists that comedy be leavened with an understanding of the
tragic to create a new perspective, the "humorous." And humor is
the final stage before Kierkegaard' s version of true Christianity, a
necessary way-station of his religious dialectic, from which one
who wishes to discover real faith must eventually depart.
Kierkegaard' s rejection of Hegel's systematic religion has rwo
main parts. First, Kierkegaard explains and justifies a willingness
to live with the sort of contradictions that Hegel seeks to transcend. We find explicit contradictions difficult to work with, but
we do it all the time-living in a complex world, we are capable
of acting despite the paradoxes of freedom and determinism, for
example, or the conflicts between our principles and our practical
needs. Perhaps Kierkegaard' s passionate embrace of the Absolute
Paradox indicates that he takes Kant's "antinomies" more seriously than Hegel. Where Hegel wants a systematic rational capacity to explain even those things which are founded on nonrational
paradoxes, Kierkegaard recognizes that reason has limits-and
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argues that passion does not. Second, Kierkegaard lays an emphasis on the personal dimension of religious experience, a dimension
which Hegel cannot account for. Since in Hegel's system the
religious is identified with the Spirit of the community, and is
thus objectified and unparadoxical, we can perhaps see why
Kierkegaard thinks that "Hegel and Hegelianism are a venture in
the comic" (CUP, p. 34n). That is, since the individual who is
truly concerned with his relation to the divine should (in
Kierkegaard's eyes) exert himself to be at the height of subjectivity,
infinitely impassioned, with respect to the Paradox, any train of
thought that insists that the best way to further that effort is to
appeal to objective speculation must be absolutely comical. For in
becoming objective, the individual must necessarily lose sight of
his own individuality, must place himself completely in the "universal" category of humanity. 28 But it is exactly this loss of
individuality that Kierkegaard bemoans, and, thus, pursues Hegel
with the hue and cry of humor and comedy:
It is from this side that an objection must first be made
to modern speculative thought, that it has not a false
presupposition but a comic presupposition, occasioned by its having forgotten in a kind of world-historical absentmindedness what it means to be a human
being ... what it means that we, you and I and he, are
human beings, each one on his own. (CUP, p. 120)29
The whole speculative project, then, becomes comically impossible; as Niels Thulstrup puts it, "speculative thought ... belongs in
a museum for comical and useless discoveries."30
Finally, let me just remark that while Kierkegaard's criticisms
of Hegel's speculative theory of religion seem to me devastating,
I am uncomfortable with parts of his own subjective system. For
example, I think Robert Manning is right to question
Kierkegaard's Christianity for its odd stress on pain and loneliness:
"Kierkegaard' s deformed view of himself and his melancholic
isolation from others caused him to have a deformed view of
reality, other people, sociality, and Christianity which must be
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criticized."31 Perhaps if Kierkegaard's views could be tempered,
their extreme individualism mixed with a touch of sociality,
without taking them back to a watered-down Hegelianism, the
result might be a vety human and accessible version of the Christian religion.
Let me end with a claim of Anti-Climacus, another of
Kierkegaard' s own pseudonyms: "it is certain and true that the
first one to come up with the idea of defending Christianity in
Christendom is de facto a Judas no. 2."32 Although we certainly
ought not to identify the views of Johannes Climacus and AntiClimacus, in the face of Anti-Climacus's assertion we must question Kierkegaard' s view of his own project in Philosophical
Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Would he want
to characterize himselfas "another Judas"? Or is Kierkegaard using
humor against his own readers in this juxtaposition of pseudonyms? Perhaps being a subjective, humorous Judas isn't so bad,
compared to being an impersonal, objective Hegelian.
Notes:
I. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie (New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), ~206, p. 251. Future references will be
made in tbe text.
2. See '229, p. 266: "It has the certainty of having in trutb stripped itself
of its Ego, and of having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a
'thing', into an objective external existence."
3. For a good understanding of Hegel's notion of "Spirit," see Terty
Pinkard, "The Successor to Metaphysics: Absolute Idea and Absolute Spirit"
The Monist74 (1991):309. "Spirit is thus not a metaphysical entity of which
we are all parts but rather a certain relation among people tbat structures and
mediates tbeir self-understanding. Put another way: Spirit tbus is just the
human community developing in histoty... [it] is that developing conceptual
space within which individuals situate themselves and to which they assume
particular stances.''
4. Pinkard, 321-22, my emphasis.
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5. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reoding ofHegel trans. J .H.
Nichols, Jr. (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 67.
6. Pinkard, 321.
7. Introduction, 72-73.
8. Introduction, 73
9. Pinkard, "Idealism, Historicism, and Reason" Unpublished paper,
1993, p.7.
10. Introduction, 153.
11. Mark C. Taylor, journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1980), 110.
12. Sonen Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical
Fragments (hereafter CUP) trans E. H. Hong and H.V. Hong, vols. 1 and 2
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), vol. 1, 203. Further
references will be made by page number in the text; all are to vol. 1 unless
otherwise noted.
13. S0ren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments (hereafter PF), trans. E.H.
Hong and H.V. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985),
46. Further references will be made by page number in the text.
14. See, for example, CUP, 209: "if the individual, existing, does not lay hold
of the truth in existence, he will never have it."
15. journeys, 258. "The Absolute Paradox occasions an absolute decision by
posing an absolute either-or. Either believe or be offended. From the Christian perspective, this crucial decision is of eternal significance."
16. PF, 52-53.
17. CUP, 199: "At its highest, inwardness in an existing subject is passion;
truth as a paradox corresponds to passion, and that truth becomes a paradox
is grounded precisely in its relation to an existing subject."
18. Niels Thulstrup Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 371: "Kierkegaard's aim in the Postscript .. .is to
answer the quesrion of how evety single individual can enter into the correct
relation with Christianity."
19. Relation, 378: "The central point of Christianity is paradoxical ... it is not
any doctrine in the speculative-philosophical sense ... but it expresses an
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existential contradiction, namely, that an existing man's eternal salvation is
worked out in time, through the fact that he relates himself to something
that paradoxically has become historical, together with the fact that Christianity is communication of existence (Kerygma, as it is frequently called
nowadays), i.e., it causes one to participate in the_true existence ... "
20. See also Judge Wilhelm's advice in Kierkegaard's Either/Or (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), Vol. 2, 167: "What is important is
not so much to choose the right thing as the energy, the earnestness, and the
pathos with which one chooses."
21. Journeys, 132.
22. CUP, 292: "What I properly call humor... [is] an equilibrium between
the comic and the tragic."
23. I Corinthians 4: I 0.
24. Louis J. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard's Philosophy of
Religion (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1984), 8: "The
significance of humor, then, is to show just how impoverished finite reason
is, to laugh at all man's attempts by his understanding to scale the heavens.
Secondly, it has a positive function of opening a person to accept the reality
of paradoxical truth, and ultimately to acceptance of the highest paradox of
all, the paradox of the Incarnation. Thus humor is the road to salvation."
25. CUP, 602.
26. See ~747, pp. 748-49: "It is the return of everything universal into
certainty of self, a certainty which, in consequence, is this ... complete loss of
substantial reality on the part of what is alien and external. Such certainty is
a state of spiritual good health and of self-abandonment thereto, on the part
of consciousness, in a way that, outside this kind of comedy, is not to be
found anywhere."
27. Relation, 375. In Kierkegaard's view, "Speculation, by denying the
absolute difference between God and man, wishes to abolish the paradox and
therewith that on which Christianity stands or fulls."
28. Relation, 374: "The subjective thinker must, in the final analysis, interpret the whole speculative endeavor as a comical attempt to do what is
impossible for the existing human."
29. See also CUP, 124-25.
30. Relation, p. 379.
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31. Robert John Scheffler Manning, "Kierkegaard and Post-Modernity:
Judas as Kierkegaard's Only Disciple" Philosophy Today 37 (1993): 146, and
the note on p. 152.
32. S0ren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, p. 87; quoted in Manning,
"Kierkegaard and Post-Modernity," p. 133.
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�i
~
Making the Constitution
Murray Dry
As Residential Scholar of Constitutional Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute, Robert A. Goldwin, author of the volume
under review, and former dean of St.John's College in Annapolis,
has organized and led a number of conferences on the American
Constitution with scholars and practitioners, including judges,
elected officials, and journalists. This book, which began as an
examination of how the first Congress passed a bill of rights,
became a meditation on constitution-making, a subject of widespread interest today. As an explanation of what happened and
why it happened, I think Goldwin has it right and that he has
written a book that "constitution-makers" today and students of
American constitutionalism should read.
Goldwin cautions his readers that his book "differs in important respects from most others that deal with the making of the
Constitution" (p. 6). For one thing, Goldwin thinks that it is
necessary to describe "the great constitutional controversies that
raged during the ratification process" (p. 5). Hence, he begins his
story with the final days of the Federal Convention and the
Framers' decisions regarding the transition from the existing
Articles of Confederation to the new Constitution. Goldwin's
narrative highlights James Madison's statesmanship. The Father
of the Constitution, who initially opposed a bill of rights, later
came to reconsider his position in light of his understanding of
what was necessary to make the Constitution acceptable to the
great majority of his fellow citizens. He then rallied a reluctant
Robert Goldwin, From Parchment to Power: How james Madison Used the Bill of
Rights to Save the Constitution, (Washington D.C.: AEI Press, 1997).
Murray Dry is a Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science at Middlebury
College, Middlebury, VT.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Federalist majority in the first House to pass a bill of rights
without in any way altering the governmental structure or powers
provided for in the Constitution. This is where Goldwin's book
differs from Robert Rutland's, The Birth of the Bill of Rights, a
standard work on the subject. Goldwin is right to highlight
Madison's open-minded reconsideration of the issue and his ability to persuade reluctant Federalists to join him in supporting
most of his proposed amendments. At the same time, Goldwin
reminds us of the role of chance in ratification of the Bill of Rights.
Thus, constitution-makers today will be well advised to study this
book, in order to understand both how constitutions can be made
to secure a people's freedom and how those with political responsibilities need to respond prudently to changing circumstances.
The book's nine chapters are divided into three parts, with a
concluding Reflections section to each part. Part One covers the
ratification of the Constitution, from the last days of the Federal
Convention, when the transition questions were taken up in
detail, through the ratification by eleven states, all except North
Carolina and Rhode Island. Part Two starts with Madison's
reconsideration of the bill of rights question, prompted in part by
popular support in Virginia and throughout the country, as well
as by Jefferson, who made the case for a bill of rights in letters he
wrote to Madison from Paris. As a result of this reconsideration,
Madison introduced amendments to the Constitution in the
House on June 8, 1789. Part Three covers how Madison went
about steering the individual and collective popular rights amendments through the House while successfully resisting those
amendments aimed at weakening the federal government in relation
to the state governments, which the Anti-Federalists favored.
By starting where he does, Goldwin is able to show how the bill
of rights issue arose in the Federal Convention and then in the
ratification debate. Of course, a more obvious division would have
been to move from the Federal Convention to the Ratification
debate and then on to the First Congress. Or, by covering the
transition questions in the Federal Convention together with the
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127
ratification process, Goldwin could have provided a two-part
narrative: from the ratification of the Constitution to the making
and ratifYing of the Bill of Rights.
Instead, Goldwin puts his chapters on Madison changing his
mind (chapter 4) and Madison's speech to the House accompanying his proposals (chapter 5) together in the central part of the
work. Moreover, chapter five, entitled "To Introduce the Great
Work: Congressman Madison Takes the Floor," occupies the
central place in the book. Goldwin has thus arranged his material
in order to highlight Madison's achievement.
Goldwin first quotes from Madison's speech to show that he
was responding to what he regarded as the earnest concerns of
friends of the Constitution and that his expectations for a bill of
rights were moderate. Then Goldwin identifies Madison's addressees and explains his purpose.
He was not speaking to those one would think of as
his opponents in Congress, nor was he seeking to
convert the Anti-Federalist members of Congress to
becoming friends of the unamended Constitution. He
addressed, instead, those who one would think would
be his allies in the Congress-those who, in agreement
with him supported the original Constitution and
opposed efforts to alter it. He sought to explain to
them that their opponents, those who wanted to make
changes in and additions to the Constitution, could
be divided .... His analysis was that the popularsupport could be stripped away from the Anti-Federalists
by offering not what their spokesmen sought-radical
alterations in the Constitution-but rather only explicit assurances on the 'great rights of mankind,' and
that that could be accomplished without altering in
any way the powers of the new government (p.82).
In addition to describing Madison's prominent role in bringing
the Constitution to life, Goldwin helps his readers appreciate the
element of chance in politics. During the ratification struggle, for
example, Jefferson's presence in France as America's Ambassador
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
was fortuitous. Jefferson lent support to the movement for a
second convention, by urging four states to withhold their votes
for ratification until the others agreed on a bill of rights and on a
term limit for the president. Had he been in Virginia at the time,
Jefferson's influence might have been significant enough to force
a second convention, which would have produced either a weaker
federal government or no agreement at all (pp. 61-62). Goldwin
relates the story of Governor George Clinton's delay in communicating to New York's legislature a letter from Governor Edmund
Randolph of Virginia, concerning support for a second convention. Randolph then had Clinton's reply delivered to the Virginia
legislature. However, it was not read until a day after Virginia's
convention had ratified the Constitution. Following his source,
Goldwin believes that if the letter had been received earlier, the
two states would have cooperated and "a second convention prior
to ratification would then have been inevitable" (p. 43). Goldwin
also describes the important John Hancock-Samuel Adams proposal in the Massachusetts Ratification Convention; by supporting "recommendatory amendments" rather than "conditional
amendments," these two Federalist leaders attained an unqualified
ratification (pp. 40-41). With that action as a precedent, all
subsequent states ratified unconditionally (p. 47).
In his coverage of the closing days of the Federal Convention,
Goldwin relates how the Framers dealt with five obstacles to
ratification:
• the amending provision in the Articles of
Confederation
• the instructions from the Continental Congress
establishing the convention
• the Continental Congress itself
• the state legislatures
• three prestigious dissenting delegates
Today, these issues would be identified as "transition issues."
(Such issues were as important then as they were during the recent
revolutions in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.)
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129
Goldwin describes the solutions as well as what he calls some
"evasions" (p. 19). The amendment provision of the Articles of
Confederation required the consent of the Continental Congress
and of each of the state legislatures. But the Convention's transmittal letter called on the Continental Congress to send the
proposed Constitution on to the states without voting on it, with
directions that each state legislature have elections for a ratification convention to meet. The ratification article provided that
the Constitution would come into being when nine states ratified
it through these conventions. In addition, the instructions from
the Continental Congress were arguably breached by the Federal
Convention since the meeting was "for the sole and express
purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation," and the proposed Constitution did more than that. Goldwin points out that
many of the Framers thought that Congress's limitation on the
means contrasted with its expectation that the revisions would
"render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of
Government & the preservation of the union" (p. 17). The
Framers, especially Madison, regarded the Convention's work as
the equivalent of a constitutional revolution, and hence it was
essential from a juridical perspective to have the people elect
delegates to a convention to deliberate and vote on ratification.
The proponents of the Constitution were not above trying to
make their action appear unanimous, even though many framers
left the Convention early because they disapproved of the work,
and three others-Randolph, George Mason, and Eldridge
Gerry-refused to sign the document. Still, the Constitution
contains the words "done in Convention by the Unanimous
Consent of the States present ... " (p. 27). Goldwin explains that
the state legislatures allowed the Continental Congress to follow
the instructions of the Federal Convention because the states had
little confidence in the Congress (p. 30).
In his reflections on part one, Goldwin notes that this robust
political activity
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
all occurred before the Constitution was ratified. What
this means is that these familiar American political
habits were not originally developed and ingrained in
the American character by the Constitution. They
existed in full force before the Constitution existed.
The genius of the Framers was in writing a constitution that capture,d American democratic politicking as
it was practiced, designing institutions and a structure
of society that would perpetuate, not redesign, the
way Americans were already constituted (pp. 49-50).
This reminds one ofTocqueville's remarks about America having
enjoyed the benefits of revolution, meaning the historical absence
of hereditary institutions, without having to have undergone a
revolution. Today some call it American exceptionalism, and on
that basis liberal, democratic constitution-makers today cannot
simply follow an American script. On the other hand, America's
constitution-makers did not act as rigorous democrats when they
provided a complex structure of government, including legislative
bicameralism, a unitary executive with a share in the legislative
power, and an independent judiciary. Goldwin's point about
American politics is that republican or popular government requires familiarity with and an interest in political activity.
In Part Three of the book, Goldwin describes how Madison
finally succeeded in getting enough Federalists in the House to
engage the subject of a bill of rights. This includes an account of
how Madison, who proposed "interweaving" the amendments
into the Constitution, relented when he met with strong opposition to this from Roger Sherman and others (p. 1 08). On the other
hand, Madison refused to allow any amendments that would
weaken the new federal government. These included: a proposal
for "instructions" for members of Congress, which implied issue
by issue control-by the state legislatures over the Senate and by
the people over the House-with recall if necessary (pp. 114-124);
a motion to add the word "expressly" to what became the tenth
amendment; limitations on the tax power or the power to raise an
�DRY
131
army; and annual elections for senators as well as state legislative
control of federal elections (pp. 129-134).
These amendments were either voted down decisively after full
discussion or they were summarily defeated. Goldwin discusses the
recall debate in chapter six and the debate on the other amendments
in chapter seven, entitled, '"Those Solid and Substantial Amendments,' All Defeated." He calls part of that chapter "What the
Anti-Federalists Were For,'' which is the tide of Herbert]. Storing's
book-length essay on Anti-Federalist thought. (It is published
separately in paperback and also as volume one of his seven volume,
The Complete Anti-Federalists, [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press; 1981].) Goldwin explains the purpose of those amendments.
The intention was to alter radically the structure of
government established under the Constitution, and
the thrust of the proposed provisions was to transfer
power from the several branches of the federal government back to the states. What these alterations were
thought to have to do with the security of the rights of
individuals is an important clue to understanding the
fundamentals of the Anti-Federalist position (p. 131).
The Anti-Federalist leaders who supported these "solid and substantial" amendments feared that without them a consolidated
national government would develop, weaken the relatively small
and homogeneous states, and thereby destroy republican government. Earlier, Goldwin drew on Madison's writings in the Federalist and his letter to Jefferson to explain the novel character of
the Constitution; it provides for a strong republican government
over an extended territory with a diverse population, to provide
for the requirements of defense and to check the republican
disease of majority faction (pp. 62-7 4). Goldwin's account thus
clarifies the differences between the two kinds of amendments.
After defeating the Anti-Federalist amendments, Madison still
has to gain enough Federalist votes for his fmendments to carry
the House by the requisite two-thirds vote! And then he has to
persuade Federalists in the several states to support the amend-
�132
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ments and to persuade others to do so (chapter 8). Goldwin
includes, "as an instructive example of this effort," an exchange
between Madison and Richard Peters, the speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Peters playfully chides Madison for proposing
amendments "to the Machine before it is known whether it wants
any'' (p. 146). Goldwin explains that when Madison referred to
"the nauseous project 'of amendments," he meant the "frustratingly slow legislative process," not the amendments themselves
(pp. 147-8). And then Goldwin quotes extensively from a letter
Madison sent to Peters to provide him with the necessary arguments in support of ratification of the amendments. After beginning with his own qualified support ("provision in favr. of
essential rights is a thing not improper in itself and was always
viewed in that light by myself'), Madison provided six other
reasons, which Goldwin describes as "of a markedly different
character, all designed to appeal directly to the inclinations and
needs of a practical politician" (p. 149). The gist of the other
reasons are that adoption of the amendments "will kill the opposition everywhere" (p. 150). Goldwin reports that while Peters
feared that the concessions would not satisfy the Anti-Federalists
and therefore wanted Madison to use the Federalist majority to
silence them, Madison saw "the amending project ... as an opportunity to diminish divisions and generate unity and therefore as
an essential part of the constitution-making process" (p. 151).
In his reflections on Part Two, Goldwin critically discusses
Rutland's contentions that Madison was mistaken not to support
a bill of rights when George Mason suggested one toward the end
of the Federal Convention and that Madison only changed his
mind when he realized that he would have to support a bill of
rights to get himself elected to the House of Representatives in
1789 (pp. 96-7). After quoting from Madison's Federalist expressions about the need for a republican government to provide
checks against the majority, Goldwin quotes the following argument for a bill of rights from Madison's letter to Jefferson of 17
October 1788:
�DRY
133
The political truths declared in that solemn manner
acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the
impulses of interest and passion (p. 99).
Goldwin, who provides many instances of Madison's qualified
support for a bill of rights, calls this Madison's only statement of
unqualified support. Madison came to understand, Goldwin
argues, how a bill of rights can make a positive contribution to
freedom in a republican form of government. The Bill of Rights
can become "a force potentially more powerful than any majority
because it involves a profound commitment of 'the whole people
of the United States"' (p. 99). Of course this can only happen if
the bill of rights provisions are rightly constructed, if they do not
in any way revise or weaken the structure of the new government
and its powers. Rutland, according to Goldwin, does not appreciate this point (p. 101), and, as a result, his presentation has
Madison simply bowing to public opinion. According to Goldwin, however, "[t]he significant truth about Madison and public
opinion and the Bill of Rights is that when Madison spoke, the
people listened. And they revised their views" (p. 102).
The difference between Goldwin and Rutland on the Bill of
Rights concerns more than the relative contribution of Madison
versus public opinion, however. It also concerns the relationship
between the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Goldwin follows
Storing in emphasizing the significance of what was excluded as
well as what was included in the Bill of Rights (p. 83). Before
Madison took charge, the opponents of the proposed Constitution controlled the bill of rights issue. They were using it to call
for a second convention, with a view toward revising the structure
and powers of the federal government. After Madison took control
of the issue, he limited the amendments to statements of rights of
the people against government and he kept out all revisions of the
Constitution's structure and powers. That is the meaning of the
Goldwin's subtitle, "How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights
�134
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to Save the Constitution." Rutland, who notes in the essay
Goldwin discusses that "there is ... much truth to the argument that
the Constitution is a living, breathing document," limits his
examples to the Bill of Rights, or individual rights against government. And in another place, Rutland writes: "Fortuitously separated from the original Constitution, these ten amendments in
time became the most admirable aspect of American law-making"
("The First Ten Amendments," in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of
the American Revolution, ed. by Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole,
Cambridge, MA and Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1991, p. 274.) For
Rutland, while the Federalists gave us the Constitution, the AntiFederalists and/or the people gave us the Bill of Rights. For
Goldwin, this introduces a false dichotomy. The Bill of Rights
completes the Constitution by making it acceptable to large
majority of the American people. The Bill of Rights, by making
mention of the people's rights and their powers (the latter in the
Tenth Amendment), "closes the parentheses," opened by the
Preamble, "thereby portraying a constitution-making people that
would be worthy of the republic they founded ... " (p. 184). Thus
Goldwin presents his interpretation of the parenthesis image
Storing used in "The Constitution and the Bill of Rights," "the
seminal essay that led me to write this book" (p. 184).
I think that Goldwin's disagreement with Rutland allows us to
appreciate what might be called our continuing constitutional
responsibilities. Rutland's remarks about a "living constitution"
were made in a context indicating that he favored the twentieth
century development toward increasing judicial protection of
individual rights. As Goldwin presents it, Madison's constitutionalism does not necessarily rely on judicial activism for the
people to secure their rights. The original Federalist position,
articulated by Hamilton in Federalist 84, was that "the constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the union." For
Goldwin, the Madisonian position combines the original Federalist position, which emphasizes the entire structure of government, with a statement of the people's rights and their powers.
�DRY
135
So, short of revolutionary action, how do the people preserve
their rights and their powers? For Madison, who authored a
"Memorial and Remonstrance" to preserve religious freedom in
Virginia in 1785, and the Virginia Resolutions and Report to
preserve federalism and freedom of speech in 1799-1800, the
people can preserve their freedom through public addresses on
political matters and by their suffrage. I think Goldwin favors
this approach himself (seep. 175 and note 35, and p. 183). And
yet Madison gave as one reason for a bill of rights that the judiciary
would thereby be made "a bulwark against abuses of the executive
and legislative branches" (p. 93). Madison, incidentally, got this
from Jefferson, who mentioned it to him in his letter of March
15, 1789. This means that Madison and Jefferson were aware of
the effect the Bill of Rights could have on judicial power. They
did not favor it, nor did they favor, as it turned out, a liberal
construction of the enumerated powers of Congress. Debate over
the scope of Congress's powers has been revived lately, which
means that judicial power recently has been active in support of
federalism as well as individual rights.
What would Madison make of our constitutionalism today?
And what should we make of it in light of Goldwin's fine study
of Madison's constitution-making? I think Madison would first
note some significant changes from his time to ours: the American
polity is larger, more democratic, and more diverse; as a result it
is more tolerant of diversity and its people have come to rely on
big government. Taking account of these changes, which he
might praise in part and criticize in part, Madison would conclude
that we will need the assistance of all branches of government as
well as a public-spirited people to maintain our freedom.
�136
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLIV. number three ( 1998)
Editor
Pame/4 Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm Von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Anne McShane
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Harvey Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the distribution list,
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Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome.
Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box
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per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1998 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
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��Contents
Essays and Lectures
Prelude to Vocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Marilyn Higuera
How We Do Things With Words:
An Introduction to Wittgenstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
John Verdi
Ptolemy's Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
David Stephenson
Reviews
A Forgotten Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Lucio Russo's La rivoluzione dimenticata
Curtis J#lson
Measured Passion, Golden Rationality . . . . . . . . . 117
Eva T. H. Brann's The Past-Present
Ronald Mawby
Mimesis on the Treacherous Slopes:
Joyce's Commitment to Community
. . . . . . . 127
Cordell Yee's The Word According to James Joyce
Albert Wachtel
��t
Prelude to Vocation
Marilyn Higuera
George Eliot's panorama of life in and around the small town of
Middlemarch, England in 1829 opens with a short Prelude. These
lyrical paragraphs are not a summary of some "offstage" event in the
lives of her characters that would be helpful to know before the reader begins the story proper; in fact, no character from the ensuing
story is even named. Nor are these opening words an apology or
admonishment spoken directly to the reader as reader by the author
as author. Instead, they consist of three paragraphs which articulate
a general problem, albeit dramatically and with vivid examples anc\
rhetorical flourishes. This Prelude is our first exposure to a voice we
will hear continually throughout the book: the voice of George Eliot
as thinker.
Her first words are a rhetorical question:
Who that cares much to know the history of man,
and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the
varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt at least
briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa. .. ?
Eliot, of course, tells us what she wishes us to know of St.
Theresa's story and engrafts her interpretation of Theresa's motives
and heroism. She asks her musing question in ordel;' to prepare us to
be the right sort of audience. Without lecturing us, she reminds us
that we ought care about the history of man, for it reveals something
of, man's nature. Immediately, we are drawn into the philosophic
activity of this careful observer. Later in the book (Chapter 11, p.
Marilyn Higuera is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This is a version of a lecture delivered
in Annapolis on January 10,1997 and in Santa Fe on January 23, 1998.
�2
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
65)1, Eliot will compare herself to Herodotus and call herself a
belated historian (Chapter 15, p. 96),
In her opening, rhetorical question, Eliot specifies her interest in
history as "how the mysterious mixture [of man] behaves under the
varying experiments of Time:' Time is to be regarded as a scientist,
establishing the conditions and variables under which man operates
and then observing the results. Eliot, too, can be likened to a scientist, establishing conditions and variables and watching them work on
her characters. But, of course, she doesn't really "watch them work on
her characters"; she crafts the characters and their responses.
In the second paragraph of the Prelude, however, we have a clue
as to Eliot's own view of her scientific role. She tells us in passing
that "common eyes" are not always able to penetrate the roiling surface of events, Sometimes, heroic internal struggles issue in no wellshaped event or deed. More properly than an historian, Eliot can
transform our "common" eyes into acute instruments of intelligence
by illuminating the definite thoughts and motives of her characters
and by permitting us to witness private debates and emotional consequences. The historical imagination may help us understand "how
triumphant opinions originally spread-how institutions arosewhat were the conditions of great inventions, discoveries or theoretic conceptions;' 2 but Eliot's literary effort is to school our sensibility to the tragedy imbuing some of the most ordinary interchanges
(experiments) of our lives.
Before we let her educate us, however, let's linger over the opening
sentence of the Prelude and those "varying experiments of Time:'
Eliot means more than simply that different circumstances reveal
different aspects of man's nature. She has in ll;lind a mutual dependence between these circumstances and his nature. As she says in the
Finale (p. 577), "there is no creature whose inward being is so strong
that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it:' Such interrelatedness further obscures the enigma of man's "mysterious" animal yet moral nature. Simultaneously, it increases the importance of
the "experiments of Time." For, as Darwin says, "when we regard
�HIGUERA
3
every production of nature as one which has had a history... how far
more interesting... will the study of natural history become." 3
Darwin's theory of evolution was just being formulated in Eliot's
era. She read The Origin if Species when it was first published in 1859
and again some years later; she had previously read Darwin's predecessors Lamarck, Chambers, and Spencer, and was already intrigued
by what was then called ~he Development Theory. Eliot began writing Middlemarch in 1870, long after these controversial ideas had first
engaged her considerable intellectual energy.4 She was keenly aware of
evidence that different situations and environments pressure an
organic being in different ways, that natural selection may continually be on the lookout to capitalize on the variation ever-present in the
species. You will note that, in the third paragraph of the Prelude,
Eliot speaks of the "limits of variation" being wider than one might
think in the nature of women. The title of the first chapter of
Darwin's book is "Variation Under Domestication" and the title of the
second is "Variation Under Nature:'
Eliot claims that the hidden variation in women's souls prevents
us from treating their "social lot" with "scientific certitude:' At first,
one might think Eliot thus distances herself from Darwin, who was
a new sort of scientist. However, instead of eternal species and fixed
laws of nature, Darwin had conjectured that "we shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web of affinities" connecting various
· organisms (Origin, p. 415). Images of the web, its radiating threads,
and entanglement pervade Middlemarch as well as The Origin if Species, 5
serving in both texts as a model for reality with two problematic features. The first is that individuals, while the most important element
of creation, are not strictly separable from, and indeed are quite limited by, their environment. The second concerns our limitation as scientific observers; we observe only a small slice of the present, which
masks the tree. of the history of descent. Both Eliot and Darwin see
threads of connection that radiate out through space and time in
such a way as to make interpretation and storytelling an endless. and
uncertain activity.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
However, Eliot's most profound explorations take place on a different plane from Darwin's. Already in 1856, several years before she
began to write Middlemarch, in her essay 'The Natural History of
German Life;' Eliot asserted that
the conditions which society has inherited from the
past are but the ,manifestation of inherited internal
conditions in the human beings who compose it; the
internal conditions and the external are related to
each other as the organism and its medium, and
development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both.6
Though Darwin's speculations comprehended the entire community of living creatures and embraced eons of historical development,
he was more concerned with physical changes of the species, changes
that could be gleaned from the fossil records (such as bone structure
alterations, the presence of a predator at a certain period, radical
alteration of the climate). Eliot, on the other hand, speaks of "soul"
in the Prelude. She envisions as severe a pressure on the soul, from
the social and cultural practices and habits into which one is born, as
Darwin hypothesizes concerning the geographical-ecological constraints on a given individual. Her interest perhaps determines her
formulation of man's nature as a "mysterious mixture" in the beginning of the Prelude. An individual's nature was something of a mystery to Darwin as well, but Eliot's emphasis on the "mixture" is further amplified in the succeeding image of young St. Theresa and her
brother as helpless as two fawns, "but with human hearts:' Eliot's
extension of the Darwinian problem of the struggle of an individual
nature, replete with soul and heart, born into an inhospitable environment receives its fullest exploration in Middlemarch.
In the Prelude, St. Theresa is spoken of as a type: "Many
Theresas have been born:' Eliot explores the conditioning and limiting imposed on an individual type from outside, the adaptation of
�HIGUERA
5
the self to the constraints of the social order. Eliot applies Darwin's
metaphor of the polity of nature7 to the polity itsel£ The models of
behavior evolved by a society, the premises of the local religion, technological advances, the responses of the social group to political
change, all make forceful appearances in Middlemarch, a book which
culminates with the thought that the "medium" in which St. Theresa
and Antigone accomplished their "ardent deeds" "is forever gone"
(Finale, p. 577). The "gradual action of ordinary causes" (Eliot's own
description of Middlemarch in an 1871 letter to her publisher) forces
major compromises by her two central characters.
These characters, Dorothea and the young Dr. Lydgate, are both
instances of the particular type Eliot distinguishes in the Prelude, the
St. Theresa type, namely, the ardent character, passionate to act upon
.d
an 1 eal. Every word .h ere, " ard ent," "'deal" and " act," becomes a
1
,
recurring motif in Middlemarch. For the moment, I would like to give
some depth to the first of them.
I want, then, to understand the "ardently willing soul" in paragraph 2 of the Prelude. Only the very best characters in this book are
"ardent": Dorothea, Lydgate, and, occasionally, Will. (Caleb Garth is
once called "ardent" in his generosity toward young Fred, revealing
Eliot's admiration for this down-to-earth character.) "Ardent" is a
word derived from the Latin ardere, meaning "to burn:' This etymological derivation is vivified in the Prelude by Eliot's description of
Theresa's "flame" burning up the chivalric romances of her time. We,
too, connect this word "ardent" to the fiery passion a lover may feel
for the beloved or, by extension, the words uttered by such a lover; we
may even use it to describe someone's pursuit of a goal when it is particularly single-minded and feverish.
Eliot is using this word "ardent" a little differently, for she means
it to describe a nature such as Theresa's and Dorothea's and Lydgate's.
Dorothea is introduced to us as "open, ardent, and not in the least
self-admiring" (p. 3); again, Eliot says, "The intensity of her
[Dorothea's] religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her
life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
intellectually consequent. .. " (p. 17). What does it mean for a nature
to burn with desire? Eliot most certainly does not mean that such a
nature will fix easily and quickly on the first object which presents
itself and pursue it heatedly. We have only to read the first book of
Middlemarch and become acquainted with Dorothea ( in all her youthful, faintly ascetic Puritanism) to realize she is not such a monster as
that. For Eliot, the ardent nature is one that reaches beyond its very
self, and therefore its desire is not, strictly speaking, a desire to possess. What sort of desire is it then? Let us turn to the writings of St.
Theresa and her confessor and friend, St. John of the Cross, for a
glimpse of such desire.
They are, in their own words, expounders of "mystical theology."
Perhaps it would be helpful at this point to remark on the great tradition of religious mysticism which views the soul's relationship to
God as best expressed by the relationship of a bride to her bridegroom. The Song of Solomon can be and has been read as expressive of
this relationship. Both St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa continue this tradition of interweaving the romantic yearning for the beautiful beloved with the soul seeking fellowship with God. St. Theresa
repeatedly speaks of Christ as her Spouse.8 St. John of the Cross
refers to the Holy Spirit as his Spouse. Let me give some examples of
how very seriously these two authors employ the image of erotic love.
This flame of love is the Spirit of its Spouse-that
is, the Holy Spirit. And this flame the soul feels within it, not only as a fire that has consumed and transformed it in sweet love, but also as a fire which burns
within it and sends out flame .... And this is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the soul that is transformed in love, that the acts that He performs within it cause it to send out flames, which are the enkindling of love, wherein the will of the soul is united,
and it loves most deeply, being made one with that
flame in love.9
�HIGUERA
7
And St. Theresa tries to articulate how the Prayer of Union with
God can captivate and enthrall the soul:
Have you not heard concerning the Bride.... That
soul has now delivered itself into His hands and His
great love has so completely subdued it that it neither
knows nor desires anything save that God shall do
with it what He wills.10
Or St. John of the Cross again (p. 41),
... the copiousness and abundance of (the soul's)
glory and delight. .. is the greater and the more tender
when the soul is the more fervently and substantially
transformed and centred in God. This is something
much greater than comes to pass in the ordinary
union of love, because of the greater fervency of the
fire, which here, as we say, gives forth living flame. For
this soul, which is now in such sweetness and glory,
and the soul that enjoys only the ordinary union of
love, are in a certain way comparable respectively to
the fire of God. ... For the soul in this state is like a
furnace enkindled, the vision whereof is, as we say,
the more peaceful and glorious and tender in proportion as the flame of this furnace is more vehemently
enkindled than common fire.
Perhaps, the intensity of the passion here and particularly the
representation of the illumination of the soul by God as the ecstasy
of erotic love is startling. (A moment's reflection, though, can trace
this idea as descended from Augustine and Plotinus, who were themselves altering Plato's picture of eros as the force pulling us toward
truth itsel£) I believe this eros for the divine is precisely the conception which moved Eliot when shaping Dorothea's "ardent" nature.
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The preceding passages reveal people capable of great passion, a passion the essence of which is glimpsed by most people only in sexual
relations. St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross long to be
consumed by God in a union of perfect Love. They are willing to die
to themselves and allow God to live through them. Although the
object of their love is transcendent, higher than any human being,
they view their love as ~kin to the longing of a man for a woman.
Probably, such yearning to be absorbed into another's essence is
infrequently felt even in relations between the sexes. Romantic love,
however, what we might call "being in love," does seem to me to have
that paradoxical desire for self-forgetful union at its center. For
"being in love" comprises more than a desire to possess; it is an
attraction felt by one whole person-mind, body, soul-for another
whole person. Calculations concerning needs and wants fall away in
the face of a being who embodies the good and beautiful.
Perhaps no human beloved can sustain being the vehicle of
goodness for long, and perhaps no human lover can sustain surrendering his identity-even to God-for long. But, in the Prelude,
Eliot urges us to reflect on the consequences of Theresa's "rapturous
consciousness of life beyond self' Theresa's moments of union with
God actively drew her away from herself even when the ecstasy had
subsided. They were a call from the divine, or-in the very oldest
sense of the word-a vocation. In her vocation, Theresa was both
ardent and dynamic. She was passionate, not only to experience the
joys of the other world, but to do God's work in this world:
love for God does not consist in... enjoying those
consolations and that tenderness which for the most
part we desire and in which we find comfort, but in
serving Him with righteousness, fortitude of soul
and humility. 11
In this spirit of service, of dying to her own will and following
God's will, St. Theresa reformed the Carmelite order of nuns; her
�HIGUERA
9
effort was to reject the comfort of a large and pleasant convent, to
reinstitute the strict Rule of living that had been mitigated by papal
authority, and particularly to embrace a life of absolute poverty,
denying concern even over necessities.
After this exploration of the Theresa-type, we can now deepen
our understanding of the problem of the Prelude. We have before us
a character longing to be transformed by a knowledge of the good,
yearning to transform .the p~ssibilities for life in society, yet
enmeshed in a Darwinian web where change usually occurs "by the
accumulation of innumerable slight variations" and there can be "no
great or sudden modification" (Origin, p. 444). Yet the model of St.
Theresa affords hope that under certain propitious circumstances of
the local ecology, the heart and soul can find some satisfying work to
accomplish. I am ready now to turn toward the story proper and see
how Eliot elaborates this problem.
In Middlemarch, the character Dorothea is not a member of a religious order, experiencing rapturous union with God. Still, Dorothea
is first shown us denying herself things: in Chapters 1 and 2, she has
"conscientious qualms" concerning the horseback riding she loves,
and Eliot's ironic voice informs us she "always looked forward to
renouncing it" (p. 3, also p. 10); Eliot gently mocks Dorothea's hesitation in renouncing her mother's jewels in Chapter 1, and portrays
her as momentarily deluding herself that her delight in the jewels is
"mystic religious joy"; Chapter 2 finds Dorothea fending off a charge
that she is fond of "giving up" in general. The triviality of these
denials might be saved by some encompassing scheme (some of St.
Theresa's denials were not more grand), but our reaction to these
renunciations is governed by Eliot's own ironic verdict on p. 2 that
Dorothea is "likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and
then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not
sought it:'
The difference between St. Theresa and Dorothea can be seen
clearly. Dorothea is flailing about, trying to figure out the right thing
to do. She has some vague feeling that self-denial is good, but she has
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
no trustworthy guidance from anyone concerning what should be
denied and what embraced, nor any framework that tells her what
end these denials serve.
In the Prelude, Eliot tells us that Theresa's religious ideals "perform[ ed] the function of knowledge:' Since Eliot refers these ideals
to a "coherent social faith;' she must be referring not to Theresa's
direct revelations from God but to her self-confessed dependence on
guidance from priest-confessors, fellow nuns, fellow believers.U In
Eliot's time, no religion can adequately substitute for knowledge. To
find a true vocation (where now the word means only a directionnot necessarily from God-to a special work in life), Dorothea needs
some doctrine so firmly supported by a worldly structure that it can
manifest itself in society as powerfully and actively good. None of
the formal churchgoing and empty bickering about prevenient grace
in the town of Middlemarch can contend for this ideal. There, the main
import of religious sentiment seems concerned that "religion does
not require you to make yourself uncomfortable" (p. 340, see also p.
12); "the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that
opinions were not acted on" (p. 3). Such hollow reverence offers little to Dorothea in her struggle to find the "fullest truth, the least
partial good" (p. 141).
How can Dorothea channel her passion for divine goodness,
when the divine has no obvious manifestation? Lacking any liberating educational experience that might turn her to philosophy, the
nearsighted Dorothea turns toward her most obvious vocational
option. Almost inevitably, Dorothea's first marriage assumes the
aspect of religious fervor; her aim is to serve Casaubon, as maid if
necessary. Yet Dorothea dreams of being a secretary and even a kind
of graduate student to his professorial wisdom. Marriage is the one
model of fruitful self-denial that Dorothea has acquired. Dorothea
knows, however, that for marriage to be a vocation, lifting her life out
of the common and into a higher sphere, the man into whose life she
will be absorbed must be "above [herJ in judgment and in all knowledge" (Ch. 4). Only then will the self-denial be "glorious piety" (p.
�HIGUERA
11
4). She thinks, mistakenly as it turns out, that Casaubon's religious
connections and his scholarship concerning "the key to all
Mythologies" will unlock the secret of a good life.
But we would be wrong to picture Dorothea's relation even to
Casaubon as academic or abstract. Her connection with him is felt in
every fiber of her being. She "would have kissed Mr. Casaubon's
coat-sleeve, or... caressed his shoe-latchet, if he would have made any
other sign of acceptance than pronouncing her, with his unfailing
propriety, to be of a most affectionate and truly feminine nature ... "
(p. 138). Dorothea's nature requires that she make some such quixotic attempt to dedicate herself to a flesh-and-blood Dulcinea. In the
absence of direct revelation, she must reach out with affection to a
real person, and hope that the affection will carry her towards an
ideal directing her actions in this world.
During the course of her misbegotten marriage, Dorothea treads
a steeper path of self-denial than she had ever dreamed. She had
thought that she would be devoting herself to Casaubon's projeCt,
sacrificing only such dubious pleasures as dinner parties and interest
in fashion. When Dorothea's Dulcinea is recognized for the peasant
girl she is (i.e., Casaubon's empty pretentiousness and icy heart are
unmasked), duty becomes Dorothea's goal. But the word "duty" does
not, I think, adequately capture the transformation of Dorothea's
vocation. As she grows aware of Casaubon's limitations-his ignorance of certain advances in German scholarship, the empty,
labyrinthine corridors of his mind, his neurotic and unending organization of information never culminating in actual authorship, his
pathetic fear of criticism-she does not become bitter in her disillusionment. Instead, a new world opens up to her.
We do not immediately appreciate the vistas that are revealed to
Dorothea. For the new world she gains presents itself first as
Casaubon's dark, enclosed one. Dorothea has to surrender her
assumption that religious scholars have the wisdom to guide one to
virtuous action. Her solitary cry of faith (p. 190) is muted to a modest hope that the mere desire for the good may help fight evil (p. 270).
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
With no direction and little idea where to turn, she admits she hardly ever even prays after her disenchantment with Casaubon (p. 271 ).
In a book endowed with four different clergymen as characters and
an ever-present tension between Puritans, Methodists, Catholics, and
Calvinists, Dorothea's initial confidence in the power of religion to
do good in society simply evaporates. The previously noted absence
of a coherent social fai.th and the debunking of impartial Biblical
scholarship leave Dorothea stranded.
Thus stymied, the passion Dorothea had dedicated to her marriage and the pursuit of wisdom manifesrs itself as anger. Dorothea's
anger flares rather often; it is the obverse side of her ardency.
However, Dorothea's "ideal was not to claim justice, but to give tenderness" (p. 140). She repeatedly reaches beyond her very real anger
and repulsion. She becomes, not without tremendous effort and cost,
able to feel what Casaubon feels, to understand and pity him. Only a
nature longing to bury irself in the good could, at the very moment
when soul-hunger for knowledge is being stifled and affectionate
overtures are being rebuffed, ardently transform wifely duty into tenderness and pity.
The narrator betrays no trace of irony in her treatment of
Dorothea's renunciation of claims here, only admiration for her
"noble habit of soul" (p. 295) and faithful, loving compassion.
Dorothea's sacrifice for Casaubon is infinitely more serious than her
giving up of horseback riding or jewels-involving as it does a relinquishing of the just claims of a wife to respect and consideration
from a husband. Her self-repression now is founded on the very real
needs of another soul, needs which Casaubon has not even articulated to himself but which the narrator penetrates and Dorothea intuits. This sympathetic connection to another human being is new to
Dorothea. We readers, who have been continually exhorted by the
narrator to sympathy for the full spectrum of characters, recognize
this triumph over the self as a partial substitute for the failed quixotic attempt Dorothea has made to imitate St. Theresa.
In short, Dorothea matures morally. Without any authority to
�HIGUERA
13
obey, she is thrust upon her own resources. In the beginning of the
book, these resources were only able to dire£t her to establish a school
for the children in the village, to improve the design of cottages for
the poor. In the throes of her disappointment with Casaubon, a
whole different arena for doing good has opened to her. Mr.
Casaubon's "small hungry shivering self" has presented itsel£ mutely begging for sustenance, She realizes that misery of the soul can be
every bit as painful as hunger and cold, and she experiences the desire
and ability to assuage such pain.
Later, after Casaubon's death and her discovery of her own love
for the much younger and more romantic Will, this new power of
charity is dramatically and fully explored in Dorothea's intervention
to save Lydgate's marriage. At a time when she believes the man she
loves, Will, has betrayed her with Lydgate's wife, Rosamond, she
conquers despair, sets aside her own loss and determines to think
what Rosamond thinks, feel what Lydgate feels, and try to find some
influence, using sympathetically the wisdom hard-won from her first
marriage. Eliot conveys the power and magnificence of this action.
In a passage St. Theresa herself might have written, Eliot tells us
that Dorothea "yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might
make a throne within her, and rule her errant will" (p. 544). She cannot think of the "piercing trouble" that must be assailing the
estranged couple without abandoning her pride and attempting a
self-forgetful rescue.
.
In this novel, sympathetic action is more effective than rational
argument. Consider Farebrother's indifference to Lydgate's vote,
Caleb's rescue of Fred from the dangers of becoming a clergyman,
Farebrother's assistance to Fred in wooing Mary, Lydgate's support of
the publicly shamed Bulstrode, and Mrs. Bulstrode's loyalty to her
husband. The strange concept of sympathy as a vocation begins to
dawn on the reader. Perhaps instead of Theresa's faith in God and
Church, some moral guidance can be found in "an extension and
intensification of our sympathetic nature:' 13 Eliot formulates
Dorothea's progress as follows:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her
now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in
the day of our ignorance. (p. 544)
Dorothea's newfound "knowledge" issues in a concrete good: she
does indeed save Lydgate's and Rosamond's marriage. She doesn't
wholly transform it from the miserable, empty union it is; in the
Finale, Lydgate employs the metaphor of the basil plant for
Rosamond, revealing that he thinks she is flourishing on the brains
of his corpse. Still, the marriage bond is never violated and they are
able to cultivate a family as well as most couples. We, who have stared
with Rosamond and with Lydgate across the intervening abyss, are
sensible of the great feat Dorothea's sacrificed pride and pitying fellowship has accomplished.
Yet Eliot admits in the middle of Dorothea's glorious scene of selftranscendence with Rosamond that Dorothea was guilty of her "usual
tendency to overestimate the good in others" (p. 551). Dorothea rightly has faith in Lydgate's integrity and insight into the tragedies of his
career and marriage, but her "believing conception" of Rosamond's
inner, natural pity for her husband's plight is wholly inaccurate. This
error is not as grave as Dorothea's earlier decision to commit hersel£
out of compassion for Casaubon, to a life of sifting heaps of fruitless
papers after he died. However, the "knowledge" infused by sympathy
is shown to provide dubious guidance. Readers have been taught,
through Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies, to be suspicious of binding
theories which might direct one's actions-but the absence of one is
also problematic.
Earlier, I discussed Eliot's serious skepticism concerning our ability to untangle the numerous threads of causes and effects at work in
a given individual. In Dorothea's actions, Eliot confronts the likelihood that even the least egoistical person will misread the individuals surrounding her, and so be "feeling with" a partly imaginary construct rather than a real soul. Even in Dorothea's relations with
�HIGUERA
15
Casaubon, where intimacy produced a fine attunement to his nervous
susceptibilities, she remained blissfully ignorant of his baser motives
for extracting her blind promise to do his bidding from beyond the
grave. When Dorothea steeled herself to submit to the grasp of this
dead hand, Eliot even faced the possibility that sympathy will urge
unreasonable and meaningless devotion to a task with no useful
shape in the world.
Fortunately the reader's shudder of dread was brief, since
Casaubon had already died at the moment of Dorothea's decision. But
Eliot must want us to contemplate the tragic spectacle of a fine soul
achieving nothing but sympathy. Eliot admires "magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is a condition of
good to others;' 14 but she lets us know that she is aware of its limits.
On a grand scale, such active fellow-feeling might reestablish a moral
community, but in an individual case, only the very temporary easing
of a rather puny heart's agony may result. Such chilling emptiness
makes it hard to consider sympathy itself a true vocation. Nonetheless,
in the later instance of communion between the two women,
Dorothea's selflessness and her noble expectations do work to dissolve
Rosamond's previously impermeable egotism and elicit some reflexive
sympathy. Considering Rosamond's self-righteous and self-serving
character, Dorothea's action constitutes true power. Even if we have
qualms concerning the ephemerality of Dorothea's effect and her misplaced sympathy, her generosity with Rosamond is her highest moment
of vocation in the novel and we momentarily soar with her above the
stultifying constraints of the town of Middlemarch.
Immediately after this triumph, Dorothea and Will build the
foundation for their marriage, a foundation which ends rather ominously with Dorothea's words, "and I will learn what everything
costs:' She is speaking of money, but we may wonder about her soul.
We must now ask how much this second marriage satisfies Dorothea's
ardent nature, how much it is a vocation. I have highlighted three
aspects of ardency: passion, self-denial and the pursuit of good works.
Dorothea does love Will. His open kindness has been like water
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THEST. JOHN'SREV1EW
in the desert to her. Their exchanges during her disillusioning honeymoon in Rome resulted in a teary-eyed communion of souls that
formed an oasis of goodwill for her in the middle of her barren marriage to Casaubon. Her childlike friendship with Will then metamorphosed into a yearning of heart that we cannot help but feel is a
deeper love than she harbored for Casaubon. Rather than seeking in
Will a potential father qr teacher-as she did in Casaubon-she and
Will stand with hands clasped, like two children (p. 559). This is
progress. Thus, when Celia makes one last attempt to reason
Dorothea out of marriage to Will, Dorothea does not even try to
explain herself; she merely says that to understand how this union
came about "you would have to feel with me" (p. 567). No theory
urges Dorothea toward this alliance, only genuine emotion.
Dorothea's real passion for Will provokes the renunciation of her
widow's fortune. But this renunciation is not clearly an ardent submergence of self in the good. From the beginning, she has viewed
Casaubon's money as a reponsibility rather than a desirable possession. True, Dorothea must give up her opportunity to do whatever
good such money might accomplish. Dorothea:s choice of marriage
over philanthropy may even seem a rejection of her ardent pursuit of
the fullest good But Eliot makes this renunciation rather less stressfUl than it might have been, since Dorothea's project to found a community of agricultural workers has already been advised against (p.
527). At the moment of decision, Dorothea is unclear about the role
of money in doing good in the world. Hence, we find her reading
books on political economy just prior to her final interview with Will
( Ch. 83). Perhaps it is Will's romantic nature, rather than the elusive
knowledge of political economy, that can widen Dorothea's vision of
what it means to do good in the world.
Can Dorothea's second marriage be a river in which the current
of her ardent soul might flow freely? But I've claimed that their love
would have to fUel a certain kind of spiritual passion, the spark of
which ignites Dorothea's persistent question "What could she do,
what ought she to do?" 15 For a nature such as Dorothea's, love should
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HIGUERA
clarify what constitutes virtuous activity. Can Will function as some
new, less illusory, Dulcinea for Dorothea?
Does Dorothea see in him a vision of nobility and beauty? I
think not. After Casaubon's providential demise, Eliot described
Dorothea's feelings towards Will with a story about a princess.
If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a
four-footed creature from among those which live in
herds come to her once and again with a human gaze
which rested upon her with choice and beseeching,
what would she think of in her journeying, what
would she look for when the herds passed her?"
(p.
372)
This story tells us much about Dorothea's affections. They are
born of her loneliness and isolation in the world and of Will's
delight in her heart and soul. But Eliot relegates Will to being a member of the herd at the same time that she allows him to establish an
especial understanding with Dorothea.
Will does worship her (p. 152). But she must scold him even during their last interview, which begins as a final "Goodbye" though it
advances toward romantic resolution ( Ch. 83). He complains about
the painfulness of separation; she tries to lift his eyes to some higher goal. He whines that she doesn't know how painful it is for him;
she gently reminds him (and us if we need it) that she has all too
recently known exactly what it feels like to be completely alone in the
world, tactfully referring to the fact that she had discovered
Rosamond and him in compromising circumstances. When she privately buried her love and hopes, she "wished to acknowledge that
she had not the less an active life before her" (p. 545). In comparison
with her noble act in the midst of gut-wrenching agony, Will's lack
of direction and motivation seem pathetic. He is incapable of
Dorothea's selfless devotion to the good; he is only capable of worshipping it in her.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Still, the ability to recognize Dorothea's "genius for feeling
nobly" is a rare virtue in the book. We readers are relieved to see
someone respond to her inner greatness, Only Will and Lydgate, and
perhaps, for a brief moment, Rosamond, penetrate Dorothea's austere exterior and high-flown "absurdities" (p. 40), and Lydgate's eyes
are opened to Dorothea's fineness only after his painful misjudgment
concerning the feminine excellence of his wife. Most characters view
Dorothea merely as having capricious "notions"; at best they indulge
her, at worst condemn her. As I near the end of my inquiry into vocation, though, I am looking for more than awareness of Dorothea's
potential, Dorothea needs a beacon to follow and an opportunity to
shine hersel£ Is there enough quality in Will to illuminate "the higher inward life"?
Dorothea does impute more goodness to him than is really
there, and this tendency of hers to expect goodness and nobility
from others can itself work upon another to "baptise and consecrate" him into purity and rectitude (p. 532), So Dorothea can work
some kind of good upon WilL Then perhaps, even if Will cannot give
her "a binding theory which could... give the remotest sources of
knowledge some bearing on her actions" (p. 58), she has truly found
a vocation.
In a sense, she has. In the Finale, having become absorbed into
Will's life and being every bit as dedicated to him in marriage as she
was to Casaubon, Dorothea has a life with the requisite passion and
selflessness. Moreover, her influence has generated a desire in Will to
do some good in the world. This last goal has been a problem all
along, though. Is Dorothea better off now than when she designed
cottages? She seems to have given responsibility for finding particular work to Will. Now, Will becomes an "ardent" public man in the
Finale, working for political reforms, The transfer of Dorothea's
adjective to him elevates his own, and hence Dorothea's, potential for
a vocation.
Unfortunately, Eliot has undercut the effectiveness of political
reform in the noveL Not only has Mr. Brooke's political campaign
�HIGUERA
19
provided some slapstick comic relief in the novel, but provincial
Middlemarch has repeatedly shown itself resistant to all change not
directly connected with its pocketbook. Again, some of the more
humorous scenes in the book depict townspeople evaluating the newfangled doctor or landholders discussing the pernicious effects of railroads on the ability of cows to calve. While we hear several times of
distant revolutionaries, w~ see labourers armed with pitchforks driving
away those representatives of modernity, the railroad agents (p. 384).
In fact, Middlemarch is so resistant to change that the refoFmers of
the novel-Lydgate, Will, Dorothea-finally flee to London.
Eliot has chosen to set Middlemarch thirty years before the date of
authorship, in times of a great national struggle leading to the dissolution of Parliament and the passage 'of a Reform Bill which radically altered the extent of the franchise. One reason Eliot has selected
this time period is that she can remind us periodically how hopeful
those bygone activities were and how cynical the ensuing results have
made us. Thus, the "beneficent activity" that fills the lives of Will
and Dorothea in the Finale does not have much grander effect than
Dorothea's cottage-designing had earlier in the book. Indeed, at the
very moment when Eliot bestows "ardent" work on Will in the
Finale, she remarks that "in those times ... reforms were begun with
a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much
checked in our days:' We infer that his activity has not produced
much satisfying fruit. Intervention in the laws which mold the medium of society may indeed result in progress, but the pace of that
progress will proceed at near Darwinian slowness.
More troubling even than the smallness of Will's political effect
is the weakness of his will. He stumbles into a political career while
lingering in Middlemarch and hoping for the occasional ray of
Dorothea's warm presence. He begins by saying "Why not?" to politics, then develops "as ardent an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or medievalism" (p. 318). It seems he can only be an "ardent
Will" with Dorothea to support him. His vocation depends upon
her faith in him.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
If Will is a channel for Dorothea's ardency, and to some extent I
think he is, the channel's course is determined in large part by
Dorothea herself.-in the absence of any clearly defined purpose. She
has the satisfaction of "rul(ing) beneficently by making the joy of
another soul" (p. 249), but she never has an epic accomplishment
comparable to St. Theresa's. Nothing emerges to take the place of
convents for Dorothea. Eliot does not mean us to see Will as an adequate substitute for a "coherent social faith:' Even if his head sprinkles sunbeams throughout the book,16 he is no god. And the clearest
sign of that is that he has no proper activity. Instead of depicting a
freely flowing current of ardency for Dorothea, Eliot's image of
Dorothea's nature at the end of the book is that of a river, or rather
a Brooke, which cannot be entirely dammed up; it seeps through in
"incalculably diffusive" little rivulets of charitable action.
Eliot intends us to see. this ending as a "tragic failure," even
though she has made us feel relieved that Dorothea marries Will and
even though she has opened our eyes to the "divine efficacy" of small
acts of fellowship. In the end, Eliot's recognition of other cases presenting "far sadder sacrifice[s ]" than Dorothea's only reinforces the
verdict that some life force has indeed perished even in Dorothea's
case. From what perspective can we truly see Dorothea's wistful contentment as tragic?
We must keep St. Theresa well in mind, I think. Eliot's hardest
task has been to depict a Theresa-like nature which is not allowed to
manifest itself at work. Eliot has, I think, succeeded in stimulating
our imagination to a keen vision of the possible sweeping effect of
the current of Dorothea's soul if allowed to gather up material and if
given a course towards the good. Perhaps then we may feel this ending as tragic, even if the tragedy concerns society more than
Dorothea. Middlemarch is not a tale of extreme suffering, but of an
unavoidable waste of the finest part of the human spirit. What is
Eliot's purpose in trying to give us a semi-historical perspective that
mourns the passing of certain possibilities? Clearly Eliot is not call-
�HIGUERA
21
ing for a reinstitution of some Golden Age of St. Theresa. Is she
hoping to motivate some social reform which would provide new
opportunitiess for the grandeur of a noble woman to express itself?
What would the opportunities be?
Now, many occupations are scrutinized in Middlemarch. I've discussed the limited possibilites of politics already, one of the occupations which Eliot considers at least a bit worthy. The only decent
clergyman in the book would rather be studying bugs. Businessmen
provide some of the crudest types, with Bulstrode's particular combination of business and religion providing an anti-paradigm. Caleb
Garth's "religious" (p.173) pursuit of the skillful application of labor
(he is an estate-manager) is "sublime" (p. 173); but his business has
failed shortly before the book opens (p. 160) and he is helpless in his
distress over the mismanagement of his neighbor's lands (p. 279).
Of the doctors in the town, only Lydgate is not altogether a common country doctor. Only he has "an intellectual passion" (his is for
anatomy), and only he has a "moment of vocation" (p. 98). He is
presented as no mere academic, but one pursuing "the most direct
alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good" (p. 99).
Despite Eliot's passing note that Lydgate is putting his question
"What was the primitive tissue?" (p. 102)-out of which the various
organs are compacted-in the wrong way (Hooke coined the term
cell in 1865), surely his recognition of primary webs (echoing as it
does the narrator's own emphasis on webs), his variation of perspective through observation of patients and research with a microscope
(also echoing the narrator's technique of shifting focus), and his
longing to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living structure and "help to define men's thought more accurately after the true
order"-surely all these are praiseworthy. However, even here, where
Eliot dearly admires his intentions and methods and even has some
hope for real progress, limitations are overwhelmingly present.
We can convince ourselves that Lydgate's little "spots of commonness" regarding women and furniture are separable from his research
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
project; but the outcome of his project is dubious anyway. Besides
the warning about the wording of his question, many everyday pressures threaten Lydgate. He has bargained with the devil, in the shape
of the powerful banker Nicholas Bulstrode, even before he succumbs
to Rosamond. His fellow doctors and the patients themselves are
stubbornly resistant to innovation; out of loyalty and long-familiar
habit, they are as likely as not to disregard Lydgate's advanced remedies. The success Lydgate has with a few patients may be as fatal as
failure in the conservative and jealous town of Middlemarch ( c£ Ch.
45). Finally, as with politics, the narrator cynically comments,
"Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorisers
than the present" (p. 101).
I'm afraid no character in Middlemarch seems to have a vocation
with much more potential for radical effect than Dorothea's sympathy. But action is important in this book. Eliot takes as a grand
accomplishment Theresa's reformation of the Carmelite. order into
the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites. Though the Discalced
Carmelites cultivate the contemplative life in all its aspects, their dedication to the otherworldly is ignored by Eliot. She stresses only the
self-transcending action and the potential for self-transcendence
transmitted to others. The highest life for any Dorothea ought be a
life of action, improving the lot of others in this world.
Now, sympathy does not, stricdy speaking, qualifY as active work.
It may well be a mode of doing work, or a prerequisite for the work
of a reformer to take root. But I don't see how one can view sympathy
as an octupation. In that sense, Dorothea's entire history is but a prelude to vocation. Casting about for an example of active, hopeful work
in the novel, I turn finally to the narrator hersel£ Certainly, Eliot herself is a strong presence in the novel Middlemarch. My meager abilities
could not encapsulate the subdeties of her role even if I were at the
beginning of this exploration rather than the end. But I would like to
sketch my reasons for thinking the narrator is fulfilling a real vocation.
Eliot weaves into her plot commentaries on her characters, commentaries on human nature in general, and direct exhortations to the
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23
reader. Examples of her attempts to involve and educate us, directly
and indirectly, abound. Let me illustrate first with a passage concerning the local busybody, Mrs. Cadwallader. Eliot pens another
paragraph (p. 39) beginning with a rhetorical question, this time asking, "why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy
about Miss Brooke's marriage?" She notes that a telescope following
Mrs. Cadwallader's comings and goings and trained on her features,
that is, tracing her current history, would never reveal the causes of
her interests. Eliot continues,
Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we
find ourselves making interpretations which turn out
to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you
may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as
if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger
lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make
vortices for these victims while the swallower waits
passively at his receipt of custom.
Eliot is clearly more interested in defining her relationship to us
than in analyzing Mrs. Cadwallader. Unseen worlds surround us,
worlds which may only be accessible to us with the aid of art, be it
the technology of telescopes and microscopes or the wisdom of an
imaginative experiment. Even then, the art may not penetrate to the
ultimate causes. But any interpretation which attributes independent
activity to a creature has not magnified its view sufficiently.
Eliot often informs us we might not understand events properly
without her. She not only interprets events in the book, but regularly makes us aware that she is so doing, insisting that we would misapprehend her characters if she gave us only a certain strength lens to
peer through. Yet she is the person in charge of the lenses. She must
want us to cultivate a certain kind of circumspection.
This thought is borne out in my second example, where Eliot
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
explicitly cautions us against a "too hasty judgment" of the numbingly cold pedant Casaubon, whose most fervently amorous words to
his fiancee Dorothea concerned her "elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labours and to cast a charm over
vacant hours:' Eliot urges us to consider that he too is the "centre of
his own world;' with dreams of genius, fears of failure, and consuming needs. Mysteriously,,she accomplishes the Herculean task of stirring our sympathies for Casaubon while consistently judging him
nevertheless to be a twisted, arid soul, inhabiting the catacombs of
once-potent traditions which move him not at all. Eliot's question
this time, "., , but why always Dorothea?" (p. 192), places us in an
uncomfortable position. We have been made to understand
Casaubon as a vampire draining Dorothea of her lifeblood, as a
demythifying pigeonholer, paranoid of all criticism, and as a man
incapable of the smallest signs of affection. Now, Eliot makes us see
the insurmountable barriers he would have to face in order even to
lay a reassuring hand on Dorothea's arm; she forces us to experience,
from the inside, his crippling anxieties; we suffer the intensity of his
longing for respect from the intellectual community. Casaubon's soul
is not a pleasant place to visit, hut even more disconcerting than its
ugliness is the fact that we can feel at home there.
In addition to fulfilling the usual tasks of a narrator, this oneoften by bringing to bear a wealth of scientific information, poetic
sense, and history-forcefully propels us into foreign perspectives.
She appeals often to us, urging us to reflect on our reactions, criticize them, possibly alter them. She continually exhorts us to be more
sympathetic. Most novelists want readers to feel connected to their
characters. Eliot's narrator reaches even beyond the book, though.
Her educative task includes getting us to perceive sympathy as a
moral act, in our lives as well as in our reading.
Hence, her continual irony is calculated to tell on us as well as on
a character-as when we learn that, "In his closest meditations the
life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's mind clad his most egoistic terrors
in doctrinal references to superhuman ends:' We smile in safe superi-
�HIGUERA
25
ority, but the smile fades to a grimace with the narrator's next generalizing sentence, "But even while we are talking and meditating about
the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our
movements to is the stable earth and the changing day" (p. 364). We
understand that we are not so safe from this charge of hypocrisy. The
narrator's generalizations have the overarching purpose of making us
at least as morally matur~ as Dorothea! as able as she finally is to see
the lights and shadows on another's life. Hence, she tells us, "We are
all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed
our supreme selves" (p. 146). Eliot is not merely reflecting what is; she
is attempting to re-form us at the deepest level.
Her aim requires more than that we merely look at a person or
event from many different points of view; else we might turn into
Mr. Brooke, always going into everything, but never too far. When
Eliot obtrudes herself in Chapter 27, she relates a scientist-friend's
account of the phenomenon that random scratches on a mirror will
appear to be arranged in concentric circles whenever and wherever a
candle is held against it. She moralizes: "The scratches are events, and
the candle is the egoism of any person.... "That is, any individual's
interpretation will mislead, and it will mislead precisely because personal desires and prejudices will attribute causes and tendencies
where there are none.
This narrator vibrates between exhorting to sympathy and executing judgment. We are called to understand the sources of human
action and yet condemn all egoism as we do. The potential in politics and science for reshaping our lives and communities so as to
lessen the general misery of our lot, this potential, can only come to
fruition when we have a disposition not just for improvement in general but for self-sacrifice towards the benefit of particular persons
and particular social duties. While sympathy itself may not qualify as
a vocation, writing a novel which transforms "the frozen stare with
which we look at our unintroduced neighbour" (p. 64)--that I think
does quality as a full-fledged vocation. In this theater of action, jolting readers out of self-absorption and cultivating judgment of
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
motives and ends, through the widespread reading of a morally
responsible novel, radical change may be possible. Eliot, at least, has
a vocation for an heroic achievement; she finds her "epos" in reforming novel-readers' sensibilities.
Notes
All Middlemarch citations are from the Norton Critical Edition
(New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977).
1.
George Eliot, "Leaves from a Notebook;' Essays of George Eliot,
edited by Thomas Pinney, (New York: Columbia University Press,
2.
1963).
3. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Penguin Books,
1983), p. 486. All Darwin citations are from this edition.
For a fuller discussion of the influence of Darwinism on Eliot's
writing, see Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1983).
4.
George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1977), pp. 41, 64, 80, 96, 102, 124, 208, 238, 280, 290,
5.
304, 343, 350, 426.
George Eliot, "The Natural History of German Life;' Essays of
George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1963).
6.
7. See Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Penguin
Books, 1983), pp. 132, 147-148, 150-154, 156, 162-3.
See, for example, St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1961), pp. 50, 117, 122.
8.
�27
HIGUERA
9. St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, translated and edited by
E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1962), p. 33.
10. St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, p, 109.
11. St. Teresa of Avila, The Life
of Teresa of Jesus,
translated and edited
by E. Allison Peers (NewYork: Image Books, 1960), p. 131.
12. See The Life
of Teresa of jesus, pp. 105-6, pp. 220-221.
13. George Eliot, "Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet
Young," Essays of Geo'J:e Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1963).
14. Ibid.
15. George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1977), p. 17. See also pp. 52, 58, 189, 190, 199, 251! 329,
338, 556.
16. Ibid., pp. 142, 145, 250, 254.
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
How We Do Things With Words:
An Introduction to Wittgenstein
John Verdi
Ludwig Wittgenstei~ was born in 1889 and died in 1951. * He
believed that a serious philosophical work could be written consisting of nothing but jokes. I'm sorry to say that my lecture won't be
like that, but I have included a few jokes in it. I hope you notice
them. Which reminds me of the time Wittgenstein was attending a
lecture by a famous linguist at Cambridge. The lecturer was telling
the audience that while most languages have single words for the
affirmative and the negative, and most also use the double negative
as an affirmative, no language uses the double affirmative as a negative. To this Wittgenstein is reported to have said, "Yeah, yeah:' He
also believed that a serious philosophical work could be written
which consisted entirely of unanswered questions. His second
major work, Philosophical Investigations, on which I shall spend all my
time and yours, contains 784 questions, of which only 110 are
answered, and 70 of the answers are meant to be wrong. I'm happy
to say that my lecture will not be like that. Wittgenstein's style, however, is essentially dialectical, in a Socratic sense. That is, it is full of
supposings and questionings, not questions and answers.
Wittgenstein believes that the nature of the problems he considers
compels "us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in
every direction" and that the best he can present is "a number of
sketches of landscapes... made in the course of these long and
involved journeyings." (PI, p. ix) His thoughts are better explored in
the dialectic of conversation than in the monologue of lecturing,
*I would like to thank Mr. Radoslav Datchev for his many helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
John Verdi is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This is a revised version of a lecture given at
Annapolis, Sept. 20,1997 and at Santa Fe, April24, 1998.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and so I hope you will recognize that I offer you now both an introduction and an invitation,
The lecture comes in three parts. Part One is on language.
Wittgenstein believed that language could be compared to an ancient city,
a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new
houses, and of ,houses with additions from various
periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of newboroughs with straight regular streets and uniform
houses. (PI, 18)
About this city it is difficult to command a perspicuous, surveyable view. Consequently maps of its streets and terrain can be
hopelessly misleading, directing us one place while leading us to
believe we are somewhere else. We have no need for such maps in
ordinary discourse, for we generally know our way around. But it is
our fate to persist in drawing maps while we are enmeshed in the
"labyrinth of paths" (PI, 203) which is our language. One of these
misleading maps is constituted by a large part of the field of psychology, about which I'll speak in Part Two of the lecture. "In psychology," he says "there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion" (PI, 232), as when psychologists attempt to get dear about
what consciousness is, or thinking, or willing by studying the mind
and its contents or the brain and nervous system. Part Three of the
lecture is on philosophy. Philosophical problems, he says, have the
form: "I don't know my way about" (PI, 123). They arise when language is "like an engine idling, not when it is doing work" (PI, 132).
In Part One I present what I think is the core of Wittgenstein's
insight, and in Parts Two and Three some of its implications.
Wittgenstein once said that while he was not a religious man, he
could "not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view"
(Rhees, p. 94). Behind much of what I say lies my attempt to understand this remark and how it might help us discover what
Wittgenstein's place can be in our lives as a community of learners.
�VERDI
31
Part One: Language
What is the connection between language and reality? We all suspect that this question has no simple answer, but one picture might
come to mind. It is one which Wittgenstein himself cites at the very
beginning of the Philosophical Investigations, and it comes from St.
Augustine's Confessions. While it is a picture to which Augustine likely did not fully ascribe, if we consider what he says in an earlier book,
On the Teacher, it presents a tempting view of the way language originates and how it operates. Augustine is describing how he must have
come to learn language as an infant. He writes:
When my elders named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and grasped
that the thing was called by the sound they uttered
when they meant to point it out. Their intention was
shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the
face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other
parts of the body, and the tone of voice which
expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words
repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learned to understand what objects
they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to
form those signs, I used them to express my own
desires. (I, 8)
Augustine's words give a particular picture of human language,
namely, that the individual words in a language name objects, perhaps
also actions and qualities, and that sentences are combinations of such
wo rds. '" ds such as "soon," " not," "perhaps," take care o f t h emse1
vvor
ves.
In this picture of language Wittgenstein finds the root of the beliefs
that every word has a meaning that is correlated with the word and that
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the meaning is the object for which the word stands or an intermedi-
ary between the word and the object, such as a thought or idea.
To contrast with this image of language, let us place ourselves in
a simple situation. Let us imagine that I send someone shopping.
I give him a slip marked "five red apples:' He takes
the slip to the, shopkeeper who opens the drawer
marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in
a table and finds a color sample opposite it; then he
says the series of cardinal numbers-I assume he
knows them by heart-up to the word "five" and for
each number he takes an apple of the same color as
the sample out of a drawer.-It is in this and similar
ways [Wittgenstein says J that one [actuallyJ operates
with words.-"But how does he know where and how
he is to look up the word "red" and what he is to do
with the word five"'?- Well, I assume that he acts as
I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.-But what is the meaning of the word "five"?
-No such thing is in question here, only how the
word "five" is used. ( PL 1)
In this example Wittgenstein turns our attention to the possibility that the meaning of a word is the use we make of it, not some
object or intermediary to which the word refers. "For a large class of
cases-if not for all-the meaning of a word is its use in the language:' (PI, 43) The word "five" in the example is not used like the
word "red:' The shopkeeper does not consult a sample with the word
written on it. "Red" is not used like "apple;' for there is no sample
for "apple" as there is for "red:' These three simple words, "apple;'
"red;' "five;' begin to show us how words function in a variety of
ways, and that to imagine a "meaning" for each word apart from its
uses in particular circumstances is to misconstrue how language
works. Wittgenstein rejects any question about what the meanings of
�VERDI
33
these words might be apart from their uses. Such questions already
presuppose a certain view of what gives words their value. Instead,
Wittgenstein invites us to "think of words as instruments characterized by their use" (BB, p. 67).
Think of the tools in a tool-box. There is a hammer,
pliers, a saw, a s,erewdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue,
nails and screws.-The functions of words are as
diverse as the functions of these objects. (PI, 11)
And no one use characterizes all words. When we become confused about the meaning of a word or the sense of a sentence,
Wittgenstein wants us to ask: "on what occasion, for what purpose,
do we say this? What kind of actions accompany these words? ... In
what scenes will they be used, and what for?" (PI, 489)The variety of
the purposes for which we use words is bounded only by the variety
of human activities in which language plays a part.
The kinds of things we do with words, and the contexrs in which
we do them, Wittgenstein calls language-games. Wittgenstein hopes
the image of the game will give us a perspicuous view of parts of language, and emphasize features of language the importance of which
he believes is frequently overlooked. He means to "bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of a language is a part of an activity,
or a form of life" (PI, 23 ). Wittgenstein did not believe language was
a game; our linguistic activities are less trivial than games because of
the way they are interwoven into our lives. But he did think that we
could achieve some measure of clarity about language by comparing
it to games. Let's consider along with Wittgenstein the game of chess
to help ascertain some of the features of language he wants us to see.
We play chess according to rules that determine what moves are
permitted. They allow us to play the game, but not necessarily to play
it well, because they do not tell us what moves are best. The rules tell
us how the individual pieces can move, something which cannot be
determined by an examination of the shapes of the pieces or their
�34
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
places on the board. The pieces are defined by their use, by their role
in the game. (One would not say, for example, "I know what the
bishop does. Now tell me what it really is.") In language, too, rules of
what he calls grammar widely considered determine the limits of
what it makes sense to say. They demarcate the region of the sensible, in which the activities of language can take place, in which we can
actually do things with 'Yards. The functions of individual words and
sentences can be determined only by observing how they are in fuct
used in the various neighborhoods of our language, and in what circumstances and for what ends we use them.
Chess can be taught and learned, and in the process of teaching,
it must be possible to correct the learner, to tell him, for example,
that a pawn that has reached the last row cannot be promoted to a
king ( BB, p. 67), or to remind him that a bishop cannot jump over
other pieces. These are not moves in the game, though one might
imagine a variant of chess in which these moves were allowed. It
would then be for experience to tell us if such a game was worth playing, but it would no longer be chess. We teach and learn language,
too. We correct children when they say ungrammatical things, in the
narrow, school-book sense of grammar, as when in a sentence the
subject and verb don't agree in number. We also correct them in other
contexts when they speak ungrammatically in that wider sense of
grammar. For example a child who awakens in the morning and says
he was on a ship during the night might be told that he'd had a
dream, and he quickly learns to append "I dreamt" before such statements. We might suspend this rule of saying "I dreamt:' (We could
imagine children doing this as a kind of game: "Where did you go
last night?") The context would then make it clear that their travels
were dream travels and that they were not speaking nonsense.
Whenever Wittgenstein uses the word "grammar;' he generally means
it in this wider sense, into which are incorporated the circumstances
in which something is said. A sentence, therefore, may be grammatical in the narrow sense, but not grammatical in the wider sense.
Which reminds me of the man who came running into his doctor's
�35
VERDI
office, dragging a friend by the wrist, saying, "Doctor, doctor, I think
I have Parkinson's disease-and he has mine!"
Chess is also autonomous. That is, we are not tempted to think
that we must point outside the game to its meaning. If you follow
rules other than those of the game, you do not play chess badly (as
you might cook badly if you follow cooking rules other than the
right ones). You simply do not play chess (Z, 320). And this might
have consequences. Language, too, Wittgenstein wants to say, is
autonomous. It requires no justification. We do' not read its rules off
from nature. In that sense they are arbitrary. If you follow ru1es other
than those of your language, you do not say something wrong, but you
might say something nonsensical, or you might say nothing at all. But
to call the rules of our language arbitrary is not to say they are whimsical or pointless. To call them arbitrary is to say that "the aim of
grammar is nothing but that of the language" (PI, 497). And while
the rules for describing reality may be determined by convention, the
description of reality is determined by reality.
Among the many games that people play other than chess, we
find board-games, ball-games, card-games, Olympic games, related in
various ways, with various concepts of winning, various rules of what
is permitted, various contexts in which they are played and with various pieces of equipment. The multiplicity of language-games is no
less; Wittgenstein mentions the following:
Giving orders, and obeying themDescribing the appearance of an object, or giving its
measurements-
Reporting an eventSpeculating about an eventForming and testing a hypothesisPresenting the results of an experimentMaking up a story, and reading itPlay-actingSinging catches-
�36
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Guessing riddlesMaking a joke; telling itSolving a problem in practical arithmeticTranslating from one language to anotherAsking, thinking, cursing, greeting, praying. (PI, 23)
These language-gaf\les, and myriad others, belong as much to
"our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing" (PI, 25).
And so the observation and description of language-games, if it is
sensitive and detailed, can constitute a study of human life
(Malcolm, p. 77).
At this point someone might quite properly object. "You take the
easy way out."
You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have
nowhere said what the essence of a language-game,
and hence of language, is: what is common to all
these activities, and what makes them into language
or parts of language .... " And this is true .... I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,-but
that they are related to one another in many different
ways. And it is because of this relationship ... that we
call them all language. (PI, 65)
Just as we shall find no one thing common to all games on
account of which we call them all games, so, too, the various boroughs of language need share no common feature. We see instead "a
complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing"
(PI, 66). Wittgenstein characterizes these similarities as "family
resemblances," because the resemblances between members of a family in build, eye color, gait, temperament and so forth, also overlap
and criss-cross in the same way. Games-and language-games-form
such families.
�VERDI
37
The concept of language-game is central to Wittgenstein's thinking. Understanding what a piece in chess is requires understanding
the whole game, the rules defining it, and the role of the piece in the
game. So, too, we might say that the meaning of a word is its place
in the language-game, and it is its use in a language-game that
breathes life into a word, much as a hand can do work only while it
is attached to a living body.
We can also recognize in music many of the features of games
which Wittgenstein finds important to understanding language.
Different forms of music (such as Gregorian chant, harmonic,
twelve-tone, raga) are defined in part by rules which circumscribe the
bounds of the musically possible. These rules can be taught and
learned, and mistakes can be made and corrected. Music rules can
also be stretched, and new forms of music invented, though perhaps
not at will. Individual notes or groups of notes derive their meaning
from their use in the piece, and from the context in which they
appear. The same note might be heard as the tonic in one measure,
the dominant in another, as the beginning of a twelve-tone row or its
end, and so forth. Music, too, is autonomous. A melody or a piece
of music does not derive its musical meaning from something outside. When we attempt to bring someone to understand a musical
theme, or how to play a piece better, we do not point to some thing
or idea outside the music, but rather say things like: "'At this point
of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon; or 'this is ... the answer to
what came before"' (BB, 166) or "tell yourself it's a waltz and then
you will play it correctly" (PI, 167). Wittgenstein would like to say
that what the melody tells us is itsel£ but in order to understand the
melody, one must already be familiar with music. "Understanding a
sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than
one may think" (PI, 527). When we are tempted to say that understanding a sentence points to a reality outside the sentence, we should
instead say, '"Understanding a sentence means getting hold of its
content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence'" (PI, 167).
But just as we cannot get hold of what it is for a piece to be a bish-
�38
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
op in chess, or a tone to be a dominant in music without already
knowing chess or music, so, too, must we already be masters of alanguage before we can understand a sentence. And when we do understand, it is not because we see how the sentence points away from
itself. but because we know how it is used, which is to say, what we
can do with it.
By directing our att,ention to the analogy between language and
games and other rule-directed human activities, Wittgenstein emphasizes the social aspect of language, just as he emphasizes its pragmatic
aspect by comparing words with tools. At root these are the same,
though they provide different views of the functioning of language
in our lives. In an effort to explore language's social side and its
implications, Wittgenstein draws us more deeply into the problem of
what it is for someone to follow a rule. Games, music and language
are all rule-governed human activities, and their social character ties
up in important ways with rules. Following rules is involved in every
important activity in which human beings are engaged, in every activity in which there can be correct and incorrect ways of doing things.
Wittgenstein's discussion of rules leads him to talk about what
understanding a rule is and eventually to his extraordinary claim that
a private language is impossible. I'd like to follow this trail for the
next few minutes.
Is what we call 'obeying a rule' something that it
would be possible for only one man to .do, and to do
only once in his life? (PI, 199)
Wittgenstein's question, like all of his questions, is conceptual, that
is, grammatical in the broad sense and not empirical. He is not asking something like, is it possible for only one man, and only once in
his life, to swim the Atlantic? Rather, he's asking, does the concept of
"obeying a rule" make sense if applied just once? Wittgenstein
answers himself as follows:
�39
VERDI
It is not possible that there should have been only one
occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not
possible that there should have been only one occasion on which a report was made, an order given or
understood; and so on.-To obey a rule, to make a
report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are
customs (uses, institutions). (PI, 199)
Kant makes a similar observation about promises in the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. A universal law that dictated that
I could break my promises whenever it was to my advantage to do so
"would make promising... itself impossible" (55/422). Under such
conditions no individual, no matter how sincere, could promise anything because the institution of promising could itself no longer
exist. Obeying a rule is such an institution.
What goes on when we learn rules and then follow them? Is a
rule a kind of "mental mechanism" that goes through.its motions
whenever it is, turned on? Or is it an abstract entity that already contains all possible workings-out, as we might imagine an algebraic
expression to be? Or does following a rule consist in intuiting what
your teacher wants you to do, as when you continue a number series
correctly? Wittgenstein rejects all three of these accounts. Instead, he
proposes that we think about reading as an example of rule-guided
activity. He has in mind what we might call "automatic reading;' that
is, reading in which comprehension of the text is not important, not
the sort of reading we encourage at St. John's. In this way one could
be said to read a language one does not know, say ancient Greek, once
one has mastered the sounds of the letters, diphthongs and accent
marks, even before one has learned any grammar or vocabulary.
Reading in this way seems to be rule-guided. Not just any sounds I
utter will be correct, but only those which are connected in some way
with the written words on the page. The possibility of making mistakes and of being corrected makes sense here, as it does in learning
how to play a game. But exactly in what way must the written words
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and the sounds I make be connected for it to be correct to call what
I am doing "reading;' in the sense of "rendering out loud what is
written or printed'? When one reads, says Wittgenstein,
his eye passes... along the printed words, he says them
out loud-or only to himself; in particular he reads
certain words l;>y taking in their printed shapes as
wholes; others when his eyes have taken in the first
syllables; others again he reads syllable by syllable,
and an occasional one perhaps letter by letter.-We
should also say that he had read a sentence if he
spoke neither aloud nor to himself during the reading but was afterwards able to repeat the sentence
word for word or nearly so-... Now compare a
beginner with this reader. The beginner reads the
words by laboriously spelling them out.-Some however he guesses from the context, or perhaps he
already partly knows the passage by heart. Then his
teacher says that he is not really reading the words (and
in certain cases that he is only pretending to read
them. (PI, 156)
Wittgenstein tells us that if we focus on the reading of the beginner, and .use it to determine what reading consists in, we may be
inclined to say that reading is a "special conscious activity of the
mind:' But Wittgenstein does not want to say this. "The same thing
may take place in the consciousness of the pupil who is 'pretending'
to read, as in that of the practiced reader who is 'reading' it. The word
'read' is applied differently when we are speaking of the beginner and of
the practiced reader" (PI, 156). Still, we are tempted to go on and say
that if the difference between the two is not in some conscious activity, then it must be in an unconscious one, two different mechanisms to
distinguish reading from not reading. "But;' Wittgenstein replies,
"these mechanisms are only hypotheses, models designed to explain,
�VERDI
41
to sum up, what you observe" (PI, 156). They are nothing that we can
know and consequently they can never be used to teach someone how
the word "reading" is used. This is to say that they cannot figure in
the concept of reading.
Wittgenstein's interlocutor persists. "But isn't that only because
of our too slight acquaintance with what goes on in the brain and
nervous system?" (PI, 158) If we knew more, we'd be able to say,
"Now he has read this and now the reading connection has been set
up:' But ask yourself, how much do you know about these things?
Aren't you approaching the concept of reading with certain requirements, such as that whatever connection is set up between the printed word and the read word spoken out loud must be a connection set
up inside the person doing the reading, a mental connection? If you
are wearing an analog watch, not a digital one,
try this experiment: say the numbers from 1 to 12.
Now look at the dial of your watch and read them.What was it you called "reading" in the latter case?
That is to say: what did you do, to make it into reading? (PI, 161)
Wittgenstein wants to answer this question by saying that "nothing
else happens when we say the [numbersJ than just saying them while
looking" at the numerals on the watch face (BB, p.149). It is not necessary, he thinks, that certain peculiar experiences more or less characteristic of reading take place while we are reading. I might be tempted
to say that when I am really reading, "the words I utter come in a special way" (PI, 165). But in what way? "Read the letter A.-Now, how
did the sound come?-We have no idea what to say about it" (PL 166).
The difference between reading and not reading does not lie in
conscious or unconscious mental processes. It does not lie in states
of the brain and nervous system. For Wittgenstein the difference lies
in the circumstances that make it correct in the one case and incorrect in the other to say of someone that he or she is reading. If read-
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing is a rule-governed activity, like playing games, speaking, playing
music, it must be possible to teach someone how to do it. This means
it must be possible to correct his mistakes when he is wrong, to
encourage him when he is doing well, and thereby to teach him not
only how to read, but what reading is. And the possibility must also
exist for vagueness in the application of the rules, and for situations
to arise in which we WO!Jld not know what to say about how the rule
is to be applied. An inexact rule is not necessarily an unusable one, as
when I instruct someone to "stand roughly here" (PI, 88). Any social,
rule-governed activity hangs on what the person does, not on what he
feels or what he thinks he is doing. In teaching someone how to read,
we never point to our head or his and say, this is reading. We never
correct what might be going on in his consciousness or his brain. We
correct what he says, and we do so in the context of particular circumstances. If we know that Mr. Smith has never before seen the
Greek alphabet, yet on the first day of class can recite the opening
lines of the Iliad in perfect Greek, while his eyes run across the lines
of printed text, we know he is not reading. But we know this not
because we have special access to his mind, but because we know he
has never before studied Greek. That is, we know something about
his life, about his education and experience, not something about his
present mental state, which justifies us in saying, "He is only pretending to read:' What we might have been tempted to take as a mental activity (that of "reading" or "pretending to read") Wittgenstein
suggests we see as a public condition, available to all, because it is a
rule-governed public activity, and rules are teachable and learnable.
We might say that concepts, like people, require society.
Still you might object that automatic reading cannot be the paradigm of rule-governed activity. Following a rule often (and perhaps in
the most important cases) entails that we also understand the rule before
we can follow it. We are inclined to say that without understanding,
we are no better than mindless machines that act in a regular way.
Wittgenstein agrees that there is all the difference in the world
between saying a sentence with understanding and saying it without
�VERDI
43
understanding, but in what does the understanding consist?
Wittgenstein says that understanding is neither a mental nor a physical event, process or state, though there may be "more or less characteristic accompaniments or manifestations of understanding" (PL 112).
Wittgenstein offers at least two arguments for his claim that
understanding is no sort of mental or physical phenomenon. First,
no mental or bodily phenomena are necessary to my understanding a
word, a sentence, a mathematical formula, any more than they are
necessary for my understanding how to play chess or the piano. For
example, let's suppose that in order to understand a sentence one
must first have some kind of mental image. We might say that this
image serves the function of connecting the sentence to the world.
Wittgenstein writes:
Supposing I teach someone the use of the word "yellow" by repeatedly pointing to a yellow patch and
pronouncing the word .... I make him apply what he
has learned by giving him the order, "Choose a yellow
ball out of this bag." What was it that happened when
he obeyed my order? I say "possibly just this: he heard
my words and took a yellow ball from the bag:' Now
you may be inclined to think that this couldn't possibly have been all, and the kind of thing that you would
suggest is that he imagined something yellow when he
understood the order, and then chose a ball according to
this image. (BB, pp. 11-12)
Wittgenstein then asks, is imagining the yellow also necessary
when we command him to imagine a yellow patch? "Would you still
be inclined to assume that he first imagines a yellow patch, just understanding [theJ order, and then imagines a yellow patch to match the
first?" ( BB, p. 12) Wittgenstein does not deny that we sometimes do
imagine colors, shapes, and so forth when we understand a sentence,
but such imaginings are not necessary to the concept of understanding.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
One might understand without having any mental images at all, or any
other kind of experience which could constitute the understanding.
Neither are such phenomena sufficient to my understanding a sentence. Any image might cross my mind or I might feel something
when I hear or read a sentence, yet still not understand what I have
heard or read. Wittgenstein says:
Suppose that a picture does come before your mind
when you hear the word "cube;' say, a drawing of a
cube. In what sense can this picture fit or fail to fit a
use of the word "cube"? (PI, 139)
The picture alone lacks what we might call its method of projection,
that is, a rule which would connect the image with the use of the
word "cube:' The image alone cannot tell us how it is to be applied,
and according to Wittgenstein it is no more sufficient grounds for
saying "I understand" than would be a drawing or a model in front
of me.
What is essential is to see that the same thing can
come before our minds when we hear the word and the
application still be different. Has it the same meaning
both times? I think we shall say not. (PI, 140)
What, then, does Wittgenstein say understanding· is? When do
we say of someone that he or she understands? Wittgenstein wants
us to keep in mind that the word "understand" is itself teachable
and learnable, and that a learner (or even a fluent speaker) can make
mistakes in applying it and be corrected. Understanding a word signifies an ability that manifests itself in three ways: in how one uses
the word, in how he responds to its use by others, and in how he
shows others its use (Glock, p. 373). Understanding a sentence is an
ability to do something, such as get a yellow ball when asked, recite
the alphabet, continue a number series, translate a Greek passage,
�45
VERDI
help carry on a discussion in seminar. Understanding a language is
knowing what expressions of the language mean, knowing how to
use them in accord with the rules for their use. This entails knowing the difference between right and wrong ways of using words,
and in this sense understanding is an ability to do something in
accordance with rules.
But you might say this still does not sound like enough, for mere
acting in accord with a rule cannot be equivalent to following a rule, and
if the difference between the two does not consist in what goes on in
the mind or brain, then what is the difference? Anything that acts in
a rrgular way acts according to some rule, even if it acts without understanding, as perhaps the heavenly bodies do. To address this concern
Wittgenstein calls our attention to the social nature of language and
other rule-governed activities. We use rules as standards of correctness
in practice. The relation between a rule and what counts as following a
rule is given by how we employ the ru1e, how we would explain or
justif}r our use of it, how we wou1d teach it or learn it or correct misapplications of it.
A rule for the use of an expression and the acts that
[followJ it are not independent of each other, but two
sides of the same [conceptual] coin, two aspects of a
practice. ... There is no such thing as a rule without a
technique of application that is manifest in action
.... The phenomenon of language is part of the web
of human action and interaction the world. It presupposes as its stable framework certain pervasive regularities of the physical world and of human nature.
Understanding a language is not a mental state but a
capacity or array of capacities to employ symbols in
accord with rules in a myriad of speech activities. This
conception of language as Praxis, this emphasis upon
the primacy of the deed is a fundamental aspect of
Wittgenstein's philosophy. (Hacker, p. 250)
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It recalls the line from Goethe's Faust: "In the beginning was the
deed:' ("Im A>ifang war die Tat" Part One, line 1235)
All this may be true, you say, but you still have not told us what
account Wittgenstein gives of the importance of thought to language?
Language isn't simply rule-following language-behavior, which this
emphasis on action might lead one to think. What about my inner
life, my thoughts, feelings, hopes? These are mine and Wittgenstein
hasn't yet told us how language as action can have any connection to
them, or how we can talk about them at all.
Wittgenstein considers this a very serious question and his
response lies at the core of his reflections on language, psychology
and philosophy. He writes:
[ C]ould we... imagine a language in which a person
could write down or give vocal expression to his inner
experiences-his feelings, moods, and the rest-for
his private use?-Well, can't we do so in our ordinary
language?-But this is not what I mean. The individual words of this language are to refer to what can
only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot
understand the language. (PI, 243)
The question can be put this way: how can we ever come to talk with
one another about our sensations-about our inner life in all its
complexity-if they are truly mine and if language is concerned
about what we all can share, as Wittgenstein has implied? For isn't it
obvious ·that I cannot express what is inner by means of words whose
meaning relies entirely on what is outer? Wittgenstein believes these
deep concerns rest on a deep misunderstanding of how we actually
use words. In his argument against the possibility of private language
he uses pain as an example, but he means to include sensations in
general, visual impressions (PI, 277), imaginings (PI, 280), states of
mind and mental processes (PI, 290, 305-6).
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47
Wittgenstein believes that certain conceptions of self-consciousness and the mind, and especially knowledge of other minds, are
incoherent and that their incoherence rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way language works. The assumption that the primary purpose of words is to name and of sentences to describe
undermines our attempts to understand "mental phenomena" when
we engage in philosophical speculation about them. We are led by
similar forms in the way we speak in different areas of language into
insisting on a contrast between "inner" and "outer:' We unthinkingly consider the former to be analogous to the latter, without frrst
understanding the "grammar" of expressions about "inner" and
"outer:' We thereby unwittingly let ourselves be led into confusions.
Wittgenstein begins by asking his interlocutor
in what way are my sensations private?--Well, only I
can know whether I am really in pain; another person
can only surmise it.-In one way this is wrong, and
in another nonsense... It can't be said of me at all
(except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain.
What is it supposed to mean-except perhaps that I
am in pain?
Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior,-for I cannot be said
to learn of them [at all]. I have them. The truth is: it
makes sense to say about other people that they
doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about
mysel£ (PI, 246)
Wittgenstein here says that if by "private" I mean that I have a
knowledge of my sensations available only to me, and that others
only surmise or infer my sensations while I can know them, then I have
committed a grammatical or conceptual error. If it makes no sense
for me to say I doubt that I am in pain, then it makes no sense for
me to say that I know that I am in pain. Where there can be no
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
grounds for doubt, neither can there be grounds for knowledge, says
Wittgenstein, and he believes our ordinary way of speaking confirms
this. He does not suggest that we revise the way we speak about
doubt and knowledge, but rather he describes what he takes to be the
actual uses of the words, or what the concepts of doubting and
knowing consist in. We, too, would recognize this if we paid attention to how we ourselves use the words in ordinary discourse, and
how we might teach others how to use them or how we correct them
when they are wrong. (Even the skeptic does not teach his young
child, "Perhaps that's a chair:') Words are learned within families in
conjunction with contrasting words, and while the head of a coin
may be forcibly separated from the tail, the result is only to remove
both pieces from circulation.
While language is doing its work-while we are at work with
it-we generally do not make such mistakes, except as jokes. Which
reminds me of this exchange between Blondie and Dagwood:
Blondie: Oh, I feel so blumpy today!
Dagwood: "Blumpy"? That word's not even in the dictionary!
Blondie: That's because no one has ever felt blumpy before!
(Fann, p. 109)
As soon as I disengage the gears and allow the engine to idle, I am
tempted to imagine that when I have a pain I possess something no one
else can have access to, and that in a sense my entire inner life is available only to me for my own viewing. But "no one can have my pain" is
a rule of grammar, just as is "no one can play solitaire with a friend:'
A thought that has probably occurred to most of you at some
time or other offers another avenue of approach to clarifying the
relationship of language to our inner lives. Wittgenstein lets his interlocutor say the following:
The essential thing about private experience is really
not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but
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49
that nobody knows whether other people have this or
something else. The assumption would thus be possible-though unverifiable-that one section of
mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. (PI, 272)
Wittgenstein believes thatthis tempting suggestion of the unverifiable
possibility of an inverted spectrum is not empirically false, but conceptually incoherent. He thinks that he recognizes in it a paradigm for
the bewitchment that can be worked on our intellects by language, and
by theories of language. To understand why the possibility of the
inverted spectrum is no possibility at all is to have acquired a perspicuous view of one part of the landscape of our language, and thereby
to find rest from a whole host of temptations that can be forced on
us by grammar when we let language take a vacation.
But surely it makes sense to say that the road sign that I see as
green you see as red? After all, I can imagine the same sign as being
red, and when I do, I am imagining what you are seeing. Of course
we can never know this, because,. we both learned to use color words
in basically the same way, and so we now both call that sign
"green." Wittgenstein says this is as if "when I uttered the word I
cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to
say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it" (PI, 274). But
"imagine someone's saying: 'I know how tall I am!' and laying his
hand on top of his head to prove it" (PI, 279). Children sometimes
do just this until they learn that they really have not shown how tall
they are at all by this act, for we make no use of a concept of "private height," which each person might have for himself and which
is independent of measured height. The claim that my private sensation of green can be known only by me is analogous to the claim
that I am this tall, and like that claim is not in dispute because it is
a misuse of language.
Wittgenstein continues:
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How
blue the sky is!"-When you do it spontaneouslywithout philosophical intentions-the idea never
crosses your mind that this impression of color
belongs only to you. ... And if you point at anything
as you say the words you point at the sky. (PI, 275)
But how is it even possible for us to be tempted to
think that we use a word to mean at one time the color
known to everyone-and at another the "visual
impression" which I am getting now? (PI, 277)
The temptation arises in part because of misleading analogies
in the forms of our expressions. If we allow ourselves to think of
"attending to a sensation" as an inner pointing (as one might consider introspection to be an "inner inspection"), we might then
begin to mix the rules of one language-game with those of another. We do after all often direct our attention to things people point
out to us. Even the phrase "direct your attention to" leads us to
think of attending as having a direction. If in attending I am pointing, then by attending I can name, and thereby give my sensation a
place in my private language. And so Wittgenstein's entire account
turns on the impossibility of my pointing to my sensation for my
own use. We can point to someone else, the traffic sign or the blue
sky with a finger, but attending to our sensation is not a kind of
pointing. For Wittgenstein my effort to point to my private sensation is no effort at all, because what it is to point takes its meaning
from its use in our language, the language which I learned by being
taught by others and which in its everyday use is governed by rules
of correctness. The view that words stand only for things or ideas
lies behind the inverted spectrum puzzle. If my private sensation is
a something, then I ought to be able to give it a name. I can point
to the pain in my foot, can't I? Yes, we do talk that way, but we also
�VERDI
51
say, "my foot hurts" or "it hurts me there:' Once we remind ourselves of the different ways we talk about sensations (and by extension about the vast panorama of our inner life), we will be less
inclined to consider them objects to which we can privately point,
which can be privately named, and which can take their place in a
private language.
Wittgenstein compar~s the idea of a private sensation to a box
with something in it. He says:
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we
call it a "beetle." No one can look into anyone else's
box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only
by looking at his beetle.-Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his
box.-But suppose the word 'beetle' had a use in these
people's language?-If so it would not be used as the
name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in
the language-game at all; not even as a something: for
the box might even be empty... .That is to say: if we
construe the grammar of the expression of sensation
on the model of "object and name'' the object drops
out of consideration as irrelevant. (PI, 293)
Here, the beetle is analogous to a sensation, and to have a beetle
in a box is to have a sensation. When we are tempted to say that the
sensation must be something that we have, we ought to remind ourselves that we have thus far said nothing, unless we go on to say what
is involved in this having. It is "as if I were to say of someone: 'He
has something. But I don't know whether it is money, or debts, or an
empty cash register'" (PI, 294).
Wittgenstein believes a private language makes no sense even if I
am concerned simply about talking to mysel£ Our inner life is essentially shareable, and it can be ours only if it is possible for us to share
it with others. The real incoherence of the private linguist is that he
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THE ST. JOHN'SREVIEW
cannot achieve what he thinks he is achieving, namely, referring (even
for himself) to a private sensation (or private inner life). Hegel
expresses a similar insight in the opening section of the Phenomenology
if Spirit, "Sense-Certainty," which is
a view of our awareness of the world according to
which it is at its fullest and richest when we simply
open our senses... to the world and receive whatever
impressions come our way, prior to any... conceptual
activity. (Taylor, pp. 140-1)
When the subject of sense-certainty is asked to say what he experiences, however, he finds that his attempts are empty. If he tries to
speak of the "here'' and "now" that he is experiencing, not even he
.
,
h tmse If can k now w h at h e means by "here," " now," and "I" un1ess h e
means something universal, beyond the immediate place, moment
and person. The particular gives way to the universal, because as the
inexpressible, the particular is nothing other than the untrue and irrationaL Wittgenstein puts it this way:
'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place,
and 'this' is not a name. But they are connected with
names. Names are explained by means of them. It is
also true that it is characteristic of physics not to use
these words. (PI, 410)
I want to leave Part One of my lecture with some questions
which Wittgenstein himself asks and which I shall leave unanswered.
1. "The purpose of language is to express thoughts:... Then what
thought is expressed, for example, by the sentence 'It's raining'?" (PL 501)
2. "We do not say that possibly a dog talks to itsel£ Is that because
we are so minutely acquainted with its soul?" (PI, 357)
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53
3. "'But doesn't what you say come to this: that there is no pain,
for example, without pain-behavior?"' (PI, 281) '"Are you not really a
behaviorist in disguise?"' (PI, 307)
4. "Make the following experiment: say 'It's cold here' and mean
'It's warm here: Can you do it?-And what are you doing as you do
it? And is there only one way of doing it?" (PI, 510)
5. "Imagine that you were in pain and were simultaneously hearing a nearby piano being tuned. You say 'It'll soon stop: It certainly
makes quite a difference whether you mean the pain or the pianotuning!-Of course; but what does this difference consist in?"
(PI,
666)
6. "How should we counter someone who told us that with him
understanding was an inner process?-How should we counter him
if he said that with him knowing how to play chess was an inner
process?" (PI, p. 181)
7. "Describe the aroma of coffee.-Why can't it be done? Do we
lack the words? And for what are the words lacking?" ( PL 610)
Part Two: Psychology
In this section I want to discuss briefly two concepts, thinking
and imagining. They serve to illustrate how Wittgenstein's conception
of meaning as use and his consequent radical revision of the innerouter dichotomy overcome obstacles to understanding and clearer
thinking. The section on imagining also contains some remarks about
experimental results in modern cognitive psychology.
�54
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thinking
Wittgenstein launches us into his discussion of thinking by this
exchange with his interlocutor.
In order to get clear about the meaning of the word
'think' we watc~ ourselves while we think; what we
observe will be what the word means!-But this concept is not used like that. (It would be as if without
knowing how to play chess, I were to try and make
out what the word 'checkmate' meant by close observation of the last move of some game of chess.)
(PI, 316)
When one looks at the last move in a chess game one is in a sense
seeing a checkmate. But there is much else that one has not seen if he
observes only this last move. He witnesses something the meaning of
which he can not know, because he witnesses only it, and not the context in which it occurred, the chess game. We cannot get clear about
what thinking is (that is, how the word "thinking" is used) by any
sort of introspection, but only by broadening our study to include
the circumstances in which we use the word and related words. Nor
would we follow the production process of a hammer to learn how a
hammer is used, or observe a piece of cheese to see how the price of
cheese rises.
Thinking forms a family of concepts with various meanings.
Wittgenstein says:
Remember that our language could possess a variety
of different words: one for "thinking out loud"; one
for thinking as one talks to oneself in the imagination; one for a pause during which something or
other floats before the mind, after which, however, we
are able to give a confident answer. One word for a
�55
VERDI
thought expressed in a sentence; one for the lightning
thought which I may later "clothe in words"; one for
wordless thinking as one works. (Z, 122)
What thinking is not, Wittgenstein believes, is some sort of accompaniment to thoughtful activities.
While we sometimes call it "thinking" to accompany
a sentence by a mental process, that accompaniment
is not what we mean by a "thought." (PI, 332)
If thinking and speaking stood in the relation of the
words and the melody of a song, we could leave out
the speaking and do the thinking just as we can sing
the tune without the words. (BB, p. 42)
But can't I do just that? Can't I think without speaking? I often
know in an instant what I want to say, but the saying of it takes
much longer than my prior thinking did. Wittgenstein agrees that
we can think without speaking, even to ourselves. But this does not
imply that thinking is necessarily a mental process, one which may
or may not accompany other processes like talking. He asks us to
ask ourselves, when would we say of someone or something that he
or she or it is thinking? How would we teach someone the rules for
using the words "thinking" and "thought"? Not by pointing to a
mental activity, distinct from other kinds of activities. Wittgenstein
gives us this rule of thumb to use whenever we are tempted to think
that there must be a mental process of thinking: substitute for
"thinking" or "thought" the expression of the "thinking" or
"thought" (BB, p. 42). This is not to say that a thought is identical
with its expression, say a spoken sentence, because we do speak
thoughtlessly, as when we read aloud automatically, or while thinking about something else. Wittgenstein says, however, that "speech
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
56
with and without thought is to be compared with the playing of
music with and without thought" (PI, 341). When I play a piece of
music with thought, there may be no "thoughts" accompanying my
playing. But my playing can be described in ways that playing without thought cannot. ("Notice how he phrased that passage to bring
out its connection with the opening theme:') To say I played the
piece with thought is t9 say something about how I played the piece;
that is, thinking has an adverbial character. My actions are described
as expressing thought, just as my gracefulness is expressed in my
dancing and my anxiety in my pacing.
It is true that we often speak as though thought and speech were
rwo separate activities, that we might do the one without the other as
we might hum the tune of a song and not sing the words. "Think
before you speak!" "What I just said didn't quite express my
thought:' "The English language uses words in the order in which we
think them." (BB, p. 148) What "accompanies" speech in those cases
might be modulation and tone of voice, certain gestures. But we are
not tempted to call them the "thinking:' No, what allows me to say
of someone else that he is thinking includes what he is doing now,
what has led up to it, what he would be willing to say when asked
what he was doing, and so forth. The psychologist who hopes to
learn more about thinking by asking people what goes on when they
think, or by observing their reactions to certain kinds of problems,
or by studying brain activity while people are thinking has involved
him or herself in a hopeless conceptual muddle. We discover more
about what thinking is by reminding ourselves what we mean when
we say that someone is thinking.
Imagination
The imagination appears to be a more fruitful landscape than
thinking for the work of the psychologist, in part because of the
existence of mental images, which seem to be entities that in some
way or other can be observed. The topic of the imagination is a vast
�VERDI
57
one, and if you really want to sink your teeth into the meat of it, you
ought to read Eva Brann's book, The W<Jrld of the Imagination. I shall here
lay out once again, this time for the concept of mental images, what
I think the implications are of considering the meaning of a word to
be its use, and the consequent impossibility of private language.
Wittgenstein says this about the imagination and images:
One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines anything, but how the word
'imagination' is used. But that does not mean that I
want to talk only about words. For the question as to
the nature of the imagination is as much about the
word "imagination" as my question is. And I am only
saying that this question is not to be decided-neither for the person who does the imagining, nor for
anyone else-by pointing; nor yet by a description of
any process. [The question, What is the imagination?] asks for a word to be explained; but it makes us
expect a wrong kind of answer. (PI, 370)
When we think about how we use words connected with imagining, Wittgenstein believes we discover that when we imagine something, we do not have an image that is just like a physical picture, only
private rather than public. Nor is imagining a case of non-sensory
perception.
Wittgenstein does not deny the existence of mental images or
deny that we can see things· iq the mind's eye. He does, however,
deny that we do the same sorts of things with mental image words
that we do with sense-perception words or with picture words. We
play different language-games here, but ones that he says "hang
together:' (Z, 625) The imagination does not require mental images,
even when I imagine something that I might express in a rough
drawing. That is, I might draw something from imagination that is
in no sense a copy or a likeness of any image I might have in my
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mind. I might have no image at all in my mind. Regardless of
whether or not someone had a mental image, we would still say that
his drawing came from his imagination. It might in fact turn out
that having mental images facilitates doing certain things for some
people, such as making drawings. But the absence of those images
would have no effect on our rule-governed employment of the conu.
.
.
,
cept, tmagmatmn.
Wittgenstein says that images are not just a private sort of physical picture. The concepts of "mental image" and "picture" are not
alike, though they are intimately connected. We do not see, look at
or observe our mental images. This is not an empirical remark which
experiments might someday disprove, but a conceptual one, one
about how we speak and think about pictures and mental images. I
can look at a photo of McDowell Hall, I can look at the same photo
again, or look at it more closely or under different light. But only as
a sort of joke would I say I was doing any of these things with my
mental image of McDowell Hall.
Another difference between pictures and mental images is what
it means to say that a picture or a mental image is the same as it
was, or identical to another picture or image. We say about a picture, perhaps a photo, "that it remains the same not only on the
ground that it seems to us to be the same.... In fact we shall say
under certain circumstances that the picture hasn't changed
although it seems to have changed (BB, p. 171). We say it hasn't
changed because we know something about how it has been kept,
how photographic images fade over time, and so forth. This, of
course, doesn't prevent us from talking about imagining the same
thing from one day to the next or saying things like: "A picture of
him swam before my mind:' But from such usage we should be slow
to infer either that pictures can swim or that images are pictures.
"In part of their uses the expressions '[mental] image' and 'picture'
run parallel; but where they don't the analogy which does exist
tends to delude us" (Hallett, p. 372).
Imagining is also unlike seeing for at least two reasons. First,
�VERDI
59
-
r:::::: -...
-...J
......
.....
......
images are voluntary, says Wittgenstein, while sense-perceptions are
not. He says
[w]hen we form an image of something we are not
observing.... The coming and going of the pictures
is not something that happens to us. We are not surprised by these pictures, saying "look!" (Z, 632)
While we don't always succeed in conjuring up the images we
want, "trying to imagine something which isn't present" makes sense,
while "trying to see something which isn't present" does not make sense.
Second, because images are voluntary, they tell us nothing that
can be true or false about the world; that is, they have no cognitive
content. Some experiments by psychologists might be construed as
indicating that Wittgenstein was simply wrong about this. I want to
talk a bit about one of these experiments to give you an idea of the
sort of very influential work many psychologists and other cognitive
scientists have been doing in recent years and to try to interpret their
results in the light of what I have presented as Wittgenstein's thought.
Roger Shepard published a study in 1971 on the speed of mental
rotation of figures. The subjects were shown pairs of drawings such
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
as those you see below and asked whether or not the two were different views of the same shape. Shepard varied the angular distances
between the two figures so that some were only a few degrees different, while others much more. He then measured how long it took
people to tell whether the two figures were the same or different.
What he found was that these reaction times were proportional to
the angles which separated the figures. It took twice as long to decide
that one figure was the same or different from the other if the angle
of separation was twice as great. Many studies have produced similar results, some even providing evidence for "inertia" and "momentum" effects (Freyd, 1989). Other experiments seem to indicate that
mental images take place in a mental medium which possesses texture
and boundaries.
Shepard's results have been interpreted to mean that subjects
rotate a mental image through mental space in a way remarkably like
the way a real figure might be rotated through real space in an effort
to solve the problem. Mental images, it seems, can tell us something
about the world. How might we understand these experiments?
Wittgenstein believes that his own work is entirely descriptive, not
explanatory, because his interest lies not with phenomena, but with
concepts, that is, with the workings of our language. The problems
that engage him "are solved, not by giving new information, but by
arranging what we have already known" (PI, 109). This implies that
questions like "Can mental images tell us anything true or false about
the world?" will not be answered by experiments such as Shepard's, but
by reminding ourselves how we use words like "mental image:'
You ought to object immediately. For don't we come to know
more about moving bodies through observations of bodies in
motion, and electricity by observation of the phenomena of electricity? We don't explore how we use the words "motion" and "electricity" in our language in order to understand what motion and electricity are, do we? We do experiments. Shepard's work is no different
from Galilee's and Faraday's, except in the objects he studies, you
might say.
�VERDI
61
Wittgenstein might respond like this. Philosophical or conceptual problems are in principle immune to solution by means of advances
in science. The sciences either employ the concepts which create conceptual perplexity (such as "seeing" and "thinking") and hence presuppose an understanding of them, or they create new, different concepts (such as "force" and "electron") which tend to bypass the puzzle, not solve it, and may perhaps even generate further conceptual
questions (Hacker, p. 157). The sciences do make new discoveries,
and add to human knowledge about the world both by revealing new
objects and properties hitherto unknown and by providing new
explanations of hitherto inexplicable phenomena. But they are not of
use in resolving conceptual problems, which, according to
Wittgenstein, arise from the workings of our language and are
resolved only within language.
Wittgenstein would say that Shepard's experiments reveal a deep
conceptual confusion. "The existence of the experimental method
makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which
trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by" (PI, p.
232). While the physicist observes and reports on the phenomena of
that which he is investigating, the psychologist observes human
behavior, for example reaction times and verbal reports, not mental
images. But, you might say, scientists often draw conclusions about
what can't be seen from what can be seen. They devise experiments to
trick, cajole, or torture nature into revealing its secrets. William
Harvey, for example, by his experiments on the heart and blood,
could come to know what he could not see, namely, that the blood
circulates through the veins and arteries. And Galileo could discover
the acceleration of a freely falling body, which he could not measure
directly, by using inclined planes to slow the acceleration to a measurable rate. And so, even though the psychological experimenter can't
see his subjects' mental images, this should be no reason for thinking
that he cannot learn new facts about their nature. But, Wittgenstein
might say, a mental image, like a pain, cannot be observed because it
is not the kind of thing about which it makes sense to say one
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
observes it. It is unobservable not because it is too small, or hidden,
or goes by too quickly, but because the grammar of the expression
"mental image" is not the grammar of any word referring to an
observable object, Our concept of mental image, Wittgenstein
believes, precludes its being the subject matter of any scientific experiment which purports to explore its nature. Many of the problems in
the study of the mind, ~uch as those of consciousness, thinking, and
willing are not empirical at all, but conceptual. The psychologist
must know what he is looking for before he can know where to look.
This requires first of all asking questions like, how does one learn to
talk about mental images, and what applications do we make of
words like "image" and "imagination"? For only then shall the psychologist know what a mental image is. Wittgenstein believes he will
then no longer be faced with questions like, do mental images exist
and what are they like? Rather the psychologist will be more concerned with the causes and effects of mental images. (It might be of
interest to discover, for example, that whenever people have a certain
mental image, their blood pressure drops. This would be a useful
result.) I'm reminded of the time that Meno and Socrates met one
another outside the baths in Athens.
Socrates: Hello, Meno! Have you taken a bath?
Meno: Why, Socrates? Is one missing?
What then makes an image of him into an image of him? That is,
what connects the image with that of which it is an image?
Wittgenstein's oblique reply is, "Not its looking like him" (PI, p. 177).
The same question applies to the expression "I see
him now vividly before me" .... What makes this
utterance into an utterance about him?-Nothing in
it or simultaneous with it ([orJ "behind it"). If you
want to know whom he meant, ask him.... His answer
[will] be decisive. (PI, p. 177)
�63
VERDI
I imagine McDowell Hall on fire and someone asks me how I know
it is McDowell Hall. Couldn't it be some other building very much
like it? The question makes no sense in this context. If I show a
friend a photo of one of my identical twin brothers and tell him it
is a picture of my brother Homer, he can ask me how I know it is
Homer and not my other brother, Vergil. When I tell him that I took
the picture, the matter i~ settled. But if I say that I am imagining my
brother Homer, then his question, how do you know it is Homer and
not Vergil you are imagining?, makes no sense. I cannot answer simply, it looks like Homer, because it also would look like Vergil, if it
"looked like" anyone at all. Not even God, could he look into my
mind at that moment, would be able to tell of which brother I was
thinking. Yet no one would question my authority in this matter.
What makes the image into an image of him, Wittgenstein says,
is "perhaps what I later [say or do]" (Z, 14). This could include
descriptions I might give or drawings I might make about the image.
Such descriptions can even simply take the place of the image. No
image carries along with itself a reference to that of which it is the
image. The image becomes an image of something determinate only
by what we say and do, that is, by becoming part of our language and
our form of life.
Part Three: Philosophy
Philosophical questions and problems, says Wittgenstein, like
many of those in psychology, arise largely through a misunderstanding of how language works. They are "linguistic" or "conceptual"
problems, which is not to say that they are silly or unimportant.
These problems
have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes;
their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language. (PL 111)
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Wittgenstein believes that "a main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words"
(PI, 122). And because philosophical problems have the form "I don't
know my way about" (PI, 123), it is precisely the perspicuous representation of how we use words that is of fundamental significance to
any effort to answer philosophical questions and to solve philosophical problems. We are led to philosophical problems when we confuse
the forms of our expressions with their uses. "Words like 'thinking'
and 'thought' alongside words denoting (bodily) activities, such as
writing and speaking make us look for an activity... corresponding to
thinking" and to a product of thinking analogous to the products of
writing and speaking. "When words in our ordinary language have
prima facie analogous grammars we are inclined to try to interpret
them analogously" (BB, p. 7). Similarly, for each substantive we tend
to seek a substance and so are led to ask, for example, "What is
length? What is meaning? What is number?" instead of "How are
lengths measured? What is an explanation of meaning? How are
numerical expressions used?" (Hacker, p. 169)
Related to this source of confUsion is our, tendency to mix up language-games. We might imagine, for example, that certainty, be it about
the weather, a geometrical proo£ or my own pain is the selfsame concept, and differs only in degree in these cases. Instead, we ought to consider it to be more like the concept of winning, as we find it in football, in chess and in solitaire. We also easily succumb to the temptation
to project grammar onto reality, and to think of words as names and
sentences as descriptions. It is a short step to the conceptual confusions of psychology, where "I" becomes the name of a person who has
privileged access to his own mental objects, states, and events, which he
then describes when he says "I have a pain;' "I am anxious;' "I am
thinking:'
What Wittgenstein offers to help solve these problems is "not a
philosophical method," but "methods, like different therapies" (PI,
133). For "the philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (PI, 255). That is, if we consider what
�VERDI
65
Wittgenstein is doing also to be philosophy, then the Wittgensteinian
philosopher's task differs in important ways from that of most of his
predecessors. His job is to "to show the fly the way out of the flybottle" (PL 309). The fly-bottle is a humane apparatus for catching
flies. The fly is drawn in through a hole in the bottom of a bottle by
means of beer which sits in a trough surrounding the bottle. The fly
thereafter flies only upw;:~rds or sideways, n~ver down, and is effectively trapped in the bottle, which has no other opening. This could
be Wittgenstein's inversion of the allegory of the cave in Plato's
Republic. The new philosopher's job is to lead us out of this prison,
which consists of philosophical problems and questions themselves.
How does the Wittgensteinian philosopher liberate us?
Wittgenstein's approach is like that of Socrates in that both attempt
to bring people to remember what they have forgotten, since it is still
somehow present in them. Both try to elicit from others the consequences of their own words, and both frequently do this by asking
questions. But Wittgenstein's philosopher treats this illness of chronic forgetfulness by assembling reminders of how we actually use
words and what we do with them in ordinary language. He says:
"When [someoneJ use[s J a word-'knowledge; 'being; 'object; 'I'... and tr[iesJ to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask
oneself: is the word ever actually used this way in the language which
is its original home?" (PI, 116) We might say that according to
Wittgenstein, "it is the whole of philosophy to realize that there is
no more difficulty about time than about [a] chair" (L, p.119).
This image of philosophical problems as a kind of forgetfulness
that must be treated with aids to remembering reminds me of the
Meno. But first let me tell you about a conversation between two boys
in a comic strip. The first says: "Everyday I ask myself those age-old
philosophical questions-Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here?
That, my friend, is philosophy:' Whereupon his friend responds:
"Sounds more like amnesia" (Fann, p. 108). Meno poses a famous
paradox about coming to know anything: if I don't know what I am
looking for, how can I recognize it when I have found it? And if I do
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
know, why do I need to look for it? As a solution to the paradox,
Socrates suggests that in a previous life we learned all things and that
in our present life what appears to be learning is really recollection of
what we knew but have forgotten. Wittgenstein is saying something
similar. Birth may be a protracted process: we are perhaps not fully
born until we have mastered our native language. The time before our
birth, that is, the time b~fore this mastery is achieved, is the time during which we were learning how to talk, when we first learned how to
do things with words. Later, especially when we philosophize, we
tend to forget what we know and need to be reminded of it. Once we
are, the problems which trouble us dissolve. We once again can operate with words according to their true grammar, which expresses the
essence of things. The consequence of this Wittgensteinian dialectic
is to lead us out of the fly-bottle of philosophical problems and
questions and restore us to our ordinary ways of speaking. Imagine
that you are trying to describe in words to a friend how to do a dance.
At a certain point in the description you get stuck-you just can't
remember if the left foot or the right foot moves at that moment.
The answer to the question will come as soon as you grab a partner
and do the dance. Wittgenstein might say that philosophical problems come on the scene whenever we stop dancing, that is, whenever
we stop using words in their ordinary ways.
This, however, shouldn't lead us to think that philosophical questions and problems are avoidable. Most of us cannot spend all our
time dancing; we find other activities attractive, too. And sometimes
using words in extraordinary ways, like in poetry, is just what we want
to do. It is also instructive to ask what use a word has in a particular
author, which may not be an ordinary use. But to someone enmeshed
in a philosophical problem it is never a useful answer to say simply:
we don't talk that way. Wittgenstein puts it like this:
You must not try to avoid a philosophical problem by
appealing to common sense; instead, present it as it
arises with most power.... Philosophy can be said to
�VERDI
67
consist of three act!VIttes: to see the commonsense
answer, to get yourself so deeply into tne problem
that the commonsense answer is unbearable, and to
get from that situation back to the commonsense
answer. ( BB, pp. 108-9)
Wittgenstein always ~ried to work his way into and through a philosophical problem with his students, which is reminiscent of a Zen
master's technique (Fann, p. 104). D. T. Suzuki writes:
Before you have studied Zen, mountains are mountains
and rivers are rivers; while you are studying it, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers no longer
rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers are rivers.
Wittgenstein also believes that the work of the philosopher is
descriptive, not explanatory. He says that "philosophy simply puts
everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For
what is hidden ... is of no interest to us" (PI, 126). The descriptions
Wittgenstein gives of how we use words are not meant to be even hints
of explanations, nor calls for scientific clarification. Wittgenstein is
interested not in causes, but in reasons, because he is concerned not
with phenomena but with concepts. Causes can be discovered by
experiment, but reasons cannot.
The descriptions Wittgenstein paints are attempts to provide
overviews of the landscape of language, surveyable representations
which help us find our way about. In a sense his work is aesthetic: he
draws our attention to certain features of language, and places things
side by side so as to exhibit these features. The hoped-for result is a
change in the way we view things. Goethe attempts something similar
in his essay and poem on the Metamorphosis of Plants, with which
Wittgenstein was familiar. Goethe's fictional primordial plant is an
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
archetype by means of which he hopes to understand all plants. He
thereby achieves an overview that he hopes will bring us to see plant
development differently, but which eschews all discussion of causality.
It is time that I bring the lecture to a dose and return to a remark
of Wittgenstein's I cited at the beginning. Wittgenstein said that he
was not a religious man, but that he could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view. What did he mean by "a religious
point of view") Three of Wittgenstein's favorite authors, those to
whom he turned again and again, were St. Augustine, Kierkegaard
and Dostoevsky. (He is reputed to have known The Brothers Karamazov
almost by heart.) All three share a conviction in the importance of
what cannot be said, a conviction Wittgenstein himself expressed when
he was young and which remained with him, I believe, until his death.
He agreed with Kierkegaard that the most impottant things are best
shown, not said. "If only you do not try to utter the unutterable,
then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be-unutterablycontained in what has been uttered!" (Engelmann, 9) Of his own work,
Wittgenstein writes:
Where does our investigation get its importance
from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it
were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of
stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing
but houses of cards and we are dearing up the ground
of language on which they stand. (PI, 118)
Next to this we may juxtapose Kierkegaard's remark from one of
the short discourses.
It is true as the understanding says that there is nothing to wonder at, but precisely for this reason is wonder secure, because the understanding vouches for it.
Let the understanding... dear the ground, then won-
�VERDI
69
der comes in in the right place, in the changed man.
(cited by Drury in Fann2, p. 70)
The changed man is one . who now sees differently. At the
moment Augustine hears the voice of a child as a ~omrnand from
God, while in the world everything remains the same ind nothing has
changed, for him everythjng has changed, nothing remains the same.
He is a changed man. As Socrates first taught us. there is no prescribed set of rules for bringing someone to see differently. For
Wittgenstein the religious point of view is the one which approaches a philosophical problem with the belief that its solution lies in
radical re-collecting ar1d re-visioning. The new vision is not a truth
to be proved any more than faith is taking someone's word for it, even
God's. And our new eyes cannot be given to us by another, and certainly not by any book. Schopenhauer, whom Wittgenstein read early
in life, puts it this way:
When we read, someone else thinks for us .... [W]hen
we read, the work of thinking is taken away from us
.... In addition to this, is the fact that thoughts
reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the
footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that
we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw
on the way, we must use our own eyes. (Parerga and
Paralipomena, Chapter 24, Number 291, translated by E.
F. J. Payne)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Some questions for Part Two
1. Is it a fact of experience that trees and stones are not conscious?
2. Why can I interrupt your thinking, but not your believing?
3. "Does it make sense t\) ask, 'How do you know that you believe?'and is the answer: 'I know it by introspection'?" (PI, 587)
4. Why can I not be mistaken about my intentions, but can lie about them?
5. "Why can't a dog simulate pain? Is it too honest?"
(PI,
250)
6. "We say a dog is afraid his master will beat him; but not, he is
afraid his master will beat him tomorrow. Why not?" (PI, 650)
7. "Why does it sound odd to say 'For a second he felt deep grief'?
Only because it so seldom happens?" (PI, p. 174)
8. Why can I play-act fear, but not hope? "Is hope a feeling?"
(PI,
545)
9. "One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy,
startled. But hopeful? And why not?" (PI, p. 174)
10. "Why can a dog feel fear but not remorse? Would it be right to
say 'Because it can't talk'?" (Zettel, 518)
References
Wittgenstein's Works
Philosophical Investigations. NY: Macmillan, 1958. (PI)
Blue and Brown Books. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1958. (BB)
Zettel. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. (Z)
Lectures, 1932-1935. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. (L)
�VERDI
71
Secondary Sources
Baker, G. P. and Hacker, P. M. S. An Analytical Commentary on
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983. (Baker)
Engelmann, Paul. Lettersfrom Ludwig Wittenstein, with a Memoir. Translated
by L. Furtmuller, edited by B. McGuinness. Oxford, 1967.
(Engelmann)
Fann, K. T. Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy. Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1971. (Fann)
Fann, K. T. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy. New Jersey.
Humanities Press, 1967. (Fann2)
Freyd, J. "Dynamic Mental Representations:' Psychological Review, 94
(1989)
Glock, Hans-Johann. A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
(Glock)
Hacker, P. M. S. Insight and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986. (Hacker)
Hallett, Garth. A Companion to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. (Hallett)
Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1994. (Malcolm)
Rhees, Rush ( ed). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984. (Rhees)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
Ptolemy's Truth
David Stephenson
Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air
A wheel within a, wheel, way in the middle of the air
-Traditional spiritual
Aristotle splits the world in two: heaven and earth. This is not a
matter of religious belief, but merely of observation. Above us in the
sky bright objects describe circular paths near whose center we dwell.
Every night the circle is completed as the stars return along their
courses. But here near the surface of the Earth things head downwards or sideways, and for the most part in paths as straight as possible, as if trying to arrive at their goal by the quickest route. Whereas
whatever we kindle into light soon burns out, heavenly lights appear
to last forever. Whatever moves on Earth is born, changes shape and
size, ages, and dies; above the clouds sameness and permanence rule.
Thus it is hard to imagine our being made of the same stuff as the
stars, or of responding to the same causes, for our modes of motion
and existence are very different-so different that the sublunar
sphere we inhabit is connected with those overhead only by our
thoughts and imaginations.
And yet there are reasons to hope that the heavens are not so alien
as to escape understanding altogether. For one thing, a few of those
"stars" do exhibit a more erratic progress along their orbits than do
the majority, as if they had wills of their own like ours. They are
called "planets" because of their tendency to wander in their traces,
sometimes falling behind the crowd, and at other times catching up.
Indeed, the first kind of explanation of their wandering must have
David Stephenson is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John's College. This lecture was
delivered at Annapolis, April 4, 1997.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ascribed some of our own terrestrial willfulness to the celestial, and
hence allowed one to hope that those shining beings might regard us
with greater affinity and affection than can the rocky, gassy masses lit
by the hydrogen bomb we think nowadays has usurped those gods:
the cold reflections of an indifferent fire.
But even in Aristotle's time, one who sought patterns among the
stars by careful observation of their courses over months and years
could see more of rule than whim in their careers, a rule based on
recurrence, and hence on the period, on the circle. Ptolemy puts it
thus: "it is first necessary to assume in general that the motions of the
planets... are all regular and circular by nature... and their apparent
irregularities result from the positions and arrangements of the circles
on their spheres through which they produce these movements, but no
departure from their unchangeableness has really occurred in their
nature in regard to the supposed disorder of their appearances:' That
is, appearances are deceiving: the mind must see behind planetary
meandering to the perfect circles out of which it is composed. I say
"must;' for, according to Ptolemy, this hypothesis of regular circular
motion is the only one that willleadlls to the "study of things which
are always what they are;' that is, to changeless truth itsel£ and this
truth, he assures us at the very beginning of his treatise, is the aim of
astronomy, as it is of every science worthy of the name.
One might even say that Ptolemy's principle is what allows his
science to gain the clarity of mathematics, which is largely absent
from Aristotle's description. For the astronomer builds his orbits
not only out of circles, but out of circles rotating uniformly about
their centers. The uniform angular motion now can represent time
itsel£ and thus subject moving things to the static science of
geometry.
Once we insist on looking behind appearances, however, certain
terrestrial things, too, reveal rational forms of motion to someone
properly prepared to look for them. The discovery attributed to
Pythagoras that simple numbers underlie harmonic combinations of
tones could well have been the absolute beginning of natural philos-
�STEPHENSON
75
ophy, since, like Ptolemy's circles, these numbers imply a form and
measure accessible to reason underlying the sefming randomness of
narure. It is no accident that Plato's Timaeus, although primarily an
astronomer, sings the diatonic musical scale of Pythagorean numbers
into his myth of the creation of the entire universe, including the
Earth and us its inhabitants in his melody. Ptolemy himself did write
a very Pythagorean treatise of music, but it is separate from his System
of the World, because the srudy of music begins in the sublunar sphere,
and the world of circles he sees only in the heavens.
Examples of such terrestrial harmonics lie ready to hand in the
form of most musical instruments, even the most primitive.
Examples of bone flutes have been found in burial sites preserved for
twenty thousand years: hollow tubes pierced by holes spaced with at
least approximate arithmetic regularity. And if one just compares the
lengths of pan pipes-one of the simplest and oldest of instruments-it is hard not to notice the harmonic proportions they
exhibit. They are even more apparent in the musical divisions of a
string stretched on the frame of a harp, guitar, or violin, and hence
manifest themselves in the construction and use of modern as well as
ancient instruments.
It is part of my task to show how far beyond the seemingly specialized sphere of music these harmonics can reach, and to connect
them more clearly with Ptolemy's circles. From the vantage point of
Ptolemy or the Pythagoreans, mathematics can find its proper place
within narure, and itself reveals truth to us through geometry and
number. Thus arises the famous "quadrivium" of learning: astronomy
gives the sky a geometry and sets it spinning; music embodies arithmetic in the vibrations of earthly elements.
Ptolemy & Pythagoras: The Joining of the
Celestial and Terrestrial
Whenever Ptolemy discovers an anomaly in the motion of a
star-a deceleration or acceleration that apparently destroys the con-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
stancy of its intent-his hypothesis stands ready to explain away this
irregularity. Upon examination, each anomaly reveals its own period
to which Ptolemy can ascribe a circle. By combining these circles he
obtains the erratic courses we observe. But the hypothesis takes several possible forms.
Either we are not really at the center of a star's circular course,
so that uniform progre~s looks more rapid to us when the star happens to sweep closer to us; or its circle rides upon another circle, so
that the combination of the two simple circular motions together
make up the irregular one we see; or the uniformity with which the
star describes its circle cannot be judged with respect to its own
center, as one would normally do, but only with respect to some
other point. The first of these forms is known as the "eccentric"
hypothesis; the second the "epicyclic" hypothesis; the third the
"equant." Ptolemy expresses indifference about which form to
choose, especially with respect to the first two-they are equivalent:
we have neither the means nor the need to choose between them.
He is not interested in some imaginary mechanics that could push
the planets along their paths, but only in finding explanations that
will arouse what is divine in our own minds. Any of the three will
cause us to think beyond superficial appearal}ces. It is hardly necessary, therefore, for Ptolemy to adopt a different manifestation for
each anomaly. Nevertheless, when a planet, such as Mars, exhibits
three anomalies, he grants it all three types of explanation, one for
each: an eccentric, an epicycle, and an equant. It seems strange at
first that he should prefer variety to uniformity in his explanations,
and this preference inspires speculation. I will return to it later and
speculate.
But the three forms of explanation are not perfectly equivalent.
Epicycles are obviously more adaptable than either of the others,
since epicycles can rotate in directions the same as or opposite to
their deferents. Moreover, epicycles can be added on to epicycles, so
that there is no end to the number of anomalies that could be produced in one composite motion by the repetition of this single
�STEPHENSON
77
hypothesis. One can imagine a chain of circles riding on circles riding on circles... ; and ultimately be moved to ask whether any motion
whatsoever could be analyzed into such a concatenation.
Ptolemy does not link epicycles into such a chain, but
Copernicus does, and before Copernicus others, like Oresme, sometimes adopted the epicyclic hypothesis exclusively as. the most flexible one. For consider: any error which recurs can be assigned to a circle with the appropriate period and size; if another error remains
after this supposition, tack on another circle; should this too fall
short, add another, and so on. A nonrepeating error, of course,
would not submit to this kind of synthesis, but, then, exactly because
it does not recur it would be considered accidental to the natural
motion that we are trying to explain. Thus such a singular astronomical phenomenon as a comet or a nova or a meteor would most likely have been ascribed to atmospheric accidents: to the sublunar
sphere and the notoriously capricious whims of the weather. The
celestial world was the world of rule and order, and hence of regular
cycle and recurrence.
Nevertheless, such circles can illuminate terrestrial phenomena
as well if they recur periodically, even those which seem to have no
connection with the sun or stars: the pendulum; the vibrating
string; the sounding tube of air in an organ pipe or a trumpet.
When a single circle does not suffice we can superimpose others to
represent and explain these motions as closely as we please. Of
course, the circles usually appear in the form of sine waves, but
what else is a sine wave but the shadow of a rotating circle stretched
out uniformly along a straight line? Take the straight line as a portion of a very large circle, and you have adopted a procedure 'very
much like Ptolemy's to some earthly phenomena. Add a series of
sine waves in much the same way as Ptolemy's successors tack on
epicycles and you have a complex vibratory pattern like that present in a musical sound.
But harmonics arouse the understanding in another way as well,
even before they are formed into music. In the vibrating string, arith-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
metic complements Ptolemy's geometry. The circles of musical vibration are not just chosen randomly for the sake of explanation; they
are related to one another as simply as are the counting numbers,
since they correspond to the subdivision of the string into whole
numbers of parts. Each fraction produces a musical interval: half
sounds the octave; a third adds a perfect fifth; a quarter, a fourth; etc.
The existence of thes~ intervals in a tone has long been apparent,
even before physics confirmed their significance. An attentive ear can
pick out in a single musical tone the array of pitches that have combined within it, a plurality that most often we ignore as such, preferring to think of it as a whole with harmonic parts. But through
analysis we discover the simple ratios essential to the connection of
these component vibrations, ratios that once more confirm the
Pythagorean faith, by joining number to the Ptolemaic patterns of
shape and motion.
There are two impediments in the way of the full pursuit of this
Pythagorean principle. First of all, it seems perhaps too limited.
Remarkable as is its discovery of discreteness within the continuum,
of number at the heart of our physical science (which otherwise
seems more subject to geometry than arithmetic); wonderful as is its
implicit synthesis of Ptolemaic circles and musical sound, and hence
of the celestial and terrestrial worlds, the phenomena that immediately reveal such a natural unity are few, and seem to be limited to
those connected to music. The second difficulty could have been
anticipated by Ptolemy: time inevitably figures into terrestrial phenomena. The stars' motions show no obvious signs of decay; Ptolemy
sees them as eternal. But musical and other movements we see near
to hand always die. If Ptolemy's celestial mathematics is to be
brought down to Earth, there must be some way of adapting it to
earthly dissipation.
The extension of the Ptolemaic and Pythagorean projects to a
natural world not obviously musical has been accomplished only in
the last few centuries, as part of the project of mathematizing nature
to which Newton gave such an impetus with his Principia. Newton
�STEPHENSON
79
and all reputable scientists at least since the time of Kepler and
Galileo disagree with Ptolemy in one important respect. No, I do not
mean in their belief that it is the Earth rather than the Sun that
moves; I mean in their conviction that the stuff of the Earth and the
stuff of the planets or stars is not essentially different. It is a pity that
they all abandoned Ptolemy's search for circles along with his geocentric bias. Otherwise, . someone might have anticipated Joseph
Fourier in his discovery that Ptolemy's circles might not only guide
the heavens, but motion on the Earth as well-in the form of sine
waves. A straight, curved or arbitrarily zigzag course all can emerge
from a combination of sine waves.
Now wait! Would anyone seriously suggest that a straight line
could be formed from curved ones? Yes, this is exactly what Fourier
did. Or rather, with even greater generality, he claimed that any shape
whatsoever, even one drawn freehand, even one with certain gaps and
disconnections, can be built out of a series of sine waves, that is, ultimately, out of circles: not just little bits of circles that might look
straight, but a whole chain of circles rotating at different rates and of
different sizes; and all complete, so as to leave sinusoidal traces in
their wakes. This is Fourier's Theorem.
The resemblance between the sums of sines and circles raises the
question: to what extent can we consider Fourier to be Ptolemy's heir
and disciple?
Fourier
Fourier was interested in a very earthly problem: how do we
understand the way in which heat flows in bodies? Nothing to do
with the heavens, where heat must travel in a different way, because
of the emptiness of space; nothing apparently to do with music
either. Fourier, like virtually everyone since Newton, followed
Newton's footsteps. When a force acts on a mass it accelerates proportionately, says Newton, and this acceleration is derivative from
distance traveled in time. Unravel the acceleration equation and you
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
will be able to find where the body will be at any time. Physics thereby becomes a problem in mathematics.
Even though heat cannot be said to move like a Newtonian
mass, nor be subject to Newtonian force, Fourier adopted the basic
procedure that physics has derived from Newton's more geometricseeming model, viz., cast all motion into the mathematical form that
the calculus calls a "gifferential equation;' and then "solve" this
equation. That is, in this case, the fact that the rate of heat transfer
between bodies is proportional to the difference of their temperatures-which can be verified by experience-is sufficient to determine an equation describing the instantaneous flow of heat in any
body generally. To find the temperature anywhere in a particular
body, we need to know its shape and the manner in which it is heated or cooled, and then solve the general equation with these conditions in mind.
The problem of time's decay he resolved very simply. One can
maintain the temperature differences in an object artificially until the
flow of heat setdes down into a steady state. Then focus on the now
unvarying temperatures as functions of position within the object.
Factor temporal cooling back in again after the spatial analysis is
complete, if you wish to.
Fourier's analysis depends gready on a device he inherited from
medieval philosophers like Nicolas of Oresme.
Whilst the temperatures are permanent and the
source [of heatJ remains, if at every point [of a mean
plane in the object-a ring in this case J an ordinate
be raised perpendicular to the plane of the [object],
whose length is proportional to the fixed temperature
at that point, the curved line which passes through
the ends of these ordinates will represent the permanent state of the temperatures, and it is very easy to
determine by analysis the nature of this line.
�STEPHENSON
81
That is, the curved line formed in the imagination out of the
parade of temperature within the object discloses what Oresme
calls "the quantity of this quality:' What is so original and illuminating about Oresme's procedure is that all kinds of problemsespecially problems in the physical world-become by this means
problems in a special geometry: the geometry of representation. It
is a geometry that we tend to assbciate with the name of Descartes,
but perhaps owes even more allegiance to the world of Galileo,
whose constructions sometimes resemble those of Oresme very
closely. In the geometry of representation, lines stand for and measure nongeometric quantities, and the geometric relationships
among these lines tell us facts about objects that have nothing
directly to do with their geometry, facts normally couched in the
language of velocity, or heat, or power. It has its roots, of course,
in the physical treatises of Archimedes, and even in Book V of the
Elements. But under the aegis of more recent mathematical techniques, and especially of the calculus, representative figures introduced virtually a new science. A geometric construction such as a
tangent now acquires a meaning very different from its meaning in
the world of Apollonius or Euclid, a meaning that depends on
interpretation of its geometry.
So when Fourier discovers that "a curved line arbitrarily drawn"
can be built out of an infinite series of sines or cosines, his discovery reaches far beyond the topic of heat. It encompasses anything at
all that can be represented by such a curve. Nevertheless, Fourier
must have drawn his initial inspiration in large part from the analysis of the vibrating string, in which representation and portrait coalesce in the same figure.
The vibrating string had been the subject of great interest and
even hot debate for nearly a century before Fourier began to work on
heat. Two very different solutions had been proposed. Fourier chose
one, and then had to defend himself against the advocates of the rival
solution. He did so by showing that the two solutions, for all their
differences in appearance, were in fact equivalent.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
What do these two rivals look like? Euler and d' Alembert insisted that any function whatever will satisfy the differential equation for
the string, provided that its argument have the form, x-Wt or x+wt.
Daniel Bernoulli cited aural evidence to support his claim that the
function must be a series of sine (or cosine) waves, independent of
time, each of them corresponding to a harmonic component within
the musical timbre.
'lj!(x,t) = F(x-wt)-F(x+ wt)
(1)
'lj!( x,t) = (a 1cosx + a2cos2x + a 3cos3x
+ a4 cos4x + .. , )sin cot
(2)
Euler's equation describes waves of arbitrary shape moving to the
right and left along the string; Bernoulli's an accumulation of simple
waves in the form of cosine curves which do not progress either right
or left but only grow and diminish periodically. Euler and
d' Alembert cite visual evidence; Bernoulli, musical experience. The
first solution seems too general; the secon'd too specific. It is hard to
see how two such different kinds of function could solve the same
problem. Hence the debate, which engaged many mathematicians of
that time. Fourier's choice of Bernoulli's solution, when the same
equation turned up in his analysis of heat flow, inevitably thrust him
into the same fight. Consequently, the Parisian Academy of Science,
dominated as it was by members of the opposing sect, summarily
rejected his first memoir on heat. It took fifteen years to win acceptance for his theory.
But Fourier's defense of the sine series did more than exonerate
Bernoulli, it also unconsciously restored Ptolemy's vision to science.
For a sine wave, we have already shown, is a kind of rolling image of
a circle (not of a rolling circle-that would be a cycloid-but of the
displacement of a point on a rotating circle stretched out along a
time-line1). While this is not precisely Ptolemy's scheme, it shares with
Ptolemy one essential point: all motions can be derived from uniform
�STEPHENSON
83
circular motions by simple superposition. And rc. recasting Ptolemy's
by
project in the form of functions and equations;J'ourier enabled himself to prove what Ptolemy seems to have believed, though without
proo£ namely that any i:urved line whatsoever can be constructedfrom the sum of
circles of the appropriate size moving at the appropriate rate. So the demonstration of this proposition makes Fourier not only Ptolemy's heir, but his
champion as well, assuming for the moment that Ptolemy would have
considered such demonstration as grist for his celestial mill.
Fourier's Theorem may be stated in the form of an equation,
<j>(x)
= a1sin(x) + a2sin(2x) + a3 sin(3x) + ...
(3)
where the function, <j>, is arbitrary. It may even correspond to "a
curved line arbitrarily drawn;' according to Fourier. The range of x
for which this equivalence holds is also arbitrary, though if <I> is not
itself periodic, the series will match it only over some finite interval.
We can substitute cosines for sines, or include both kinds of trigonometric functions without changing the essential nature of this series,
provided only that we alter the numerical coefficients, a1, a2, a3, ...
appropriately.
In its formulaic form, however, the proposition may look more
daunting than it is. Let me therefore make full use of his liberty of
graphical representation to illustrate its meaning. The equation above
will exhibit several of its features clearly in graphical form. Thus, each
sine term in the series has its own wave, with loops increasing in number as the multiple in its argument, and size as its coefficient. The sum
itself is the sum of all the ordinates of each of the component sines
to form the ordinate of a composite curve, and it is this curve that
Fourier says will match that corresponding to the function <j>.
Consider the example of the musical string from Fourier's point of
view. It may be sounded by plucking, that is, by being drawn up at one
point and releasecl. The initial shape of this string, therefore, would be
a triangle, and this triangle must itself therefore be one of the shapes
that can be synthesized out of sine waves.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
1.5
0.5
.25x
0
.75x
F~.l
1.5
Fig.2
1.2
1•
Fig. 3
�STEPHENSON
85
Let us begin the synthesis. The loop of a single sine wave approximating this triangle obviously falls short in the middle and exceeds
at each side. (fig. 1) Add in a second sine wave of one third the wave
l~ngth and see how much closer to the triangle this composite has
become (fig. 2).
Note how the approximation improves with' the addition of
another of one fifth the }"ave length (fig. 3). Now the algebraic representation of what we have just done is as follows,
sin(x)- (1/32 )sin(3x)
+ (1/52)sin(5x)- ... ,
(4)
which clearly reproduces the form of sine series projected by
Fourier's general equation (3). But in this example another feature of
Fourier's series emerges with remarkable clarity: not only are
Ptolemy's circles contained within it in the form of sine functions,
Pythagoras's numbers also ornament its expression. Here one only
sees the odd numbers, but other curve matches include the even as
well. Let me, to commemorate this ancient insight, call any series of
whole number multiples of a variable a "Pythagorean series:'
For an equation describing the shape of a plucked string such a
harvest of harmonic numbers may not be surprising, since
Pythagoras anticipated this aspect of Fourier's theory in a musical
context. Yet once we recall that the triangular shape we have been
approaching with our series can measure the intensity of many different physical quantities-including the temperatures at the end of
a heated bar, for example, which is a problem specifically probed by
Fourier-then the true compass of his theorem should reveal itsel£
Fourier becomes more than usually rhapsodic in describing this theoretical transformation of heat into music:
The problems of the theory of heat present so many
examples of the simple and constant dispositions which
spring from the general laws of narure; and if the order
whieh is established in these phenomena could be
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
grasped by our senses, it would produce in us an impression comparable to the sensation of a musical sound.
He seems to have united the astronomical and musical spheres,
and extended the domain of both to the entire physical world.
Functions and the Infinite
To explain the nature of Fourier's argument in more detail, I must
examine two concepts essential to it, If there is a convincing purely
geometric argument that any line whatever can be formed from the
sum of an infinite number of circles, I do not know it, and Fourier
relies on the concepts of "infinite series" and "fimction" for his proo£
There is a long and interesting history connected with these ideas,
Return for a moment to the quarrel among Fourier's predecessors
over the mathematics of the vibrating string. Much more was at stake in
this debate than just the phenomenon of vibration itsel£ Euler claimed
that <I> could be any function whatever, even a discontinuous on~ whereas
Bernoulli's appears to be as continuous as the sine waves that make it up.
But with continuity the very meaning of the word "fimction" comes into
question if it is to replace line and figure as the central object of mathematics. Ever since Leibniz first used the Latin junctio with a special significance, this substitution has been a noticeable tendency in that science,
In his early works the term retained a geometric character, and
included lines, such as tangents and perpendiculars to tangents under
the same rubric. But later Leibniz seems to have forgotten these early
experiments with the term, or else decided that its true sense emerged
more in algebraic expression, Towards the end of his life, he goes so
far as to claim that it was the very concept of function that completed the Cartesian revolution, by extending geometry into a region
that requires the differential calculus to complete it:
Now it certainly never entered the mind of any one else
before Leibniz to institute the notation peculiar to the
�STEPHENSON
87
new calrulus by which the imagination is freed from a
perpetual reference to diagrams, as was made by Vieta and
Descartes in their ordinary or Apollonian. geometry;
moreover, the more advanced parts pertaining to
Archimedean geometry, and to the lines which were called
"mechanical" by Descartes, were excluded by the latter.
But now by the calrulus of Leibniz the whole of geometry is subjected to analytical computation, and those transcendent lines that Descartes called mechanical are also
reduced to equations chosen to suit them, by considering
the differences [differentiaeJ dx, ddx, etc., and the sums
that are the inverses of these differences, as fimctions of
the x's; and this, by merely introducing the calrulus,
whereas before this no other fimctions were admissible
but x, xx, x3, vx, etc., that is to say, powers and roots.
This excerpt comes from a work called Historia et Or(go Calculi differentia/is, that is "the History and Origin of the Differential
Calculus:' It was written towards the end of his life by someone purporting to be a friend-but most probably by Leibniz hirnself.-to
defend him against the accusation of plagiarism made by Newton
and his followers. Much is said in this interesting-if polemicalwork about the significance of Leibniz's notation (the d's and elongated s's still in use today), about the relationship between the finite
and the infinitesimal, and about the various mathematical insights
Leibniz claims to have discovered during his life. The question of
who best deserves credit for the discovery of the calculus is an interesting one, but outside my purpose. Whether or not it decides this
issue, the Historia does articulate some of the ideas that (though from
hindsight, to be sure) Leibniz considered to have been essential to the
development of the new science. Among these ideas, his insistence on
the importance of replacing geometry with symbolic or algebraic
forms dominated the calculus for the next two centuries, centering
around the function concept original to him.
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But the most striking phrase in the portion of Leibniz's defense
which I have just quoted is the claim that by his notation "the imagination is freed from a perpetual reference to diagrams:' What, afi:er all, is
wrong with diagrams? A mathematics textbook without a single picture
is a bleak landscape indeed to the beginner. Nevertheless, many textbooks
and treatises have prided themselves on just such pretended purity.
Now we do .not havr to look very far to find philosophers as well
as mathematicians who distrust the senses. To rely on notoriously fallible organs to decide matters of consequence is to build our scientific
house on shifting sand. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is just a
moderns preference for logical purity that moved him to propose his
notation. Leibniz loves logic and symbolic language, yet it is not so
much their rigor that delights him, but rather their power to reach
broadly to the whole universe of mental objects. He does not worry so
much about the senses deceiving us, as about them limiting us. For
Leibniz did not attend to the rigor of his calculus even as much as
many of his contemporaries would have liked. There are times when he
blatantly calls his differentials "infinitely small;' and then, apparently
unsure of their status as such, claims that anyone who wishes can give
them finite magnitude, for it is only their proportion that matters.'
I wish I had the time to say more about Leibniz's calculus; to examine, for example, his claim that "the infinitely small" is "a kind of useful fiction"; the implications of admitting fiction into the realm of
mathematics, and the ways in which fiction might fit into his general
philosophy. But this pursuit would distract us from my present goal,
which is to explain how Fourier might be said to fulfill Ptolemy's project, and how the concept of "function" plays a role in his argument.
Without pictures, what can we rely on? Logic and magnitude: the
correlation of quantities. These are the province proper of the function. Even so, it took a long time for it to rid itself of some unexamined mathematical traditions it had inherited from geometry and even
from algebra. It took a long time for someone like Bolzano, for example, to realize that the continuity of a function need not and should
not presuppose the same kind of intuitive "betweenness" as did the
�STEPHENSON
89
continuity of a line. It took a long time for someone like Fourier to
decide that a function need not be the expression of a single, simple
law, that a function could be made up out of other functions, even an
infinite number of them.. For Fourier to complete his argument, he
had to make room for an unlimited number of sines or cosines.
Series give us a way of embracing the infinite as old as the ages
of Euclid or Aristotle. O~e can, says Aristotle, divide a line infinitely in potentiality but not in actuality. That is, we can imagine the operation
of dividing-say bisecting-a line as a repeatable process. We do not
have to stop and ask for new instructions at every division, since the
instructions are always the same: just keep on dividing by two. If
Achilles can't catch the tortoise it is only because he traps himself
mentally in such endless bisections. But our own failure ever to reach
an ultimate half becomes transformed into a triumph over the infinite by the very uniformity of procedure and our certainty of being
able to make the remaining pieces of our line as small as we please by
continued subdivision. Inability to know the infinite dissolves into
perfect comprehension of any step along the way.
A familiar example from geometry is Euclid's filling of the circle.
Take a regular polygon inscribed within it, he says. It will occupy most
of that circle. If we double the number of its sides it will increase in
size, but never become larger than the circumscribing circle itsel£
Nevertheless, he establishes by careful reasoning, a sufficient number
of doublings must bring us closer to that circle than any given magnitude. Hence another potential infinity arises, a sequence of essentially identical operations by which a polygon draws ever closer to the
circle without surpassing it. And in the ratio and number books he
also confronts infinity: there are an unlimited number of primes;
ratios are the same when the infinite sets of equimultiples of their
terms always bear the same relationships to one another.
But let us be precise. Euclid never uses such language. The number
of primes he proves to be greater than any given number. The equimultiples of the Fifth Definition of Book V are "any;' not "every"
equimultiple. The "infmite" is not a noun. It is not even an adjective.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
90
"Greater (or less) than any given magnitude" is the phrase that recurs
where we are tempted to read "infinite:' As Aristotle says, there is no
actual but only a potential infinite. Thus an "infinite series" would be
a misnomer for Euclid or his predecessors and successors. Much is
concealed by the ellipsis or the "etc:' when we see a series written so
provocatively with their aid: "1 +2+3+4+5+6+7+ ... etc:' But the misnomer and the deceptive language gained advocates nonetheless.
The contemplation of the potential infinite in the form of a
repeated operation might give us hope of demonstrating Fourier's
Theorem. Numbers are not the only possible components of infinite
series. Since we want to add circles or sine waves, we will have to
move up from numbers to functions. But before we do so, please note
one characteristic of the examples given so far that we should not
take for granted: we have embraced the infinite in the form of a
repeated process but we should not therefore tacitly believe that the
operations must always be of the same kind. A difficult quantity like
Jt can often be approximated by a series that seems to build rationally. Leibniz was so proud of his discovery of the series:
:n:/4 = 1 - 1/3 +
1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...
that he called it numerus Dei without a hint of any arrogance: "the number of God:' Yet a decimal expression for Jt is itself an "infinite series":
3
+ 1/10 + 4/100 + 1/1000 + 5/10000 + 9/100000 +
...
and no sequence of its digits will ever repeat continually. It should
remain a question for us whether every "infinite series" can be recast
into a repeating form.
The Proof
Armed with functions and a grip on infinite series we can at least
sketch Fourier's proo£ Without invoking many of the technical tools of
�STEPHENSON
91
the integral calculus, we can glimpse its power through the graph of a continuous fUnction. Fourier himself relies on this imagt,. Now look again at
the series (3) that he claims will approximate any function whatever:
<j>(x) = a1sin(x)
+ a2sin(2x) + a3sin(3x) + ...
All that distinguishes, one Fourier series from another is the size
of the coefficients a1, a2, a3,••. of the sine (or cosine) terms. His
demonstration, therefore, depends on the assurance with whicll these
numbers can be found for any gi~en function. Now multiply both
sides of this equation by some one of the sine terms, and integrate
the product between 0 and :n:. A small bit of labor in the fields of the
calculus will convince you that every term on the right will become
zero except the one corresponding to the particular sine we have chosen. That is,
the integrated series reduces to the following simple equation:
J;(x)sin(nx)dx = anf: sin2(nx)dx =an :n:/2
which tells us that any coefficient an is proportional to a definite
integral based on the original function, <j>, and a sine. Since <j> is arbitrary, you might think that we can say no more until we know its specific form. However, Fourier thinks of a definite integral as a number that can measure the area surmounted by a curve. If <j> is any drawable function whatever, he says, multiplying its values by the simultaneous values of a sine function in Cartesian fashion will not destroy
its ability to defme areas. And that is all we need to know to be convinced that the definite integral exists, that it equals some real number, and therefore so does the coefficient proportional to that integral. That is, a Fourier series for any sucll function can be established
even without actually calculating its coefficients. The existence of the coefficients guarantee the validity of the series, so to speak.
This concludes the only truly technical part of this lecture. From
this sketcll of Fourier's argument I hope you can gather at least this:
any drawable function whatever, any function whose graph is made up
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of continuous pieces (and that includes most functions you can
name, and most that you can't) can be approximated as closely as you
please by a Pythagorean series of sines or cosines with numerical
coefficients (see fig. 4, below).
Before I conclude with some speculations about the greater significance of their work, let me compare and contrast the ancient and
the modern champion of circles. Both find an underlying simplicity in
nature in that form, but they do not regard this simplicity In exactly
the same way. For Ptolemy the hypothesis of circular motion amounts
to a necessary condition for knowledge. He never draws the orbit of
a planet that results from the compounding of circles. A separate consideration of each anomalistic circle will give us a glimpse of the
divine, he believes, and so lead us into the Platonic world of Being and
Truth. Fourier makes no such declaration of faith. Unlike Ptolemy he
is interested in the paths and shapes corresponding to functions.
Circles confront him from within the phenomena willy-nilly, or rather
spring unexpectedly from the mathematical analysis of these phe-
X
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STEPHENSON
nomena. He seizes the opportunity to generalize this analysis far
beyond its origins in the study of heat; however, he insists that "the
profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical
discoveries" because it excludes "vague questions and calculation without issue:' The very first phrase of Fourier's Treatise is, "Primary causes are unknown to us:' I do not know whether Ptolemy would share
this declaration of ignorance without qualification, or disparage
"vague questions" as impatiently as Fourier, but he does not attempt
to find the source of the celestial movements he describes so carefully. Despite his introductory homage to Aristotle, who devoted a good
part of his Physics and Metaphysics to the discovery of causes on Earth
and in the sky, Ptolemy seems content with the analysis of the form
of those motions. Both he and Fourier ultimately rejoice somewhere
just short of cause, in the knowledge that the world is fruitful in ideas,
and hence will lead us to pursue the truth. However complicated the
analysis which discovers them, the outcome raises our sights in a satisfying way. But is there more to circles than meets the eye?
Aristotle again: Circles of Thought
One of Aristotle's deepest insights illuminates the edge of his
physics. The circular motion of the heavens--of the starry sphere that
bears day and night in its revolutions, he says, can rise only out of the
desire for knowledge. There is a connection at its periphery between
the world of nature and the world of thought, and the longing of the
one for the other moves it. But since truth has no direction, the only
kind of movement appropriate to such a desire is circular: rotation,
movement in place, which is both motion and motionlessness.
Can we take Aristotle's vision seriously? There is, after all, no
edge to our universe, so we have been told. Nor can Copernicus's
arguments fail to persuade us that the stars do not really revolve
around us. Nevertheless, that thinking does involve a circular motion
of some kind, and that it can move the world: these are both propositions that I think can and should be defended.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The latter is obvious. Thought changes things. We see that in most
of the objects around us, and in ourselves. "All men desire to know;'
and that desire moves us to explore and build and observe and draw
and measure and calculate and read and write and tame and talk. It's all
very unnatural, if by "natural" I mean merely the thoughtless spread of
matter and energy. But once a being capable of thinking begins to act
on nature.and on his O!Vn nature, then the whole world changes.
You might want to object that I have distorted Aristotle's conception, that he intended the stars rather than us to be moved quite
literally by their lust for truth. That is why they circle so swiftly:
because they are the closest to and have the clearest perception of
knowledge. But I do not think that Aristotle meant the stars to be so
separate from us. Of a different stuff, yes, one that does· not impede
their vision and their action as much as ours does. But it is not just
the distant stars that are spun by the unmoved mover, it is the world
as a whole. After all, the circuit that brings round the same constellations every night also brings us cycles of the suns warmth and light
that inspire all living creatures to birth and growth. The "world as a
whole'' includes the sublunar sphere, which, even if it itself does not
rotate, does participate in the desire that continually brings everything capable of embodying a specific virtue and excellence into the
maturity that realizes those ideals in a cycle of life.
I do not mean that Aristotle believes in progress beyond the individual, except incidentally. That is, the "world as a whole'' does not get
any closer to the object of its desire. He can see no providence in history. Perhaps that is because the ttuth is infmitely far away or infinitely
rich, so that whatever knowledge we human beings acquire is insignificant with respect to what remains to learn. Or perhaps Aristotle is a historical pessimist: whatever progress our race achieves is bound to be
undone by war or some other disaster. Or perhaps the bits of knowledge that we acquire and pass on to our heirs does accumulate, but this
accumulation does not count as progress, because it does not change our
essential nature. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that the world both
moves continually and stays the same. That is why its motion is circular.
�STEPHENSON
95
But even without these arguments from Nature, one might be persuaded that thought in itself requires a kind of circular inotion, especially if by "thought" one means self-conscious thought. There may be, as
Aristotle insists, a kind of thought that does not move at all: contemplation, the present enjoyment of truth known and grasped in itsel£ The
embrace of such moments, when for an instant we glimpse the truth,
and which Aristotle calls t)le most divine and happy activity possible, is
VO'I]O't~ voflcrero~ What better circularity could be found than such an
expression, "thinking of thinking;' even if it is not a moving circle.
Most of our thinking does move-from step to step in an argument, from one perception or apperception to another. Each of these
steps should form a unit, a momentary resting place like the primary
one of contemplation. But the motion of a whole argument also does
close upon itself the way a circle does. Any sentence ends with.a period, that is to say it is periodic, and to utter a meaningful sentence is
to "have in the beginning the end in mind;' as Aristotle says.
Sentences necessarily mirror thought; some would even say that we
think in sentences. Speech, therefore, corroborates the claim that even
discursive thinking is a circular motion.
The self of self-consciousness, or of self-evidence are one and
the same. Even when we engage in the deepest kinds of thinking,
when we "lose ourselves," the unity of self accompanies the activity.
You need not attend consciously to the self that thinks for it to be
present and for it to take part in forming the thought, in making it
one thought, your thought. The same circularity that is evident when
we do contemplate ourselves is always there at the periphery, if not
in the center, of our thinking.
Ptolemy claims that the study of the stars will bring us closer to
"the things that are always what they are:' Aristotle's metaphysics
should make it clear why movement in circles forms a necessary part
of this dialectic. By analyzing the motions of the planets into component circular motions, we expose the nature of thinking itself, and
thereby bring nature and humanity together into a single science. A
book or a lecture becomes a world, with its own intellectual stars and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
planets, and the world becomes a dialogue. Each moment in this
dialectical chain is a tiny mental circle, adding to and correcting the
scientific legacy and conversation that precedes it.
What does science look like through Ptolemy's eyes? An endeavor
to discover thought in the universe, that is to say, ultimately: objects of
contemplation. To find a simple circle of movement within the celestial manifold is to focu$ on the truth that causes that movement, and
it is always the pleasant reward of our effort to dwell with that truth
until some other anomaly beckons us to find its center and compass.
Fourier's world appears both similar to and different from
Ptolemy's. Circles churn beneath its surface, and numbers as well, and
it is through these that our understanding comes to understand, much
as Ptolemy says. But for Fourier the process is essentially infinite: the
truth lies not within these units of thought, as it does for Ptolemy, but
in the whole that we can never reach but always approximate. The
musical tone that led him to his theorem requires such an infinity: the
ideal vibrating string pulses simultaneously in all its infinite parts.
The vibrating string is not yet music, only musical: the promise of
music. Thus perhaps Fourier's world is a world still to be composed
and never finished, whereas Ptolemy faces us immediately with the
true and changeless world behind appearances at each moment of discovery. Since nature mirrors the world of thought for both these men,
however, the science of circle and synthesis, of trial and error, of hit
and miss and correction, of guess and refmement always reaches
beyond physics into the realm of everything that thought can touch.
Notes
1. The "sine curve" in its first incarnation was called "companion to
the cycloid:' C£ Roberval.
2. This is almost exactly the procedure of Newton, who recommends
a kind of imaginary microscope in lemma VII of his Principia to display the relationship of vanishing quantities.
�t
A Forgotten Revolution
Curtis Wilson
This book is about the mathematics, science, and technology of
the late fourth, third, and second centuries BC. In its detailed argumentation, it challenges many long and widely held views. Its thesis
is extraordinary.
The "forgotten revolution" of Russo's title signifies nothing less
than the first emergence of science, both exact or deductive science
and experimental science. It took place, according to Russo, not in
modern times but in the Hellenistic Age, with the work of Euclid,
Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Ctesibius, Herophilus, Archimedes,
Apollonius, Seleucus, Hipparchus, and others. Conventionally the
Hellenistic Age has been dated from the death of Alexander in 323
BC to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans in 30 BC, but in science,
according to Russo, it may be said to have essentially ended by 145
BC, the year in which Ptolemy VIII, for political motives and possibly
as an agent of Roman policy, systematically destroyed the Greek scientific community in Alexandria (see Polybius, History, XXXIV, 14).
A 180-year efflorescence of science, virtually extinguished not only as
an historical phase, but also in historical memory: such is Russo's
theme. Fragments of and clues to this efflorescence survived, but
often distorted by later misinterpretation. The science of the 17th
century, according to Russo, came about in considerable measure as
a recovery of Hellenistic science.
Prongs of this thesis that may astonish are the following. Russo,
while granting that articulate rationality was an achievement and
legacy of the Greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and that this
rationality was an essential element in Hellenistic science, argues that
Lucio Russo, La rivoluzione dimenticata. Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1996.
Curtis Wilson is tutor emeritus at St. John's College.
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THE ST. JOHN'SREVIEW
it evolved into exact science only in the time of Euclid. (This claim
presupposes Russo's definition of "exact science," which I'll come to
shortly.)
Secondly, exact science according to Russo emerged out of the
interaction of Greek rationality with the technical cultures of the
empires that Alexander conquered-above all the Egyptian empire.
Egyptian technology at the time, an affair of lore and tradition that
had accumulated over centuries, was superior to Greek technology.
Alexander's aim was to Hellenize the world. In the newly conquered
empires, as ruled by him and after his death by his successors, Greek
intellectuals were put in administrative roles. Under the beneficient
reigns of Ptolemy I Soter (ruling from 323 to 283 BC) and Ptolemy II
Philadelphos (ruling from 283 to 246 Be), Greek administrators were
challenged to rationalize and improve upon the technological
processes they were required to supervise. Russo sees the invention of
both exact and experimental science as a response to that challenge.
Thirdly, according to Russo, as the Romans, scarcely out of barbarism and totally ignorant of science, conquered the Mediterranean
world, the maintenance of scientific culrure became increasingly difficult and finally impossible. The transmission of scientific culture by
oral instruction was thus interrupted; and when post-Hellenistic
writers like Vitruvius, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, and Seneca came to
write of science and scientists, they failed to understand the terminology and methodology of the Hellenistic works that had come
down to them, and remained largely ignorant of their true mathematical and experimental content. It is a mistake, in Russo's view, to
paint a picture of a unified Greco-Roman culture, as Plutarch did in
his Parallel Lives.
To argue for such a sweeping thesis, Russo has to be a textual
archaeologist, a detective who ferrets out and connects together a
multitude of small dues. There is much in his book that is admittedly conjectural; much that the reader may wish to investigate further. In the following, I give references to relevant pages to help the
reader in locating the pieces of Russo's argument referred to.
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99
An early question must be: What does. Russo mean by "exact science"? His definition is rather restrictive (p. 31f£). "Exact science;' as
he proposes to use the term, has to do not with concrete objects of
the real world but with specific theo'retical entities, for instance angles
and segments in geometry, or temperature and entropy in thermodynamics; these do not exist in nature, but are cultural products, originating in human activity., The theories of "exact science" have a rigorously axiomatic-deductive structure; they start from a few fundamental enunciations (postulates or axioms or principles), and deduce
consequences from them by strictly logical inference. Expertise in a
theory of this kind means being able to 'pose and solve exercises or
problems formulated within th~ theory's ambit, and agree on the correctness of the solutions; the existence of such expertise is an identifying characteristic of "exact science:' Finally, applications to the real
world are made possible by "rules of correspondence" between the
entities of the theory and concrete objects. Technology and exact science, in Russo's understanding, are distinct bu1; go hand in hand.
Is there a documented use of "exact science" in classical, preHellenistic times? Russo says No (p. 39). Eudemus, a disciple of
Aristotle, wrote a history of geometry (known only through references to it by Proclus in his commentary on the first book of Euclid's
Elements), in which he assigned the discovery of certain geometrical
theorems to earlier thinkers (p. 51£). For instance, he makes Thales
the discoverer of the theorem that triangles with one side and the
adjacent angles equal are equal, because Thales is said to have used
this proposition to calculate the distance of ships observed at sea.
But, counters Russo, one could use this proposition, accepting it as
true, without having formally proved it. More generally, Russo
doubts there was a motive for demonstrating apparently obvious
truths (like the equality of vertical angles, or the equality of the
halves into which a diameter divides a circle, "theorems" that
Eudemus also assigns to Thales) before it was discovered that deductions could lead to quite unsuspected truths. The deduction of theorems probably began in Plato's time, but the notion of a unified
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
axiomatic-deductive system hadn't yet solidified (p. 55). None of
Euclid's five postulates is attested in pre-Euclidean geometry, nor are
there any alternative sets of postulates documented as having been set
forth before Euclid (p. 65).
It is thus Russo's view that one author, Euclid, with a unitary
aim, put together Euclid's Elements, which became the paradigm of a
deductive system for a\1 succeeding ages. But he suspects that the
text as we have it contains interpolations. Among these may be the
definitions of u point," uline," u straight line," u surface;' and u plane
surface" at the start of Book I, which possibly stem from Hero of
Alexandria, of the first century AD (pp. 235-44). These definitions
are "realistic;' implying the existence of their objects in the world,
rather than nominal like the other definitions of Book I. Euclid,
Russo believes, had a "constructivist" rather than a "realistic" conception of his geometry (pp. 71-75). The first three postulates state
the allowable operations: to draw a line from any point to any point,
to extend the line, and to describe a circle. These operations are the
clear and explicit transposition to the level of mathematical theory
of the operations normally executed on papyrus, using pen and ink,
straight edge and compasses. To be sure, there is an enormous difference between mathematics and engineering design; but the postulates "model" what the actual instruments do, so that it is perfectly
clear whence the postulates derive and what the "rules of correspondence" are that permit the mathematics to be applied. By means
of his unitary starting point and strict adherence to deduction, the
mathematician becomes independent of both philosophical speculation and immediate engineering concerns (p. 57). But the relevance
of mathematical science to engineering applications, Russo believes,
was something Hellenistic society was unlikely to let the mathematician forget.
According to Russo, it is an indication of Euclid's constructivism
that he uses the term <IT\JlELOV (sign, mark, token) for "point"; the
earlier term had been <nt'YJ.la. The latter term, Russo states, has like
the Latin punctum the realistic sense of a prick or stab, whereas a
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101
01)fJ£tOV or sign is a cultural construction or an interpretation of one
thing as meaning another. Archimedes, Apollonius of Perga, and
apparently Hipparchus continued to use 01)flEtov for "point:' but in
the post-Hellenistic period there was a rerum to the earlier term with
its realistic connotation (pp. 72-73).
Another indication of Euclid's constructivism is that all entities
in the Elements are constr';'cted on the basis of the initial postulates
(pp. 73-74). His inclusion of the fifth or parallel postulate among his
postulates, without any attempt to demonstrate its truth or otherwise
comment on it, is consonant with a high level of sophistication. He
had evidently found the postulate to be necessary for the derivation
of the properties of the figures constructed. His formulation of the
posrulate is sparing, ascetic; it does not speak of infinity ( c£ pp. 61,
331). The ascetic choice of basis suggests an artfulness that has
reached mature self-awareness, that knows it can proceed only by
construction.
But what about the often alleged 'platonic' inspiration of Euclid's
Elements? Let us distinguere, as the schoolmen used to say.
Mathematicians, in pursuing their deductions, discover truths hitherto unsuspected. One such discovery was that there were five and only
five of the so-called 'platonic bodies; the convex polyhedra that the
Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus uses for the imagined construction of
the universe. Do such 'platonic bodies' have an "independent existence," whatever that might mean? Not independent of the constructivist starting point, if Russo is right. He is urging that the
Hellenistic mathematicians were conscious, and perhaps even proud,
of their independence of metaphysical speculation.
At the same time, Russo believes, they were sharply aware ofthe
engineering relevance of their propositions. Euclid's Elements had widespread application to the solution of architectural and engineering
problems. The standard method for solving a problem was to dra'f a
diagram, and apply the propositions of Euclid's Book II (which
Russo, like Heath, calls "geometrical algebra"). The method can be
comparable in accuracy with the slide rule, the standard engineering
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
calculative device before the age of the digital calculator. The modern
complaint about the ancient'aesthetic' preference for straight lines and
circles is thus, according to Russo, badly misplaced (pp. 57-60). In the
technological context in which Russo places it, the constructivism he
sees in Euclid's Elements fits comfortably. Russo finds evidence of the
same constructivism in Apollonius of Perga (pp. 72, 113-14).
Russo's sense of tl,e technological context is supported by the
surviving Hellenistic mathematical treatises that are explicitly concerned with sciences we would call "applied." Euclid's Optics is a
deductive science having to do with visual perception, and permitting
the quantitative determination of the apparent sizes of objects seen
from a given distance and given standpoint (pp. 79-83). The fUndamental 'elements' to be considered here are il\vet~, straight lines collocated in a cone with apex at the eye. It is by considering how
objects are placed in this cone that we understand how they appear
perspectivally. The term OIJIEt~ in Euclid's treatise has usually been
translated "visual rays:' Beginning in the fourth century AD, we find
complaints about Euclid's claiming that vision occurs by visual rays
issuing from the eye, rather than by rays of light entering the eye. But
this, says Russo, is misinterpretation. Euclid is not proposing a physical cause of vision, but a geometrical theory of how things appear,
which requires a consideration of the visual cone, the Oljlet~ or lines
of sight with apex at the eye. The use in paintings of geometrical
rules of perspective is documented for Euclid's time, but not earlier;
geometrical perspective was rediscovered during the Renaissance in
the context of an interest in Hellenistic culture (p. 81 ).
The treatise "On the equilibrium of plane figures" by
Archimedes (ca. 287 BC- 212 Be) gives us what we call the "law of the
lever;' and shows how to determine the "centers of gravity" of variously shaped plane figures (pp. 91-94). Archimedes' choice of "plane
figures'' rather than "weights'' is perhaps a way of insisting on the
quantifiability of his subject matter. In this treatise he lays the basis
for the determination of the "mechanical advantage" of simple
machines, making possible the quantitative design of machines for
�WILSON
103
the lifting of a given weight through a given distance with the avail"
able force. Aristotle had asserted that a single rna!"' could not move a
ship; a century later, Archimedes showed how by an appropriate
machine the single man could do it. Don't believe, says Russo, the
picture that Plutarch gives us of Archimedes as an otherworldly theorist; Plutarch was writing two and a half centuries after Archimedes
was killed by a Roman soldier, and knew little or nothing of
Archimedes' mathematics.
Similarly, Archimedes' treatise "On Floating Bodies'' laid the scientific basis for naval architecture, leading, according to Russo, to a
major increase in size of ships (pp. 94-97, 125-27). Other Hellenistic
sciences had similar engineering relevance: hydraulics, for instance,
for the delivery of water under pressure to elevated citadels as in
Pergamon (pp. 130-33); and catoptrics for the construction of parabolic mirrors, employed in the lighthouses that now came to be built
in the larger ports of the Mediterranean, including the great lighthouse on Faro in the harbor of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders
of the world, projecting a light that could be seen for 48 kilometers
(pp. 127-29).
The Hellenistic Age, Russo believes, saw an unprecedented
development and application of technology. He reviews the evidence in his Chapter 6 (pp. 179-200); it comes mainly from administrative records and twentieth-century excavations. A good deal of
it was assembled by Rostovzev in the early decades of this century
(see his Social and Economic History ?f the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 1941).
The early Ptolemies energetically pursued a policy of increasing
agricultural production. The areas cultivated under royal control
were increased by the draining of swamplands and the irrigation of
the edges of the desert. New machines, with iron parts (possibly
including geared wheels, which are first documented for this time),
were introduced for the raising of water and the sowing and reaping
of grain. New kinds of wheat were imported; old and new kinds
were hybridized. That this policy was successful is suggested by the
following facts (p. 190):
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(a) In late Pharaonic (pre-Ptolemaic) times, the population of
Egypt is estimated at three million.
(b) In 1836 it was estimated that the agricultural lands of Egypt,
if utilized to the maximum, could support a population of eight million; by 1882, ·as a result of economic reforms, the population of
Egypt had increased to 6,800,000,
(c) Alexandria, fo4nded by Alexander in 331 BC, had in .50 BC
about 500,000 inhabitants; it was the largest city in the Mediterranean
world. In the first century AD, the population of Egypt was estimated on the basis of fiscal records to be 7,500,000.
And Egypt during the Hellenistic period not only consumed
grain but exported it on a large scale, along with many industrial
products such as glass, ceramics, paper, textiles, perfumes, and pharmaceuticals (pp. 190-95).
Economic prosperity led to a large increase in wealth, not only of
the Hellenistic rulers but of an expanding middle class. In the first
century BC Diodorus Siculus described Alexandria as "the first city
of the world, by far superior to all others for elegance, size, riches and
luxury:' Its broad avenues were illuminated by lamps throughout the
night; its houses were supplied with running water; its theaters and
baths provided entertainment and recreation, All the genres of painting that would later be developed in the 17th century-portraiture,
landscapes, still-lifes-appeared here in the third century BC.
And by royal policy scientific research was richly supported. The
Ptolemies created at Alexandria the Museum, the first public institute of research known to history (p. 182). There, just as at our
Institute for Advanced Study, meals were served in common, and
mathematicians and scientists exchanged ideas. At the disposition of
the Museum's guests was the famous Library. Ptolemy II
Philadelphus not only bought books from merchants but requested
copies of new books from all the states with which he had diplomatic relations. Ships docking at Alexandria were required to list all
the books they carried and to allow them to be copied. Within a few
decades the Library contained a half million books. A separate sec-
�WILSON
105
tion of the Library was open to the public, constituting the first public library. Pergamon under the Attalid dynasty (263 - 133 Be) followed similar policies, instituting a library and art collection, and
fostering interchange of ideas between mathematicians, scientists,
and engineers. At Antioch, too, mathematical and scientific research
was supported under the Seleucids.
In the sciences of .hydrostatics, hydraulics, and pneumatics,
experimentation was a prerequisite for formulating postulates or
principles, since the latter did not emerge as obvious truths from
ordinary experience. Again, in the breeding of plants and animals,
experimentation was the only avenue for advance. Active experimentalism, according to Russo, emerges naturally out of a constructivist
"exact science;' self-consciously pursued.
Russo makes much of the experimentation of the anatomist and
physiologist Herophilus, active in Alexandria at the start of the
Hellenistic period (pp. 154-69). He it was who first introduced the
taking of the pulse as a diagnostic procedure. For this purpose, an
accurate clock was required. At just this time, his associate at the
Museum, Ctesibius, had modified the ancient clepsydra or water
clock by making it a constant-level device (by means of constant
inflow combined with an overflow trough), so as to insure a constant
pressure on the water issuing from the orifice at the bottom (pp. 12122). This orifice was lined with gold or gemstone, to avoid corrosion
or incrustation. The water issuing from it was collected in a second
receptacle and measured by a float that moved an indicator over a
graduated scale. With such an instrument Herophilus determined
average pulse rates for persons of different ages.
Herophilus dissected human bodies and carried out physiological experiments. A century after Aristotle had declared the function
of the human brain to be that of cooling the blood, he had recognized it as the central organ of the nervous system; and by experiments (perhaps on condemned prisoners-horrible thought!) had
distinguished the motor and sensory nerves issuing from the spinal
cord. He had discovered the reticular structure of the retina, sug-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gesting the discrete nature of the visual receptors; and this discovery
may underlie Euclid's assumption, in his Optics, of a discrete set of
0\j/Et<; as forming the cone of lines of sight. Denying the adequacy
of ordinary language-an adequacy on which, according to Russo,
Aristotle had depended-Herophilus invented special names for various anatomical organs that he discovered, such as the epididymus
and the Fallopian tubes; many of these organs would. be rediscovered
only in the 16th century.' Galen (second century AD) expressed disapproval of Herophilus's raising strong objections to every proposed
cause of a physiological phenomenon, then proceeding to make use
of such causes; to Galen these actions seemed self-contradictory. In
Russo's view, Herophilus was merely being critical and self-aware in
his use of hypotheses (pp. 165-66). The school of Herophilus persisted into the first century AD, but was then extinguished amidst
growing incomprehension of Hellenistic science.
Russo's account of Hellenistic astronomy (pp. 99-109, 251-84) is
not the least daring of his reconstructions. Only two works. of
Hellenistic astronomy, both minor, have come down to us:
Aristarchus's On the Dimensions and Distances of the Sun and the Moon, and
Hipparchus's commentary on Aratus's poem Phenomena. Neither tells
us anything about the motions of the Moon or planets. But a passage of Archimedes's Sand-Reckoner states that Aristarchus (fl. 280-264
BC) had produced "demonstrations of the [planetaryJ phenomena:'
Plutarch (first century AD) in his De facie quae in orbe lunae apparel states
that Aristarchus had sought to "save the appearances'' by assuming
the Earth to have motions of rotation and revolution; Aristarchus's
theory was evidently heliocentric. This theory appears to have made
little immediate stir, and it has been generally assumed that it
dropped out of sight for 1800 years, until revived by Copernicus. Not
so, says Russo.
One myth to be rejected is that Aristarchus, because of his heliocentrism, was accused of impiety; the story comes from a misreading, by the 17th-century philologist G. Menage, of a passage in
Plutarch's De facie (pp. 104, note 101). That absolute rest is not
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WILSON
detectable by observation was a commonplace among Hellenistic
writers: Euclid ·in his Optics states that the appearances of motion
depend solely on relative motion between observer and object
observed; a similar statement by Herophilus is reported by Galen;
and Lucretius in De rerum natura makes much of the same point.
Heracleides of Pontus and others in the fourth century BC had proposed accounting for the daily apparent westward motion of the stars
by assuming an eastward diurnal rotation of the Earth; such an
assumption already challenges the naive belief that we can observe
absolute rest, since it implies that the inhabitants of Mediterranean
cities are being whirled eastward at. speeds of around 1000 km/hr.
Mathematicians, being constructivists, would not have made a realistic or exclusive claim for the heliocentric theory; its excellence for
them would have been in the elegance with which it accounted for the
appearances. Archimedes mentioned Aristarchus's heliocentric theory
without raising physical objections to it.
We know that Archimedes constructed a planetarium; its design,
Russo argues, must have been essentially heliocentric. Cicero saw it
two centuries later, and said of it that "the invention of Archimedes
is to be admired in that he thought out how a single conversion could
reproduce dissimilar, inequable, and contrasting motions" (p. 104).
Cicero's stress on the unicity of the
11
conversion," Russo urges, is
incompatible with a mechanism of Ptolemaic type; it suggests a single center about which the revolutions occur. Assume a mechanism in
which all planets revolve about the Sun in the same direction; to show
what the appearances would be for a terrestrial observer it would suffice to hold the Earth fixed while the 'conversion' continued. Another
planetarium is credited to Posidonius of Rhodes (first century Be),
and Russo believes that it, also, is likely to have been heliocentric in
the sense just explained. By contrast, an apparatus of the type
described in Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses, incorporating a totally separate epicyclic mechanism for each planet, would be difficult to construct and unrevealing as an object of contemplation.
Russo believes the Hellenistic scientists went beyond the mere
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proposal of a heliocentric scheme, to a consideration of mechanical
concepts that would be compatible with it. Let me cite some key
pieces of the evidence he brings to bear.
Hero of Alexandria, now dated to the first century AD, is viewed
by Russo as reflecting Hellenistic ideas and discoveries. In his
Mechanica (I, iv, 20-21) he announced: "We shall demonstrate that
weights placed on a fric~ionless plane can be moved by a force smaller than any given force:' The demonstration consists in approximating the horizontal plane by means of a series of inclined planes with
ever smaller inclinations (pp. 251-52). Here we would seem to be
close to Galileo's experimentation with inclined planes, and to the
modern idea of inertia, according to which a body set in motion continues its motion without the application of force. This discovery
crucially depends on the recognition of friction as a force that under
ordinary terrestrial conditions brings motion to a stop.
That gravicy causes acceleration was well-known to the ancients,
including Aristotle. Strato of Lampsacus (d. ca. 270 BC), successor of
Theophrastus as head of the Peripatetic school in Athens, according
to a report of Simplicius (commentator on Aristotle, fl. ca. AD 530),
noted that this acceleration was observable in a stream of falling
water, which after a certain point in its fall breaks into
separate drops. In the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems (not
datable, but presumably late- or post-Hellenistic), immediately after
the explanation of the parallelogram rule (for what we would call the
vectorial combination of motions), it is observed that a point moving in circular motion is subject to two simultaneous displacements:
one described as according to nature ( Kma (j>ucrtv ), along the tangent, and the other contrary to nature (napa (j>Ucrtv ), directed to the
center (Mechanical Problems, 849a, 1417).
Plutarch's De facie is a dialogue in which one of the interlocutors
takes the side of the mathematicians while the other opposes the
mathematicians' "paradoxes." According to the first of these interlocutors, "Certainly the Moon is kept from falling by its own motion
and the rapidity of its rotation, just as objects in a sling are kept from
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falling by circular motion. In fact, motion according to nature guides
each body, unless it is deviated by something else. For this reason the
Moon does not follow its weight, because it is equilibrated by the
effect of the rotation:' Plutarch's source evidently assigned weight
(heavine~s toward the Earth) to the Moon, and appears to have had
a dynamics based on the principle of inertia. Russo (pp .254-55) gives
evidence tending to date the theory reported by Plutarch to the time
of Hipparchus (second half of the second century Be).
A passage in Seneca's Naturales quaestiones, VII, xxv, 6-7, can be
interpreted as expressing the same theory, but now extended to all the
planets: "We have met with those who say to us: You err in judging
that any star can stop in its path or go in reverse; the celestial bodies
cannot stop or turn away; all advance; as they are once launched, so
they proceed.... Should they be stopped, the bodies now conserved
by their regular motion would fall the one on the other. What is then
the cause why some seem to turn back? A falling in with the Sun, and
the nature of their circular paths, so positioned as for a certain time
to deceive the observers, impose the appearance of slowness on them.
Thus ships, although moving under full sail, yet seem to stand still."
The passage, Russo admits, may allow of a non-heliocentric interpretation, but he believes the heliocentrism of Seneca's source is
detectable in it. And that source may well have been Hipparchus, who
may also have been the source of the mathematical "paradoxes" discussed in Plutarch's De facie. Pliny in his Natura/is historia (II, 95) says
that Hipparchus had an ingenious theory for explaining planetary
motions, and laments the failure of anyone to exploit the Hipparchan
legacy.
Archimedes's discovery of the buoyancy principle, Russo argues,
made Aristotle's theory of gravity untenable (p. 273). The discovery
showed that there was no such thing as absolute lightness, opposed to
gravity. All terrestrial bodies are heavy, but bodies float in water or rise
in air because they are less dense. In face of this discovery, Aristotle's
theory of the elements becomes unsustainable, and a major reason for
supposing celestial bodies qualitatively different from terrestrial ones
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is removed. In his treatise on floating bodies, Archimedes derives the
sphericity of the ocean's surface from the symmetry of gravity about
the Earth's center. Later, as reported by the historian Diodorus
Siculus, it was suggested that the Earth was initially fluid, and that the
Earth's spherical form is the result of the gravity of its parts. The
apparently spherical forms of the Sun and the Moon were explained
in the same way; thus Plutarch in his De facie reports the notion that
the Sun draws to itself the parts of which it consists, just as the Earth
does (p. 274).
According to the geographer Strabo (first century BC ),
Eratosthenes (third century Be) objected to Archimedes' claim that
the form of the oceans was exactly spherical; the tides, he believed,
were due to the Moon's attraction, which thus altered the spherical.
form (p. 275). Also according to Strabo, Seleucus, a mathematician of
the first century BC, studied the tides of the Arabian Sea, and found
an annual cycle: the two daily tides differed maximally in size when
the syzygies (full or new moon) occurred in the solstices (in midwinter or summer), and differed least when the syzygies occurred in
the equinoxes (in spring and autumn). The effect suggests that the
Sun's attraction as well as the Moon's is involved in producing the
tides, and that the effect of these bodies is maximal when they are at
the zenith or the antipodal point (see Appendix).
Pliny in his Natura/is historia (II, 212, 213, 216) seems to be referring
to Seleucus when he says that the Moon and Sun cause the tides, and
mentions that the difference between the two daily tides becomes nil
at the time of the equinoxes. He also remarks on the retardation of
the tides with respect to the positions of the Sun and Moon: a
remark that makes sense only in the context of a gravitational explanation. That Seleucus believed in the Earth's motion is shown by a
passage in Plutarch's Platonicae quaestiones ( 1006 c), where he mentions
the idea that "the Earth was projected, not confined and stable, but
revolving and rotating, as successively affirmed by Aristarchus and
Seleucus, the first only assuming it by hypothesis and Seleucus rather
proving it:' Russo's suggestion is that Seleucus based both his theory
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of the tides and his proof of the heliocentric theory on the hypothesis of a gravitational interaction with the Sun (pp. 276-78 ).
Hipparchus (second century BC) was a younger contemporary
of Seleucus, and according to Strabo accepted Seleucus's findings
on the tides (p. 278). Hipparchus is known from Ptolemy's Syntaxis
to have discovered the precession of the equinoxes, determined the
distance of the Moon as, 59 Earth-radii from the Earth's surface (a
good value), and developed an accurate theory for the Sun's motion,
and a theory giving accurately the Moon's positions in the syzygies.
From other sources we know that Hipparchus wrote on gravity, and
Russo is of opinion that Hipparchus's theory was one of universal
gravity, in which the Sun kept the planets in their circular courses
by attracting them out of their inertial paths.
Of the several items of evidence that Russo assembles in support
of the idea that such a theory had been developed in the late
Hellenistic period, I shall cite only one, a passage from the De arcbitectura of Vitruvius, a Roman engineer of the first century BC. The
passage (in De arcbitectura IX, I, 12-13; Russo, p. 267) is obscure; Russo
assumes that, like much else in Vitruvius, it stems from a Greek
source (possibly Hipparchus), one that Vitruvius found difficult to
interpret. Here is the translation of the passage given in the Loeb
Classical Library:
... the mighty force of the Sun extending its rays in
the form of a triangle draws to itself the planets as
they follow, and, as it were curbing and restraining
those which precede, prevents their onward movement
and compels them to return to it and to be in the sign
of another trigon.
Perhaps it will be asked, why does the Sun cause
delay by these heats, in the fifth sign away from itself
rather than in the second or third? I shall therefore
explain how this seems to happen. Its rays are spread
out in the firmament on the lines of a diagram of a
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112
triangle with equal sides. Now each side extends neither more nor less than to the fifth sign...
This text, it will be granted, is not very illuminating. Russo believes
that the meaning of the original Greek passage can be reconstructed
if we realize that Vitruvius's signum, by which he seems to understand
a zodiacal sign, can h:)ve been his translation of the Greek word
OTIJ.lEtOV, and further that the ordinal numbers "second;' "third;' and
"fifth" would in Greek be expressed by the second, third, and fifth letters of the Greek alphabet, B, r, E. On this understanding, we can
suppose that the original Greek passage had to do with vertices of .triangles labelled "point B;' "point r;• and "point E." (In another passage at IX, vii, 3, Vitruvius shows that he did not understand OTIJ.!E'iov
in its technical geometrical sense as a point: he gives "signum et littera
C" apparently as a translation of "O'l]jlEtOV r;• taking 011JlELOV to
refer not to a point but to the concrete letter written on the page.)
H
E
A
B
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The original diagram, as Russo envisages it (Figure 1), would
have the Sun (H) at the center, and the planet initially moving Ka'ta
~ucnv along the straight line AB but being drawn back rcapa ~uow
toward the Sun, and so arriving at r rather than B; the same composition of motions would be repeated in the next adjacent triangle, so
that the planet moving ;>.long ril would .arrive at E rather than Ll.
Thus the Sun, by pulling the planet toward itself, would cause it to
follow a circular path, and the intent of the diagram would be to
show how the circular orbit is produced dynamically. Russo believes
that we can see here the foundation of celestial mechanics, eighteen
centuries before Huygens and Newton.
It is generally maintained that Ptolemy's Syntaxis rendered earlier
works on astronomy obsolete, so that they ceased to be copied (see,
e.g., Toomer, Ptoltmy's Almagest, p. 1). This view, according to Russo,
gives too little weight to the interruption of an active astronomical
tradition between the time of Hipparchus and that of Ptolemy. In
the Syntaxis, the last observation of Hipparchus cited is dated 126 BC,
and the next astronomical observation cited, taking them in chronological order, is an observation of the Moon by Agrippa dated AD
92--an interruption of 218 years. According to Russo, Ptolemy's
adoption of Aristotelian 'realistic' cosmological premisses, as in his
insistence on the Earth's being at rest at the center of the cosmos, is
evidence of a deep gulf of incomprehension separating him from his
Hellenistic predecessors. Russo derives a similar conclusion from
other aspects of Ptolemy's work (pp. 259-62).
(Russo has given his reconstruction of late Hellenistic astronomy in a lengthy article in English published in Jilstas in Astronomy,
vol.38 (1994), 207-48: "The astronomy of Hipparchus and his time: a
srudy based on pre-Ptolemaic sources:')
Russo's book is a multiply-pronged argument with many parts,
and it is impossible here to give anything approaching a thorough
review or critique of the whole. It is to be hoped that an English
translation will soon appear, and lead to detailed assessments of the
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
several parts of Russo's argument by competent specialists. Here a
few general conclusions will be ventured.
If Russo is right, the mere survival of some books into the postHellenistic period was not sufficient for the maintenance of an ongoing scientific and mathematical tradition. Pace Hegel, the choice of
books for copying and preservation showed little in the way of geistreich intelligence; one has only to think of Heiberg's accidental discovery, in 1906, of a palimpsest giving Archimedes' On method to know
that important works did not necessarily survive. Science itself was a
fragile growth, dependent on oral tradition and financial support
from beneficent rulers. Such bits of Hellenistic science as made their
way into the works of the literati of the imperial age were transmitted
only in distorted or ambiguous form.
If Russo is right, Hellenistic science discovered many experimental facts and reached many deductive conclusions that have previously been regarded as special achievements of modern science as founded in the 17th century by Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes. The
assumption, often made within the St. John's community, that modern science presupposes certain philosophical doctrines first articulated in the 17th century, thus comes into question. The question
deserves the radical inquiry called for in a recent lecture at the
Annapolis campus (Grant Franks, "'Everything Aristotle Has Said is
Wrong': The Authority of Texts and How We Got This Way;'
February 6, 1998).
As we have seen, Russo attributes to his Hellenistic mathematicians a self-conscious, methodological constructivism, leading them
deliberately to avoid "realistic" definitions. Is the attribution of so
sharply defmed a methodological stance to ancient authors-whose
statements about methodology, if any, have not survived-an imposition of modern views? In a recent article Russo has argued in detail
for the hypothesis that Euclid's first seven definitions are an interpolation, perhaps due to Hero of Alexandria ("The Definitions of
Fundamental Geometric Entities Contained in Book I of Euclid's
Elements," Archive for History of Exact Science 52 (1998), 195-219); and I
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115
believe he has made a cogent case. He is himself clearly a passionate
methodological constructivist. He views the widespread realistic
acceptation, in the schools and in the press, of such concepts as "elementary particle" and "black hole;' as a transmogrification of science. I am inclined to agree: we understand these concepts only when
we understand both that and how they are human constructions. But
had the Hellenistic mathematicians and engineers arrived at so
sophisticated a view? I believe it is a fascinating possibility, worthy of
our consideration.
See Appendix next page.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
endix
Why do successive tides at the solstitial syzygies differ most in
height, while those at the equinoctial syzygies differ least? Russo
gives the explanation on p. 277, note 139, Suppose the Sun to be initially at the zenith of a point A on the Tropic of Cancer, while the
Moon is at the zenith of a point B on the Tropic of Capricorn (see
Figure 2). If we ignore the delay of the tides, we can say that there
will be high tides at A and B. Twelve hours later, the Earth will have
rotated through 180°, carrying the meridian CEB into the position
formerly occupied by the meridian AE'D; we shall have high tides at
C (not B on this meridian as twelve hours earlier) and at D (not A
on this meridian as twelve hours earlier). Thus in the solstitial syzygies the point of high tide on the meridian CEB shifts from B to C
and back again; and the point of high tide on the meridian AE'D
shifts from A to D and back again, At a particular point on the
Earth's surface like A, successive tides will therefore differ in height.
In the equinoctial syzygies such a shift does not occur, because the
Sun is aligned with the Equator, and the Moon is either accurately so
or not more than 5° off the Equator,
N.P.
c
A
E'
E
B
D
M
S.P.
Figure 2
s
�t
Measured Passion, Golden Rationality
Ronald Mawby
The Past-Present is a welcome collection of thirty-one writings by
Eva T. H. Brann. Ms. Brann has been a tutor at St. John's College for
four decades, and served as dean of the College from 1990 to 1997.
The title, unexplained in the book, presumably has two senses. The
minor sense is personal. These writings, some from twenty-five years
in the past, continue to express Ms. Brann's present views. The major
sense refers to her stance toward books that are both old and great.
Ms. Brann, the very type of a civilized mind, resembles in one respect
that least civilized fellow, Huckleberry Finn, whose interest in Moses
vanished with the discovery that Moses had been dead a considerable
long time, for Huck "don't take no stock in dead people:' Ms. Brann's
professional career might seem to have consisted mainly in taking
stock in dead people, but the truth is othetwise. In a recent essay in
this journal Ms. Brann stated that as a student of the St. John's program she has no interest in the past at all. "For we study these books
not insofar as they tell us of bygone times but because they tell us of
the present. They are not absent in time, as is the past, but present
(and perhaps even out of time altogether). They are in the past insofar as it is present; they are effectively present; they are ... the PASTPRESENT" (St. John's Review, 43, 2, p. 52, 1996). What is properly
ancient is not old in years but antecedent in the order of things, and
by delving under the world that is merely current we meet with
shades from the past who, for a potion of lifeblood, will presently
speak and lend the world within and without a "well-defined significance" (p. 339).
The present volume is so striking in its variety that the only
direct way to convey its contents is to list them. The collection is
Eva Brann, The Past-Presmt, Edited by Pamela Kraus (Annapolis, MD: St. John's College Press, 1997).
Ronald Mawby teaches at Kentucky State University, Lexington, KY.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
divided into eight sections. The first, "On Prose and Poetry;' contains an essay on the poet of the Odyssey, a loving articulation of the
perfections of Jane Austen, an interpretation of the manifold silences
in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn;' and an exposition of the artistry
of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice:' The second section, "On
Philosophical Texts and Subjects," contains five essays. The first
argues that Socrates' offensive defense in the Apology is intended by
Plato to display Socratic philosophizing as a dangerous activity at
once enticing and publicly indefensible. The next, called ''Plato's
Theory of Ideas;' traces seven paths-excellence and commonness,
speech and dialectic, answers and questions, opinion and knowledge,
appearance and being, same and other, original and image-all of
which lead to the eidos. The following two-part piece describes a cluster-concept Ms. Brann calls "Philosophical Paganism;' whose features "make a plausible and intellectually attractive whole" which is
"in very sharp opposition to a number of current views" (p. 129).
Paganism combines the following features: a conception of knowledge as having a present object and images as having being through
their originals; the will downplayed in favor of habit and intellectual attention; a philosophical divinity that neither creates the world
nor issues commands to it, but that is a lure for thought; a view of
human goodness in terms of personal virtues rather than universal
morality, and a sane inwardness of thoughtful passion rather than
subjectivity emotionally expressed; communal life, with a distinction
of public and private, as the locus of happiness; and a conception of
time as an inessential, derivative aspect of human life (p. 123 and p.
129). A companion essay on "The Roots of Modernity" argues that
certain characteristically modern themes are derived from a Luciferic
twist or "perversion" of the Christian notion of creation. "Kant's
Imperative" tries to help us understand what Ms. Brann suspects we
can neither accept nor forget-the Categorical Imperative. "The
Second Power of Questions" surveys the conceptual landscape of the
realm in which questions are raised about questions. The last essay in
this section is an illuminating reflection on the terms of its title,
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119
"Intellect and Intuition:' The third section, "On Political Texts and
Subjects;' consists of a rhetorical analysis of an address by James
Madison against the entering wedge of a religious establishment. The
section "On Current Issues" contains musings on gender considered
as an essential accident of humankind, a tiny (two page) essay on taking offense, a discussion of whether liberal education and multiculturalism are friends or en,emies, and a piece containing a dozen preconditions and precepts for a way of reading whose gently hortatory
effect may bring some student of literature back from fashionable
ways of treating books toward "mere reading:' The five essays on
"The College Community" include a commencement address, three
Dean's opening lectures entitled "Depth and Desire;' "Telling Lies;'
and "Why Read Books;' and a "Statement of Educational Policy"
that gives an excellent account of the radical practices of St. John's
College. The "Reviews" section brings to our notice books by contemporary writers Paul Scott, Patrick O'Brian, Cynthia Ozick,
Vikram Seth, and Douglas Allanbrook, and reviews the film High
Noon. Five other pieces, categorized as "Occasional" or "Ceremonial;'
include an imaginative speculation on the consequences for human
experience of living extraterrestrially in a confined space, and a piece
for students culminating in the claim that "odyssey" is the proper
name for the life of learning.
The list of writings suffices to show the sweep of Ms. Brann's
odyssey of learning, though my brief annotations fail to suggest the
rich perceptiveness and vivacity of her travelogues. This book contains many wonderful things. The unifYing thread is the quality of
mind of the author, which despite the variety of subjects is in a certain sense everywhere the same. Ms. Brann is a lover of the logos, and
these writings are permeated by a measured passion and golden
rationality. They are knowledgeable, masterfully self-aware, generous,
and lucid. Whitehead remarked that style is the ultimate morality of
mind, and Ms. Brann's style is scintillating-it emits quick flashes of
insight, of formulation, of pixie humor, that sum up to a luminous
glow. She is a delight to read. That emphatically affirmed, I wish only
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to add some desultory comments on the sources of that satisfaction,
I notice first that Ms. Brann's view of thinking as attentive receptivity leads her to respect the integrity of her topics. Topics are not
sealed apart, but each is conceived distinctly enough so that it can
have real relations with others. Often those with a dominant interest
use an essay on one subject as an occasion to pursue another. Ms.
Brann's intellectual passjon is polymorphous enough to let each topic
be what it is and not another thing.
Her writings are, in the main, essays of elucidation, and one general comment to be made is that they elucidate. Whether she is propounding the perfections of Jane Austen, or cataloguing various
approaches to questions and questioning, or defining the St. John's
educational policy through sixteen statements of what it is not, or
explaining why Gary Cooper's marshall is a fit mate for Grace Kelly's
Quaker in High Noon, Ms. Brann sheds light.
The light she sheds is not idiosyncratic, but the broad-spectrum
illumination of a common understanding greatly enlarged.
Mathematician Mark Kac distinguishes the ordinary genius from the
magician. The workings of the magician's mind are incomprehensible
to us-his ways are orthogonal to ours. The ordinary genius, in contrast, is what you or I would be, if only we were many times better
than we are. Ms. Brann stands to us as an ordinary genius. These writings will not, I think, turn your life upside down, or wrench you into
a new world of thought or feeling (although if you think the Western
tradition began with Descartes, you will discover a new world). Ms.
Brann provides what is very rare, the perfection of the common
undersranding. Where we have muddled heads and awkward tongues,
she is clear and articulate. She is more intelligent, more widely and
deeply read, more adept at discerning differences and collecting similarities than most of us, and commands a deft and spirited pen that
can say what she sees. Although, unlike her, I am not properly civilized, she and I share many presuppositions and preoccupations, so I
often found reading her essays to be like talking with a better version
of myself, in which what in my mind is inchoate is set out in lively
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and lucid fashion. Ms. Brann clearly expresses what I vaguely glimpse,
and observations that with me are scattered and schematic are developed by her into a rounded and orderly array, so that when we
approach the same topic in the same way her results are finer, fuller,
and crisper. It is a little disheartening at first, but that soon passes
into gratefUl pleasure.
Her general method is that recommended by T.S. Eliot, namely,
to be very intelligent. This intelligence is remarkable for its selfawareness. Part of the pleasure of reading these writings derives from
the sense that Ms. Brann knows what she is doing. She is mindful of
language, being especially attentive to the largess of meaning lying on
the skin of phrases that we often hurry over. Ms. Brann savors them,
and a characteristic of her elan is to use such linguistic unburied
treasures to make penetrating observations. For example, she writes
that one danger of literary explanations is that the critic drags the
author down to his own level, and concludes "to make something
plain is to flatten it out:' Again her playfulness delights when she
writes of the carping that goes over too well in conferences "devoted to cutting edges and similar dangerous devices;' or when she
organizes an essay around the precise ambiguities of the phrase
"telling lies:'
Ms. Brann's self-awareness extends to her practices and presuppositions. In "Plato's Theory of Ideas;' for example, she begins by
warning us that this apparently respectable topic is completely
wrong-headed, for the doctrine is not Plato's but Socrates', the
notion is not a theory but a hypothesis, and the term 'idea' is misleading for the 'invisible looks' in question. Thus she reforms her
topic into' "Socrates' hypothesis of the eidos" and gives us the impression that, whether what she says about the hypothesis of the eide is
right or wrong, she knows what she is about. Likewise when writing
about that intellectual cloud-formation or configuration of features
that she calls philosophical paganism, she warns the reader about the
dangers of taking in the wrong way such fabricated terms, and thus
by defining its limits justifies her procedure.
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Every lover of the logos knows that all things work within limits, and the limits of these writings are mainly those intrinsic to their
genre. Most were originally given as lectures to undergraduate audiences, and that format imposes restrictions on where one can start
and where one must stop. These writings are jargon-free attempts to
help us think from wherever we happen to be into the midst of
things, and are more often orienting first words than final ones. Ms.
Brann excels at sorting out. She sifts our common experience and her
considerable learning and incisively sets up alternatives. But it is
sometimes frustrating when she breaks off before the end-I wish I
could have been at the question period after the lecture to hear her
extend, supplement, or revise. I will give one example. Near the end
of the lecture on the hypothesis of the eidos, she admits that the doctrine of images as interweavings of being and non-being "in no wise
solves our greatest problem: how the eidos drops down from the context of being to become entangled with non-being in a new and
world-making way-how there can be an eidos incarnate" (p. 114).
Now I am not one to deny that all things end in mystery, but if we
are offered a hypothesis put forth to make phenomena intelligible,
and we find that the hypothesis makes it unintelligible that there be
phenomena at all, what should we think? I am sure Ms. Brann would
have something to say about this, and, as I said, that she does not is
in part because she cannot tell us everything she knows in sixty minutes. Also, of course, Ms. Brann may be like the rest of us-regarding the ultimate issues she may not know either, and what we cannot
speak about we must pass over in silence. In any case in this collection, while Ms. Brann returns from her odyssey with charts that mark
the trouble spots, ultimate difficulties are more often noticed than
thoroughly explored.
The lack of closure in some of these essays seems to be in part
also a consequence of Ms. Brann's philosophical predilections. Ms.
Brann is in her own terms a philosophical pagan, a lover of sights and
images. To exaggerate a truth, she acts in order to see, rather than seeing in order to act. For the philosophical pagan life connects with
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thought by enabling us to peer over the rim of the world into a timeless realm of beautiful sights. For Ms. Brann, imposing a resolution
before the ideas resolve themselves is willfulness, an egocentric distortion that signals a refusal to take thought seriously. Thus she exhibits
to an unusual degree the intellectual virtue of fairmindedness and the
Socratic wisdom of knowing what one knows, with its concomitant
just apportioning of credence to what the evidence warrants. In consequence, though many positions are taken, many fundamental questions are left open.
Let me briefly contrast this with a non-pagan option, in part to
clarify Ms. Brann's views by the contrast, in part because of the
intrinsic importance of the issue, and in part out of "sheer honest
contrariness" (p. 191 ). I£ following Aristotle, we have enough ambition to attempt to live in accord with the divine element in us, we
immediately face the question of the nature of divinity. For the
philosophical pagan the divine element is perfect awareness of what
is first in being. For the Jews and Christians and their modern transmutated offspring, the divine element is creativity. As Goethe's Faust
translates the opening of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was
the act." For the pagan, method refers primarily to an open pathway
into a pre-existing domain. For the nonpagan modern, method refers
to a prior plan of action designed to bring about a result. If the modern inherits from Christianity the notion that salvation is a matter
not of obedience to a Law, but of right belief somehow freely chosen, and right belief results from thinking, then the one thing needful is rules for the direction of the mind. For the modern, thought
connects with life by illuminating the present moment of decisive
choice. Aquinas writes in a discussion of faith,
Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First,
through being moved to assent by its very object...
Secondly, the intellect assents to something, not
through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its
proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby
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it turns voluntarily to one side rather than the other.
(Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 1, Art. 4)
The speculative pagan admits only the former mode of assent as
proper to the intellect. The deliberative modern admits both as proper to the soul due to our invincible ignorance of what we would need
to know to act with perfect awareness. To remain suspended in matters of deliberation is nb virtue-to be lost in thought is to be lost.
When our apprehension of the proper object is inadequate for the
matter to resolve itsel£ and we must nevertheless decide, we impose
our resolve and choose one way or another, knowing we are acting
beyond our knowledge and holding conclusions so drawn as defeasible. What in speculative matters is unintelligent dogmatism is in matters of action integrity. From the modern viewpoint, then, to leave
certain fundamental human questions open seems like vacillation,
which, however attuned to the shifting look of ultimate things, looks
like a refusal to take thought seriously. The modern grows restive when
a pagan companion seems to be diverted into Lorus-land, captivated
by multifarious beautiful visions.
Ms. Brann grows restive, and rightly so, with claims to creativity
which amount to the production of novel trivialities. She thinks, and
rightly, that most efforts to be up-to-date end in being swept along
in a "thoughtless thought" that is too shallow even to be wrong. She
prefers the radical quest that leads to the "dearest freshness deep
down things" (Hopkins) and finds or seems to find or supposes that
as one goes deep down one meets the fresh appearance of an ancient
thing. Great books of the past can be present because, as Pound says,
literature is news that stays news.
I have only to add that the The Past-Present is by no means a complete collection of Ms. Brann's essays. Each of the eight sections concludes with references to further writings, which I hope will be collected in future volumes, for essays like these are to be celebrated. Ms.
Brann prefers clarity to obscurity, happiness to sorrow, knows that a
well-ordered soul is essential for good living, and awakens in us the
�MAWBY
125
pleasure that Aristotle defines as the "movement by which the soul as
a whole is consciously brought into its normal state of being:' If in
life's strange fascination she emphasizes the fascination rather than
the strangeness, if her gracefulness entails avoiding awkward tip-toe
stretches toward what we can barely discern, and if by my lights she
fails to take time seriously, well, these are deep matters, and a cloud
which to one glance looks like a weasel seems to another very like a
whale. Ms. Brann is one from whom we can learn much, and a mere
reading of The Past-Present both instructs and delights.
�126
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
Mimesis on the Treacherous Slopes:
Joyce's Commitment to Community
Albert Wachtel
There is real significance to Cordell Yee's The Word according to James
Joyce. He sets out to prove what no one would deny, that there is a
large representational element in Joyce's fiction, but his argument
leads him to a powerful insight: that the world of cooperative scholarship responding to the difficulty of understanding Joyce (the
accompanying pettiness and backbiting do not alter the fact) can be
seen as part of the author's contribution to harmony in the world.
Yee credits scholarship of the eighties for what was known from
the start about Joyce's work, that it draws from both high and low culture and that one of its unique qualities is its fidelity to the everyday.
By November of 1923, T.S. Eliot was praising Joyce's special way
of combining the high and low as a "mythical method:' Jung, less
felicitously but more viscerally, praised U~sses as a tapeworm that
consumes contemporary life, the resultant waste being the text of the
novel. Joyce's use of popular fiction has been obvious since the narrator of "An Encounter" mentioned stories of the Wild West and the
boy of "Araby" found "paper-covered books" in his house. Molly
Bloom's pleasure in soft pornography, Leopold's morning reading
and newspaper, and Gerty MacDowell's style of thinking leap from
the pages of· U~sses with the message that popular culture has a vast
influence on our lives. But the dependence of people of the eighties
on those who preceded them, whether Yee is aware of it or not, is
part of the large picture of cooperation to which he ultimately
comes. Moreover, he performs a service to Joyce studies and our fragCordeiJ D. K. Yee, The Word according to James Joyce: Reconstructing Repmmtation, (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1997).
Albert Wachtel teaches at Pitzer College, The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA.
�128
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mented world in undertaking to explore the importance of,a selection of works from the high culture canon to the study of Joyce.
Great literature, Yee recognizes, like great science, is not great because
it experiments; it is great because its experiments have yielded
insights into our condition. To Yee's credit, he wants to explore "signposts" for "understand[ing] the issues raised" by Joyce's work. Yee's
responsible "contextu~st and historicist" commitments are welcome, and his reaching out to the community of scholars for acceptance-integral to his vision of what Joyce's oeuvre sets out to accomplish-may well be among the~ most significant contributions to
Joyce studies that The Wclrd according to James Joyce makes.
His "intentionalist" ambitions are less impressive, resulting in
pages of what Yee himself elsewhere labels "literary source
hunt[ing]:' as if the biographical tics that may have contributed to a
passage were its literary significance. Yee should have looked more
broadly at the canon. It has been clear since Homer and the Hebrew
prophets asserted that a god spoke through them that, as D.H.
Lawrence affirmed, tellers are less trustworthy than their tales.
Stanislaus Joyce's contention that his brother wrote stories to learn
from them is a version of the same affirmation. Unfortunately, Yee
seems unaware that texts can have certifiable intentions of their own
of which their authors may or may not be consciously aware. But it
is also true that Joyce was a most self-conscious writer, and to the
extent that Yee desires to discover Joyce's artistic, as distinct from narrowly personal, intentions his project can be endorsed; He believes
correctly that Joyce's works have significant constructive things to say
about human life and life in the modern world, that, if a deconstructor, Joyce is also a discoverer of truths, of moral, psychological,
and philosophical insights.
Yee's inquiry into Dubliners lacks the unrelenting dedication that
might open previously unnoticed routes of access. He does not
attempt to uncover the economy by which, say, simony, gnomon, and
paralysis are conceptually and psychologically related to each other and
fundamentally elucidate "The Sisters;' the first of the stories.
�WACHTEL
129
Apparently unaware that he is undergirding the "antirealists" (Yee's
term for deconstructors) he means to counterbalance, he accepts the
easy out of believing that the three are not vitally related but rather
intentionally introduce "uncertainty:' (How they relate and function
with a kind of scientific certainty in the story can be found in my
1992 book, The Cracked Lookingglass.) Still, in an effort to stay his direction, Yee competently r~views some meanings of the words and
attaches them to characters in Dubltners and life in Dublin. He also
has useful things to say about "Evelyn," "The Dead," and
"Counterparts:' He sees the word as it is used in Dubliners as both
representational C' mimetic, or u imitative/' a use described in
Aristotle's Poetics) and exhortatory ("deliberative, speaking urges:' a
use described in Aristotle's Rhetoric), a mirror with a purpose, and
thus opposed to what "antirealists" claim to find in it.
In A Portrait '!f the Artist as a Young Man, Yee reminds us, Joyce adds
internal mimesis to his imitation of the physical world, mirroring
not only people and their actions in the external world but the consciousness of the characters, their emotions and thought, which,
using Aristotle and quoting Aquinas, Yee ties back into things, '"of
which thoughts are likenesses:" That inward mirroring also characterizes the narrative of stories in Dubliners is also true, of course, and
it is also true that Tolstoy, unnoticed by Yee and many other contemporaries, dubbed the hardly revolutionary approach "infected"
writing, a more descriptive term than "Uncle Charles principle:' But,
certainly, one of the signal features of A Portrait is that its narrative is
alive with the mental and emotional states of the characters perceiving the world, and, Yee asserts, the inward, mirroring is accurate.
On the other hand, Joyce brought a distorted mirror to bear
on Urysses, Yee recognizes. He provides no profound payoff for the
observation (the why is insufficiently explored), but it is certainly
accurate, and Yee suggestively brings S.H. Butcher's commentary and
translation of Aristotle's Poetics, which Joyce owned, to bear on what
Yee claims to be Joyce's Aristotelian conception of music.
Bringing Butcher into the game to balance Walter Pater, whose
�130
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
prose anticipates contemporary logorrhea, is itself a service to interpretation, Having performed it, Yee slides back into repeating the old
saws of interpretation, The linguistic architectonics of Oxen of the
Sun "imitate... the development of a foetus;' he points out, as if such
merely factual observations add to our store of understanding. Yes,
Mrs. Purefoy is giving birth, but how does Joyce's so-called imitation
of gestation increase our wisdom?
There are other small-scale mistakes, Yee thinks, for example, that
Odysseus wrestled with Proteus, when it was Menelaus who did so,
He asserts that Einstein can be understood in mathematical terms
but not in language, when mathematics is itself a language and
Einstein goes a long way to making his theories accessible in everyday language in Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, to which Yee
himself alludes. More dangerous is Yee's assumption that an aesthetically important feature of representation is to be found in Joyce's use
of his fiction to "settle some scores" against personal enemies. Aware
that he is in perilous territory in thus relying on the author's life to
support the thesis that Joyce's fiction is representational, Yee asserts
that "no opposition exists" between "self-referentiality, or self-reflexivity, and extratextual referentiality:' But the assertion does not
change the facts, as Yee himself implicitly recognizes when, in his
reconsideration of Dubliners, he recognizes Little Chandler's failure in
"A Little Cloud" to write poems that are "extratextual" in their "referentiality"-about the grimy children of the street, for instanceinstead of creating self-referential, self-indulgent imaginary reviews
that praise the poet for his unwritten poems.
Self-indulgent exercises by a vexed writer fit cheek by jowl with
such neurotic and infantile behaviors. Not only does Yee (with the
saving admission that other interpretations exist) reduce the Finnegans
Wc!ke fable of the "Mookse and the Gripes" to an allegory of Joyce's
vexation with Wyndham Lewis, but he sees Joyce's life, not as a
source, but as the subtext of Ulysses-this rather than the implicit
lives of the characters, what I like to call the fictional base of the day's
events, including accidents which, because they affect the characters,
�WACHTEL
131
become psychologically causal despite their chance origins (" psychocausal;' I like to say) in the characters' lives, illustrating a like
process in our world.
What Yee has to say about Joyce's appreciation of Ernest
Fenollosa, on the other hand, tied as it is to the author's process of
creating the work, makes good sense. Yee's book is a useful biographical supplement for ~tudents of Joyce, shedding light on the
author's creative process by recalling some of the readings, some of
the personal vendettas, some of the relevant personal writings, conversations, and experiences that contributed to the creation of the
fiction.
The Word being more about Joyce's commitment to "imitating"
the "real world" in some permutation of Aristotle's conception of
the terms than about elucidating any profound insights that Joyce's
fiction contains, its survey of imitation in Joyce leads to no overarching insight. Yee turns instead to the issue of imitation as other
Modernists conceived of it. His argument here is supported by
telling quotations from some of Eliot's and Ezra Pound's and
Fenollosa's famous and not-so-famous essays. In a world that has
had almost a century to digest and amend the work of Ferdinand de
Saussure, there is a certain naivete in Yee's use of terms like signifier and signified. "What the poet as scientist strives to do is to dose
the gap between word and object, between signifier and signified," he
writes, as if words referred directly to concrete objects rather than
the ideas of such objects as well as utterly abstract ideas(the words
for which Pound counseled poets to avoid). But Yee's realization that
Eliot and Pound shared with Joyce a sense that poetry, "like science,
has an empirical basis" and Yee's further claims that William Carlos
Williams and Marianne Moore expressed related visions are undeniable.
Yee's concluding "Apologia" is in part a mystery. Why does he
find it necessary to defend, as if it were already being counter
attacked by "adherents of antirepresentationalist readings;' his presentation of Joyce as a flexible evolving writer grounded in empiri-
�132
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
cism? And how does he manage to move from the recognition that
empirical observation is a central characteristic of Joyce's work to the
unnuanced claim that Joyce "adhered to scholasticism"? However
that may be, there are some constructive observations along the way.
Yee's treatment of the argument between Bloom and the Citizen in
Ulysses, preceded by Bloom's misreading of "Blood of the Lamb" has
some merit. It vaguely harks back without reaching it to my recognition in The Cracked Lookingglass that Bloom, a modern day Christ, is a
greater Odysseus, one who tries to bring vision to a Cyclops instead
of blinding him. Moreover, the chapter ends usefully.
Yee's observation that Joyce seeks to "reshape his audience;' that he
"perceives his audience as multiple, not individual, and reading as a
communal .. experience" is empirically sound. It takes the lot of us to
come to terms with Joyce's oeuvre-its breadth, complexity and profound importance for our lives-and in the process we find ourselves
united in ways that transcend differences in interpretation. Cordell Yee
has made a significant contribution to this important work.
�
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Kraus, Pamela
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Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
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McShane, Anne
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Douglas
Higuera, Marilyn
Verdi, John
Stephenson, David
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Mawby, Ronald
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLV. number one (1999)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
EvaT H Brann
james Carey
Beale Ruhm Tim Oppen
joe Sachs
john Vtm Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Anne McShane
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Harvey Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the distribution list,
subscriptions are $15.00 for three issues, even though the magazine
may sometimes appear semiannually rather than three times a year.
Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome.
Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box
2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1999 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
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��Contents
Essays and Lectures
Memorial to a Woman with an Alabaster Jar:
Speculations on Matthew 24 to 26
. . . . . . . . . . . 1
John E Cornell
Peter of the Vine:
The Perversion of Faith in Inferno 13 . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Peter Kalkavage
Bodies . .
John White
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Erotics and Heroics in Genesis 1-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Mark Shiffman
Reviews
A Call to Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Pope John Paul II. Fides et Ratio.
Eva Brann
��t
Memorial to aWoman with an Alabaster Jar:
Speculations on Matthew 24 to 26
John F. Cornell
I never lost as much but twice
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels-twice descending
Reimbursed my storeBurglar! Banker-Father!
I am poor once more!
In this poem by Emily Dickinson1 the speaker meditates on the connection between her experience of bereavement and her act of calling on God. Indeed, the "door of God;' not a little ambiguous, may
be the lid of a coffin or the abyss of an open grave. She remembers
her loss of two loved ones, but does not tell us the nature of the third
loss, which occasions the poem. She declares only her spiritual poverty. The most dramatic moment comes just before the final line.
Before calling on God the "Father" from her despair, she accuses him
with names of quite another sort: "Burglar! Banker-." God is an
unpredictable trustee. Does her present grief leave her bitter toward
this heavenly father?
I am inclined to think that the grief of the speaker in the poem
has not embittered her, because her third loss is the loss of certain
pious illusions. Why I think this may only become clear gradually, for
the thought in Dickinson's poem is close to my general theme. If I am
not mistaken, the poet has in mind here a couple of pages of the
Gospel text, more or less the ones I shall present here for consideraJohn F. Cornell is a tutor at the Santa Fe Campus of St. John's College. This is a slightly revised
version of a lecture delivered in Santa Fe, October 30, 1998.
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tion. These pages are Jesus' last sermon in Matthew, where he reveals
to his disciples that he will come again. Strange as it may sound, the
path toward that spiritual impoverishment in Dickinson's poem parallels the movement of this gospel text. We might see this if we can
approach the Bible with something of her own poetic spirit.
Poetic spirit: I should try to indicate what I mean by this, to avoid
misunderstandings. By reading the Bible poetically I mean, first of all,
reading without a particular theological viewpoint.2 Like all prior opinions about a book, theology can cover over the original text without the
reader realizing it. It is true of all our most cherished possessions: what
we will not give up, we shall lose. If we can approach the gospel without imagining beforehand what it must or must not say, we allow for a
sort of resurrection of its meanings. Our preconceptions pass away, the
words themselves work upon us, and (when we do not quite expect it)
the message of the book comes to life again.
The fresh experience of the text is often the work of noticing
details. By reading poetically I also mean reading closely. I hope it
will become clear in what follows how certain subtleties, certain
ambiguities that Matthew incorporates into Jesus' last sermon, have
evoked my speculations. If we ponder such details long enough, we
may begin to see how they point to some startling line of thought.
But I have not mentioned the most obvious feature of reading
poetically which is the attunement to figurative speech. Must we not
admit it? Jesus is a poet. Not just his parables but even his more
ordinary utterances adopt the idiom of images-as if the divine
language should retain a similarity to hieroglyphics, and the sacred
still resemble a secret. Perhaps one never becomes proficient in this
language of signs. I leave open to what extent I have succeeded
in putting together the picture puzzle that is Jesus' last discourse.
What I offer, to repeat, are so many speculations. But they will
achieve their purpose if they show readers new entrances into the
gospel text and lead them to better thoughts of their own about
what it might mean.
Jesus' last sermon (beginning in chapter 24) is an answer to his
�CORNELL
3
disciples who question him about the end of the age and the return
of the Son of Man. He begins by warning them about the wars and
persecutions that will characterize the final epoch. But he does not
represent that time as a far-off future. It is one with his disciples'
mission in a hostile world. Earlier he told them:
"When you are persecuted in one town, take refuge in
another .... Before you have gone through all the
towns of Israel the Son of Man will have come."
(Matt. 10:23. C£ 26:64)3
Now he says in his long final speech:
"This gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed
throughout the earth as a testimony to all nations;
and then the end will come:'
(Matt. 24:14)
The ambiguity is not only about when the final events will take
place but also about how. What modern people think of as "apocalypse"-the cataclysms and wars that bring history to a conclusionis a derivative idea. "Apocalypse" is first and foremost a disclosure, a
revelation, a clarity of vision: that is its meaning as a biblical term.
Jesus reassures his disciples:
"So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered [apokaluphthesetai],
nothing hidden that will not be made known:'
(Matt. 10:26)
The Kingdom comes in a spiritual as well as an historical sense.
Consider this much-quoted passage from the gospel of Luke:
"You cannot tell by observation when the kingdom of
God comes. There will be no saying, 'Look, here it is!'
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
or 'there it is!'; for in fact the Kingdom of God is
within you." (Luke 17:20-21)
This obscure utterance follows:
"The days will come when you will desire to see one
of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see
it. And they will say to you, 'Look here!' or 'Look
there!' Do not go after them .... For as the lightning
that flashes out of one part under heaven and
shines to the other., .so also the Son of Man will be
in his day:'
(Luke 17:22-25)
Here is the parallel passage in Matthew 24.
"See I have forewarned you, If they tell you, 'He is
there in the wilderness; do not go out; or if they say,
'He is there in the inner room; do not believe it. Like
lightning from the east, flashing as far as the west,
will be the coming of the Son of Man:'
(Matt. 24:25-27)
Does this metaphor of the messianic lightning only refer to an outward and future spectacle? The warning in the next line of Matthew
sounds like a clue to something else:
"Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather:'(28)
This line seems to parody the human attempt to possess the legacy of
the dead messiah-to make of him an abstract truth on which to feed,
a religious fact around which to congregate, an "historical Jesus:' But
Matthew's Jesus describes the Son of Man as unpredictable and
astonishing; his return is like that phosphorescent flash across the
�CORNELL
5
horizon. Jesus' next remark continues the metaphor of the sky:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days the
sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers
of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the
Son of Man will appear:'
(29-30)
It appears that the messianic thunderbolt will be the only light in
the approaching darkness. After the meteorological catastrophe,
when the luminaries of heaven are put out, there is only night, and
the wildfire of the world. Jesus suggests a veritable twilight of idols:
the gods of traditions withdraw, and God comes to be seen only in
what is human-that is, under the "sign of the Son of Man:'
Yet this twilight of the gods might also take place within the
individual disciple. The destruction of idols would be not just a
world-historical event but a person's overcoming of his or her own
false gods. I shall argue that Jesus' last sermon proceeds with this
deconstruction of deities and reveals a Second Coming in human
spirit. This is part of what is meant by the coming of the Kingdom.
Let us continue to cite the rest of Matthew 24-25 in segments.
There can be no question of complete explanations, but I shall
remark briefly on each.
In the next section, Jesus announces that he is teaching through
parable.
"Now learn the parable (ten parabolen) of the fig tree
(sykes). When its branch has already become tender
and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.
So you also, when you see all these things, know that
it is near-at the doors!
"Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no
means pass away till all these things take place.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will
by no means pass away. But of that day and hour no
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my
Father only.
"But as the days of Noah were, so also will the
coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days
before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came
and took them all away, so also will the coming of the
Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field: one
will be taken and the other lefi:. Two women will be
grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other
left. Keep awake (gregoreite) therefore, for you do not
know what hour your Lord (kurios hum!m) is coming:'
(24:32-42)
We saw a moment ago that the coming of the Son of Man was
not necessarily an event to be located in space. There will be no saying uLook, here it is!" or uthere it is!" Now, with Jesus' reminder of
the days of Noah, it appears that the time of the Son of Man is not
fixed at one moment either. It is not simultaneous for all individuals.
Two women will be grinding: one will be taken and the other left. The
Lord who is coming comes to a person in his own time: " ... you do
not know what hour your Lord is coming:' Indeed, if the Lord is not
coming to at least some persons soon, it is odd for Jesus to state that
this generation will not pass before these things take place. Just as his
words never pass away because they are outside the time of creation,
so the experience of the Son of Man must be an ever-present possibility. The disciple is transported, however not in a physical sense.
But the most important feature of this text is the image of the
fig tree. Learn the parable of the fig tree, Jesus says. When its branch
puts forth leaves, we know summer is near. Notice that this formulation does not concern the effect of the summer on the tree.
Summer is near but not yet arrived. Rather the tree is changing itself
in anticipation of the new season. So perhaps the fig tree does not
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represent the external signs of what is to come so much as an internal preparation for it. We might reach toward apocalypse the way the
fig tree heralds the summer. When we see all these things, Jesus
says-the things he is about to recount-we know that apocalypse is
near. Does the fig tree instruct us about our own power of vision, our
own understanding and its transformation?
That this fig tree should depict the ascent of human spirit would
hardly be strange. In scripture, trees and their fruit frequently express
human growth and flourishing, either in the collective or in the individual. The prophet Hosea tells us:
I came upon Israel like grapes in the wilderness, I
looked on their forefathers with joy like the first ripe
figs.
(Hos 9:10)
In the gospel of Mark, when a blind man begins to receive his
sight, he sees men who
look like trees, but they are walking about.
(Mark 8:24)
In Matthew we are repeatedly told that a poor tree cannot yield
good fruit (Matt. 3:18, 7:16-20, 12:33-34); and Jesus asks rhetorically
whether figs can be picked from thistles. (7:16) In the text we are considering there is even a play on words to suggest the inward sense of the
parable of the fig tree.4 Matthew's word for "fig tree" in chapter 24, syke
can be taken as a pun on psyche, the word for "soul:' In Greek Jesus
could seem to tell his disciples, "Learn the parable of the soul:'
This hypothesis, that the fig tree is human spirit, radically alters
our reading of the rest of Jesus' discourse. What has traditionally
made the next paragraphs in Matthew so baffling is the impression
they give of being simply an assortment of sayings and warnings
about the Second Coming. For it appears Jesus proceeds to other
images besides the fig tree, to other little stories or parables concerning the world's judgement at the end of time. Some editions of the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
New Testament insert subtitles like "The Parable of the Ten
Maidens;' "The Parable of the Talents;' "The Parable of the Sheep
and Goats:' But this misleads readers about the structure of the text.
It encourages them to ignore the larger discourse Jesus is unfolding
and to read these parables separately, as individual pieces of doctrine.
But I think Jesus has a deeper intention. He uses the word "parable"
only once in this sermon,. only when he tells the disciples to learn the
parable of the fig tree. On the hypothesis that the fig tree represents
human spirit, there truly is only one parable, a parable of upward growth
that continues to the end of his speech. All the subsequent images Jesus
invokes are really a description rf this spiritual growth. For human awareness
evolves by phases. What look like separate parables, the subsidiary
images Jesus will run through in the remainder of his discourse, are
really these phases. They are so many scenes within a single motion
picture of spirit unfolding. Each scene in the sequence, each image of
that Kingdom that will come, is really a way of experiencing it, a
stage in its coming. Each picture that looks like a separate parable
depicts a way rf thinking about the Kingdom, and the King. This is how
Jesus elaborates his earlier hint about the destruction of idols. He
teaches that, as the soul becomes aware of its images of God as images,
it is set free for movement and opens up to the Eternal in time. Only
the rest of the text can give substance to this proposal.
In the next paragraph we come to the "burglar" that Emily
Dickinson mentions in her poem. For in the sequence of personifications
of the Son of Man, the first is that of a burglar breaking into a house.
"But know (gignoskete) this, that if the master of the
house had known ( edei) at what hour the burglar
would come, he would have watched and not allowed
his house to be dug through (or dug across:
dioruchthenai). Therefore you also be ready, for the Son
of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect:'
(24:43-44)
Jesus begins with a frightful picture: the Son of Man returns like
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a thief. assaulting the "master of the house;' who tries to protect
himself. What are we to make of this scene? Freud once said that the
essential discovery of psychoanalysis was that the ego was not "master in its own house:' 5 I am not so sure about the originality of psychoanalysis on that point. One does not have to be Sigmund Freud
to surmise that the "master of the house" in this Gospel passage is a
figure of the soul's ordinary consciousness, and that here too this
consciousness is under attack. 6 The master of the house would like
to know the hour of the break-in, but Jesus is recommending an
alternative knowledge. He tells us to know that the master of the house would
like to know the hour. We are to investigate not the burglar but the frightened master and his futile defenses. The master would like to watch
to prevent the psychic invasion-in vain, however, since the burglar
still succeeds. How should our readiness be different? Jesus proposes
that, since the Son of Man always comes when we are not expecting,
we need to become aware of what we are not usually aware of. We
need to allow the thief into the house, allow the Son of Man to harrow the soul. In Greek the word for the "digging through" the house
that is the thief's work can also be a "digging across." The "thief"
tears up the contents of the soul and leaves it divided. The idea seems
to be: better the Son of Man come in now with our acknowledgement, better he reveal to us those secrets of ours unknown even to
ourselves, than expose us by stealth in the sleep of self-ignorance.
Jesus' repeated injunction to be ready and stay awake is not just a
threat about the final historical crisis. He calls us to realize the only
alternative to the anxiety of judgment. He calls us to self-awareness.
Perhaps this speculation seems far-fetched. But the next segment
of Jesus' discourse begins by assuming that one is no longer master
in one's own house, and this segment ends by further exposing the
divided soul.
"Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom
his master made ruler over his household to give them
food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly,
I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his
goods.
"But if that bad servant (ho kakos doulos ekeinos) says
in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming; and
begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and
drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant
will come on a day when he is not looking for him
and at an hour that he is not aware o£ and will cut
him in two ( dichotomesei) and appoint his portion with
the hypocrites. There will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth:'
(24:45-51)
One can read this text as a description of two stewards, one good,
one bad. But the text also conveys the possibility that one servant, in
two different moments, is being described. Jesus says, "But if that bad
servant says in his heart ... ," as if speaking only of an alteration, or
another side of the "blessed" one. The corrupted servant seems to be
the main interest of the story, since Jesus offers striking details about
his bad behavior and punishment. Indeed we should not discount the
hidden possibilities of the human examples, good and bad, Jesus sets
before us, Things may not be all they seem at first, The very characters we would reject at each stage in the series-the parts of ourselves
we would reject-may be precisely those that, once acknowledged,
would carry us to the next leveL This is Ms. Linda Wiener's formulation, and it gives us, I think, a profound sense of what Jesus is up
to, His initial question here "Who,., is a faithful and wise servant?"
is a genuinely open question, not to be answered peremptorily.
In fact, Jesus asks, "Who,,. is a faithful and wise servant, whom
his master made ruler over his household to give them food in due
season?" He is alluding to Psalm 104:
The eyes of all, 0 Lord, wait upon You, that You give
them their food in due season,
(104:27)
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The scriptural allusion suggests that whoever the wise and faithful servant turns out to be, his task is to become more like the lordgiving food in due season. Now the career of the bad servant begins
with his loss of faith. He says in his heart, "My master is delaying
his coming;'-which can only mean that he wonders if the lord will
return at all. But if the future "wise" servant will be one who has
become like the lord, it is hard to know if the bad servant's disenchantment is not a stage on the way. After all, the bad servant has put
aside the self-protective strategy of the previous character and finds
himself instead in a state of longing. Could it be that, after feeling
so acutely the master's delay, he attempts, albeit inadequately, to fill
this emptiness himself? Will he even acquire in his roundabout way
some lordly wisdom about the world? The absence of God might
have its compensations.
But the text only indicates that, at this point, the bad servant has
thrown himself with abandon into his work and his pleasures. In the
ambiguity of God's absence, he has become himself divided. Angered
at the void of governance in the world, he. has filled the void a little
too enthusiastically-beating his fellow servants. On the other hand,
taking full advantage of the cosmic anarchy, he indulges himself with
his boozy companions as he pleases. Surely there is some comedy in
the fact that the returning master cuts him in two and casts him with
the hypocrites. 7 For hypocrisy is this psychic division; and such is
already the condition of the bad servant, who behaves as abusive
tyrant and abject slave. For the present, the lord has come as that visible rift in his soul.
Following this passage on the divided servant are the well-known
stories of Matthew 25--the ones most often lifted out of context
and treated as separate parables. Here is the first.
"Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened ( omoiotheisetai) to ten virgins who took their lamps and went
out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were
prudent, and five foolish. Those who were foolish
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the
wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But
while the bridegroom was delayed, they all nodded
off and fell asleep. And at midnight a cry occurred:
'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet
him!' Then all those virgins were aroused (ergerthesan)
and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the
prudent, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are
going our: But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest
there should not be enough for us and you; but go
rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves: And
while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and
those who were ready went in with him to the
wedding; and the door was shut. Afterward the other
virgins came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us!' But
he answered and said, 1\ssuredly, I say to you, I do not
know you: So keep awake (or, be attentive: gregoreite),
for you know neither the day nor the hour in which
the Son of Man is coming:'
(25:1-13)
Perhaps even on a first reading we feel uncertain about this story.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of the Eastern Church expresses his
doubt succinctly. "Shall I be frank?" he writes. "I do not like the wise
virgins. I would have preferred them to give all their oil to the foolish
ones, to be cast out for their sakes ... in a generous act of folly:' 8 Rev.
Bloom has picked up the scent of Jesus' irony. He recognizes that
something is wrong with this picture, and he indicates by a brief note
that his suspicion agrees with St. Paul, who considered forfeiting his
own salvation to benefit others (Romans 9:1-3).9 Now it is of the
highest importance to notice that the parable text itself encourages us
to scrutinize these prudent virgins, their state of mind, their motives.
The story opens: "Then the Kingdom of heaven will be likened (or compared) to ten virgins:' It does not say "The Kingdom of heaven is like
this:' (New English Bible). Jesus is representing how people will conceive the
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Kingdom. He is not offering his own perspective, but portraying a
temporary and partial idea. In view of his original image of the fig
tree, we might say he is examining a fig not quite ripe. That is the
point of describing ten maidens not ready for the mystic marriage.
Before proceeding, I should emphasize that the instruction on
the surface of these stories in not without its positive value. It is just
that, if we only go that far in our reading, and take them as so many
pearls of explicit doctrine, we fail to notice the irony that threads the
whole of Jesus' discourse. We fail to notice the compassionate smile
and the penetrating gaze of the Son of Man.
To be sure, the virgins have something positive to teach. They
have attained a more unified condition of soul than the divided servant in the previous picture. Rather than allow their lord's delay to
raise doubt about his coming-and give free rein to unruly
instincts-the virgins' desire is caught up in the divine wedding. The
bad servant's impatient and resentful longing has changed into the
virgins' frankly erotic anticipation.
And here we begin to see the problem. Could the virgins' virginity denote an extreme reaction to that kind of wanton behavior
described in the previous story? Their very awareness of their virtue
and their desire to conserve this virtue may be a bit exaggeratedstill anxious and still divisive. The goodness of the once good servant of the earlier stage has come back-yes, but come back with a
vengeance. For vengeance is what we see in the clever five. As Rev.
Bloom recognized, the five clever maidens do not mind if their prudence displays the imprudence of the others. After all, what is the
evidence that the oil supply would not suffice for all ten? How necessary is that trip of the five foolish ladies to the store? One wonders,
when the clever maidens send the imprudent five away on their
errand, if these clever ones are entirely free of scheming. These
ingenues seem a little disingenuous. Perhaps there is a trace of guile
beneath those gossamer veils.
So let us look more closely. The problem with hypocrisy is that
neither the perpetrators nor the victims necessarily suspect it. And
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that would be the case with these ladies. Jesus calls attention-if we
are paying attention-to their state of unconsciousness. The maidens all doze off before midnight. While they slumber, a cry "occurs"
and they are aroused. (The word "aroused" is ambiguous, in Greek
as in English, and it is not the word Jesus uses to admonish us to keep
awake.) Then there is the reputed oil crisis that leads to the preferment of the prudent five. Finally, Jesus exhorts his listeners to stay
awake. Now isn't it odd that, after the five prudent virgins are saved
in spite of their falling asleep, Jesus tells his listeners to wake up and
pay attention? Have we missed something? Was the warning supposed to waken us from our own slumber, as if we might well be
dreaming the same dream as they? 1 For the implication of Jesus' call
to us to wake up is that the virgins in his story are still dreaming
their collective dream.
A dream is always revealing. The virgins are dreaming that their
marriage to the bridegroom of their soul will be a reward for manifest virtue, virtue discerned against others' inadequacy. But this
moralistic dream of the Kingdom is no different from the way of the
world, where good habits (generally speaking) are neither impractical
nor unprofitable. The virtue of the five prudent virgins-like so
much of what we call "virtue"-comes down to good sense and foresight, symbolized by that additional measure of oil. Alas, the contingency plan of the smart ones is threatened at the eleventh hour.
The bridegroom was late, but was he late enough to show the prudent
five to advantage? The five foolish girls' lights are dwindling, but what
if their lamps should not go out in time? The prudent ones will have
exercised all that prudence for nothing! And those fools have the
cheek to ask the prudent ones to share the fuel supply! So the prudent exhibit their prudence once again. They clarify their morally
ambiguous predicament with a little morally ambiguous advice: these
dullards had better go to the store! I think Jesus' story challenges the
false equation of the Kingdom with the discipline of virtue. At some
point it becomes evident how little virtue has been its own reward. Is
it at the moment the virtuous fear they may not profit from their
°
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virtue as they tacitly planned? When it comes to protecting some
hard-earned honor, it can be surprisingly easy to act dishonorably.
The King James' Version renders the beginning of the next paragraph of Matthew as follows: "For the Kingdom of Heaven is as a
man traveling ... " etc. But again the translation gives a misleading
impression. In Greek, Jesus' next story opens with no such assertion
about the Kingdom. Rather he continues in his hypothetical and
ambiguous manner.
HNow, as it were, a man, traveling to a far country,
called his own servants (or slaves: doulous) and
delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five
talents (talanta ), to another two, and to another one,
to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the
five talents went and traded with them, and made
another five talents. And likewise he who had received
two gained two more also. But he who had received
one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord's
money. After a long time the lord of those servants
came and settled accounts with them. So he who had
received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, 'Lord, you delivered to me five talents;
look, I have gained five more talents besides them:
His lord said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful
servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will
make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy
of your lord.
He also who had received two talents came and
said, 'Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I
have gained two more talents besides them: His lord
said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; y!'m
have been faithful over a few things, I will make you
ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Then he who had received the one talent came
and said, 'Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping
where you have not sown, and gathering where you
have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went
and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you
have what is yours: But his lord answered and said to
him, 'You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I
reap where I have not sown, and garher where I have
not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited
my money with the bankers, and at my coming I
would have received back my own with interest.
Therefore take the talent from him, and give it to him
who has ten talents. For to everyone who has, more
will be given, and he will have abundance; but from
him who does not have, even what he has will be
taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the
outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth:"
(25:14-30)
Now where, one must ask, is the hypocrisy in this famous tale of
the talents? If it is anywhere, surely it is in the fellow who received the
one talent and produced no surplus. For the lord points out rhat if
this nervous fellow believed the owner would demand a return on his
deposit, logically he should not have gone and buried it but should
have put it in a savings bank. The fellow wirh one talent has been
caught in what rigorous thinkers call a contradiction. But let us not
judge hastily. The master reaps where he has not sown. The hapless
beneficiary has planted his talent in the soil as if it should grow there.
I do not think it beyond Jesus' wit to raise a question in rhis way about
our unconscious confusion of a cultural or social process wirh a natural one. If we can entertain this possibility we may begin to see rhat rhe
little guy's hypocrisy is not the most interesting kind.
But first let us observe the positive elements in this new image of
the Kingdom. The maidens in the previous story were supposed
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simply to wait, ever ready to meet the bridegroom. But those who
receive the talents face a more open field of action; the lord does not
specify what he expects of them. Nonetheless, two of the capitalists
discover on their own one of the secrets of creation. Smart investment is a capacity to let go for a time; and they find that, through the
right way of letting go, things develop spontaneously of themselves.
Their living is easy. So these successful investors are more secure than
the anxious maidens. No schemes enter their heads for getting an edge
over the competitors.
Incidentally, the word "talent" (talanta in Greek) which in this
story means a sum of silver, is the historical source of our English
word "talent;' meaning an individual's native gifts. The derivative
idea, that a person's inherited character is a unique opportunity that
repays a little judicious expenditure, is true to the worldly wisdom in
this text. Human beings are exhorted to enjoy the creative power hidden within.
The story of the talents is also a quick sketch of what people call
the uloser.~' A uloser;' in the technical sense of the term, is not some-
one who happens to fail. A "loser" is someone who tends to make himself fail through the expectation and fear of failure. The master in the
story expresses this sad truth. "From him who does not have, even
what he has will be taken away:' The man with one talent feels too
acutely the comparison with his fellows. His subjective feeling of "not
having" causes him to forfeit what he has. He annihilates his modest
chance in life by the defeatism that imagines he has nothing at all.
Yet this does not seem to be the full perspective of Jesus, the
teller of the tale. Notice that here he does not formulate the lesson
about the have-nots himself but places it in the story, in the master's
mouth. The idea of letting the have-nots take the heat, so to speak,
is not quite Jesus' idea. True, the "loser" proceeded illogically, as the
master was quick to point out. But the master's own logic, or at least
his arithmetic, is far from perfect. There is a howler in the premise of
his benefaction, as stated in the initial conditions. The lord allegedly
assigns the talents to his servants "each according to his ability:' But
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the two successful characters, the ones allotted two and five talents
respectively, turn out to have identical skills in financial management.
Each doubles his capital. The story does not ratify the lord's original
judgement about ability. Nor can we see a reason for his assignment
of the loser's talent to the man with ten. 11
I suspect that Jesus' discernment, and his arithmetic, are not so
poor; and that instead, through his story, he points to the irrationality of the advantages of the advantaged. The "loser" may be overly
debilitated by his lowly position. But the successful parties overlook
the arbitrariness of their head starts, which gave them their confidence in the world. Do we really think it is coincidence when the ultimate rewards turn out, as in the story, to correspond with the
initial advantages? Jesus has caught us in the subtlest hypocrisy,
subtlest because it is collectively concealed in an economy that seems
blameless and natural. Those who are made to feel the likelihood of
success have a correspondingly greater stake in the system. This
greater stake is reflected in the fact that the lord will depend on those
richer servants to throw out the poor investor.12 "Cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness:' 13 Jesus hints at the unexamined collusion between those who benefit from a particular human
order and that order's god. Once we have doubted the harsh god of
the successful, we may decide to give up-along with Emily
Dickinson-the theology of the banker.
One result of interrogating these well-contrived stories of
Matthew's Jesus, and of bearing their context in mind, is that we
begin to see the irony in them, an irony that permits opposing perspectives, an irony that generates tension and movement. Each little
story represents a broadening of human vision of the Kingdom but
also the blind spot in that vision that a little questioning begins to
correct. Simplicity of heart and an intricate knowledge of human
self-justification thus combine in Jesus' speech. The hypothesis of his
irony, of course, makes us uneasy. We fear we have been deceived; our
impressions of Jesus and of ourselves are in danger. But unless we
acknowledge deception there is no enlightenment. Lightning too is
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dangerous when it strikes, and yet we come to delight in that dazzle
that is never so harsh as to injure our sight.
In any case, it would be a mistake to assume that Jesus' words
always have an ironic sense. Take his last story, the story of the sheep
and goats. Its opening is marked: Jesus breaks with his previous tone.
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all
the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the
throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered
before him, and he will separate (aphorisei) the people,
as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And
he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats
on the left. Then the King will say to those on his
right hand, 'Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world .. .':•
(Notice the word "kingdom" has only now been asserted
positively, as well of the idea of the "fatherhood" of God, which
corresponds to the "Father" in Dickinson's poem.)
"' ... for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was
thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and
you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I
was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you
came to me: Then the righteous will answer
( apokrithesontai) him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see
you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you
drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you
in, or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you
sick, or in prison, and come to you?' And the King
will answer ( apokritheis) and say to them, 'Assuredly, I
say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least
of these my brethren, you did it to me:
Then he will also say to those on the left hand,
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
'Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry
and you gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave
me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take me
in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in
prison and you did not visit me: Then they also will
answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty ot a stranger or naked or in prison, and
did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them,
saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did
not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to me:
And these will go away into everlasting punishment,
but the righteous into eternal life:' (25:31-46)
This story completes the sequence of images Jesus has put before
us. Let us see how.
First of all, when the King discloses his solidarity with the
"least" of his brethren, the text quietly sets aside the god of the
talents who condemned the little guy. Indeed the whole story of the
sheep and goats makes the world's idea of success and failure irrelevant. Not a word here about the unfortunate ones' responsibility for
the bad situation in which they are found. How unnerving is the
King's report when he says, for example, "I was in prison!" He does
not say, "I was completely innocent and ended up in prison:'
Typically, Matthew's Jesus touches on the most complicated of
problems by the simplest of means-in this case, the problem of
society's relation to the criminal. But we can have little clue about such
implications if we have misunderstood Jesus' progressive disclosure of
human presumption: the disappointed believer who now trusts only
in force; the prudent maidens who turn their virtue into a weapon;
and, most disturbing of all, the investors of the talents who, as long
as someone else is at the bottom of the ladder, assist the god
of worldly advantages. All these efforts to distance ourselves from
frailty and failure-to refuse sickness and even crime as any part of
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ourselves-perhaps these separations had to have their season. But
from the perspective of the story of the sheep and goats they are now
suspect. God himself does not play the Almighty as his all too human
creatures do. He reveals himself in a Son of Man who is not merely
one particular man but all humanity's brokenness and distress.
But what of the fact that the sheep and goats acted by mere
instinct? Neither the sheep nor the goats acted by knowledge; all were
surprised by the King's identification with human affliction. How
can they be rewarded or condemned for their responses to the little
ones? I think that if we look closely we can see that there is more in
the picture. The puzzlement expressed by the sheep and the goats is
not as senseless as it first seems. There are different ways of being
unaware; and the difference between the sheep and goats shows us
something important about hypocrisy. Perhaps it also shows us the
alternative path.
Both the sheep and the goats ask the King, "When did we see
you ... ?" But their past actions dictate that the two groups cannot be
expressing the same doubt, nor revealing the same thing about themselves. The sheep are asking, "When did we see you hungry and feed
you, or thirsty and give you a drink, or in prison and visit you?" Their
question wonders whether they have ever done any of these deeds. They
question their own positive action, their effectiveness in the world,
their having achieved anything to solace the King's sufferings. Of
course, it turns out that they had only to do something for one of his
least brethren and they did it for him. The goats necessarily imply
something different. They inquire about when they saw the King
hungry or thirsty or naked or in prison and did not minister to him.
That is, the logic of their question, questioning their failure to act,
implies that maybe they always did all of these things. There is a logical difference, which amounts to a psychological difference, between
the sheep and the goats. It is the difference that precisely shows forth
hypocrisy-hypocrisy even in an etymological sense. For hypocrisy
(hypokrisis in Greek) can describe an insufficiency of judgment by failing to turn one's judgment to onesel£ That is what the goats have
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
failed to do: they have not questioned their own ungenerous hearts
and so they question the King's imputation now.
The text indicates in another way that such a difference is visible
in the sheep's and goats' questions, For, before they ask their
questions, the text says each time, surprisingly, ", , , and they will
answer, ••• " How is their question an "answer"? The Greek word used
here, apokrinomai, I think gives us a clue, Apokrinomai is the same as the
word for "separating"-not the external act of setting different
species apart (aphoridzo) which the King does like the shepherd-but
rather a self-activated separation. The suggestion is that the sheep
and goats are separating themselves by these simple questions which are
also their "answers:' Their "answers" reveal and distinguish them.
The text says that the King will then "answer" them, too. By answering the sheep's and goats' "answers;' it appears that the truth is
reflected back to them so they themselves will see it. (C£ Rev. 1:7)
Indeed, after the King's answer, the sheep and goats go their separate
ways. Notice: the sheep do not cast the goats out as their counterparts do in the earlier stories. The goats go away on their own. Have
they now judged themselves in the light of the Kingdom? 14
Jesus' apocalyptic discourse is complete. He has confided to the
disciples something of his wisdom about the unfolding of human
spirit. Like the fig tree, spirit matures with time, opens its flowers
of divine awareness, and (in the words of the psalm) shares its fruit
in due season. By this dynamic image, Jesus depicts a metamorphosis
of the soul, a metamorphosis distinct from the outward systems of
good and bad that would fix the soul in a moral identity, in
self-satisfaction, or in self-defeat. The parable of the fig tree sets our
moral ideas in motion, it takes them up in a continuous, ever more
encompassing growth. It is no accident that Jesus' sequence of
secondary images expands outward: from a master of a house, to a
household with its staff of servants, to a wedding that unites households, to an impersonal economy of investment and profit, and finally to all the nations of the earth.
.Yet Jesus' instruction does not end here. Matthew's Gospel
�CORNELL
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follows up Jesus' last parable with an extremely significant episode. It
is as if the evangelist would take the ever-ascending thought of the
parable to a yet higher viewpoint-higher but in no way remote. The
evangelist would show us the divine agony and the divine succor in
the immediate present, and not just as something realized in an afterworld when a soul beholds its past in shame. By way of conclusion,
let us consider a few more lines.
Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these
sayings, that he said to his disciples, "You know that
after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man
will be delivered up to be crucified ... "
(26:1-2)
And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of
Simon the leper, a woman carne up to him having an
alabaster jar of very costly fragrant oil, and she
poured it ( katekeen) on his head as he sat at the table.
But when his disciples saw it, they were indignant,
saying, "Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might
have been sold for much and given to the poor." But
knowing what they were up to, Jesus said to them,
"Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a
beautiful deed for me. For you have the poor with you
always, but me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on my body, she did it for my
burial:'
(26:6-12)
Readers who have grown aware of the subtle continuity of the
gospel text, and who have just examined the sheep and goats parable,
will not have a hard time guessing where the disciples' indignation on
behalf of the poor has come from. They learned it-or thought they
learned it-from Jesus' private instruction. Like many of Matthew's
readers, the disciples seem to have extracted the sheep and goat story
from its dynamic context and made of it a watermark of their piety,
and their authority. They know the law of charity now. And so they
are eager to separate this goat from among the sheep, to expel this
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
woman from their company of true discipleship. In this the disciples
are correct. They are sheep and she is the goat-although not in the
sense they imagine. For the woman who never heard Jesus' apocalyptic discourse is much closer to him in spirit, and she accepts the role
of scapegoat of these woolly-headed followers. Here the irony of the
Gospel is transparent. The disciples have demonstrated the pious
hypocrisy about which, without their realizing it, Jesus had attempted to enlighten them. In telling them they have the poor, but not him,
always with them, he gives them another chance to grasp his essential
idea. He gently suggests that perhaps they have already made of his
teaching a useful abstraction, while they fail to notice the affliction
present before them.
Meanwhile, we hear the melodious silence of the woman. There
is a mystery in that simple phrase " ... a woman came up to him," a
hint of intimacy between her and Jesus. The text refuses to shed light
on it, as if to insist that it is only that immediate and implicit understanding of two persons who will always recognize each other
because they know the cost of the most costly things. Is that not
what her gesture declares? She "pours out" (katekeen) her fragrant oil
just as Jesus will say on the next page that his blood that forgives sins
is "poured out" (ekkunnomenon) (26:28).1 5 She knows the poverty that
is an emptying of the spirit, a total expenditure of one's certainties,
one's gods, onesel£ The woman is a poet. And her mute poetry, her
language of signs, says even more. This funerary rite, performed on
the head of a man who is not yet a corpse, is also a spontaneous rite
of baptism. She has transformed the acknowledgement of death into
a recognition of rebirth and supreme life, that may be felt in the very
void of that acknowledgement. The woman has understood-we do
not know how-she has understood what Jesus has taught about a
receptivity to the world's anguish, and the gift of oneself to death.
She therefore recognizes in him a fragility that will never break, a
powerlessness that overpowers dread. She freely empties her vessel.
Jesus' final remark is a counter-recognition of the woman's recognition of his message. We should reflect on it well.
�CORNELL
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"Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what this woman has
done will also be spoken of as a memorial to her:'
(26:13)
At the moment when Jesus' personal ministry is about to be
extinguished, he declares the endurance and inseparability of his
word and the woman's deed. Her gesture is an utterance of the divine
language-simple, unpredictable, spilling over with meaning. Jesus
marks the eternal moment. For an instant, he is not merely the
central character in Matthew's Gospel: he ruptures the very confines
of the story. He speaks over the heads of his disciples and even his
narrator, to reach the eavesdroppers of future time.
In a single remark, in a flash, Jesus breaks out of the world of the
text and into a world that does not yet exist, the world of those who
will hear his voice and understand. Suddenly he is not in that inner
room-but like lightning that comes out of the east.
Acknowledgement:
The author wishes to express his gratitude to Maryanne
Hoeffner-Cornel!, Linda Wiener, Daryl Koehn, Malcolm Moncrief[
Wallop, Astrida Ode Tantillo, and Keven Schnadig for helpful
comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Emily Dickinson, Compute Poems., ed. Thomas A. Johnson
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960) #49.
2. Some ancient traditions of interpretation relied on surprisingly little theology. In Syriac and Oriental Christianity, for example,
Greek philosophy, and hence doctrinal formulations, had relatively
little influence. Poetry, paradox, and symbol characterized the writings in this Semitic tradition continuous with the Bible itsel£ See The
Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Lift, ed. Sebastian Brock,
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
26
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian Pub!., 1987), x-xxxiv; and French translator
of the Bible, Jean Grosjean, Aramfennes (Paris: Cerf, 1988), pp. 135-138.
Two outstanding examples in English translations are The Ascetical
Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, trans. Anon. (Boston: Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), and Grigor Narekatsi, Lamentations
of Narek, trans. Mischa Kudian (London: Mashtots Press, 1977).
3. Both the New King James Tirsion and the New English Bible have
been used for citation, with minor corrections made to reflect the
original Greek relevant to the argument. The source for the Greek
text is the Nestle-Almond Novum Testamentum Graece (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).
4. Mr. Benjamin Shook first pointed this out to me elsewhere in
this gospel.
5. Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton,
1966), 353.
6. Cf. Matt. 12:29, 13:5, 13:21. In chapter 13 also Jesus uses apoc-
alyptic parable to teach about hidden movements of the soul. See my
"A Parable of Scandal: Speculations about the Wheat and Tares in
Matthew 13;' in Contagion, 5 (1998): 98-117.
7. This reference to hypocrisy, crucial for the whole of Jesus' last
sermon, only continues his blasting of hypocrites throughout the
Gospel of Matthew. To take the previous chapter alone, see Matt.
23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27-29. The covert theme of hypocrisy in chapters 24
and 25 is thus a fitting test for the disciples.
8. Anthony Bloom, Meditations: A Spiritual Journey through the Parables
(Denville, N.J.: Dimension Books, 1971), 97.
9. Another saint, Jean Vianney, adopted a similar attitude when
�CORNELL
27
he wrote, "I would rather suffer with Jesus Christ than reign with
him in heaven:' See Thoughts of the Cure' d'Ars (Springfield, Ill.:
Templegate, n.d.) June 22/p.32.
10. C£ Bloom, op. cit., p. 98.
11. Surely it was with an eye to this text of Matthew that the
17th-century Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracian wrote, "In our
world nothing is given except to those who have the most. Many are
stripped of their possessions because they are poor, and see them
given to others because they are wealthy .... The rich inherit and the
poor have no relations .... He that has nothing shall have nothing:'
A Pocket Mirror for Heroes, trans. C. Maurer (New York: Doubleday,
1995), 85-86.
12. It is significant that the Greek term doulos, used in the story of
the good/bad servant in Matthew 24, and used here for the servants
receiving the talents, can as well be translated "slave;' therefore
adding to Jesus' irony in presenting these images of the Kingdom.
13. The harshness of the lord, which the man with one talent
anticipates, is therefore confirmed in fact by the lord's condemnation.
The unwary reader who accepts this conclusion with no compunction also accepts (notwithstanding his better opinion of himself) the
condemned man's way of thinking. The reader's condemnation is still
partly hypocritical.
14. Perhaps their free departure represents a soul's moment of
recognition of its own past sins, and its consent to consume them in
the fires of suffering, the furnace of death that burns even now. In a
remarkable book, The Diary of a Russian Priest, Alexander Elchaninov
writes, "However just and pure a man may be, there is always an
element of sin in him which cannot enter the Kingdom of God and
which must be burned up. Our sins are burned up by our sufferings:'
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Press, 1982), p. 27. Hence, like eternal life, "everlasting fire" encompasses the present time and a soul's
experience in the present. Is this the meaning behind the "baptism in
fire" mentioned in Matthew 3:11?
15, The Greek words ekkeo and katakeo use the same root.
�t
Peter of the Vine:
The Perversion of Faith in lriferno 13
Peter Kalkavage
Render therefore to Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.
Matthew 22:21
In Canto 13 of the Inferno Dante enters the realm of the suicides.
There he meets one of the most tragic inhabitants in all of Hell. Like
so many others among the damned whose one consolation is to be
remembered, the soul tells his story. In spite of Virgil's promptings
to question the soul further, the pilgrim Dante is so overcome with
pity that he cannot speak (84).
The soul that moves Dante to speechless pity is that of Pier della
Vigna. He is never named in the canto, nor would he need to be for
readers of Dante's day. Everyone would have known from the
description Pier gives of himself that here was the most successful
and influential statesman of the age, a gifted man of humble origin
and an accomplished poet who skyrocketed to :fume and power as the
most trusted advisor to Frederick II, Head of the Holy Roman
Empire.! That so famous a man is left nameless makes his evocative
name resound all the more as we read the canto--Peter of the Vine,
the pietra or rock on which Frederick founded his earthly kingdom.
No less a man than this is Dante forced to see imprisoned forever in
one of Hell's most gruesome devices.
The particulars of Inferno 13 prompt us to ask: What is the sin of
suicide for Dante? How is the peculiar nature of suicide revealed in
the divine retribution for suicide? But the most interesting question
of all in the canto is: why does Dante choose Pier della Vigna as the
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This paper was presented at the
American Political Science Association, Sept. 4, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts.
All translations of the Divi11e Comedy are the author's.
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
representative of this sin? What, in other words, does suicide have to
do with poetry and politics?
Now Dante is a master at showing how evil is the perversion of
good, Throughout the journey through Hell, we see souls that have
taken something good and natural and twisted it to an evil end. This
perversion of good comes across most powerfully in Dante's depiction of those among the damned who are noble or great-souled. It is
they who most capture' our attention and stick in the memory, they
who most evoke our pity and our fear. As we scan these noble figures,
we come across three who pervert the virtues most fundamental to
the Christian life-faith, hope and love. These figures are Francesca,
Ulysses, and Pier della Vigna. Francesca, in subjecting reason to
desire (5.39), represents the perversion of love; Ulysses, in his violent
quest for the eternally new, the perversion of hope; and Pier, as we
shall see, the perversion of faith.
Before turning to Pier and the centrality of faith in this canto, let
us recall briefly the place of the suicides in the overall scheme of
Hell. In Canto 11 Virgil warns Dante that he is about to enter the
circles of decidedly more grievous sins than the ones he has encountered so far. There are three main categories of sin-incontinence,
malice, and what Virgil calls "mad bestiality"-each of which is punished in its own appropriate region (82-83). Malice corresponds to
violence and "mad bestiality" to fraud. Suicide falls in the circles of
violence, the realm presided over by the Minotaur (12.12). As the
middle of the three sublevels of violence, it is a mean between the
lesser sin of murder and the greater sin of blasphemy.
According to Dante's infernal hierarchy, suicide is worse, more
deeply entrenched in hellishness, than murder. Sin is bad not just for
formal reasons, not just because God said "Don't do it;' but because
it is contrary to nature. Sin is the wilful distortion of our human
nature, a fact made painfully clear in the self-mutilations we witness
throughout Dante's Hell. Sin is perverse. Suicide is worse than
murder because violence against one's own self is more perverse than
violence against another. Dante includes among the murderers those
�KALKAVAGE
31
who plundered the goods of others as well as those who robbed them
of their life. That is why the ryrants, who are steeped in both versions
of mortal robbery, are almost completely immersed in the lake of
boiling blood that is the general torment of this level. We witness an
analogous pairing of sins in the realm of the suicides, where Dante
combines in one level those who murdered themselves with those
who squandered their wealth (11.40-45). In a sense we are what we
have. We are entrusted with a human self, which, like any other good,
is to be enjoyed and taken care of, and with material goods, which are
the condition for and extension of our very life and selthood. The
suicide and the squanderer each tears himself from himself, rips the
fabric of selthood. This violation of self or self-rape, as we may call
it, is portrayed in the images of tearing and breaking that appear
throughout the canto.
As if to emphasize the peculiarly destructive character of the suicides, Inferno 13 opens with a repeated use of negation. The first three
tercets begin with the word non, which is the first word of every line
in the middle tercet. This middle tercet stresses the perversion of the
natural: "no green leaf but dusky hue; no smooth boughs but knotted and warped; no fruits were there, but poisonous thorns" ( 4-6).
Even the name of the centaur who leads the two poets through the
circles of violence-Nesso---hints at nessun, the Italian word for
"nobody;' which in fact appears in line 3. All sin for Dante has the
nature of a self-inflicted wound, a self-negation. As the wilful
destruction of our own being, all sin is suicide. The suicides of
Canto 13 have taken this vicious circularity, this self-negation that all
sins have in common, and singled it out as their conscious and
deliberate end. Perhaps for this reason, because suicide is explicitly
perverse, Dante is here equally explicit about sin as the negation of
nature's goodness.
The retribution of the suicides-the depth of which is not fully
revealed until later in the canto (103-108)--is arguably the most
nightmarish in the whole Inferno. Upon entering this region of Hell,
Virgil and Dante fmd themselves in a no man's land or antiworld.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The landscape is that of blighted nature-a dense, pathless wood of
thorns and bushes. As the granunatical figure "not this but that"
makes clear, it is a place where things ought to have blossomed but
instead became monstrosities. This is the only torment that involves
a wood-the only torment, in other words, that takes us directly
back to Dante's personal dark wood at the very beginning of the
poem. To the scene of blighted nature Dante adds the loathsome
Harpies, "who drove the Trojans from the Strophades with grim prediction of what was to come" (11-12). A disgusting combination of
human and bird, the Harpies, whom we meet in the third book of
the Aeneid, are famous for their acts of defilement. First they defile
the feast of Aeneas and his men; then they defile Aeneas's journey
with a prophecy of great hunger (3.225-257). Disgusting as the
Harpies are, the suicides, in their act of self-defilement, are by implication even more disgusting. By cursing their own life and selfhood,
they are Harpies and Aeneas's men combined. They defile their own
feast and curse their own journey. We are told that the Harpies
"make lamentations up in the strange trees" (15). Just why these trees
are strange, why they are trees that are not trees, Dante and the reader have yet to discover.
The reference to the Harpies of Aeneid 3 is a fitting prelude to a
canto in which Virgil's poem plays so prominent a role. Before the
two poets proceed further into the wood of the suicides, Virgil
reminds Dante of his orientation within the circles of violence, as
though there were some special danger here that Dante might lose his
bearings. Then Virgil tells him: "But look you well: rhus will you see
things that would take away faith in my sermon" (20-21). This is the
first time that the word jede, "faith;' occurs in the canto. Virgil seems
to mean: "Dante, you're about to see something which, even if I had
told you about before-and I have in my Aeneid-you wouldn't have
believed:' Virgil here takes on the voice of biblical auctoritas. He casts
Dante as a "doubting Thomas" who must put his hand to the wound
if he is to believe. For Dante the Aeneid is virtually the other Bible. It is
the poem that sings of the world in labor, the world giving birth to
�KALKAVAGE
33
the Roman monarchia or empire that was sent by God to heal the
world's political woes. It also sings of the curses that militated, vainly, against the establishment of Rome's hegemony: the hatred of
Juno, the horrible omens, defeats and broken truces Aeneas encounters along the way, the eternal hatred of Dido. By calling attention to
Virgil's authority and to the political authority of Rome, Dante
seems to warn his reader: "Disbelieve the Aeneid at your peril!" But
why is such a warning necessary? And why is the warning issued here,
just as Dante is about to meet Pier della Vigna?
In response to Virgil's advice, Dante does indeed "look well"and sees nothing. He hears wailings all around him, but their source
remains invisible. 2 Dante confesses to being totally at a loss, smarrito
(24)--the word used in the very first sentence of the Comedy, where
Dante says that he recovered himself in a dark wood, "where the
straight way was lost;' che Ia diritta era smarrita (1.3).
We then hear what is perhaps the oddest, most contrived line in
the entire Comedy: "I believe he believed that I believed;' Cred' io ch'ei
credette ch'io credesse (25). Commentators point out that in this artful
stutter Dante is mimicking the style of Pier della Vigna's courrly and
mannered poetry. 3 More important, however, is the reference to belief
or faith-prepared by Virgil's preceding imputation of Dante's
incredulity. It is this reference to faith that gives the mimicking of
Pier its point. Dante believes that Virgil believed that he, Dante,
mistakenly believed that the wailing sounds were coming from
people who were hiding in the bushes. There is no way to put this
without sounding like Pier with his ingenious turns of phrase. What
we have here is a brilliant, one-line enactment of what could only be
called tangled faith. It is as though Dante is momentarily infected
with the self-referential miasma of the suicides, with the pernicious
music of suicide. Caught in the thicket of merely human belief, belief
without revelation, Dante concocts a "likely story" that in effect disconnects him from Virgil and calls Virgil's authority into question. 4
This belief that fails to get beyond itself functions as an allegory. It
shows the vulnerability and lostness of the human mind when left to
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
its own devices. It is not so much the erroneousness of the unguided
intellect that the line captures as its involuted self-enclosure, the tragic inability of the mind to get beyond its own ingenious but pathetic constructs.
"I believe he believed that I believed," Cred' io ch'ei credette ch'io
credesse. The line is harsh and prickly-like the thorns of the suicidal
bushes. Like the self-referential act of suicide, it depicts a belief that
tries to get beyond itself but only circles back: Dante's belief remains
"within itself" even as it attempts to "read Virgil's mind:' Cred' io
leads back to io credesse. The suicidal "bent" of the line reminds us that
for Dante, who discovered his true vocation as poet when he "found
himself again" in the dark wood, poetry is for the sake of vision. It
is not for its own sake, for the ingenuity of language which it must
obviously employ, but for the sake of that divine Whole to which language points. As poet of the divine Whole, Dante is our new
Theseus. In leading us through the labyrinth of Hell, he shows us the
potential poetry has for being infernal and suicidal. Poetry, the
"golden thread" that can lead the soul to its highest happiness, can
also be the instrument with which the mind murders itself in the
deification of style and ingenuity, in poetic narcissism. Dante's lostness
at the beginning of Inferno 13 recalls precisely this danger. It is the
Minotaur to whom Pier presumably succumbed and whom Dante
narrowly escaped.
Anyone who reads Dante at all closely is struck sooner or later by
the unprecedented importance he attaches to language and the power
of words. The Comedy is itself a tribute to that power in its attempt
to record and shape for all time to come the experience of Hell,
Purgatory and Heaven. Canto 13 has a threefold relation to language.
First, Dante attaches extreme importance to the meaning of people's
names. This holds of course for the the entire poem but has a special
relevance for this canto, where the names "Peter of the Vine" and, as
we shall see, "Polydorus" and "Frederick" are all charged with
allusiveness. Second, the canto bristles with harsh-sounding Italian
words: tronchi, stizzo, schiante, strazio, to name just a few. 5 Dante causes us
�KALKAVAGE
35
to feel the potential thorniness of language. It is almost as though,
in order to experience the peculiar evil of the suicides, all we have to
do is read the Italian out loud. As we have seen, the Pieresque line,
Cred' i"o ch'ei credette ch'io credesse, is the perfect example of a verbal thornbush. It is the very sound of ingenuity bereft of fluidity and grace.
The third relation to language is found in Pier himsel£ who was a
master stylist in both prose and poetry. These three relations point to
the fact that Inferno 13 is, among other things, a multilayered meditation on language and its potential hellishness.
It is not clear whether Virgil is indeed deceived as to Dante's true
mental condition. In any case he addresses what he takes to be an
error on Dante's part and urges him as follows: "If you break off
some small branch from these plants, the thoughts you have will turn
out to be maimed" (28-30). The word Virgil uses here, monchi, means
mangled or amputated. It is ironically suited to what Virgil now tells
Dante to do. The deliberate wounding of Pier seems to be Virgil's
way of calling attention to Dante's own amputated condition, his
momentary but significant lack of faith in his teacher's authority and
insightfulness. As we shall see, Dante's slight fracture of Pier's branch
rums out to be the precursor of much more severe infractions yet to
be revealed. But what is this breach of faith that Virgil imputes to
Dante? Does it refer merely to the factual mistake (which Dante
seems not to make) of thinking that there are people hiding in the
bushes, or is something deeper going on?
Dante breaks off a twig from a "great thornbush" (32). To his
horror and amazement he discovers that "words and blood" flow out
together, that the "strange trees" contain human souls! At this point
in the canto the poet Dante forces us to relive one of the many
horrors in the Aeneid. This particular horror occurs at a pivotal
moment of the story-in Book 3, the book of Aeneas's wanderings
where we also meet the Harpies. Troy has just fallen, and the Trojans,
now exiles, set out in search of a new land. Their first stop is Thrace,
the land of Mars. Aeneas prays for the auspices of the gods, but his
pious hopes are dashed when he sees "an awful omen, terrible to tell,"
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
horrendum et dictu mirabile monstrum (26). It is his kinsman Polydorus, the
youngest son of Priam, whom Priam had sent to the Thracian king
for safekeeping. Betrayed by the king and murdered, Polydorus now
lies imprisoned in a mound of myrtle and dogwood (22f£) The
"grove" of lances that pierced his body has been transformed into
plants that feed, vampire-like, on the hero's blood. Aeneas learns all
this only after he has ,unwittingly broken one of the plant-man's
branches, thus releasing the power of Polydorus's bloody speech.
Virgil's Polydorus is the innocent victim of a faithless world. The evil
of this world is seconded by malign supernatural powers that invade
and pervert the sphere of life-giving nature.6
Dante reduplicates the graphic details of this episode: the initial
cries of the wounded soul, the black blood that flows from the
lacerated branch, the appeal to the pious hands of the lacerator. He
thus recalls not only the Polydorus episode but also the overall
horror and injustice that haunt the whole Virgilian world. In Dante's
Christian cosmos, the episode is both preserved and revised. Pier is
indeed "Polydorus"-he is much-gifted, as the Greek meaning of
the name implies. But he is no innocent victim of another's crime.
Having yielded to malizia against himsel£ he is consigned to eternal
punishment by his compatriot and fellow poet, Dante Alighieri. Pier
now speaks on behalf of all the suicides in Hell as he grimly intones:
Uomini fummo, e or siam jatti sterpi, HMen we were, and now we are
turned to shoots" (39). Later we are told that suicide is the fierce act
by which the soul has "uprooted itself" from its body (95). This
uprooting is the key to suicide and helps us to see why suicide
is deeper and more comprehensive in its violence than murder. Why
are the suicides plant-people? Because in willing their own destruction they put a curse on all things that live and grow, put a curse on
the living Whole by destroying their rootedness in that Whole.
The gruesome irony of suicide, the truth of suicide, is that, far from
escaping the realm of rootedness, far from attaining the freedom he
so craves, the suicide becomes more rooted and unfree than ever.
He becomes a member of the degraded community on behalf of
�37
KALKAVAGE
which Pier speaks when he says: "Men we were, but now we are
turned to shoots:'
As Dante hears Pier cry out in anguish, he drops the branch-tip
from his hands. The violent, dehumanized speech of the suicides is
unforgettably brought to life in the simile of the "green brand that
is burning at one end and drips from the other, hissing with the
escaping air" (40-42). 7 Virgil apologizes to the wounded soul with yet
another reference to faith:
"If he had been able to believe before,
0 wounded soul;' my sage responded then,
"what he had not seen except in my lines,
He would not have stretched out his hand against you;
but the thing unbelievable made me
prompt him to that which grieves my very sel£"
( 46-51)
Earlier, Virgil had referred to the faith Dante would not have had
in Virgil's "sermon:' Here again Virgil portrays himself as a divine
authority, whose Aeneid, by analogy with the Bible, contains things
unbelievable which nevertheless are true and ought to be believed.
The connection between the Aeneid and the Bible is all the more perplexing given the fact that Virgil, along with all the other denizens of
Limbo, is in eternal suspense precisely for lack of faith ( 4.34-36).
Virgil's poem, as Dante reads it, is in one sense the prefigurement
of sacred text. As we see in the retribution for suicide, Virgil's images
point beyond themselves to deeper, more original truths that can be
revealed only in a Christian context. Virgil's vision of the Whole,
although inspired, is also limited. But in another and equally important sense, the Aeneid is itself original-not an image at all. Its authoritativeness regarding world empire is on a par with and independent
of the Bible. This fact is brought out forcefully in Dante's prose work,
Monarchia, where Dante appeals to the Aeneid as a book of divinely
inspired signs, all indicating the legitimate, providential nature of
Rome's dominion. In Virgil's poem we read the will of God. The
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directness with which we discern God's will in the poem mirrors the
directness of the temporal authority of which the poem sings. It is an
authority that emanates, so Dante relentlessly argues, not from the
authority of the Church but directly &om God (Monarchia 3).
By making the spokesman for suicide Pier della Vigna, Frederick's
right-hand man, Dante places us squarely in world politics. By appropriating the Virgilian image of Polydorus, he traces that politics all
the way back to the root and beginning of Rome's founding, to the
very first (and unlucky) step Aeneas took after the fall of Troy. Now
in Book 2 of Monarchia Dante confesses that he once was blind to the
fact that Rome's conquests were the will of God on earth. Dante had
failed to take Virgil seriously: he did not know how to read the signs
implicit in Virgil's words and images, did not believe in the manifest
signs of divine providence. Here in Inferno 13 Dante's "break" with
Virgil's authority is occasioned by human sounds combined with
invisibility. Dante is "lost:' Until Virgil suggests a path of discovery,
he does not know that the sounds are coming &om inside the trees. He
"looks well"-or so he thinks-but he fails to "see;' that is, he lacks
faith in the outer sign of an inner secret. This lack of faith, this failure to read signs, is a form of violence against Virgil's poem. In the
allegorical opening of Canto 13 Virgil forces Dante to relive and
thereby recognize that violence by wounding Pier's tree, that is, by
doing violence to an inspired image. The image then "speaks" to
Dante and shows him the error of his ways.
The beginning of Inferno 13, with its recollection of lostness
within a dark wood, recalls the time when Dante, blind to guidance
through signs, suffered a double despair---despair for himself and
despair for the course of world history. The Comedy depicts a return
to Beatrice, whose authoritative splendor Dante had forgotten. But it
is no less a return to the authority of Virgil, who is Dante's guide to
Beatrice. Without faith in Virgil's poem, the world, as far as we are
concerned, is lost. That the world itself is blind to Virgil's (and
Rome's) authority is perhaps alluded to in Inferno 1, where Virgil is
introduced as "one who appeared weak through long silence" (63 ).
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39
The continuity between the Bible and the Aeneid is intensified as we
reflect on the Christian overtones of the Polydorus story. That
Polydorus was sent by his loving father and became the innocent victim of a betrayal reminds us of Christ, who suffered for the sins of
a faithless world. The mingling of words and blood suggests the mingling of the divine Logos and the divine Passion in the person of
Christ. Dante's transformation of Polydorus's myrtle and dogwood
into a thornbush also recall Christ's suffering. And, as Virgil clearly suggests, Dante is a doubting Thomas who must put his hand to the
wound if he is to believe. Why does Dante do this seemingly bizarre
thing? Why does he combine in one image the retribution for suicide
and the divine Passion? Perhaps because suicide, as the wilful death
of self, is not only the rejection but also the infernal mockery of that
divine love that reveals itself in self-sacrifice and death to sel£ By
conflating in one image Christ's Passion and the suicidal retribution,
Dante recalls the sacrifice that finally healed the wound at the heart
of the world, the wound symbolized by the Christ-figure Polydorus. 8
In light of this divine sacrifice, suicide and its despair are rendered
groundless and perverse. The suicidal plant-people of Iriferno 13 have
denied precisely the divine care of the world to which their own sinful condition mockingly points.
Now in Virgil's story Aeneas pulls at some branches, ramis, and sees
"black blood" flow out (3.25-29). Then he pulls again in order to reach
the causas latentis, "the secret causes'' that lie hidden in the roots (32). It
is as though pious Aeneas wants to get to the roots of all human woe
so that he might extirpate them once and for all, heal the wound at the
heart of the world. But the result, alas, is only increased suffering for
Polydorus; the roots of woe endure. From the Christian perspective
Virgil seems to have divined the notion of original sin, a wound so deep
that no amount of good politics can ever succeed in healing. It is
highly interesting that in his revision of the Polydorus story, Dante is
bidden by Virgil to break off no more than qualche jraschetta, "some little
branch:' And in line 32 Virgil's ramus or branch has been subtly transformed into a mere ramicel or twig. By emending his own text, Virgil
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avoids undue suffering for the man within the plant. And yet Pier reacts
with as much pain as does the Trojan hero, as if to demonstrate that
what seems like a small infraction is actually more grievous than even
Virgil himself had originally imagined.
We may sum up Virgil's complex role in Inferno 13 as follows.
Although officially suspended for lack of faith, faith in the eternal salvation of individual souls, Virgil must nevertheless be accorded the
faith he deserves. Withbut Virgil, without "the other Bible" and its
song of Rome's divine origination, we lose sight of the earthly, historical-political wound that God's love for man had sought to heal in
the establishment of worldly empire. We lose sight of the fact that
God's providential care for man embraces both the supernatural destiny
of the individual human soul and the temporal course of political history. The fate of Pier della Vigna combines, as we shall see, the importance of both Bibles, the two foundations of God's kingdom. Both
Bibles are necessary if we are to avoid a maimed or amputated faith.
Virgil tries to make it up to Pier for urging Dante to the discovery he could make only by inflicting pain:
"But tell him who you were, so that, by way
of some amends, he may refresh your fame
in the world above, where he's allowed return:'
(52-54)
The refreshment of fame proves alluring to the gracious Pier, to
whom reputation means everything. Pier shows touching courtesy to
the two poets, not knowing who they are. "Let it not be grievous to
you," he says, "that I am lured to speak a while" (56-57). Pier's use of
a bird-catching verb, inveschi, recalls the dove-like Francesca, whom
Dante summons as though calling a bird.9 Pier proceeds to tell his
story. Through the boldness of his poetry, Dante subjects us to a
seemingly cruel juxtaposition of nobility and evil. The voice of the
courteous Pier is not a graceful stream of speech that flows from the
lips of a human form. It is instead the violent hissing discharge of
one whose humanity lies buried and unseen within a grotesque plant.
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41
The juxtaposition compels our wonder. Why does the poet Dante
put this man in Hell? How could such a man ever embrace the
malizia that puts a soul in the circles of violence?
Pier's story is fairly brief and deserves to be quoted in full:
"I am the one who held both of the keys
of the heart of Frederick, and I turned them,
locking and unlocking so suavely that
from his secrets almost all men I kept:
faith I brought to my glorious office
such that I gave up all my sleep and pulse.
The harlot who from the household of Caesar
not once did turn those whorish eyes of hers,
the common death and the vice of the courts,
set aflame against me the minds of all;
and they, inflamed, inflamed Augustus so
that happy honors turned to dismal woes.
My own mind, through its relish for disdain,
believing with dying disdain to flee,
unjust made me against my own sel£ just.
By the new roots of this tree I do swear
that never ever did I rupture faith
with my lord, who was so worthy of honor.
And if one of you to the world goes back,
let him comfort my memory, which lies
still beneath the blow that envy gave it:'
(58-78)
It is this speech that reduces Dante to speechless pity. His loss for
words seems to say: "Pier, you of all people, in this place, in this
ghastly condition! You, who suffered such grievous injustice and
ingratitude!" Dante may also be thinking: "There but for the grace
of God go I!" His reaction must be all the more painful given the fact
that Pier was one of the poets at Frederick's court who paved the way
for Dante's "sweet new style:' Pier is indeed pitiable. Although unlike
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THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Polydorus in dying by his own hand, he resembles the Trojan hero in
being the victim of a horribly misplaced faith-faith in a faithless
king. Apparently, Pier was falsely accused of betraying the emperor's
secrets. Frederick believed these lying accusations and had Pier blinded and imprisoned, whereupon Pier killed himself by beating. his
brains out.l 0
Before proceeding to the details of Pier's speech, I note in passing that Dante is less iliterested in isolated sins than he is in the living context out of which sins emerge, in the stories sinners tell of how
they came to their sorry pass. Recall how carefully and at what length
Francesca, Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro and Ugolino all tell their
stories-stories so complex and full of the detail of life that it is
sometimes difficult to locate and identify the sin itsel£ These stories
all underscore the fact that human life for Dante is a journey or
adventure replete with pitfalls, opportunities and temptations. They
show us that within the complex and unpredictable field of contingencies, of things beyond our control, free will is operative at each
moment, most especially at the dire moment in which evil is chosen
eternally. The stories remind us of the organic interconnectedness of
all things within an ever-shifting whole, of how one sin usually begets
another and poisons the whole wellspring of life. Francesca's sin, for
example, transcends itself: it tempts her husband to the murder that
sends him to a much deeper pit of Hell than the one she occupies
(5.107). Stories themselves enter into the web of life and act as
tempters. Witness the story of Lancelot and Guinevere in the case of
Francesca. Through the stories of the damned, Dante educates his
reader, not by preaching generalities but by involving him in the
problematic texture of moral life.
When we witness the immersion of the tyrants in boiling blood in
the preceding canto, we are tempted to respond: "Good for the bastards!" The punishment of murder is generic. No one there tells his
story, and the pilgrim Dante is, in the words of John Sinclair, "grimly
judicial:'n But here in the realm of the suicides the situation is very different. Dante is intensely, personally involved. He hears a tragic story
�KALKAVAGE
43
from a fellow Italian whose many gifts and political woes resemble
those of Dante himself. Virgil is eager here that Dante have direct,
hands-on experience of the damned and spend time questioning the
soul of Pier. And when Pier does speak, it is not simply to tell his sad
story but to vindicate himself. to give the still living Dante a report that
will rejuvenate Pier's good name in the world above. Dante the poet is
playing with ftre. He exposes us to a man who seems more sinned
against than sinning. By deliberately arousing our pity, he tempts us to
question the divine justice that saw fit to send Pier to Hell.
But precisely because Pier tugs at our heartstrings, we must all the
more resist the temptation of sentimentalityPToward the beginning
of Canto 5, just as Dante is about to enter Hell proper and meet the
seductive Francesca, the horrible Minos gives him a piece of advice:
"Watch how you enter and in whom you put faith" (19). The reader
of the Inftrno would do well to heed this warning: he must steel himself against the rhetoric of the damned.
Like Francesca, whose rhetoric is indeed potent, Pier has every
intention of evoking our pity and admiration. She poses as the enviable heroine of romantic love, he as the tireless champion of loyalty
or faith. Both arouse overwhelming pity in Dante and are proud in
their damnation. Pier begins with a great-souled boast: "I am the one
who held both of the keys of the heart of Frederick:' The rest of his
speech is in the same vaunting, self-vindicating tone. In Inferno 13
Dante both damns and vindicates Pier. On the one hand, we believe
that Pier is telling the truth-that he was a tireless and ever-faithful
minister of the king, that the accusations against him were horribly
unjust and that whorish envy was at the bottom of it all To this
extent he merits our pity. But on the other hand, now feeling the
gruesome consequences of his suicide, Pier remains obsessed with
the harm others have done to him. As he reminisces about the good
old days, the days before his "glorious office" and "happy honors"
were taken away from him, he again resembles Francesca in her
wistful recollection of the events leading up to her eternal loss.
Pier takes evident pride in his faith. Eternally consumed by this
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pride, he boasts not only of having served his king well but also of
having been raised above other men in enjoying privileged access to
Frederick's heart. The reference to the emperor's heart adds a chilling
note of intimacy to Pier's conscientiousness. Political service for Pier
went far beyond mere duty. He had in fact transformed his affaires
d'etat into an affaire de caur. In telling Dante that he gave up all "sleep
and pulse;' Pier is saying that for Frederick's sake he made a sacrifice
of his very life and will. He is saying: "Why, I killed myself for that
man!" The boast ironically combines Pier's service and suicide, his
nobility and his evil. The reference to the heart of Frederick reveals
the perverse workings of the heart of Pier. Here was a man on whom
rested the most important matters of the common good, the welfare
of the entire kingdom. And yet for Pier it is as though no common
good even existed. The common good, the end of politics, is
completely suppressed on behalf of personal gratification and selfaggrandizement. The world was Pier's oyster, the field and
playground for the indulgence of his various talents. His pride of
position, although characterized by intense political busywork and
achievement, was nevertheless at its roots antipolitical, a fact amply
shown by his covetous guarding of Frederick's heart. In condemning
the envy that infects all courts, Pier unwittingly reveals his own.B
Pier crowns Frederick with the titles "Caesar" and "Augusrus;'
thus recalling both the noble roots of ancient Rome and the emperor's rightful claim to divine status. They are, as we shall see, titles that
Frederick little deserves, and Pier's use of them, from Dante's
perspective, no doubt borders on the obscene. But to Pier's mind
Frederick is a god who more than deserved them. Pier calls him "my
lord;' which elevates Frederick even more, transforms him into Pier's
Christ. Frederick has become the true Vine, of which Pier is the
proudest branch. 14 In this perverse mimicry of Christ and St. Peter,
we witness a reversal of roles: it is the disciple who is infinitely
faithful and the lord who betrays that disciple. Now Dante has a
passionate interest in what a human being gives himself to completely, who his god is. Of all the things that lay claim to our time
�KALKAVAGE
45
and energy, there seems to be some one thing that most wins our
heart, something for which we would be willing to sacrifice other
things we love, perhaps even our very lives. If this is true, then-with
the exception of the utterly disgusting neutrals in Canto 3, who
admitteclly are legion-no human life, no genuine human life, is really "theologically neutral:' There is something to which we bow down,
whether or not we agree to call this something god. The human heart
wants to give itself to something infinitely and eternally.l 5 This is most
evident in the case of the passionate and noble-minded beings like
Francesca, Ulysses and Pier. Francesca gave herself infinitely and
eternally to her god Eros, to whom she sacrificed all decency and
even all concern for her lover Paolo's welfare; Ulysses to the mad spirit of adventure, which drove him to transgress every human limit.16
Pier, too, is tragically devout. He gives himself infinitely and eternally to Frederick, "my lord, who was so worthy of honor:'
In deifying Frederick Pier reveals that his great faith is in fact
both idolatrous and heretical: he rendered to Caesar a faith that properly belonged to God. Now in Hell he paints his suffering with the
colors of martyrdom for his earthbound (and ill-paid) faith. St. Peter
denied Christ three times, but Pier sticks with his lord to the bitter
end. He sings his praises in Hell and even swears loyalty to Frederick
by the roots of his infernal tree (73), thus signalling that he takes his
infernal faith, his rootedness in Hell, as something sacred. It must be
noted that while Pier condemns the whorishness of the court, it
never enters his mind to find any fault whatsoever with his idol,
Frederick, whose heart could be so easily turned away from his most
trusted advisor. Like Francesca and Ulysses, Pier blinds himself to
the true source of his sin. Francesca blames her sin on a book of
romance (5.133-138); Ulysses blames his on an unquenchable thirst
for new experiences (26.90-99). Pier blames his on the turning of
Frederick's heart by the envious intrigues of the court. He fails to
realize, or rather wills not to realize, that his culminating act of
suicide began with and had its roots in his perverse faith, his
unswerving devotion to a changeable lord.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But the heretical roots of Pier's mistaken faith are not fully
exposed until we consider Frederick's own place within Dante's
scheme, Frederick is punished among the arch-heretics of Canto 10
(119), among those "who make the soul dead with the body" (15).
Their patron is Epicurus (14). This form of heresy is not dissension
from Church doctrine as such but the murder of the soul. Heresy is
the marriage of intell~ctualism and sensualism. In its heretical
employment the mind ·rejects all transcendence and canonizes the
claims of the body. Heresy is thus punished in an appropriate region
of Hell--on the border between the "upper" sins of incontinence
and the "lower" sins of malice and fraud. The heretics are piled, like
with like, into the proud monuments they constructed to their own
authority, monuments that are also fiery tombs. Frederick's heresy
took an especially perverse form. According to one thirteenth-century chronicler, Frederick "was an Epicurean, and he and his scholars
tried to find anything they could in Divine Scripture which might
serve to show that there is no life after death:' 17 Frederick, in other
words, not only subverted the Bible but also sought to turn the Bible
against itself, to make the Bible commit suicide.
Frederick's very name for Dante supplies the clue to his corruption. When Frederick is first mentioned among the arch-heretics, he
is called Federico, which means "rich in faith:' Here in Canto 13 Dante
moves from this bitter irony to an even more revealing epithet by
changing the c in Frederick's name to a g: Federico becomes Federigo. The
slight alteration releases the arrogant inscription Jede rigo io--"I rule
faith:' The name thus embodies the sweeping act of presumption
with which the City of Man, whose good and proper nature has been
distorted by a sophist king, usurps and displaces the City of God.
No one could fault Dante for not giving politics its due. Politics is
everywhere in the Comedy. We must never forget that the murderers
and betrayers of Julius Caesar are in the same satanic jaws that
chomp on Judas, that crimes against God's political viceroy are crimes
against God himsel£ But Frederick sought to make himself the king
of souls as well as cities, to govern matters of Church as well as
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matters of State. To such a lord did Pier give his very soul and that
soul's eternal devotion, a lord who had set himself up in place of the
Church as the spiritual authority on earth. Pier's suicide thus comes
to take on symbolic meaning: it is the full flowering of the suicide
that lies at the heart of a self-deifying politics corrupted by intellectualism. It is the evil fruit of an evil tree.
Clearly the sin of suicide was provocative to Dante's imagination,
his taste for what Baudelaire called correspondances or resonances. As if
to correct the vulgar notion that suicide is the paradigm of an exclusively self-related sin, Dante lets suicide "spill out" into the whole
world. He chooses a famous political man as spokesman; the details
of whose suicide remind the pilgrim Dante (and us) of the providential, world-historical whole to which we as individuals belong. The
thought of a much-gifted and successful human being who destroys
himself because of what the world did to him is like a seed that germinates in Dante's fertile mind. Out of this seed grows the vast and
complex meditation that is Inferno 13-a plant-meditation on how the
natural growth of individual, community and world is thwarted by the
abuse of success and natural gifts of intellect and artistry. Inferno 13 is
a forceful reminder of how precious for Dante-and how perilousis the role of guide. As Marco Lombardo tells Dante in Purgatorio 16,
"bad leading (Ia mala condotta) is the cause that has made the world
guilty" (103-104). For Dante poetry and politics, like rhetoric and philosophy, are modes of guidance. In Frederick and Pier we behold the
perversion of this tremendous power and responsibility, the all-tooeasy degeneration of guidance into self-indulgence. As advisor to the
emperor, Pier neglected his role as guide. Instead of attempting to
curb Frederick's pretensions, he seconded them with his fawning devotion, thus fanning the flames of his own and his lord's narcissism.
I turn now to the lines in which Pier speaks of his actual suicide:
"L'animo mio, per disdegnoso gusto,
credendo col morir juggir disdegno,
ingiusto jece me contra me giusto.n
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"My own mind, through its relish for disdain,
believing with dying disdain to flee,
unjust made me against my own self, just."
The tercet has drawn much attention from commentators, who
point out its Pieresque stylishness. This stylishness (in the present
context, unsettling to say the least) is especially evident in the third
line-ingiusto Jece me contra me giusto--with its cleverly devised frame of
opposites, ingiusto and giusto, enclosing within itself the central paradox of the suicide, me contra me. The repetition of sounds compels the
line to turn in on itself rather than to move forward and "out"-in
imitation of the suicide, who is both self-centered and self-opposed.
In the concentric circles of Pier's stylish line we detect the very funnel of Hell.
As the centtal opposition me contra me suggests, the suicide doubles
himself and then pits one self against the other. One Pier who is just
(an innocent Polydorus with an unmerited fate) is set upon by another Pier who is unjust (the savage executioner of his innocent alter
ego). 18 The vicious circularity of the suicide reminds us that Hell is
full of circles, all perversely imitating the heavenly circles of mind
and love. As Pier makes clear, suicide begins as a pain in the mind. It
is not the blinding and imprisonment that bother this great soul but
the thought of a lost reputation. Pier shares the lament of Cassia in
Othello: "Reputation, reputation, reputation! 0, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is
bestial" (2.3.261-263). The very absence of Pier's name in the canto
suggests a suppressed or darkened name that cries out for renewed
utterance and clarification. Harrowed by this pain in the mind, this
loss of his name, Pier proceeds to annihilate the bodily life on which
mind as consciousness depends. The mind itself thus becomes
bloody-a fact dramatized in the bloody stream that flows from the
suicide's torn branches. By killing himself, Pier seeks to extirpate the
living roots of his thinking: a thing that neither lives nor thinks
cannot be pained by the loss of honor. But in this self-negating act,
he also strikes at the human community that gave him honor in the
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49
first place and at the whole living Nature of which that community
is itself a part. The act of uprooting is violence against the context
from which the suicide's roots are torn. This violence against the
whole, in particular against all other human beings, is marvelously
captured in the thorns that jut out in all directions from the suicidal
bushes. Suicide is de-Creation. It is nothing less than the will to
destroy the universe.
Pier credits his mind with the actual suicide. His use of the word
animo for mind, so close to anima or life-giving soul, suggests the
unnatural antagonism he has generated between the noblest part of
himself and the organic life on which that part necessarily depends.
The significance of crediting the mind with suicide is two-fold. It
involves the revelation of a truth and simultaneously the subversion
and distortion of that truth. The truth is that suicide not only
temporally begins but also has its timeless roots in the mind taken
broadly as our inner state. The outward deed for Dante is not what
makes suicide sinful. If that were the case, then all the pagan suicides
would be here in Canto 13. The sinfulness of suicide follows from
the biblical story of divine Creation and God's blessing on life, and
more specifically from the sanctification of personhood by
Christianity. The Bible uncovers an evil unknown to the pagan
world-perversity of will, the pursuit of evil in the fully knowledge
that it is evil. 19 Pier's suicide consists in an inner disposition of the
will, prompted by a wounded mind, to destroy or de-create. It is this
inner evil, this perverse attempt to undo the creative Logos or Word,
that is expressed and incarnated in the outward deed.
Now for the rhetorical subversion of this truth. In blaming his
mind for the suicide, Pier falsifies and degrades the nature of the
mind. He depicts it as though it were some external and violent force
that made him unjust, Jece me. The fact is that Pier yielded to his relish
for disdain and wilfully reduced his mind to the status of a weapon.
Pier's sophistical displacement of blame is the effort to pawn off his
suicide as though it were merely the result of great-souled incontinence, as though, noble-minded as he was and disdainful of life
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
without honor, he simply couldn't do otherwise. Pier would have us
believe that he really didn't choose the path of self-destruction, that
he had no free will.
As a rule, the damned will not to understand themselves. Pier in
all fairness half understands himself; he understands that he was a
paradox of justice and injustice, that he had "doubled himself' But
he presents this paradox not as any deep self-knowledge but as an
opportunity for being artistic, for a display of his characteristic
style. Pier poses as a tragic figure. Indeed, by presenting himself as
the victim of an unmerited fate, he poses as Polydorus. We recall
that early on in the Inferno Hell is defined as the place of those who
lost the good of the intellect (3.18). Pier's violence against the intellect, his wilful loss of the good of the intellect, can be seen in his
use of the word gusto in line 70. He attributes to the mind a taste
or relish for disdain. The object of this disdain is, we must imagine,
not those who contrived his fall but Pier's own life and selfhood
now made hateful through the loss of fame. To quote Cassia, "I have
lost the immortal part of mysel£ and what remains is bestial." It
is no accident that Dante employs a word that recalls the aesthete
and connoisseur side of Pier rather than his office as sober counselor. Indeed, it is the side that allies Pier with the Epicureanism of
his master. Gusto and giusto are dangerously close in Italian, differing
only by a letter. The highly intelligent Pier-the Pier who was
no doubt a most judicious and conscientious administrator-has,
in his suicide, reduced the just and its rationality to a matter of
irrational taste.
The central line of Pier's suicide-tercet directly connects his
suicide with his perverse faith: "believing with dying disdain to flee:'
Pier shares the heretical dogma of his lord. Rejecting the immortality
of the soul and the eternal order of punishment and reward, he
believes that in death he will no longer feel the self-disdain that
others have inflicted on him. Of course, here he is, still "alive" and in
Hell, still worshipping Frederick, still mortally wounded by the loss
of his name. He registers no surprise that in murdering himself he put
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51
down "new roots" in the antinature of Canto 13. Like so many of the
other sinners we meet, Pier is disturbingly at home in Hell
One final reflection before we leave Pier's story. We often think
of someone who commits suicide as a victim of despair. It is this
view that makes us think of suicide as a form of incontinence.
Someone was "driven;' we say, to take his own life. As we see, Dante
puts all the Christian suicides in the sphere characterized by malizia,
that is, the conscious will to harm. Pier's suicide, as we may detect in
the very tone of his speech, is rooted in a pride of self-affirmation
that accompanies his despair, a pride immortalized in Hell. This
pride brings us to yet another way in which the suicide violates the
Creation: the suicide assumes absolute authority for and ownership
of his life and being. Implicit in the act of self-slaughter is the view,
"My life's my own, to do with what I please:' 20 Suicide is the expression of a lust for consummate self-possession. Like heresy, it is thus
the usurpation of divine authority and divine origination.21 Perhaps
this is another reason why in Canto 13 Dante so intimately connects
suicide with heresy. Frederick and Pier, both of whom dabbled in
poetry, both of whom fiddled, as it were, while Rome burned, are
perverse originators--a fact symbolized by the artistic and intellectual
originality for which Frederick's court was famous. Their giving way
to the deep-set lust in man for originality helps us to understand why
in the blighted nature of Inferno 13 trees are "strange" and roots are
"new:' Strange does not mean just unusual, nor does new mean just
recent. Strange here, in addition to meaning bizarre, means estranged
or alienated, and new means novel or originaL Together the adjectives
point to the deep connection Dante sees between suicide and poetry.
Suicide, like poetry that aims at novelty rather than intellectual
vision, is the effort to be original or creative, to be one's own source.
Through the gruesome images of Canto 13 Dante seeks to persuade
us that this effort is self-deluded and doomed, that the rage for
creativity is violent injustice against the providential and alreadyestablished Nature that sustains all human acts and imaginings and
guides them with its pervasive goodness. The new taken as an end in
�52
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
itself can lead only to the strange.
On this note, we begin to see why Dante chooses as the torment
for suicide not just trees but the Virgilian tree of Polydorus.
Frederick and his henchman Pier have together perverted the divine
tree of world empire, the tree which, as the Aeneid relentlessly shows,
cost so dear to plant in the first place and which had to overcome any
number of curses. All ~ese curses are heralded by the accursed tree
of Polydorus-the very first horror Aeneas encounters as he leaves
fallen Troy in search of a new world. To disbelieve or ignore Virgil is
to reject not only the Christian redemption of the individual soul (to
which the tree of Polydorus points) but also the divine providence at
work in the founding of pagan Rome, the city which, as Marco
Lombardo says, "made the world good" (Purgatorio 16.106).
As I noted earlier, the punishment of the suicides is the only torment involving a wood. Pier's horrible fate cannot help but remind
Dante of his own dark wood. At its roots, Dante's selva oscura is the
dark wood of the mind, a mind that clings to a false and tangled faith
in its own powers and seeks fUlfillment in that faith. 22 Here in Canto
13 Dante no doubt recalls in Pier the injustice of his banishment
from Florence and the origins of this banishment in envy. But far
more to the point he accuses and damns his own self-negating,
suicidal past.23 If his choice of Pier serves as any indication of
Dante's own lost condition, we may gather that Dante, like Pier, had
cultivated a heretical, merely ingenious form of poetry, and that he
had taken inordinate pride in the power and honor of his political
office. Then there is the second book of Monarchia, in which Dante
confesses to a former lack of faith in the signs of authority in Virgil's
Aeneid, the signs of God's care for secular history. This too plays an
important role in Dante's lostness. Proud as he was, Dante could
easily have gone the way of Pier and succumbed to the relish for
disdain and suicide, especially if he believed that the political world
for which he cared so deeply was "going to Hell in a hand-basket."
Despair might have triumphed. This of course is not what happens.
Dante "wakes up" and undergoes a long conversionary process
�KALKAVAGE
53
through the guidance of Virgil and Beatrice. He recovers hope-for
himself and for the world.
Now admittedly Pier had it much worse than Dante. His roots
went much deeper into worldly success and fame, and his suffering
was more brutal. But the very extremity of Pier's circumstance, especially in his being blinded, might have driven him at last to genuine,
untangled faith-" the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen" 24-the roots of which faith his lord Frederick
had sought to extirpate. He might have pondered at last the Christian
implications of his name and, like St. Peter, might have repented for
having denied. Thus did Buonconte and Manfred, Frederick's own
natural son. 25 To do this, however, Pier would have had to break faith
with "my lord, who was so worthy of honor"-something which,
even in Hell, he refuses to do.
Dante's speechlessness in the face of Pier's sad story forces Virgil
to intervene. It is of the utmost interest that Virgil seems so keen on
questioning Pier. Virgil wants Dante to hear, and perhaps himself
wants to know, how the soul came to be in this plant-prison in the
first place and whether any soul is ever liberated. This is indeed the
Virgil of the Aeneid, the poet of causes and origins, who now understandably wants to know the full implications of his own divinely
inspired image. We are momentarily reminded that Hell is fascinating.
There is a violent expulsion of air from Pier's prophetic branch, after
which the gracious poet-statesman yields to Virgil's request. Pier gives
a brief exposition of how a suicidal soul, having "uprooted" itself
from its body, falls into the wood "wherever fortune flings it" (9495). At this point in its new career, the soul undergoes a perverse
resurrection: it is regenerated, reborn as what Pier calls a "fierce
plant:' No sooner does this plant grow to maturity than the Harpies,
feeding on its leaves, "make grief and for the grief an outlet" (102).
The Harpies in the Aeneid are the defilers of providence and good
hope. Here in Canto 13 they accomplish a twisted form of providentiality or care. By eating the leaves of the suicidal bushes and
causing pain, they simultaneously pravide for the expression of this
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11-IE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pain. They are the perversion of the natural adaptation of appropriate means to happy ends.
The distinctly Christian ban on suicide is now brought out with
overwhelming horror as Pier tells the poets what will happen on the
Last Day when the body is resurrected. The passage is a terrifying
reminder that Christianity "expands" the pagan world for better and
L
.
1or worse, H , as we II as "d own " H up, . th e promtse o f etern al
up
tn
life and "down" in the new depths to which a human soul can sink.
The regeneration and immortality of the body follow directly from
Christianity's sanctification of personhood. This regenerate character
of the body "expands" the spiritual universe even beyond what we
and Dante witness in Hell: the recovered, resurrected body will
complete both the torment of the damned and the happiness of the
blessed. On the Last Day, the day of nature's perfection, we come to
be fully who we are as our experience of either Hell or Heaven is
made exquisite.
As if the suicidal bushes and their words of blood weren't gruesome enough, Dante has Pier speak with an authoritative voice about
the suicide's reclamation of his body:
"Like the rest we'll come for our cast-off bodies,
but not that any may put his on again;
for it's not just to have what a man robs from himsel£
To this place we shall drag them, and all through
the mournful wood our bodies will be hung,
each on the thornbush of its irksome shade:'
(103-108)
In Pier's last words Virgil is exposed to the deeper implications of
his own sentence in the Aeneid, quisque suos patimur manis, "each of us
suffers his own shade" (6.743). What Pier so chillingly describes is the
work of divine justice. In the fullness of time the truth of suicide will
be consummated. Body and soul are eternally wed. But since the
suicide has unjustly divorced himself from his body, the union can
�KALKAVAGE
55
only be one of eternal self-molestation. The classic figure of the suicide-the body hung, Judas-like, on a tree-is enacted forever as the
suicide's lust for harm, his malizia against himsel£ is eternally gratified.
The encounter with Pier della Vigna ends as it began-with a
reference to belie£ The two poets seem held in a condition of fascinated expectation as they await Pier's future revelations, believing that
his maimed branch might want to to tell them more, credendo ch'altro ne
vousse dire (110). Pier becomes the vehicle for that revelation he denied
in life. He becomes an instrument by which Dante may experience
the roots of his own former lostness and by which Virgil may recognize more deeply the power and limits of his own former vision and
belie£ But suddenly all Hell, so to speak, breaks loose. It is the noise
made by the squanderers-yelling, taunting each other and trying to
hide from the ravenous bitches that are chasing them through the
bushes (109-129). The whole scene is like a satyr play after a tragedy,
a sudden come-down and debasement of tone after the grandeur of
Pier and his ghastly revelation of divine justice. It breaks the spell of
Pier's solemnity and reminds us that all the souls here-squanderers
and suicides, the base as well as the noble-are entangled in the same
anti-world. The low comic tone suggests that whereas suicide is
deeply tragic, the squandering of one's resources is just plain stupid.
The canto ends, however, with a return to suicide, this time an
unnamed suicide from Dante's home town. The tone is still lower but
in a different way. It is the tone of the familiar and close-to-home.
The closing line-"! made me a gibbet of my own house"-takes us
back to the Harpies and the suicides' taste for self-defilement.
Imagine the obscenity and disgrace, especially for one as civic-minded as Dante, of a man who makes his hearth and home the place of
self-execution, makes this self-defilement into a public spectacle! The
Florentine suicide reminds Dante of the curse Florence brought
upon herself when she changed her patronage from Mars to St. John
the Baptist, thus bringing civil war, the vengeance of Mars, upon hersel£ In the torn leaves of the Florentine suicide we seem to behold
the suicide of Florence hersel£ 26 Elsewhere in the poem judgmental
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and sarcastic toward his city, Dante here displays an Aeneas-like piety
and love: at the beginning of Canto 14 he restores the suicide's torn
leaves. The gesture is perhaps a prayer of sorts that the curse of Mars
be lifted, that Florence may not reach the full measure of her selfdismemberment.
The question of suicide cannot fail to evoke the suicides of antiquity, in particular Cato but also Dido, Lucretia and the poet Lucan.
None of these pagans is' a thornbush in Canto 13. Lucretia and Lucan
are in Limbo with Virgil, and Dido is in the same circle as Francesca.
As for Cato, he is the formidable watchdog of Mount Purgatory and
the stern guardian of its transpolitical justice. At the end of time Cato
will be among the blessed, body and soul. Virgil reminds us of this
amazing redemption of a pagan when he refers to Cato's cast-off
body as "the vestment which on the Great Day will be so bright"
( Purgatorio 1.75). Why is Cato neither damned for his suicide nor suspended in Limbo along with the other virtuous pagans?
Unlike Pier, Cato was not malicious, nor was he obsessed with
his reputation. Even if he had scorn for Caesar, his mind had not
been tainted by scorn for hirnsel£ He died as a man for whom freedom was more important than life-and that is enough to win
Dante's admiration and God's love. 27 But the case of Cato is not
unproblematic. Whereas Pier was excessively, fanatically devoted to a
perverse Caesar, Cato, in safeguarding his freedom, was fanatically
opposed to a legitimate Caesar, opposed to God's will that there be
a monarchia or world-government. Pier was unjust; he rendered to
Caesar that which was God's. Cato by contrast had not rendered to
Caesar even the things that were Caesar's! He flirted with blasphemy,
a fact which perhaps explains why, toward the beginning of Canto 14,
the sands of blasphemy are said to be like those once pressed by
Cato's feet as he set out to take arms against Julius Caesar (13-14). 28
But Cato moved on. That is to say, he was ultimately redeemed by the
sacred cause for which he died-redeemed and re-employed. It is
amusing to think of this die-hard republican now in the service of an
empire infinitely more powerful than the one he had opposed, an
�KALKAVAGE
57
empire that ironically perfects the republican virtue of freedom for
which Cato had died. Such are the workings of divine comedy.
"No green leaf but dusky hue; no smooth boughs but knotted
and warped; no fruits were there, but poisonous thorns:' The horrors
of Inferno 13 make us long for nature in its original, unspoiled condition. We long to be rid of Hell. What happens to man when his
plant-like nature is allowed to unfold and grow, when the green lea£
smooth boughs and the fruits are restored and the self-negations of
Hell are overcome. 29
Dante's poem is filled with plants. Their importance continues
well past the dark wood of the opening and the fierce wood of the
suicides. At the beginning of the Purgatorio, just after he meets Cato,
Dante girths himself with "the humble plant," which springs back up
the moment it is plucked (1.133-136). It is the homely symbol for
refreshment and regeneration. It is in fact Virgil's own golden bough,
now shorn of its proud and unyielding metal, now pointing comically, not down to the circles of repetition and despair but up to the
circles of hope. When Dante reaches the summit of Mount
Purgatory, again he enters a world of plants. It is the earthly paradise
where his relation with the beloved will again take root and this time
blossom. The human-divine plant is perfected in Paradise. There in
the unspeakable beauty of the eternal rose, Dante beholds the true
City in which souls, individually and collectively, attain to their "glorious office"-a City, we must note, that constantly celebrates the
transcendence of envy. 30
Dante considered himself the poet of the true Empire and his
poem the blossoming of the plant first cultivated by Virgil. He was
enough of a Roman at heart to love the great fame that is the reward
for so great a task. At one point in the Inferno Virgil, like some new
Anchises, stirs his poetic son Dante with "love of coming glory." 31
He tells him: "Rise, therefore, and conquer your panting with the
spirit that wins every battle" (24, 52-53). But Dante can "rise" to tlte
true Empire, become its poet and prophet, only after he has undergone a purgation and slain his demons. In Pier della Vigna Dante
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
beheld his own Minotaur-a tangled faith that took the form of
self-enclosure or narcissism in the domains of poetry and politics.
This self-centeredness blinded Dante to the sacred images ofVirgifs
poem and to the providence of which it sang. To seize the golden
thread, to reverse Pier's suicide and rise to new life, we must nevertheless be willing to kill the monster in ourselves: hoc opus, hie labor est,
"this is the work, this the labor:' 32
Notes:
1. See Singleton's commentary on the Inferno pp. 209-210, in Dante
Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated, with a commentary, by
Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series LXXX, Princeton: (Princeton
University Press, 1970-76).
2. The complete suppression of the human form here in Canto 13
reminds us that the soul of Ulysses suffers a similar fate. It is eternally obscured within a wandering tongue of flame.
3. Singleton, p. 207.
4. See Giuseppe Mazzotta's discussion of this point in his Dante, Poet
of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1979), 188-191.
5. Commenting on his list of the many "harsh-sounding, consonant-
ridden words" in this canto, Leo Spitzer writes: "As we pass in review
this bristling array of words we have almost the impression of being
faced with a new language that recalls little of the melody and fluidity of the Italian tongue" ["Speech and Language in Inferno XIIT;'
Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by John Frecerro (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 89].
�KALKAVAGE
59
6. The gruesome transformation of Polydorus into a plant-man is
apparently of Virgil's invention. The story of Polydorus' ill-fated trip
to Thrace is told by the ghost of Polydorus in Euripides' Hecuba. In
this version of the story Polydorus is murdered by the Thracian king,
Polymestor, and thrown into the sea. Dante knew this version from
Ovid's Metamorphoses (13.429-438) and even refers to it in his description of Hecuba (Inferno 30.16-20).
7. The violence with which speech emerges here may be compared
with the passage in Canto 26 where the voice of Ulysses is "flung"
from the tip of the hero's flame (90).
8. Even prior to Adam and Eve's breaking faith with God and the
mortal wound that resulted from this rupture, there was Satan's fall.
Satan is "the guilty worm who pierces the world" (Inferno 34.108).
His fall literally made a wound in the earth, simultaneously creating
the pit of Hell and the mountain of Hope (Ibid., 121-126).
9. All the sinners "who subject reason to desire" are likened to
birds: to starlings and cranes (5.40-46). Francesca and Paolo are
doves" summoned by desire" ( 82). Francesca's conceit of innocent
naturalness is further conveyed by her calling Dante an animal grazioso
e benigno ( 88).
10. See Singleton, 209-210: "The cause of [Pier's J fall is not accu-
rately known; the most probable surmise is that he was suspected of
having intrigued with the pope and of having attempted, at the latter's instigation, to poison the emperor:'
11. Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1961), 165.
12. In Canto 20 Dante weeps to see the grotesquely distorted bodies
of the fortune-tellers only to be reprimanded by Virgil, who plays on
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the two meanings of pietd: Qui vive Ia pietd quand' i ben morta (28).
Dante's pity for Francesca and Pier, mixed as it must be with personal
reflections and perhaps self-pity, is arguably even more dangerous
than his tears for the general distortion of the human body in Canto
20. If pietd as piety or goodness can live only if pietd as pity is dead,
why does Dante elicit our pity at crucial moments of the Inferno?
Perhaps pity for the damned can be killed only if it is first aroused
and acknowledged as our own.
13. See Joan Ferrante, The Political Hsion of the Divine Comedy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984): "Pier ... fails to see how much
harm he did the state by his distorted view of service. What Pier did
was turn a public office into a private domain, and the result was that
he became the private victim of the public reaction" (p. 157).
14. John 15:5.
15. In this connection consider the words of Stepan Trofimovich in
Dostoevsky's Demons: "The whole law of human existence consists in
nothing other than a man's always being able to bow before the
immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably
great, they will not live and will die in despair" (Pevear and
Volokhonsky trans., (New York: Vintage Classics, 1994), 664.
16. The theological significance of Ulysses' sin, his yielding to the
desire for travel as transgression, is evident in the boast that he was
willing to sacrifice his love of father, son and wife (Inferno 24.94-99).
The hero's boast is a perverse echo of the harsh words we find in
Luke: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and
mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his
own life, he cannot be my disciple" (13:25).
17. Salimbene da Parma; see Singleton, 159.
�KALKAVAGE
61
18. See Mazzotta, p. 60, in particular note 93 on Augustine's City of
God and the self-doubling of Lucretia. Right after he exposes the
perversity of noble Lucretia's suicide, Augustine proceeds to expose
that of Cato.
19. For the definition of evil as perversity of will, see Augustine,
Cotifessions 7.16.
20. The right to one's own life cannot fail to remind us of Socrates'
"critique" of suicide in the Phaedo. We belong to the gods, says
Socrates, and must "go" only when "called" (61C-62C). One wonders what Cato made of that passage when he read the Phaedo on the
night he died!
For Kant suicide is wrong because it is self-contradictory and goes
against our duty to preserve ourselves (The Metaphysical Principks of Vt'rtue,
"Elements of Ethics: Part One;' translated by James Ellington, (The
Library of Liberal Arts, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.,
1964), 82-85. In a similar vein Hegel writes: "Thus, it is a contradiction to speak of a person's right over his own life, for this would mean
that a person had a right over himsel£ But he has no such right, for he
does not stand above himself and cannot pass judgement on
himself. . . if it is a question of simple right to kill onesel£ such a
right may be denied even to heroes" (Philosophy of Right, "Abstract
Right:' trans. by H. B. Nisbet, (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 102. The editor reports something very interesting in his
notes that bears on Dante: "Once in his lectures, Kant appears to
admit that in the case of Cato, 'suicide is a virtue; but he hastens to
add that 'this is the only example which has given the world the opportunity of defending suicide"' (Ibid., p. 413).
21. Auctoritas signifies not only authority but also origination. With
this meaning in mind, we can say that Frederick and Pier strike at the
very roots of things. The origin of the idea that sin in general is the
usurpation of divine authority is no doubt Augustine's Corifessions and
�62
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the famous theft of the pears. At one point in his quest for the cause
of evil, Augustine speculates: "Did it please me that as a captive I
should imitate a maimed liberty, by doing with impunity things
illicit bearing a shadowy likeness of your omnipotence" (2.6)? Sin
originates, in other words, in our passion to be creative, our will to
auctoritas. The classic hero for freedom in this sense is Kirillov in the
Demons, for whom genuine autonomy can be attained only through
suicide: "It is my duty to shoot myself because the fullest point of
my self-will is-for me to kill myself... It is my duty to proclaim my
unbelief... Man has done nothing but invent God, so as to live without killing himself... For three years I have been searching for the
attribute of my divinity, and I have found it: the attribute of my
divinity is-Self-will" (Ibid., pp. 617, 619)!
22. See Charles Williams' The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante (New
York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1973), 104-105. Williams's remarks on
the significance of the dark wood as coeval with the prestige and
prosperity Dante must have enjoyed in 1300, the fictional time of his
divine journey, have tremendous implications for Francesca's most
seductive lines, the lines in which she tells Dante that there is no
greater sadness than to recall the happy time in present woe (5.121123). Williams' reading suggests an antidote to Francesca's tangled
faith: there is no greater horror than to remember a time when we
believed we were "in heaven" but in fact were near dead. We get some
sense of this condition if we imagine ourselves being suffocated and
simultaneously filled with sweet dreams.
23. Leo Spitzer's otherwise subtle and perceptive analysis of this canto
is far from the mark on this point and robs the canto of its most troubling reflection on the suicidal tendencies of poets and poetry. To say
that Dante "transcended his original purpose" of portraying Pier
(Spitzer, p. 94) means not that Pier's style is simply appropriated for
larger metaphorical reasons but that it is here the very focus of the
mind's narcissism and obsession with style. Dante is not caricaturing
�KALKAVAGE
63
Pier's style but exposing its hellishness. The scholar whom Spitzer sets
out to refute at one point (Olschki) is actually right but for the wrong
reason: Dante does imply a close personal connection with Pier, not
to vindicate himself, except perhaps incidentally, but to recall and
accuse his own former blindness. How could the pathless wood of
Pier fail to recall the opening of the poem?
24. Hebrews 11:1.
25. Manfred tells his story at Purgatorio 5.112f£ Buonconte, who tells
his at 5.88f£, is another almost-lost son of a lost father-Guido da
Montefeltro, "the fox," whom we meet in the circle of evil counsel
(Inferno 27).
26. On the symbolic meaning of the vengeance of Mars, Singleton
writes: "The art of the god Mars is, in this instance, civil war"
(p. 224). A more interesting reading is given by Dorothy Sayers:
". . . Dante may be covertly reproaching the Florentines with abandoning martial pursuits and concentrating on amassing the florins
stamped with the Baptist's image" (Dante, The Divine Comedy, Penguin
Classics, 155). As the Florentine suicide presents it, civil war was
incurred by b/,sphemy against the Roman god.
27. C£ Paradiso 20, where Dante is flabbergasted to see the pagan
Ripheus among the celestial souls. In the Aeneid Virgil calls him
"foremost in justice among the Trojans, and most zealous for the
right" (2.426-427). Beatrice explains that regnum caelorum just couldn't
help itself--Ripheus proved simply irresistible to the divine will (9499). As for Dante's extreme admiration for Cato, see Monarchia 2.5,
where Cato is said to be "the strictest guardian of freedom" (severissimi libertatis tutoris). For Dante's definition and praise of freedom, see
Monarchia 1.12 and Beatrice's "hymn to freedom" at Paradiso 5.19f£
28. See Sinclair's remarks on Cato and Alexander, Ibid., 189.
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11-lEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
29. Dante may have known that in Plato's Timaeus man is said to be
"not an earthly but a heavenly plant" (phyton ouk engeion all' ouranion,
90A).
30. Paradiso 30.124-132. Dante's herald of this transcendence is the
gentle and eloquent Piccarda. Realizing that Piccarda occupies the
least degree of celestial bliss, Dante, still understandably politicalminded, asks her at III.64-66: "Do you [voi] who are happy here desire
a higher place, that you may see more and become more dear?"
Piccarda gives her sublime reply: "Brother, the power of charity quiets our will and makes us will only what we have and thirst for nothing else" (70-72).
31. Aeneid 6.889.
32. Ibid., 129.
�t
Bodies
John White
Zasetsky
On March 2, 1943, the Russian army attacked a German position on
the banks of the Vorya River near Smolensk. A Russian soldier
named Zasetsky led a platoon of flame-throwers across the frozen
river. Zasetsky was wounded: a bullet penetrated the left occipitoparietal area of the cranium, and he went into a coma. The wound
became inflamed, which caused adhesions of the brain to the
meninges. And then scar tissue began to form, altering the lateral
ventricles. Zasetsky describes his reawakening:
Right after I was wounded, I seemed to be some newborn creature that just looked, listened, observed,
repeated, but had no mind of its own .... Afterwards,
when I'd had a chance to hear words that people use
again and again in conversation or thinking, various
clusters of "memory fragments" developed, and from
these I began to make some sense out of the life
around me and to remember what words meant.
By the end of the second month I recalled who
Lenin was, understood words like usun," umoon,"
" cIoud" " ra1n," an d my fi
.
,
1rst and Iast nam.e an d
patronymic. At times I remembered that somewhere I
had a mother and two sisters ....
Because of my injury I'd forgotten everything I
ever learned or knew ... everything ... and had to start
from scratch to develop again-at least up to a cerJohn White is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John's College. This lecture was delivered at
Annapolis on Aprill7, 1998. An earlier version was given at Santa Fe in Spring, 1997.
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
rain point. After that, my development suddenly
stopped. . . . Mostly, it's because of my memory that
I have so much trouble understanding things.... I
can't think of a single word .... Whatever I do
remember is scattered, broken down into disconnected bits and pieces. That's why I react so abnormally
to every word a,nd idea. 1
There are many language problems associated with injuries to this
area of the brain. Zasetsky's language defect is an "anomie" (rather
than an "aphasia") because he is generally not confused about language or about what an object is once he finds the name; he just can't
find its name. We don't understand how we find the names of things
either. Names are "there" when you need them, as my right hand is
just "there" when I want to move it. These problems show us that
language is not simply a way of representing our thoughts to allow
for communication. Language is a crucial part of the process of
knowing itself, because at least some kinds of knowledge need representation just in so far as they are knowledge. The simplest example
of this might be numbers and calculation. Multiplication is understood by many different peoples in many different languages, and
numbers have been written in different ways. But when we give names
to numbers we are determining whether or not we will be good mathematicians because the rules of calculation involve the names of the
numbers, their representation. We perform calculations on the representations-not on the numbers themselves. (What are the rules for
multiplication if numbers are represented by Roman numerals?) In
language we analyze perceptions and distinguish the essential from
the inessential. Language is fundamental to memory, thinking, and
behavior; it is also fundamental to perception itsel£ Language organizes much of our inner life. Zasetsky says:
[W]hether I'm looking at objects, people, or animals,
I can't immediately remember or pronounce the
�WHITE
67
words for them ... And when .. .I forget what things I
see are called; I pay no attention to them .... That's
true even about parts of my own body ... I tried to
remember my mother's and sisters' faces ... [I couldn't].
But when I was finally sent home [for a visit] and saw
my family, I immediately recognized my mother and
sisters. They were overjoyed that I was home, threw
their arms around me, and kissed me. But I wasn't
able to kiss them-I had forgotten how .... I'm
always aware of these defects in my memory and in
my ability to speak or think. I sense just how abnormal I am when I talk to people; I'm aware of that idiotic smile on my face, that silly nervous laugh I have
and my constant habit of saying 'Yes, yes' while someone is talking to me .... Out of habit I tend to see
things in my environment in much the same way I did
earlier. But when I'm face to face with objects, I don't
really recognize or remember them .... I don't understand the essential things about the plants and animals I see, because I can't remember the names for
them or what they mean .... When I'm sitting or
walking in my room and look at things there, they
seem familiar and make sense to me. But somehow I
can't name them .... For example, I'll look at an object
and begin questioning myself: 'Is it a stove? No. And
it's not smoke ... or a chimney ... or a fire ...
torch ... candle ... house ... flame .. .light: Damn it, I
just can't remember. So I start reciting other words:
cat...spoon ... etc. and finally it comes to me. It's cast
iron! ... I'm still tormented by this and find it just as
agonizing. But I have no intention of giving in.
(pp. 94 f£)
A person with Zasetsky's injury can continue to perceive discrete
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
objects, discern speech sounds, but he cannot immediately combine
these impressions into a whole. So these things seem just to "float;'
without a context or mooring. Zasetsky also suffered damage to
certain optic fibers in the area of his wound. In effect, he lost the
right half of his visual field. He would look at an open book and see
only the page on the left; when he looked at the page on the left, he
would see only the left side of the page, and so on.
But, in order for us to see objects, it is very important that we see
them in the center of a visual field which surrounds them on both
left and right. When we look at a series of objects, we move our eyes
so that the object we wish to see is focused on the macula, the
center of our retina, a concentration of color-sensitive cone cells
(whereas the periphery of the retina is made up of less sensitive rod
cells). One might think that this center-surround visual field is a
physiological consequence of the anatomy of the retina. But in
patients with the total destruction of the calcarine cortex of one
hemisphere of the brain-a condition called "hemianopsia;' which
produces true total lack of one side of the visual field, more radical
than Zasetsky's visual defect-their behavior does not indicate that
they see nothing in one half of the visual field. Subjectively they are
aware of a somewhat impaired vision, but it is not true that they see
only one half of an object, or even that they see less distinctly on one
side. Their range of vision is a center-surround visual field, as in normal vision. The patient appears to receive stimuli that come from the
blind half of the retina. But what actually happens is that the patient
shifi:s his gaze from the normal position and looks to the side when
he looks at something. But this means that the anatomical macula is
no longer the junctional macula. There is a new macula, a functional
macula (no longer composed of cone cells but still the place of clearest vision), and the anatomical macula (along with its cone cells) is
now part of the "surround" or visual background. This adjustment
does not take place unless the entire calcarine area is destroyed, i.e., it
does not take place where there is still some remnant of a center-surround or foreground/background visual field.
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The Russian neuropsychologist Aleksandr Luria met Zasetsky
m a rehabilitation hospital about three months after his wound.
Luria says: "I was struck by how young he looked. He seemed
scarcely more than a boy, who looked at me with a puzzled smile
and tilted his head awkwardly to one side. Later I learned that the
vision on his right side was gone, and in order to see he had to shift
sideways:' Luria talked with Zasetsky for a while, discovering his
difficulties with language. When Luria asked Zasetsky to raise his
left hand, he could not. Zasetsky made a desperate effort, but he
failed, saying, "Right? Lefi:? Where is my left hand? What does
''h' mean.lN o, I cant o tt.
'd
ng t
Zasetsky's difficulty with right-and-left was not a difficulty with
language alone, with understanding the conceptual meaning of
words, because the difference here is not conceptual. Zasetsky would
get lost when he left his hospital room.
•H
When I came out of the bathroom, I forgot which
way I had to turn to get back to my room. So I just
started walking, dragging myself along. Suddenly I
banged my right side against a door [that part of his
visual field was missing]-something I had never
done before. I was amazed that this had happened ....
I turned in the other direction and fell. Suddenly
.
the words " nght," H]efit," ub ack" ur
, rorward" u up,"
,
"down" occurred to me, but they weren't any help
since I didn't understand what they meant. A minute
later I remembered the words "south;' "north,"
"east," an d" west."But w hen I tne to fitgure out
.d
what the relationship was between any of these two
words, I was lost .... But right then someone called
me .... I looked around. [Zasetsky had also lost the
ability to localize sounds.]. . .It's so weird-I simply
can't orient myself to a place, just have no sense of
space.
(pp. 53, 58)
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
70
We recognize and describe the space around us with a system of
geometrical coordinates that are symmetric around an arbitrary
origin. But for us as living beings, right-and-left, up-and-down, frontand -back are not symmetric and the origin is not arbitrary. We are the
origin: we are always "here" no matter where we go-we are the center of a field, never at its periphery. An essential feature of human
spatial perception is the fact that it is asymmetrical. Orientation in
space for us essentially consists of knowing what lies on our right
side. Zasetsky's problems made oral communication with others very
difficult. And reading was a nightmare. Zasetzky describes his
attempt to read a long word, golovokruzheniye (dizziness).
When I look at a letter, it seems unfamiliar and foreign to me. But if I strain my memory and recite the
alphabet out loud, I definitely can remember what the
letter is. [This recitation is an established oral-motor
skill, something remembered and performed as a
whole; we do not perform it by visualizing each letter
separately. JWhen I try to read a book, the most I can
take in are three letters at a time (in the beginning I
could only see one). I also have to focus a little to the
right and above each letter in order to see it.... When
I look at a word like golovokruzheniye ['dizziness'], I just
can't understand it. All the letters-even parts of the
word-are as meaningless to me as they would be to
a child who'd never seen a primer or an alphabet. But
soon something begins to stir in my mind. I look at
the first letter ('g') and wait until I remember how to
pronounce it. Then I go to the letter 'o' and pronounce the whole syllable. Then I try to join it to the
next syllable ('go-lo'). I take a quick look at the next
letter ('v'), wait a little, then quickly look at the letter
While I'm looking at that letter, the two letters to
the left of it escape my vision .... But the first two or
'o:
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three letters in the word ('go-!') are no longer visible.
To put it more exactly, at that point I see only a gray
mist in which spots and threads and little bodies seem
to shift and flicker back and forth. [He has true
hallucinations at times, probably connected to the
(pp. 63, 68, 75)
formation of scar tissue.]
We have bodies, or perhaps we are bodies. The world is present
to us, and we to it, through our bodies. Our knowledge of the world
is conditioned by our bodily presence in it, a presence attuned to
action (rather than knowledge) with an an orientation: left/right,
back/ front, up/ down. I will tell you about the kinds of problems
faced by occipito-parietal patients, people who aren't quite here in the
world. Their problems are spatial, but somehow more than spatial.
Zasetsky had every one of them, I think.
1. Patients confuse left/ right, east/west. When asked to put their
hand in a certain position, they confuse vertical/horizontal, frontal,
saggital. They have problems telling time with a clock. Think of the
difference between 9:15 and 3:45 or 12:30 and 6:00.
2. They have difficulties copying geometrical figures with asymmetrical elements. They show signs of mirror-image writing.
3. They have special speech disorders involving logical-granunatical relations connected to spatial relations. Words as concepts aren't
lost. For example, Zasetsky knows the meaning of the words "father;'
"brother;' and "uncle:' But he gets lost when he looks at the two
phrases "brother's father" and "father's brother:' The genitive case in the
phrases is expressed by two nouns symmetrically located around the
"apostrophe s;' and the meaning depends on the asymmetry. "The
dog of the master" and "the master of the dog": the phrases seem to
be the same. Comparative adjectives: John is bigger than Jim; Jim is bigger
than John; Jim is smaller than John-are they the same or not? A
sentence such as "John is bigger than Jim but smaller than Fred" is
vastly more difficult. The passive voice is very confusing: the order of
the words is different from the order of the action. Double
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THE ST. JOHN'SREYIEW
negatives are very confusing. Generally, these patients cannot integrate
details into a whole and cannot understand that the same elements in
different locations may express different relations.
4. Patients confuse the numbers 6 and 9. They cannot make out
Roman numerals: what is the difference between IV and VI? Before
and after. The decimal system of writing numbers requires us to
understand different locations (relative to the decimal sign) as
different categories of number (different powers of 10), and the
numbers somehow retain this spatial organization even when we
imagine them or think about them. Occipito-parietal patients have
difficulty keeping the place-categories straight. Patients will write
109 as 100 and 9 or 729 as 7, 2, 9, without integration into a threefigure number. They notice the numerical value but do not account
for the category, the part of the meaning that comes from location.
They have difficulties with subtraction problems that involve the
carrying-over of tens. A patient might do the following: 31-7=22 or
45-8=27. The answers are often incorrect by twice the second digit
of the first number. This happens because the patient solves the
problem in the following way. He first changes the problem from
45-8 into 40+5-8 (probably to help keep the categories straight, to
separate tens from ones). Then he regroups the numbers as
40-8+5. He solves the 40-8=32, remembering it numerically and
correctly. But then the +5 part: the patient counts 5 but he counts
5 in the wrof\g direction, minus instead of plus. Fractions and division
are impossible-above/below do not have symmetric meanings.
5. Even though Zasetsky knows the meaning of a word, he
cannot form an image of it. The word "looks familiar;' but he has to
wait until the meaning "appears:' So for him a relatively complicated story becomes a heap of isolated and unrelated parts that he
cannot fit into a whole. The same thing happens to him visually.
When Zasetsky was shown a drawing of a pair of spectacles and was
asked what it was, he thought for a while and said "Bicycle:'
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73
This was not a problem with vocabulary. He saw the parts: two circles, a short straight line, two cane-like lines. But these parts weren't
added up visually for him-a part to the left of another part in the
drawing is not "to the left" for his eyes. He had to use his memory
to "synthesize" and unify the parts, so he would try to remember
something that combined those same parts. ("Bicycle" is probably
the only other possibility.) Zasetsky lives in a "shattered world;' a
world that is often broken into pieces, isolated from each other.
Because of that head wound I'd become an abnormal
person--except that I wasn't insane .... I'm in a kind
of fog all the time, like a heavy half-sleep. My memory's blank. . . . All that flashes through my mind are
some images, hazy visions that suddenly appear and
just as suddenly disappear .... Whatever I do remember is scattered, broken down into disconnected bits
and pieces .... people ... can see how different I am
now .... I tell people that I've become a totally different person since my injury, that I was killed on March
2, 1943, but because of some vital power of my organism, I miraculously remained alive .... It's hard to
believe that this is really life, but if it is a dream I can't
just wait until I wake up. Also, my new therapist tells
me ... that I've become ill and illiterate because of a
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
serious brain injury. So that means I haven't been
dreaming all this time-of course not. A dream can't
last this long or be so monotonous .. .I have just as
much hope as ever of doing something with my life,
and so I don't want people to think I'm a hopeless
case. I'm doing everything I can to accomplish this,
and little by little use what possibilities I have.
(pp. 11-13)
Zasetsky decided to write a journal describing his struggle. He
thought this exercise might help him to recover his memory and his
life. At first, writing was impossible: it took so long to remember and
form each letter that he would forget the word he was trying to write.
But he discovered that he could use the technique of automatic
writing. Unlike a child learning to write, he had been writing for
twenty years. For adults writing in cursive is an automatic skill, a
series of movements that are like "kinetic melodies;' patterns stored
as indivisible wholes of living motion. His injury had not affected his
kinetic-motor functions. So one day he picked up a pencil and
repeated the word "blood" several times and quickly wrote it without
lifting his hand from the paper. He hardly knew what he had written
because of his difficulty with reading. He could write only certain
short words automatically; others had to be broken into syllables. He
could never be certain that he had written the word he was thinking
about. He would make an attempt, stop, read the word, and then
begin again, trying not to forget what he wanted to say. Often he
could not read or understand what he had written at all. Some days
he wrote one or two words; other days he might write a whole paragraph or more. At one point he was not satisfied, so he destroyed his
notes and began again. He worked for 25 years. His notebooks are
3000 handwritten pages.
Having been victimized by his illness, he tried to investigate it.
Luria says that Zasetsky has written a tragic document, but one with
priceless information.
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75
Kant
Kant thought about space and its relation to bodies throughout
his life, beginning with his reading of the Leibniz-Ckrke Correspondence.
In those letters Clarke defends Newton's claim that space and time
are "absolute:' At first Kant took Leibniz' side in the argument; he
thought that space is not an independent reality. He wrote a paper
(when he was 22, in 1747) where he says
[A]11 connection and relation of substances existing
outside one another are derived from the reciprocal
actions which their forces exercise upon one another ... If substances had no force whereby they can act
outside themselves, there would be no extension and
consequently no space. 2
Space is not mere appearance, the way the world looks to a being
with eyes. Space is a relation between real things. Real relations
between bodies, unlike merely apparent or accidental relations, are
expressed by laws of force (such as the inverse-square law of gravity). Force laws give us "objective" evidence about spatiality because
they speak about the relation of bodies to each other without an
observer. But Kant sees that this style of argument, because of its
very "objectivity;' raises a new question about space: why does space
have three dimensions? What is the "objective" reason for this? Can
there be spaces of a higher dimension? Four- or five- dimensional
spaces? Kant has no final answer to this, but he thinks the following:
The threefold dimension seems to arise from the fact
that substances in the existing world so act upon one
another that the strength of the action holds inversely as the square of the distances. [gravity, magnetism,
static-electricity, brightness, etc.]. .. this law is arbitrary, and ... God could have chosen another. . . and
from a different law, an extension with other properties and dimensions would have arisen. A science of
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
all these possible kinds of space would undoubtedly
be the highest enterprise which a finite understanding
could undertake in the field of geometry. 3
Now Kant was also aware of the special value that dimensional
relations have for living beings. He had always been interested in the
orientation and structure of organic bodies.
[T]wo creatures can be distinguished [from each
otherJ even though they may be in perfect agreement
in size and proportion and relation of parts relative
to each other.... All hops twist round their poles
from left to right; beans twist in the opposite direction. Almost all snails, with the exception of three
species, coil from the left to the right .... These qualities are present in a species without any relation to
the hemisphere where they are found or to the direction of the daily movement of the sun or moon ....
This is because the cause of the convolutions lies in
the seeds themselves., .[He is aware of the "evolutioepigenesis" debate in embryological development.J 4
Perhaps this striking biological difference between left and right
made him think again about the ideality of space. For at one point
Leibnitz had said:
If space were an absolute being, something would
happen for which it would be impossible for there to
be a sufficient reason. Which is against my axiom. And
I prove it thus. Space is absolutely uniform; and without the things placed in it, one point of space does not
absolutely differ in any respect whatsoever from
another point of space. Now from hence it follows
(supposing space to be something in itself, besides the
order of bodies among themselves) that it is impossi-
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77
ble there should be a reason why God, preserving the
same situation of bodies among themselves, should
have placed them in space after one particular manner,
and not otherwise; why every thing was not placed in
quite the contrary way, for instance, by changing East
to West .... Their difference [between east and west,
right and left, clock- and counter-clockwise Jis only to
be found in our chimerical supposition of the reality
of space in itsel£ But in truth the one would be exactly the same thing as the other, they being absolutely
indiscernible.s
Kant must have reconsidered these argumenrs because he no
longer thinks that space is a relation. Space is absolute. He says:
[T]he positions of the parts of space, in relation to
each other, presuppose the region, according to which
they are ordered... region consists in the relation of
the system of these positions to absolute space ....
The most common example [of a "Region"] is found
in the human body. . . . A right hand is similar to the
left hand, and a complete description of the one must
apply to the other in all respects. Yet an internal
difference remains: the surface that includes the one
could not possibly include the other. Let it be imagined that the [only thing in the world] were a human
hand, then it must necessarily be either a right or a
left hand. . . . [theseJ differences in bodies are connected purely with absolute space. . . . Space is [notJ
a mere entity of reason. 6
This argument seems to be Kant's discovery. 7 When Kant says
that "a complete description of the two hands is the same;' he means
that I can describe my hand in two ways. first, I might say that "The
thumb is on the right side. Next to it on the left is the index finger.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The little finger is on the far left:' I have to add "looking down on
the hand when the palm faces down:' Then you know that I am
describing my left hand. This kind of description makes a double
demand on the listener-the kind of demand that Zasetsky could
not meet. In one way the listener is "there" in a spatial and unsymmetric relation to the description of the hand. The
listener ("looking down on the hand") is "above" rather than
"below" this "possible'" hand in an ideal. imaginative presence. The
description constructs the hand in intuition. The listener is also
"there" as an "ideal presence" who is present for the hearing and
understanding of words, and he is able to "construct" the whole sitnation, both the hand and the one constructing the hand. That is one
kind of description.
But there is a second description, one that limits itself to the
conceptual meaning of words. In this description we have no "ideal
position:' We are aware of ourselves mostly as thinkers who understand pure meanings. The only "presence" we have is that of a listener present at the now of speaking and within its time. This description would use symmetric relations, logical relations, like "between"
and "opposite:' I would say "The index finger is between the thumb
and little finger;' and I would give measurements (because length is the
same from right to left as from left to right). Such a description is
true from any point of view; it is logical and symmetric. It applies to
both right and left hands. Reason and speech do not imply an
embodied presence so they do not capture the difference between
right and left. Without an "ideal bodily presence;' there is no right
and left, no "construction in intuition;' and no pointing, no "here and
there" unambiguously different from each other.
We usually just ignore the difference between the two kinds of
description, as we do in Proposition 1, Book I, of Euclid's Elements.
Euclid wants to construct an equilateral triangle. But he constructs
two of them, located symmetrically, one above the other. And he then
ignores the lower one. The unsymmetrical result (not strictly logical)
is taken for granted. But when it comes to motion, where I need a set
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of directions or a map, each turning has two possible solutions-the
ones Zasetsky couldn't untangle. The directions can never have an
unambiguous meaning until I hold the map the "right" way. There is
no logical algorithm to show me the "correct" way to hold the map
because there is no logical way for me to locate my own right hand.
My hand is just "there" for me when I need it.
In a paper written two years later, Kant has changed his mind
again about space. He returns to his original position: space is not
something absolute. His reasons sound familiar. He argues that:
between ... the left and right hand ... there is a difference which makes it impossible for the boundaries of
their extension to coincide, although one thing could
be substituted for another as far as concerns all the
things which may be expressed in marks intelligible to
the mind in speech. Space is not something objective
and real. .. ; it is subjective and ideal.8
A "region" of space has an indivisible unity of back/ front,
above/below, right/left, a unity not analyzable into parts and not
composed of parts (for a part would have to be a "left" without a
"right:' like the impossible visual field in hemianopsia).
Kant's final position about space (in the Critique '!f Pure Reason and
the Prologomena) combines both of his earlier views: space is both real
and ideal; it is empirically real, but transcendentally ideal. His new
position has echoes of both earlier positions, the "objective" relation
of things and the "subjective" difference of right and left hands, but
there are significant changes. He says:
In order that certain representations be referred to
something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself)
and similarly in order that I may be able to represent
them as outside and alongside one another ... the representation of space must be presupposed.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we
represent to ourselves objects as outside us .. , In
space.,. their relation to one another is determined or
determinable. 9
Space has two parts or aspects, the "outside me" and "things
outside one another:' But the two parts are not equally important
because, in order to understand space as intuition, we must see that
Space does not represent any property of things ...
nor does it represent them in their relation to one
another ... Space is nothing but the form of all
appearances of outer sense ... the receptivity of the
subject, its capacity to be affected. (B42)
The "objective" version of space (things outside each other), the
position Kant took in his first paper, is wrong because it confuses the
sensible with the intelligible.
Leibniz's .. .doctrine '!f time and space•• •intellectualized
these forms of sensibility, [and itJ owed its origin
entirely to this same fallacy of transcendental reflection.
(B331)
The "objective" version of space not only confuses the sensible
with the intelligible, it also fails to realize that "things outside each
other" is really not a spatial relation at all. "Things outside each
other" is really a temporal relation, the temporal relation of "coexistence:' "Objective" space really belongs to the other form of intuition, time.
Things are coexistent when in empirical intuition the
perceptions of them can follow one another reciprocally [X before Y then Y before X, i.e., right-to-left is
the same as left-to-right] which ... cannot occur in the
succession of appearances ... Thus the coexistence of
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81
substances in space cannot be known in experience
save on the assumption of their reciprocal interaction ...Things are coexistent in so far as they coexist
in one and the same time [not space].
(B257)
Coexistence, besides being temporal rather than spatial, is also a
symmetric relation-the relation is "reciprocal;' the same right-toleft as left-to-right. The symmetry shows that this time (in coexistence)
is not really the time of intuition but is instead a different kind of
time. So Kant has a second treatment of time and space (in the
Critique) in a section called "Antinomies of Reason:' There he talks of
World-time and World-space (or "the world in time and space"). The
time of coexistence is this "World-time:' We will look at World-time
and World-space briefly at the end. But for now, in order to understand the space (and time) of experience, of things as they appear, we
must concentrate on the part of space that Kant calls "outside me:'
The "outside me" part of space shows that experience is asymmetrical because things are "outside me" and I am not "outside
things:' This asymmetry is part of every sensation: I sense the table
and it does not sense me. Space is "a representation which underlies
all outer representations" (B38); it is the form of outer sense. This
relation "outside me" is a diminished version of the "right-hand"
argument and involves a diminished bodily presence.
The space and time of intuition are neither sensations nor
thoughts. Space and time are both absolute and relative, both real and
ideal, both empirical and transcendental. They are part of experience
yet not part of experience, because they are not the space and time
we find embodied in clocks and rulers. Space and time are the Here
and the Now that is experience itsel£ Experience is the relation of a
subject to an object. This relation must be immediate and irreducible
to anything else. This immediate "relation of an object to a subject"
(B67) is called intuition.
But we cannot really understand this relation in terms of a subject
and an object. Such understanding makes the subject and object more
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
fundamental than their relation (experience). This intuitive relation
"outside me" is more basic and deeper than what it seems to relate. The
object exists in this relation only as "outside me:' and the subject exists
only as "outside me:' The subject is not "there" as an "I" or an Ego.
The subject is there as "me;' as a body, as "my body"-" there" in the
way my right hand is just "there" for me when I need it.
This relation, "outside me," is the crucial relation that allows us
to distinguish between the consciousness of objects and the experience of objects. In the consciousness of an object, the clarity and
certainty of consciousness come from the fact that I can always avoid
any deceptions or "presuppositions" by an act of reflection. For
example, if I say "I see a chair," maybe I am deceived by my senses
and there is in fact no chair there. But if I reflect and retreat to the
purely conscious part of the experience, my seeing as an act of awareness or consciousness, and if I say "I think I see a chair," I cannot be
wrong. The intentional object of the mental "act" of awareness was
u chair;' whether it exists or not. So consciousness is able to retreat
from "judgments" which are based on possession of a body because
the possession of a body and sensations are not clear and distinct
perceptions. A body is what makes perception confused, indistinct,
and vivid. This "withdrawal" from my embodied experience of the
world is possible for consciousness because consciousness is at the
same time and in the same respect also self-consciousness: the "I" of
the "I see a chair" and the "I" of the "I think I see a chair;' are the
same. I am I for consciousness.
But this intentional relation to objects is not experience. In experience "I am not I." Instead, "I am me." I think that Kant reflected on
the two descriptions of a hand, and that this led him to go beyond
philosophies of consciousness to a new dimension of thought.
When he distinguishes 'T' from "me" (the kinds of "presence"
demanded by the two descriptions), he distinguishes between the
sensible and the intelligible, and this distinction is the beginning of
transcendental philosophy.
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The concept of sensibility and of appearance [intuitionJ would be falsified if we were to accept the view
that sensibility is nothing but a confused representation
[ideaJ of things ... the difference between a confused
and a clear representation is merely logical and does not
concern the content... this difference [between the sensible and the intelligibleJ is quite evidentally transcendental .... It concetns their origin and content.... The
question of the relation of the representation to the
object [takes on a new significance and] becomes transcendental [because thinking and intuition cannot refer
to objects in the same way].
(A43-4)
Consciousness has no body, no u outside me"; consciousness is
pure ''I;' pure Ego, without the possibility of being an object in the
world or of experiencing a body as "mine." Consciousness has no
relation to an object that is not the intentional relation of thinking,
so the relation of the representation to the object for consciousness
is always "logical;' either clear or unclear. So consciousness retreats
from any context or background for an object because a background
as background is not given by an intentional awareness but by a
vague, marginal awareness-like the "surround" part of the centersurround visual field (a manifold). The consciousness of objects has
no foreground/background structure. The objects are purely and
unambiguously present. Consciousness doesn't distinguish between
the appearance of the object and the whatness of the object, between
intuition and understanding. Consciousness is immediately related
only to the whatness of its object-the part of the object that survives the change from "I see" to "I think I see" a chair. But that means
that consciousness cannot understand its own spatial and temporal
structure.
Experience, on the other hand, is based on the "me" of the
relation "outside me:' The "me" changes our awareness because the
"me" is there bodily in the experience [both as perspectival and in
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sense modalities], and this means that the object of experience is
present as an actualization of one of many possibilities. First, an
object of experience is never present in an unambiguous fullness, a
presence without absence, a foreground without a background; the
object is never present as an actuality without being surrounded with
possibilities. An object of experience can be experienced from different sides. To see an object from one perspective is to be aware of
other possible perspectives-either my own sightings of it at different times or sightings of many different people from different places
at one time. Experience is not experience without these possibilities.
Second, the properties of an object refer you to other properties of
the object, e.g., the color of an object refers you to a possible taste, a
possible weight, a possible warmth of the object, etc. (The particular actual taste or weight of the object is only given by a particular
actual experience.) If the properties of an object did not refer to each
other, or if a perspectival view did not refer you to another possible
perspective, or if the actual and the possible were not linked in this
way, there would be no experience.
Now what we get in intuition is called a "manifold" but it is
neither one nor many. The "manifold" is like the amorphous background out of which an object comes and stands before us. So our
knowledge of objects needs another source, a source of the "objectivity" of the object, the foreground of the background, appearance
as the appearance of something definite. Experience involves more
than a Here and Now, an indistinct manifold, and an inarticulate
pointing. It involves a "whatness:'
What it is that is present in this or that location ... is
not given through intuition .... A thing cannot be
known through mere relations.
(B67)
So another faculty is needed. The understanding is a "logical"
faculty, a thinking, more like consciousness. But its thinking is not a
form of awareness of objects and the "I" or ego is not the ego of
consciousness. Its thinking is exhibited by discursive thought, by
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speaking and judging. So, unlike the consciousness of an object, the
concepts of the understanding do not refer immediately to objects.
Since no representation, save when it is an intuition,
is in immediate relation to an object, no concept is
ever related to an object immediately, but to some
other representation of it ... Judgment is therefore the
mediate knowledge of an object, that is, the representation of a representation of it.
(B93)
The understanding supplies no particular "whatness:' If it did, it
would become an intellectual intuition. So the understanding
supplies only "whatness" itself, the unity that every object has. This
unity is not another property but is the relation that the properties
have to each other (as an actual color referred to a possible taste).
The understanding supplies that relation by collecting and connecting the matter of intuition. The unities of the understanding have no
meaning apart from what they unify; i.e., they have no meaning apart
from their application to intuition. There are twelve categories. One
example is sufficient to understand what the categories do: causality.
The concept of "cause and effect" connects two different things; one
is the cause of the other. If I try to get at the purely logical meaning
of this connection-if I remove all hidden references to intuition,
time-causality means "there is something from which we can conclude to the existence of something else" [B301]. But this pure idea
gives one no clue on how to apply it. Logic is satisfied by either one
of two asymmetric but complementary applications. Logic doesn't
know whether the cause should be before the effect or after the effect.
So how can we apply the categories without getting confused?
Kant justifies the application of the categories by connecting the
pure "I;' the transcendental unity of apperception, with the pure
"manifold" of intuition. Two complementary things are happening.
First, we are applying the categories to the "matter" offered by intuition, a mass of sensations which occur in time (color, weight, sound,
taste, etc.). We are unifying this matter, making it into unified
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groups, objects, Second, we are also de-unifying the ego or ''I;' making it "many;' making it approximate an associative series of temporal states, making the transcendental unity into an empirical ego. For
these results time is far more important than space.
But Kant's result, the empirical ego, is a construction, not a
discovery. There would still be an "unreality" to it and its world if we
relied on time alone in its construction. The empirical ego and its
objectivity are both still unreal because the time in which they exist,
time as intuition, is not yet World-time, the time that contains
objects and events and us and our projects, and space is not yet
world-space, the space wherein I move.
We cannot empirically change our position, and perceive the change [as a change of our position rather
than a complementary change of position of the
objects we are viewing] unless matter in all parts of
space makes perception of our position possible to
us., .. Without community [or reciprocity laws J every
perception of an appearance in space is broken off
from every other, and the chain of empirical representations, that is, experience, would have to begin
anew with each object, without the least [objectiveJ
connection with the preceding representation, and
without standing to it in any relation of time [like
Zasetsky looking at the spectacles].
(B260)
With appearances being "broken off" from each other, I cannot construct
a "world;' the scene and setting of my motion. Only in a world do I have
a "location;' a position in relation to other things--a measurable position.
But a "measurable position" is not the simple "Here" of experience.
But, up to this point, time as intuition is only the time of the representation of things, the time of the possibility of objects. That is
to say, time as intuition contains nothing but relations. Time gives the
empirical ego only a certain weak reality (self-presence). Experience
is not truly different from consciousness.
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Kant added a section to the second edition of the Critique that
would make clear these considerations. It is called "The Refutation
of Idealism:' It says that we have to look again at space to overcome
the persisting "ideality" of the empirical ego. He says that the only
way to refute idealism is to show the necessity of outer appearance.
But this is not a demonstration of the 'reality' of some particular
thing we experience; that would be a kind of 'ontological' argument,
arguing from the appearance or "idea" of some object to the "reality" of that object, hence to the reality of the experience of that
object. Kant wants to prove the immediate reality of experience. And
experience is real only if there are are appearances (rather than
objects) and outer sense. Kant says:
I am conscious of my existence as determined in time.
All determination of time presupposes something
permanent in perception. But this permanent something cannot be an intuition in me precisely because
my existence can be determined in time only by this
permanent something. Therefore perception of this
permanent something is possible only through a thing
outside me and not through the mere representation of
a thing outside me. Hence determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of
actual things which I perceive outside me .... Outer
experience is really immediate, and only by means of
it is inner experience possible-not indeed the consciousness of my own existence, but the determination of it in time.
(B275)
This consciousness of my existence in time is
bound up in the way of identity with the consciousness of a relation to something outside me .... [i.e., I
am meJ
(Bxl, note a)
What the "Refutation of Idealism" adds to our intuition of time is
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the determination of our existence in time. Determination depends
on a "permanent something;' and the "permanent something" is perceived only through a "thing outside me:' So the "thing outside me"
that is added to the intuition of time and that allows me to determine my existence in time is a clock. The clock stands for all the
instruments of measurement: clocks, rulers, scales, dials, pointers,
meters. All the instruments that are half-real, half-ideal, half-object
and half-subject: they are as much object as what they measure, yet
they are only "real" as measuring instruments if they are "transparent;' an extension of a subject, providing "information" about some
other object.
As these instruments enter the world, they change its meaning
and thereby the "permanent something" comes into view. Our world
is seen in new terms; it is seen as an approach to an ideal limit-world,
a world of mathematical precision that our science can approach
with no limit to its progress or precision. Our world starts to look
like a distorting lens through which we see "the permanent something:'This half-real, half-ideal world of the permanent is the worldspace and world-time of the Antinomies.
I will list the changes space has gone through, from the Aesthetic
to the Antinomies.
Space (in the "Transcendental Aesthetic") is an intuition not a
concept. It is "essentially one;' uniquely one. Parts of space are only
limited portions of it. The whole is not the sum of the parts; the
whole precedes the parts and makes them possible. Space is an
infinite given magnitude (but it "cannot determine anything in regard
to magnitude," A25). Space is transformed by measurement, and it
becomes World-space or the "world in space:' Its parts are coexistent
as an aggregate, and "the synthesis of parts by which we apprehend
space [in measuring] is successive" (B439).
The meaning of space is inverted: world-space is neither finite
nor infinite. Nor is it in any sense ugiven." Rather than "given," it
must be acquired. Any partial whole of world-space is the sum of the
measured parts. A "world" is only the "mathematical sum-total of all
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appearances and the totality of their synthesis" (B446). The worldin-space is a measured, mathematicized, non-dynamic nature which
no longer has an intuitive wholeness. Its unity is constructed by us.
A Comment
Because we are connected to the objects of our inquiry through
instruments and devices of measurement, instruments will always
have a three-dimensional, Newtonian description. The instruments
are extensions of us and our sensory systems. But we tend not just to
use our instruments but also to inhabit them, so the borders of the
"outside me" can shifi: around. For example, consider my experience
with a tool-for example, a hammer. I had supposed the border of
the "outside me" to be between my hand and the shaft of the
hammer. And so it is when I pick up a hammer, when I feel its heft
and balance. But when I use the hammer to hit a nail, I don't feel the
impact of the shaft on the palm of my hand. I feel the hammer
hitting the nail. And if I hit it just right, sometimes I feel the nail
cleave and grip the wood. But, there seem to be many cases where the
organism does not u acceptu a stimulus in its u objective" state, main-
taining the border between stimulus and response, environment and
organism. Instead, the organism cooperates with the stimulus to
create the proper patterning for a "good" or "adequate" stimulus.
The organism does not come into some patterned state of equilibrium after the stimulus (maintaining the temporal border). Rather, the
organism and the stimulus together form a single pattern state of
equilibrium-a pattern violating the spatial border but maximizing
the possibility of an "adequate" response.
These two examples mean to me that experimental science might
have a "psychology" attached to it: How do I read instruments and
interpret measurements? How do I perform experiments?
The cause precedes the effect. But in an experiment I discover the
cause only after the effect. Only this backward linking makes the
cause a cause. Only then does the mind grasp the meaning of the
event. The temporal structure of world-space and world-time in the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVlEW
experiment is a synthetic unity of Nows. This structure imitates the
synthetic one-directional connecting structure of efficient causality
and separated Nows. But the temporality of my experience when I do
the experiment is more like the "musical" structure of final cause.
For instance, when I measure time, I think of time as a length (a
line), which means that time as measured is for me the same forwards
and backwards. There is no "directional bias" to the now of the
measurement, the now that splits time so it can be measured, the
"start" and "stop" of the timer (thus becoming a Now that is "one
point which is used as two," thereby breaking the continuity of time
according to Aristotle). The Now of the "start/stop" of the experiment (the coordination of the timer and the timed in taking the
measurement) can be only supplied only by me as the observer. This
Now is not an objective occurrence. If it were objective, it would
mean the coexistence of the timer and the timed (and "coexistence"
is a dynamic relation implying reciprocal forces). This would destroy
the non-dynamic "parallelism" of the measurement and the
Observer. The timer and the timed must be parallel and coordinated
only by me, the observer.
For me as observer, time is a length, symmetric, the same "from
before to after" as "from after to before:' For me as "doer" of an
experiment, time is unsymmetric and goes forward on its own. I
throw a switch and step back. I act and move and interpret, around
and "above" the equipment. I am both above and in the situation. I
must be able to perform these dislocations and relocations.
With clocks and rulers we seem to become derks, related to the
world through the very intellectualized form of "information:' which
we collect and process. Experiments isolate a "variable;' detach it
from its H real" context, so it is seen u in itself:' But this isolation is
not a real isolation; it is an ideal isolation. The instruments give that
variable a new ideal context of theory by the act of measuring. For
example, an electric dock and a pendulum dock might embody the
same time, isolating the variable by putting it in a context of "real"
time, world-time. But the two docks connect the measured variable
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to different theoretical contexts (electric or dynamic). Experimental
science constructs knowledge on the basis and background of an
immense amount of know-how, of designing experiments and picking the right material for the instruments-designs that allow us to
see utime" or uspace" rather than the instrument. We are constantly
inverting and reorienting ourselves when we design and interpret
experiments. I think we might learn a lot about this combination of
thought and action by considering the problems Zasetsky described
in his journal.
Notes:
1. A. R. Luria, The Man lMth a Shattered World, trans. Lynn Sodotaroff
(Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 10 f£
2. Immanuel Kant, "Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living
Forces;' in Kant's Inaugural Dissertation and Early Writings on Space, trans.
John Handyside (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1929) 8-9.
3. Ibid., pp. 11-12.
4. Immanuel Kant, Selected Pre-Critical Writings and Correspondence with
Beck, trans. G. B. Kerford and D. E. Walford, with contribution by
P. G. Lucas (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968), 39.
5. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H.G. Alexander (London:
University of Manchester Press, 1956), 3rd Letter, para. 5.
6. Selected Pre-Critical Writings, p.36.
7. Robert Paul Wolff, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary On
the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1963), 7-10.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
8. Inaugural Dissertation, #15.
9. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (London: Macmillan & Co., 1956) B37-38.
�t
Erotics and Heroics in Genesis 1-6
Mark Shiffman
I
First, a few words about Socrates. Certainly, one may question
whether such a beginning ;is appropriate to a discussion of Genesis, but
two considerations suggest that it is. In the first place, the Bible presents itself as giving guidance to human beings who, as human beings,
would be ultimately unable to find their way properly without it.
Thus, one may reasonably expect that, if it is to make good on its
claim, it should address some of the difficulties articulated by
Socrates, the man who perhaps more than any other tried to rely as
much as possible on the powers of the human soul to find his way as
a human being. He called this enterprise "philosophy:'
The second consideration is this. Socrates (and it must be understood that I am speaking of the Socrates of Plato's dialogues) gives
several striking characterizations of philosophy. According to one,
philosophy is learning how to die ( Phaedo 80E); according to another,
philosophy as Socrates practices it is clear knowledge of one's ignorance about the greatest or most important things, especially about
the proper excellence of a human being and the best way to live
(Apology 210). Now, in one of the most fundamental delineations of
the human condition in Genesis, we find the primordial human beings
in the presence of two trees. One is the Tree of Life; the other is the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In both the Platonic and
the Biblical treatments, then, we find that mortality and the need for
knowledge of our own good are two of the most prominent features
of the human landscape. In Genesis, the representation of these two
features with the image of trees whose fruit is in some sense forbidden to us underscores the way in which we do or may, or perhaps
This essay is a revision of a lecture delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, August 30, 1997.
With particular gratitude to Robert Sacks and Leon Kass.
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TI-lE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ought to experience these features, namely as a kind of lack, an
incompleteness in ourselves.
Perhaps the most eloquent treatment of the human experience of
incompleteness is that given by Plato in the Symposium. There, he gives
to the various manifestations of this experience the name eros. So
then, by summarizing some of the principal human phenomena that
Plato porrrays as cohering together under the idea of eros, we shall
prepare ourselves to ask whether Genesis presents the same phenomena in the same kind of coherence, and whether the vision and guidance it offers concerning them differs from that arising from meditation on the life of Socrates and the writings of Plato. Of the
speeches on eros in the Symposium, I will focus primarily on that given
by Socrates, because it is the most comprehensive and, possibly, the
most profound.
Socrates (or Diotima, to whom he attributes most of his speech)
distinguishes three kinds of erotic phenomena. First, there is the
desire to procreate, which humans share with animals. By procreation
we leave behind an image of ourselves, perpetuate our form, so that
death does not entirely obliterate us from the earth. Second, there is
love of honor, the desire to impress ourselves on the world, either to
achieve surpassing excellence that will live on in fame (like that of
Achilles), or to shape laws for a city that will give form to the
characters of those subject to them (like those of Lycurgus ), or to
fashion immortal poetry that will be read and will shape a vision of
the world and of human life for those who hear it (like that of
Homer). By all these means, we live on in the souls of others. Finally,
there is the path of contemplation, by which we are led to gaze upon
beautiful objects that, as we progress, are increasingly more comprehensive, more enduring, more free from the changeableness that
belongs to material things, until we arrive at a vision of the most
beautiful object, that which affords us a glimpse of the enduring
coherence of the world as a whole.
In all three ways we participate in the overcoming of time and
death. One way is by a kind of natural production, another is by a
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kind of artificial production, and the third is by way of vision or
reception. It is important to keep in mind the possibility that the
conquest of death provided by each of the first two ways is largely
illusory. That is, we do not in fact live on, but we can project our
thoughts forward and imagine the world still feeling our presence.
The third way on the other hand tends to confront us with what does
in fact eternally persist as something other than ourselves, bringing
us to look at ourselves by contrast as something that may well perish
utterly. The first two ways, the ways of production, tend perhaps
toward self-delusion; the third way tends more toward self-awareness.
Obviously, the third is the way of Socrates, who claims that eros is
the only thing he knows anything about. This means that he knows
how squarely to face human incompleteness-he knows that he is
ignorant and is prepared to die.
There is an alternative view in the Symposium presented in the
speech of Aristophanes, who is the only one to try to respond to
Socrates. This view is that eros is a longing for wholeness. One desires
another human being as one's other half, as that which will make one's
soul (and body) complete. This human attraction masks or distracts
us from a deeper longing for completeness. The circle-beings comically presented by Aristophanes as our more complete ancestors show
this hidden longing for a more complete existence: they make an
attack on the gods, in order to rule over the whole of the cosmos.
Eros, on this view, is a form of a human drive to transgress limits, to
try to be godlike and self-sufficient. Socrates takes exception to this
characterization, perhaps in part because in his eyes eros finds its
highest fulfillment in a life that recognizes one's limits. In the end,
however, it is not clear how much Socrates and Aristophanes disagree.
Socrates had proposed to praise eros, that is, to tell as much of the
truth as is favorable to eros. To portray eros as aiming at wisdom and
moderation is flattering, and perhaps salutary; to portray it as aiming
at universal tyranny is to make it either ugly or ridiculous, and is
perhaps dangerous. The final speech of the dialogue, by Alcibiades,
(an aspiring tyrant who is both a great transgressor of limits and an
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
admirer of Socrates) may illustrate the truth and the danger of
Aristophanes' perspective. This perspective speaks powerfully to a profound longing for wholeness, but offers no attractive alternative to the
implicit aim of that desire-unbounded self-aggrandizement.
Socrates, on the other hand, presents the image of a superior self-mastery, a higher human possibility that can only be reached by means of
a longing for what transcends the merely human.
II
When we turn to the first six chapters of Genesis, we find images
that express or echo all these phenomena put forward as belonging to
eros. Moreover, when we pay close attention to these phenomena and
their coherence, I believe that we discover a greater coherence in the
text than otherwise appears.
The first chapter provides the setting within which we must
understand human longings. There we learn that, "God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them" (1.27). God somehow encompasses both
male and female, and so is not imperfect, as humans are. "He" does
not need to reproduce his own kind, does not require a sexual
complement. One may surmise that God has no longings, no needs.
This impression is reinforced by consideration of God's creation of
light. Before there was light, everything was indistinguishable, there
were no things. Light, the light that exists before sun, moon and stars,
is the principle of distinguishing things, the principle of order and
differentiation, that which allows the mind to apprehend what things
are. God is beyond this principle, prior to it, and so cannot be understood to be limited in any way. All created things, on the other hand,
are deficient in comparison to God.
Here we see from the start a difference from the Socratic perspective. The Socratic notion of human incompleteness involves only, as
it were, negative space, or at least that is its starting point. The
Biblical notion, however, is one of deficiency with reference to a transcendent standard. On the other hand, in the Socratic setting one
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may conceive of an ultimate object that satisfies our highest longing.
Such an object would be like Aristotle's god, a perfectly intelligible
object, in fact the only peifectly intelligible object. And indeed the language Aristotle uses of this god in Metaphysics Book 12 reminds one of
Socrates' description of the "beautiful itself" in the Symposium. The
Biblical God cannot be a satisfying object in the same way because
He is not intelligible in the same way, cannot be contemplated in the
Platonic sense. The contemplative eros of the philosopher, the longing to embrace with the mind the wholeness of the whole, is ultimately doomed by the Biblical account to frustration-unless that
longing may be somehow transformed. Even if the created whole has
a certain intelligibility as an order, its purpose as a creation is not
likely to be intelligible. Indeed, what it means for a being not subject
to desire and need to have purposes is itself not readily intelligible.
This is the mystery of the Biblical God.
A very important consequence follows from this. If human
beings are incapable of knowledge of the whole, they are unable to
determine how best to situate themselves within that whole-in
other words, how best to live. Now, this might not pose an insuperable problem for Socrates; after all, it is knowledge of ignorance that
leads us to the view that the life of inquiry is best (Apology 22E). But
if there is a being who created the whole and so knows it better than
we can, and knows us better than we know ourselves, and so knows
what is best for us, and if that being can, through revelation, give us
the guidance we are ultimately unable to give ourselves, this poses a
problem for Socrates, that is, for the human enterprise of finding our
bearings by our own powers. That enterprise may very well amount
to forsaking the path to our own good, or even to rebellion. This
important consequence lies at the core of the second and third chapters of Genesis.
God creates man, breathes life into him, places him in a fertile
garden, and warns him: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof.
thou shalt surely die"(2.17). Man is not, it seems, made for philoso-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
phizing; it is not for him to concern himself with judging good and
evil, but only to enjoy the blessings God has bestowed. God alone is
the adequate judge of good and evil.
This divine counsel is followed immediately by a divine judgment
of what is good and what is not good: "It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him;' or "in front
of him"(2.18). It is not clear why God judges man's situation this way.
Is this an example of God's inscrutable judgment of good and evil?
Perhaps. But as the consequences of God's remedy unfold, a reason
suggests itsel£ (Perhaps this serves as the first paradigm of divine
providence, which can only be recognized as such retrospectively.)
Here is a suggestion: Our peculiar dignity as human beings is to know
ourselves as creatures of God. If left alone, perfecdy satisfied and selfsufficient in his surroundings, man may be unable to comprehend his
relationship to God as creature to creator, as ultimately dependent on
God. God is invisible; man, as a highly visual being, needs something
in front of his face to "help" him understand his situation.
The animals created by God and brought before man seem insufficient for this task. Man can see that he is superior to them, but they
may not witness sufficiendy to their source in the creator, thanks to
whom man has breath and voice to give them names. Like God, man
distinguishes things by means of words, but he may not realize that
it is because God's words cause the distinctness of things that man's
words can manifest the distinctness of things. If the experience of
naming the animals raises in man's mind the question of what
exacdy he is, it does not help him answer that question.
The animals remain at the distance of vision; they are something
almost entirely other. Something more intimate is required, namely
that man's deficiency be brought forth and placed before his eyes.
Thus, while man sleeps, God extracts a rib, fashions woman from it,
and places her before him. Man is now something less than he was
before, something more vulnerable. But he does not exacdy notice
this. Rather, he feels a longing and sees an answer to that longing.
Absorbed in gazing at the object of his desire, he fails to look at
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himself, to consider the meanings and implications of that desire, the
fact of his deficiency. He thinks of himself as completed by woman:
"This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be
called Woman, because she was taken out of man"(2.23). He names
her like another animal, but this time in reference to himsel£ Perhaps
he greets her a little too hastily. Animals exhibit regular behavior; we
can know them fairly well by watching them. But man deludes
himself if he believes he i:an know woman by looking at her. He will
learn better.
Woman does not express an absorption in reciprocal desire for
man. In fact, she exhibits a remarkable openness. Whereas man distinguishes the animals from one another in speech, and distinguishes
himself from the animals by means of speech, woman speaks to one
of the animals. Where there is a boundary for man, for woman there
is a continuity. It is woman who is open to the allure of the serpent's
temptation, the temptation to attain wisdom and become like God.
She compares herself to what God must be, finds herself lacking, and
wants to bridge the gap. She, it seems, is more open to an awareness
of her own deficiency.
Women continue to be characterized by this openness throughout the Bible, manifested by an attraction to the foreign, as in the case
of Dinah (Gen. 34.1 ), but also an openness to the true God, as in the
cases of Rebecca and Ruth (Gen. 25.22; Ruth 1.16). And the inclination toward continuity with the divine and the bestial may be seen to
characterize a particularly feminine kind of false religion, one that
attempts through fertility cults and Bacchic communion with nature
to experience the divine as permeating the human and natural world
through woman's body. In the particularly masculine kind of false
religion, on the other hand, man attempts to distinguish and elevate
himself, ascending toward heroic apotheosis, like Achilles, Alexander,
and Caesar. The rudiments of this tendency may be seen in the first
man's comparison of himself to his inferiors, the animals, and in his
fascination with what promises to make him whole rather than
attention to the inescapable fact of his deficiency, his missing rib.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
This will become more manifest in the figure of Cain, to whom we
will turn shortly.
Womaris desire leads her to taste the fruit. Man's desire for
woman leads him to join her without protest: if not drawn by the
same temptation, either he refuses to forsake the flesh of his flesh or
he is too busy gazing at her to know what he's eating. In any case, his
fate is as inevitable as hers; for to consider whether or not to eat the
fruit is to take upon oneself the judgment of good and evil, and thus
already to have eaten.
If in fact he shared with her the high hopes of becoming like
God, then he shares with her the great disappointment. As it turns
out, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is ambiguously named.
The knowledge it imparts is less like the knowledge of how best to
live and more like the knowledge that one lacks such knowledge and
is doomed to learn after the fact that one has made choices to one's
detriment. And this awareness of their inferiority to God in wisdom
is accompanied by an awareness that their division into man and
woman is also a kind of imperfection, one of which they are ashamed
and which they attempt to hide.
Why do these senses of imperfection-in wisdom and in sexuality-go together? The sexual shame seems at first to come out of
nowhere. But in fact, although the episode is not explicitly sexual,
several elements are erotically suggestive. To say nothing of the serpent, there is the high hope that the desired object will make one's
life perfect. There is great excitement and elation followed by deflation. And perhaps there is no better example than a first sexual experience of something that suggests itself as the greatest and most
choiceworthy of goods, but when tasted gives rise to the suspicion
that it may not have been the wisest choice, or at least to an ambiguity as to whether it constitutes a gain or an irreparable loss. So the
sexual theme is not wholly unprepared. But again, what is the connection to the theme of wisdom? The Symposium (and perhaps experience as well) tells us that eros on the one hand directs our vision
toward the divine and eternal, the beautiful and perfect; but also that
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its secret message, which we are reluctant to hear, is that we are quite
mortal animals, perhaps rather ridiculous and certainly very incomplete. We can read all this in our complementary sexual organs. The
ambition to be wise is ultimately an ambition to be perfect and godlike, an ambition beyond the limitations of such mortal, needy,
imperfect and self-deluding beings as we are.
The response of man and woman to this degrading self-awareness
exhibits one of the mas( consistent and fundamental endeavors of
human life. They attempt to hide the signs of their mortality, vulnerability and deficiency by covering their nakedness with fig-leaf garments. We are constantly engaged in covering over our nakedness.
Socrates made enemies of many prominent Athenians by exposing
their nakedness to themselves and to those who were supposed to
admire them. And perhaps most of our expedients to cover ourselves
are, in the end, no more substantial than fig-leaf garments.
III
The most impressive and striking way of attempting to cover
one's nakedness, one's imperfection and vulnerability, is that of heroism. In the Symposium, heroism is explicitly identified as an erotic
phenomenon. In Genesis the connection is much more subtle.
The first lover of honor and the progenitor of the race of heroes
is Cain. Cain, the firstborn of all firstborns, receives the attention of
his rejoicing mother, proud of her generative powers. He apparently
believes that he should receive greater honor from God as well. He is
the first man to exhibit anger, fi.uning at God's preference of Abel's
sacrifice to his. God asks him: "Why art thou wroth? And why is thy
countenance fallen?"( 4.6) Cain's answer ought to be: "I am wroth
because I place my own judgment of my merit above God's judgment;
and my countenance is fallen because I cannot endure to see anyone
honored before me:' But Cain makes no answer. His anger will not
endure questioning and staunchly opposes self-knowledge. It only
drives him to destroy the man who competes with him for honor. His
jealousy is the prototype of Saul's toward David.
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Cain is the first political strongman, founder of the first city.
What motivates him to found a city is above all the fear of death. He
knows hubris from the inside, and foresees that as an outcast he will
be an open target for outrage. Cain's naming of his city is particularly revealing: "Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch:
and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name
of his son, Enoch"(4.17). The city, like the son, is a means of selfperpetuation, a bulwark against death. A city is a stronghold, and glories in its strength. But it is founded ultimately upon the fear of
weakness. The story of Cain and his descendants is a story of vulnerability masquerading as strength.
The next chapter of that story is the generation of Cain's descendant Lamech, in which the city and its arts issue in the great coveringover that is the love of glory and the heroic ethos. Lamech is the first
poetic man; he sings his own praise for having killed a man who had
injured him. He glories in his seventy-times-seven-fold revenge.
Lamech is a man who refuses to be underrated. Indeed, Lamech seems
to rate self-perpetuation through glory higher than that through bodily offspring: his wives figure more prominently as the audience of his
poetic self-glorification than as the bearers of his children.
But while Genesis, like the Symposium, indicates that heroism is
like procreation in its attempt to overcome death, it goes further to
suggest something perhaps still more profound about the hero's erotic character. Let us take as our first hint of this the beginning of
chapter six:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on
the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto
them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men
that they were fair; and they took to them wives of all
which they chose.
(6.1-2)
It is hard to say for sure who these "sons of God" are, but it
seems plausible to take this as a sarcastic reference to the heroes. Like
Achilles and Gilagamesh, heroes are frequently reputed to be sons of
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gods. Moreover, when Eve gave birth to Cain, she proudly compared
her generative powers to those of God. The phrase "took to them
wives" probably does not mean "courted amicably and won"; the
contrast between sons of God and daughters of men suggests rather
an inequality of power. Achilles and Gilgamesh both came into some
trouble in part through their "taking" of women. Since the annals of
the line of Seth, recounted in the previous chapter, included always
the birth of daughters, whereas only one daughter was ever mentioned in Cain's line ( 4.22), we may justifiably see here the heroic
descendants of Cain falling upon the daughters of the peaceful
descendants of Seth. This is the beginning of the account of the
world's descent into chaos and violence, and as we know from the
Iliad, the age of heroic warfare is nasty and bloody, and a very bad
state of affairs for women.
Why then does the hero abduct women? Because he can, of
course; but to find some deeper significance to this phenomenon, we
must return to Adam's rib. We saw that woman was fashioned as the
visible manifestation of man's weakness and vulnerability, and that the
sight of her absorbs him more than does the fact that he has one less
rib. Man does not readily acknowledge his vulnerability; he does not
readily acknowledge that woman is a weakness for him. Now the heroic man more than any other is engaged in the covering over of human
weakness by dazzling shows of strength. So his attraction to beautiful
women requires a show of strength: he abducts women by force and
treats them as possessions. And we all know something of this. If a
man (and the degree to which this is true for women is not something
I would be confident to judge) is sure that the love of a certain woman
will bring him perfect happiness, probably the most terrifying
prospect in the world is the possibility that, if he makes his love open
to her, it will be spurned. So he will do something to impressher and
win her over. And if he feels the need to convince himself that his
heart really isn't as tender as an open wound, he may have to act in
such a way that really does lead to a hardening of his heart.
The law that is enunciated immediately after the account of the
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rib seems designed to point man in the right direction between the
horns of this dilemma: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and
mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one
flesh"(2.24). The injunction focuses on the man. He must give something up, must leave his blood relatives and unite with his wife. His
attachment to her is what needs to be addressed by a law. Woman's
attachment to man is somewhat less problematic in her post-Edenic
state. It is not addressed by law so much as described as a condition:
"In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"(3.16). Woman's vulnerability and mortality is clearer, especially in her child bearing; here she
feels the need for man, who stands before her as a complement and
a protector. Man will without reluctance take on the office of ruling
her. The difficulty will lie in ruling in a way consistent with clinging
to her and becoming one flesh. This is a lesson Abraham will learn
by loving faithfully a wife who cannot, without God's help, give him
the offspring he so dearly wishes to have.
God's admonition of Cain, by echoing His enunciation of Eve's
childbearing condition, underscores the fundamental connection
between the love of honor and the relationship of man to woman.
If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if
thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee
shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. (4.7)
Sin's relationship to Cain is like woman's to man. This need not
be taken (though it generally is) as a slighting reflection on woman.
Sin is the weakness that man does not wish to acknowledge, the
weakness inherent in the fact that we are not God and cannot be
God, as much as we may wish otherwise. We cannot rule over it by
conquering it, the way heroes try to rule over women. It can only be
ruled by one who acknowledges it as a weakness, who recognizes it as
of one flesh with us. But since the hero resisrs acknowledging this
weakness, the almost inevitable logical result is that he must try to
become a god.
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Hence it is entirely appropriate that Nietzsche, in his third essay
on the genealogy of morals, summed up the essential spirit of this
polemic against the Biblical perspective and the idea of sin itself with
the following epigraph:
Unconcerned, mocking, violent-thus wisdom wants
us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior.
IV
Genesis poses a profound problem for the philosopher, and offers
a profound critique of the hero. What then of the first of the three
types of erotic phenomena articulated by Socrates, the urge to procreation? As everyone knows, Genesis is full of "begats"; those are the
parts we usually skim over. I would like to compare two of these passages on begetting to see what may be made of them, and especially
of the differences between them.
In Cains line (chapter four), the only characters who get considerable mention are the founder of the city (Cain) and the heroic poet
(Lamech) and his sons, who originate several arts. The intervening
generations are disposed of in a single verse:
And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat
Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and
Methusael begat Lamech.
(4.18)
We know nothing but the direct succession, father to son; we
have no sense of the length of the generations or whether any other
children were born. We have a few glorious characters and the patrilineallinks between them.
In the line of Seth, by contrast, there is a kind of equality of
treatment that tends to make for tedium. We must, however, try to
fill in with our imagination what is going on in these 926 years
between the births of Seth and of Noah. Consider this sequence:
And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and
begat Jared: And Mahalaleellived after he begat Jared
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eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and
daughters: And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight
hundred ninety and five years: and he died.
And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years,
and he begat Enoch: And Jared lived after he begat
Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and
daughters: And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat
Methuselah: And Enoch walked with God after he
begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons
and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three
hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with
God: and he was not; for God took him. And
Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years,
and begat Lamech: etc.
(5.15-25)
Here we hear of the birth of sons and daughters, and are given
the impression of rather large families of children, in accordance
with God's injunction to be fruitful and multiply. And we are told
about fathers living a very long time after the birth of their first sons.
One can calculate that Adam lives to see eight generations of his offspring, and one can imagine them all gathered around their aged progenitors. Meanwhile, what kind of life are they living? This is
revealed by Lamech's words at the birth of his son Noah: "This same
shall comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands,
because of the ground which the Lord has cursed"(5.29). They have
lived in the condition imposed upon man by God, the one that goes
along with the post-Edenic condition of woman. The life of farming is mostly a regular, quiet kind of life.
This makes for a very unexciting narrative. It certainly can't compete with Homer. But perhaps this is part of the point. Comparison of
these two lineages brings to mind Book Nine of the Iliad, in which
Achilles briefly resolves to return home, marry a nice girl, and live
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quietly to an old age in the halls of his lonely old father. But Achilles'
character is his destiny; he is doomed to face death to win immortal
glory. The narrative of that destiny has its peculiar attraction, both
splendid and horrible. Perhaps that is why Genesis shows us the failings
of heroism in an obscure and scattered account, one that reveals its
dark and petty side while eschewing the direct description of its specious glories, glories that could hardly fail to appeal temptingly to
man's eros. This reduction of glare permits us to appreciate better the
quiet kind of life that allows for the possibility of at least one of its
number to walk with God, and produces another, Noah, who finds
grace with God. It may even be the case that the seventy-times-sevenfold revenge of Cain's Larnech pales somewhat in comparison to the
"seven hundred seventy and seven years'' lived out by Seth's Lamech,
followed though they be with the simple remark, "and he died" (5.31).
But if walking with God is a fate to be wished for, it would seem
to be desirable to do better than one or rwo generations out of ten.
This is why procreation must be transformed from self-perpetuation
into the handing down of the way God shows us to live. Preparing the
ground for this is the central task of the rest of Genesis.
In the Socratic scheme, the pursuit of wisdom by our own means
is the best response to our erotic condition. The pursuit of honor is
lower, and the begetting of offspring, it seems, lower still. In the context of a God who created us and the world, and who is the only adequate judge of our good, the life of honor holds the lowest rank.
Wisdom begins with fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9.10; Job 28.20-28), that
is, with recognizing our dependence on a God whose purposes are
beyond our understanding. And the most promising way of beginning seems to be the way followed in varying degrees by Abraham
and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah-by being brought,
through the experience of erotic longing for offspring through
another, to a sense of our own deficiency and dependence on God,
and to a gratitude for those offspring that entails a dedication to
raise them in a tradition that orients them toward God.
This orientation toward God requires a revelation from God to
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guide it. But if our human wisdom is so deficient, so in need of
revealed guidance, how can it presume to judge the merits of any text
that claims this status? Clearly, any such text must surpass human
wisdom. This implies, however, that it must be at least equal to the
profoundest human wisdom, able to address the most searching questions the human mind can pose, and able to echo the deepest insights
into the hidden coherence of human experience. The Platonic vision
of eros as communicated in the Symposium, however, is more than just
one example of profound human wisdom. It has a strong claim to
being the decisive statement of the human condition from the merely human perspective. Thus, if the text of Genesis can accommodate
the questions and insights of this vision, and in doing so not only
retain the coherence belonging to that vision but also place it in a
perspective that coheres with the fundamental presupposition of revelation-the God who transcends the determinations of reasonthen its claims to the status of revealed wisdom may, at least, not be
dismissed lightly.
�t
A Call to Thought
Eva Brann
I would like to draw the attention of the St. John's community to
Pope John Paul's latest (and perhaps last) Encyclical, his circular letter to the Bishops, entitled, as is the custom, in accordance with its
opening words, Faith and Reason.
As a historical institution and as the place of a program, this college has from its beginnings been involved in the issues that attend
the offering of one and the same education to students of different
religious backgrounds and, later on, in the problems that are inherent in carrying on a liberal education that takes dogma seriously
without prescribing it.
When King William's School was converted in 1784, the year the
Revolution ended, into St. John's College, the college was among the
earliest of the new republic to be explicitly nonsectarian. Students were
to be admitted, the Charter said, on merit only, "without requiring or
enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any
particular religious worship or service other than what they ... have the
consent... of their parents to attend:' While thus nonsectarian, the
school was nonetheless Christian; throughout the nineteenth century
the coping-stone of studies was the course in Moral Philosophy and
Christian Evidences taken by the seniors. I do not know when this
requirement was dropped, but I was present when the college's last link
to St. Anne's, that church on Annapolis's Church Circle, was broken.
Sometime in the sixties, Winfree Smith, himself ordained in that
church, raised his voice in behalf of the separation of the baccalaureate service, which took place, as I recall, at St. Anne's, from the
John Paul ll. "On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason:' Fides et Ratio. Encyclical Letter to the
Bishops of the Catholic Church. 1998. Publication No. 5-302. United States Catholic Conference,
Washington, D.C.
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis.
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commencement proper. He was acting-true Virginian that he was-in the spirit of Jefferson and Madison, the two great defenders of the
separation of church and state, the former so that free reason might
prevail over enforced dogma, the latter so that faith and reason might
flourish together. Those of us who were somewhat indifferent to the
religious aspect and more interested in the preservation of tradition
heard his passionate and rationally irresistible arguments for separation
with uneasy admiration; In the next two decades there were sporadic
calls for changing the all-too-Catholic sounding name of the college,
but here the traditionalists easily prevailed. These were the theologicopolitical issues, now, I think, settled for good.
But the intellectual problems inherent in the New Program of
1937, in which works of faith were read as a part of liberal learning,
remain unresolved. Indeed this irresolution might be said to be part
of the essence of the program, its tensed alertness to fundamental
questions, in this case whether and how faith can be studied in a secular framework. But it is probably misleading to call our program of
liberal learning "secular:' for its concerns are by no means merely
temporal, worldly. Call it rather radically nondogmatic. It embodies
no teaching of substance but only pedagogic hypotheses, which,
though they undeniably and I think unavoidably embody what might
be called biases '!f attention, nevertheless deliver no dogma of any sort
concerning the chosen learning matter. Thus we are forced to face the
dogmas of faith nondogmatically, and that ought to be for us acarefully preserved-perplexity.
Now in this Encyclical Pope John Paul speaks as embodying the
Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church; thus he
naturally affirms its dogma. But the main concern of the letter is an
astounding claim, for which the stage is set in the first sentence:
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the
human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and
God has placed in the human heart a desire to know
the truth ....
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What is astounding is not only the unqualified claim of the
coequality of faith and reason, but the way the reason-wing is developed throughout the Encyclical-not only as reason but also as philosophy. The letter is a paean to philosophy as the realization of a
predisposition to inquiry: an "implicit philosophy" found in all human
beings (8), "a journey of discovery which is humanly unstoppable"
(51), beginning in "wonder" about the Creation (7) and carried on "by
trusting dialogue and sincere friendship" (50). Such a search must be
metaphysical in the sense of searching for grounds and foundations
( 122 f£), but the final cause and first task is to recover the "sapiential
dimension," wisdom about the ultimate meaning of life (119).
This is not so much a description of systematic reason as of an
activity familiar to us. Is it not what we, students, alumni, tutors, strive
to do, prepared by the program) But it gets more interesting yet.
The Pope's prolonged praise of philosophy has, of course, some
practical aims. He is displeased that previous calls of the Magisterium to study philosophy have not been sufficiently heeded by theologians and those responsible for the preparation of priests. He is
clearly anxious about the emotionalist and "biblicist" (in American
terms, "funda-mentalist") tendencies in the Church. But he is also
calling, in a more hopeful vein, for a new Catholic syncretism, a
Summa for our time. Saint Thomas is "an authentic model for all
who seek such truths" (114)--notice the indefinite "an"; the Church
is not committed to Thomism. Among modern models he names
Etienne Gilson and Edith Stein (108), who was born a Jew and
recently made a saint. But the call is not only to priests and systemmaking theologians. Philosophy is "not restricted only to the
sometimes ephemeral teachings of professional philosophers" (46).
The call is to the whole laity; for "the human being is by nature a
philosopher" (95). Even the Israelites' "biblical world has made its
own distinctive contribution to the theory of knowledge" (28); thus
is Jerusalem made philosophic neighbor to Athens.
The Pope goes on to radicalize and expand Aristotle's definition
of a human being as an animal having logos to "the one who seeks truth"
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and "also the one who lives by belief" (45, 47). Again notice the little
connective "also"--jirst, human beings are philosophers who think
on their own, in this Encyclical at least. The Pope saves this human
propensity from the despair and dispersion of subjectivism by the
supposition that the individuation of seeking does not necessarily
end in a subjectivism of finding; we may search on our own and yet
come to common truths. This trust, or at least hope, which is I think
behind every injunction to "know thyself" and for that purpose to
"study your world;' is for the Pope a matter of faith.
It seems to me then that this Encyclical is of some consequence
to us. First practically: a good many of our students, including nonCatholics and non-Christians, seek out Catholic graduate schools
such as The Catholic University of America, Boston College and The
Pontifical Institute, because there they hope to find the works they
want to study seriously regarded. If this time around the
Magisterium is heeded, philosophical study will be invigorated and
consequently the zeal for philosophy not as a marginal professional
specialty but as the "sapiential dimension" of all human activity
might even make a (small) comeback in the secular universities.
And second, the Encyclical might affect us in the more elusive
matter of our position in the intellectual world. I have traveled to
scores of institutions in my life, and read about many more: I know
no other school besides ours that makes philosophy, understood as
radical inquiry and as the search for human wisdom, explicitly central. (Even at our Western look-alike, Thomas Aquinas College, philosophy is ancillary to sacred theology, which is studied in the fouryear theology tutorial.) It is a strange, even uneasy, and yet somehow
welcome fact that so huge an institution as the Catholic Church
should now have been directed to include in its educational efforts an
enterprise not dissimilar to ours. Many of us have long believed that
all things truly central are apt to go on at the quiet margins of the
world; nonetheless it would be a nice change to find ourselves participants in an incipient mainstream.
Of course, as I said, the Pope affirms positive dogma in his
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letter, though sparsely; by far the greater effort is devoted to pointing out philosophical error. The Pope is well-read in modern and
even postmodern philosophies, and these are his targets. In a neat
rhetorical turn, he names only one person, the terrestrial archenemy
Marx (182); the other offenders against truth are recognizably alluded to in terms of schools: modernism, nihilism, agnosticism, phenomenalism, immanentism, eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism, biblicism, social 'justification of knowledge, and postmodernism. What the Pope is most worried about is the subjectivism
alluded to above which leads to irrationalism, and the abandonment
of the search for being (10), be it in the positivism of scientists, the
denials of nihilists or the indifferentism of postmodernists.
Truth to tell, these movements and schools are the very ones I
have misgivings about, particularly those that make nonsense of our
enterprise. For example, in the "social justification of knowledge;'
truth is a social project, legitimized by the consensus of formally or
informally certified experts, and that means that the conversation of
determinedly extra-scholarly amateurs, such as make up this college's
extended community, is reduced to chatter without standing-not
what I think of myself as doing. Others among these schools, however, seem to me to require serious engagement, willing or unwilling.
So it is very appealing that the Pope praises "the precious and
seminal insights" (73) of modern philosophy, especially of hermeneutics and analysis (124). And in fact this Pope, who is generally thought
of as almost rigidly conservative in matters ecclesiastical, turns out,
amazingly, to be vastly latitudinarian in matters intellectual-a veritable liberal of the spirit. This Encyclical is irenic, catholic, egalitarian
(57), syncretic, progressive, or in English, peaceable, universal, populist, inclusive and hopeful-hopeful because time, which is of fundamental importance to Christianity (17), points forward; the Pope
speaks expectantly of the next millennium as we might speak of the
next decade, and the Last Judgment is nowhere in sight.
Here are some of the details of this inclusivism: Paul, Augustine,
Pascal, Kierkegaard are specifically and positively named; the Second
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Vatican Council is frequently cited; it is hard to imagine that either
these men or the outcomes of this event appeal to John Paul
unqualifiedly. But his net is cast even wider, bringing up startling catches cheek by jowl, as when the Book of Job is mentioned in tandem
with the philosophers of the absurd (42; I think that means certain
existentialists). The pagan Greeks are included for their attention to
"an unknown god;' the God made known to them by Paul (39). The
East is drawn in, especially India as the land of "great spiritual
impulse" (105). Yet all these influences are to be absorbed without
detriment to the Church's primary "inculturation in the world of
Greco-Latin thought" (106). In his conclusion, the Pope turns to
Mary, "the woman whom the prayer of the Church invokes as the Seat
of Tt!sdom .. .. " (153).
Even taking into account the wise policy of appealing to the
non-Western part of the world, whence increasingly come today's
converts, priests and religious as well as to the restless female
members of the Church, there would be something puzzling in this
philosophical multiculturalism, were it not in line with another
teaching of the Encyclical mentioned above: The Pope recognizes
philosophical errors, the ones just cited, but he asserts that the
Church has no positive philosophy of its own (75, 110). Recall that
Thomas was only a model, and only a model.
How is it intelligible that philosophy should be coequal with
faith, as the hither wing of the spirit, and that this wing should
flutter indeterminately? Doesn't it undermine the seriousness of
philosophy within the institution, which this Encyclical is intended
to inculcate, not so much to postpone a commitment (as befits a
search still in progress), but to declare every outcome in principle
uncanonical (75)? Is it not even at odds with the pronouncement that
philosophy is not contingent or hypothetical: "If something is true,
then it must be true for all people and at all times ... Hypotheses may
fascinate, but they do not satisfy" (43)? An institution like this college, which is radically nescient and dogmatically vacant, can and
must say that it has no positive philosophy of its own (though a good
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many of its members may have the same philosophic adherences).
But can a church that has a positive message of faith ( 14) and claims
that faith and reason contain each other (29) leave its rational side
undecided? Here is where a study of the Encyclical leads deep into
questions that I for one have wrongly neglected, though some of our
people, colleagues and alumni, here and in the Southwest, have spent
their lives with them.
Therefore the third arid best reason why I recommend this papal
letter to our common attention is the set of questions it must raise
even, or especially, in the well-disposed reader's mind. I want to say
here that in the brief ruminations that follow I am far from wishing
to imply that the Pope willfully glosses over difficulties or carelessly
introduces self-contradictions. No such thing: the letter is finite and
the subject indefinitely great; moreover it has urgent ecclesiastical
purposes that preclude subtle philosophical exposition. I have simply
grown interested in its remarkable ramifications.
The Pope leaves philosophical dogma indeterminate to protect
the autonomy of reason (75). How can reason that works in tandem
with faith be autonomous? The Pope distinguishes autonomy from
self-sufficiency (76). Reason has its own principles, methods and
conclusions, but does not encompass the whole of knowledge; it is
not "separate" from faith, that is, complete without the latter.
But what guarantees that reason, acting autonomously, will supply the "necessary preamble to theology" (99, n. 90), that it is never
opposed to faith (51), that it is never in competition with faith (29)?
For the Pope enjoins
that faith and philosophy recover the profound unity
which allows them to stand in harmony with their
nature without compromising their mutual autonomy. The parrhesia [freedom of speechJ of faith must be
matched by the boldness of reason.
(74)
The answer to the question seems to me in part to lie in the
conjunction "and" of "faith and reason:' The autonomous natural
�116
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
reason that is harmoniously teamed with faith as its preamble is, just
as the Pope intimates, self-limited by its formalisms, its method:
principles, rigorous inferences, formal argumentation. The Encyclical
names the law of noncontradiction as one such universally accepted
principle (8). I do not mean that such rationality is merely formal and
not governed by meanings, as that of symbolic logic. On the contrary,
when it is said of Thomas that semper jormalissime loquitur, "he always
speaks most formally;' what is meant by the scholastic language is just
the opposite: He always speaks of essences. What I do mean is that
the reason that is both conjoined with and distinct from faith is selfdenyingly rigorous and systematic. It is uncontaminated rationality.
When the Pope says that reason and faith contain each other (29), he
does not, I think, mean that they infect each other but rather that they
take account of and recognize each other as other, in particular that
"philosophy is always open ... to the supernatural" (109). The various
alternative routes that rigorous reason will take, depending on its principles (as do mathematical systems), is just what may account for the
Pope's rejection of one canonical system of reason for the Church.
But here enters what seems to me to be a significant duality in the
Encyclical, the one I mentioned in the beginning. Throughout the text
"reason" and "philosophy" are used interchangeably in exhortation,
though in description they are not really the same. Reason, recta ratio,
produces coherent and correct systems (8) and is a specialized project.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is a human activity, implicit in all of us;
it is a desire (40), a journey ( 42), a search ( 44)---not a vain one, for our
very philosophical capacity "implies the rudiments of a response" (45).
Though the Pope's usage is not systematic, the descriptive difference is
discernible; it is the philosophical rather than the rational mode that
produces my sense of an affinity between our enterprise and his injunction to the educational institutions of the Church. The Pope himself
delineates philosophy by the absence of two human limitations: the
"philosophical pride" that insists on representing its partial view as a
complete view of reality (7) and the "false modesty" that rests content
with partial truth and gives up on radical inquiry ( 11 ).
�BRANN
117
I put the problem of this duality to myself in a figure. The
Catholic Christian's spirit is borne on the two wings of faith and reason; the thoughtfully inclined pagan's soul rises on the single wing of
philosophical desire; members of the college will recognize it from
the one dialogue they read twice in the program, the Phaedrus. How
does the reason that is conjoined with faith differ from the impulse
of philosophy that flies solo?
If I try to define to myself in kind what are the objects of faith, I
find three: extraordinary sensible occurrences like miracles, ordinary
sensible events with extraordinary meaning like the Incarnation, and
suprasensible facts like the Trinity. These may not be within the
purview of natural reason, when they are taken as. baldly singular
facts and events. But taken in kind they ace not alien to the "wonder
awakened ... by the contemplation of creation" (7), or for that matter
of an uncreated world: the miracle of sensible appearance, the
sudden manifestation of divinity in a human being, the revelation of
unity-in-diversity of an ideal realm-these are kinds of experience
not unknown to philosophy.
Hence it seems to me that the activity of philosophy encompasses
reason, being in stretches--though only in stretches--rigorous in
refutation or proo£ For philosophy begins in medias res and includes
within itself all manner of modes: mundane trust, encouraging belie£
revelatory illumination, while reason in this understanding is bounded
not only by the singular historical facts of faith-that is why time is so
important to Christianity-but also by its principled beginnings and
its methodical purity. Hence it is not self-sufficient and complete: "It
is impossible that faith and knowledge [scientia] should be of the same
thing" says Thomas (On Truth 14.9). And so an outside source,
Revelation, is required, not so much that human knowledge might be
perfect as that the soul might be saved.
The philosophy of the pagans, on the other hand (and I here use
"pagan;' derived from pax, "peace" in its Christian meaning: a pacific civilian not enrolled in the army of Christ), is often represented as
being in itself salutary and as including within itself the possibility
�118
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of experiences that are the generic and ever-available counterparts to
the singularities of faith. Moreover, there are no objects philosophy
is not about: non-being, appearance, being, objects of ignorance,
opinion, knowledge-all come under the purview of philosophy.
The limits of philosophy come from the finitude of the thinker, not
from the occurring objects, and its bearing medium is hopeful trust,
not certain faith. Thus the soul flying on the single wing of philosophy sets no bounds to.its own desire.
If there is any truth in my observation that reason and philosophy are separable notions in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio, it is an act of
daring: not only an exhortation to professional philosophers to
return to foundational rationality, but an invitation to all and sundry
to realize their natural philosophical capability. I find this call
absolutely remarkable, not only as a Magisterial pronouncement for
the faithful, but especially as an incitement to us all to reflect on the
relation of faith to thought.
��I
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The St. John's Review
Volume XLV, number two
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T.H. Brann
james Carry
Beale Ruhm von oppen
joe Sachs
john Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Anne McShane
Special Advisors for this Issue
Howard Fisher
Curtis Wilson
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St.
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Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions
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© 1999 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
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��Contents
Beyond Hypothesis:
Newton's Experimental Philosophy
St. John's College, Annapolis
March 19-21, 1999
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Newton's Nature:
Does Newton's Science Disclose
Actual Knowledge of Nature? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Franr;:ois De Gandt
Newton's Theory of Light and Colors ......................... 20
William H. Donahue
How Did Newton Discover Universal Gravity? .................. 32
George E. Smith
Redoing Newton's Experiment for Establishing
The Proportionality of Mass and Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 64
Curtis Wilson
The First Six Propositions in Newton's Argument
For Universal Gravitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
William Harper
Cause and Hypothesis:
Newton's Speculation About the Cause of Universal Gravitation ..... 94
Dana Densmore
��I
Foreword
Harvey Flaumenhaft
Newton's work, one of the greatest enterprises of the human spirit, has
shaped our minds and transformed the world we live in, yet only a very
small portion of humanity has ever read what Newton wrote. It seems that a
large part of that very small portion of humanity must consist of people who
have passed through the halls of St. John's College. Every junior at this
college spends a large part of the year pondering long and difficult passages
in Newton's Principia, presenting in class the fruits of that study, and
discussing other great thinkers who were trying to come to terms with
Newton's work. That is not business as usual in American higher education
-nor, for that matter, in higher education anywhere else.
Some years ago, I wrote to a number of historians of science in order
to call attention to a series of guidebooks to the study of great texts in
mathematical and natural science. One of those historians was a worldfamous scholar who at the time was the leading American authority on
Newton; he replied with praise for the enterprise, but with a sad warning:
willingness to read serious books, he said, may be too much to expect of
students; after all, when you can hardly get people to look at authors like
Shakespeare, it would seem hopeless to try to get them to study authors like
Newton. On the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary of the
Principia, therefore, when I read a newspaper article that mentioned how
many copies of the book were sold each year, the thought that struck me on
examining the numbers was that most of those copies of Newton's Principia
had to have been sold to Johnnies in the St. John's College Bookstore.
So, I'm happy to say that the study of Isaac Newton's work flourishes
uniquely at St. John's College. Our nondepartmentalized faculty regards it as
among their most important tasks to equip themselves to study Newton and
to help our students to do so. To help us in that endeavor, the College held
a conference on the work of Isaac Newton the weekend of March 19-21,
1999. The conference provided an opportunity to share with guests the
delight and the instruction to be gained from the distinguished scholars
Harvey Flaumenhaft is Dean at the Annapolis Campus of St. Jolm's College.
�6
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
whom we invited to speak on the subject; and collecting the papers in this
issue of the St. John's Review provides us with the opportunity to share what
we gained with even more people.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge with gratitude the support of the
Dibner Fund, whose generosity made the conference possible. It's also a
pleasure to acknowledge the gracious loan of various sorts of Newtoniana books and equipment that were on exhibit during the conference in our
Greenfield Library-from the Burndy Library of the Dibner Institute for the
History of Science and Technology at MIT, and from the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of American History. A great deal of work in
setting it all up was done by several tutors: Howard Fisher, chairman of the
planning committee, and its other members, Adam Schulman and Curtis
Wilson. The person who set it all in motion was the alumnus for whom our
new Library is named, Stuart Greenfield, a member of our Board of Visitors
and Governors who is also a member of the board of the Dibner Fund.
�~
Newton's Nature:
) Does Newton's Science Disclose
~ Actual Knowledge of Nature?
~
Fran\=ois de Gandt
The question posed to me was: Does Newton's science disclose actual
knowledge of Nature? The question was not mine; it was posed to me, but I
accepted it. I found it interesting and challenging and rich. And also, in this
question I feel several smells or moods. For instance, I feel some postmodern suspicion about the value of science. Does it disclose actual
knowledge of nature? I feel also some nostalgic mood: maybe we have lost
contact with nature through our modern science. Such a question for me was
an occasion to sum up, to tighten various things, to envisage things in a
unified view, and to tighten some knots that were loose in my own mind. So
my lecture will not be a part of the book that Mr. Wilson has so well
translated into English;' (or, if you consider it, it could be a development of
the last page of the book). But the book mostly deals with the mathematics
of Book I of the Principia/ and some aspects around that, I mean
mathematics at the time of Newton or before Newton. And here I shall deal
more with the presence or absence of Nature, and that means especially
Book III of the Principia, Tbe System of the World.
I shall put this in the context of 18th-century science, because this is a
domain in which I am at work now. I work particularly in a group, a large
group of people who are preparing the complete critical edition of the works
of Jean le Rand d'Alembert-d'Alembert the friend of Diderot. There are
many manuscripts left in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, manuscripts which
have never been edited, and we want to give a complete, critical edition of
the works of d'Alembert. It is a huge task, and we are just in the beginning
of that enterprise. Probably I shall not see the end of it myself, but, well,
that's the intellectual life.
This has also been the occasion for me to pose certain philosophical
questions, and as I grow older I think the time has come to philosophize,
especially concerning the place of science in culture, the place of science in
Franr;;:ois de Gandt is Professor of Philosophy at Universite de IJlle. This keynote address, given
to students and tutors at St. Jolm's College, Annapolis, on 19 March 1999, was transcribed and
polished by Adam Schulman and Curtis Wilson.
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
life, and something about certainty and belief. I am interested in all that. So I
shall give only a general landscape, a sort of orientation on that question, and
we can develop particular aspects during the discussion, I hope.
I give you my plan. First, Newton in the 18th century: triumph and
critique. Then I come to what I call the other Newton and the life of Nature.
Then, the mathematical, deductive frame. Then a sort of conclusion about
Nature and mechane-the Greek word. All of you know Greek-you are
supposed to.
The pivotal place, the most important place in the Principia where we
speak of the science of real nature is Prop. 7 of Book Ill. In Latin,
Gravitatem in corpora universa fieri, etc. Here everything is suspended; it is
the critical place, the most important place. That Prop. 7 is a sort of summit
in a certain path, in a certain road you follow. We go up to Prop. 7, and then
there is a sort of a descent. You can think of the ascendant and the
descendant paths in Plato's Republic. The highest point is reached with Prop.
7, which asserts that there is universal gravitation; there is some sort of
weight of gravity toward all the bodies. In Latin, it is in the accusative. The
previous propositions have as their purpose to reach that summit, passing
from motions to forces, and then unifying forces. So you have motions in
front of you-in the heavens, somewhere-and you study those motions,
and you draw the notion of force from those motions, and then progressively
you unify those forces. This force is the same as the second one, the second
one is the same as the third one, etc., and then at the end, you end up with
just one force. And you are allowed to call it weight. It is just weight, just
gravity, pesanteur, le poids. Things have a weight toward each other. In fact,
here in Prop. 7, things have weight toward each particle of matter. Each
particle of matter is a center of weight around itself. This is the crowning
point of Book III, Tbe System of the World. For that purpose you use the
previous theorems of Books I and II, but not much from Book II, which is
about fluids.
Now after Prop. 7 you have a descent, which is an a priori
argumentation. You know that there is universal gravitation, and from that
you draw consequences, and the consequences are placed in our world; they
are terrestrial and celestial consequences of universal gravitation. And then
Newton has a sort of program of deduction and research. It is not completely
done. In many cases he says: "We would like the observers to see if... ,"
''We would like the astronomers to decide whether... ," etc. So, once you
have accepted the idea of universal gravitation, you reorganize the world,
and you are able to pose interesting questions to the world. Do tides behave
this way or that way? Do the satellites of this planet behave in this way or
�DEGANDT
9
another way? Universal gravitation is a sort of guiding light to pose questions
to nature in an a priori mode. And then you have various aspects: orbits of
planets, shape of the Earth (called Ia figure de Ia terre in the 18th century),
then the tides with their ebb and flow, the Moon, the precession of the
equinoxes, the comets; and with the comets comes the end of Book III. This
is the program which is set in Book III. But this is also the list of themes that
were addressed by scientists in the 18th century. This is the agenda of
physics in the 18th century, almost in that order. It is strange.
The orbits of planets: the greatest scientist of that time was Christiaan
Huygens, and Christiaan Huygens admitted that for the orbits of planets the
system of Newton is marvelous. It gives extraordinary consequences, which
are exactly adapted to what we can see in the orbits of planets-much more
than in Descartes's system. The Cartesian system had no answer, even no
question concerning the geometrical aspects of the orbits. And here Huygens
said, it's a marvel: we can now say why the eccentricities of the orbits are
constant, we know why the planes of the orbits pass through the Sun, which
is so important dynamically speaking, but in Cartesian terms it has no
importance. There's no reason why the center of the vortex should be always
on the plane of the orbit. And the inclinations of the orbits always remain the
same; it's important in Newtonian terms, in Cartesian terms it has no
particular sense. Many details of the orbits of planets can be explained. You
can give an account of them through universal gravitation. So Huygens was
satisfied, except that he found the theory absurd. Well, of course. I insist
upon Huygens, because very often people say that Newton was not accepted
on the Continent before a late date. It's not true. A man called Huygens
wrote and published in 1690 vigorous praise of the system of Newton.
Next, let's come to the shape of the Earth. This gave rise to a quarrel
between some quasi-Cartesians and the Newtonians in the years 1735-36,
especially amongst Frenchmen, in particular the Cassinis, Clairaut, Bouguer,
Maupertuis, la Condamine. And the French decided to send two expeditions,
one to Lapland, toward the North Pole, and the other to Peru and to the
Equator, to determine the length of the meridian, and then to see whether
the Earth is flattened at the poles. I could tell you much more about that, it's
a really funny story, an extraordinary story, especially the story of the
expedition to the Equator: extreme problems of health, difficulty with the
Indians, with the Viceroys. One member of the expedition came back only
36 years later. That expedition was not lucky. The expedition to Lapland was
much more lucky and successful, and they proved that the Earth is really
flattened. But it was not a proof of Newton's system, because many
Cartesians admitted also that the Earth was flattened. Voltaire said: Now
�10
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton has triumphed, etc. Here I should mention the mundane belleslettres, etc., the people who wrote about Newton without understanding.
That is the usual fate of science.
The tides: the tides provided the occasion of an important discussion in
1739-40. The question was posed by the Academie des Sciences de Paris: can
we explain the tides by universal gravitation? The answer of the Principia
was yes; but in how much detail? And so several people tried to develop the
details of the explanation of the tides via universal gravitation. But this was a
big task. Sometimes it is said that the success in carrying it out was complete;
that is not true. The subject is very complex, and it is especially complex
because you have a simple cause, but many, many intermediate phenomena:
resonance in basins, inertia of the water, etc., and it is very hard to see
whether the theory was really corroborated by those studies. The studies
were written by Euler, Maclaurin, and Daniel Bernoulli.
Concerning the Moon, there was a very interesting discussion and crisis
in 1747-48, because Euler, d'Alembert, and Clairaut became aware--or more
clearly aware-that a certain motion of the Moon, the motion of the Moon's
apse, cannot be explained by universal gravitation, for you derive only half
the observed motion of the apse. They had to redo the derivation. Euler
thought there could be some fluid complicating the process. D'Alembert was
skeptical, as usual; he said, probably there must be some magnetic influence,
or the Moon is hollow, with an irregular shape inside. And Clairaut said,
well, let's try to compute. He made calculations, and he showed in 1749 that
there is no need to change the law of gravitation, no need to introduce a
further mechanism; the calculation works perfectly well, once you have
admitted a certain way of doing the approximation. So the result was a
success, after a crisis for universal gravitation.
The precession: well, let's skip that and turn to comets. Halley's Comet
returned in early 1759. On the basis of Newton's theory, Clairaut predicted
the return of the comet to within approximately one month. This was a
popular success, a popular triumph for Newton's theory. Some people said,
"One month is marvelous." Others said, "Well, one month, that's much!" And
Clairaut had to compute the influence of the big planets in perturbing the
path of the comet.
So these are the triumphs of the Newtonian theory in the 18th century
which were synthesized, summarized in Laplace's M§canique celeste, which
was published around the tum of the century (around 1800). For instance,
Laplace wrote "La tbeorie de Ia pesanteur a devance les observations": the
theory of gravity has preceded observations. It was in advance.
�DEGANDT
11
This could be misleading. There were other questions that were not so
easily solved; in some cases the theory did not work. For instance, the
attempt to calculate the trade winds via gravitation didn't work; the study of
the resistance of fluids-it is a very, very difficult, complicated problem that
was not successfully solved in Book II of Newton's Principia. But, on the
whole, one can say that this [Laplace's Mecanique celeste] marks the triumph
of the system of Mr. Newton, especially in the French-speaking part of
Europe. In that day the English-speaking part was not as active as the Swiss,
the French, the people in Berlin (but in Berlin there were Swiss and French).
So I come to the limits and the critique of Newton's system. First, the
theory of Newton is absurd. It starts from a stupid assumption: that two
particles of matter can do something to each other at a distance, without
touching each other-a sort of magic or sympathy. "Attraction" was a wellknown word for things that were crazy. Daniel Bernoulli in his book about
tides starts by writing, "Get incomprehensible et incontestable principe queM.
Newton a si bien etabli . .." The phrase is marvelous: This incomprehensible
and indisputable principle that Mr. Newton has so well established. How can
you establish something incomprehensible?
And all the discussion should be placed inside a larger context, a
philosophical context and also a theological context, the context of a crisis of
causality. People at that time, the beginning of the 18th century, became ill at
ease with the notion of cause: what is a cause? And philosophers like
Malebranche or Berkeley, or even Maupertuis and d'Alembert, tried to
dismiss the traditional notion of cause. And the Newtonian system was a part
of the discussion. In the Newtonian system you cannot say you have reached
a cause, but nevertheless you go on, doing useful computations and
predictions, etc. For instance, Berkeley has a beautiful sentence in his
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: "Those men who
frame general rules from the phenomena, and afterwards derive the
phenomena from those rules, seem to consider signs rather than causes." Not
causes but signs. Physics has to do with signs only. This is Berkeley.
Then around 1750, there was a sort of turn, a sort of new fashion.
People were expecting, awaiting a new science, for instance the new science
advocated by Diderot, the friend of my d'Alembert. And Diderot's idea, for
instance especially in his Pensees sur !'interpretation de Ia nature, in 1754, is
that "le temps des geometres est passe." Mathematics are void. Nothing
happens in mathematics; you only translate the first statement in various
ways, in mathematical discourse. Diderot knew that from his friend
d'Alembert, who said so: mathematics is just translation. It is time to go to
new objects, a new style of science, especially concerned with living beings,
�12
TIIE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
because Nature is living and productive. This had to do with the secret,
subterranean influence of Leibniz-Leibniz who spoke very often of ipsa
natura, in a sort of pre-Romantic thought. And Nature is made of a chain of
beings. And people like Diderot were very interested and enthusiastic about
that chain of various beings from the stone to the man, even further-we
don't know. With the polyp, for instance, between two domains of nature:
the polyp is at the same time an animal and not an animal, we don't know
exactly. And all those new objects cannot be studied by the methods of
mathematical physics. So Newton for these people was an old-fashioned
scientist.
And the most systematic criticism came from the German Romantic
movement. There were also English Romantics concerned with this criticism,
for instance, if you read William Blake or Coleridge, they discussed Newton;
for them Newton is a representative of a particular sort of science. In Blake's
extraordinary world, Newton represents a certain figure. But I am more
interested by German Romantics, people like Goethe, Schelling, Hegel. For
them Newton was the symbol of dry, mathematical abstraction, of the
scientific understanding that desiccates Nature. Thus in Hegel or in Schelling,
in texts dating from around 1801 and 1802, for instance Hegel's De orbitis
planetarum, and the beautiful dialogue written by Schelling called Bruno:
there you swim in the ocean of infinite beauty, etc., you see everything from
a high vantage point. It's philosophy at its smoothest and its most dangerous,
perhaps. But it's fun; you should read Schelling's Bruno. And for these
authors, the composition and decomposition of force is a violence done to
Nature, because force is something unitary, autonomous, and active, and
force cannot be decomposed. There's no sense in trying to decompose a
force. In Nature there are degrees of freedom, in accordance with the Great
Chain of Being, and those degrees of freedom statt from the stone, which is
a complete prisoner of gravity, and then you go to the solar system; and
Hegel and Schelling say that the solar system has a certain higher level, and
has its own freedom. The planets are in a certain sense free, and more free
than a pure stone, which is the slave of gravity. And then, of course, a still
higher level is that of the animal. And then you come to the Spirit. And
finally, consciousness and knowledge are the highest points of Nature and
must be included in that large science of Nature.
That is, Newtonian science is abstract, it is partial, it explains only one
level of Nature, and it is non-reflexive: it does not explain itself, whereas
Romantic Naturpbilosophie explains itself. Genius is a part of Nature. My
imagination is a part of Nature. In a text of Navalis or Schelling, you explain
how the knowledge of man is a part of the operations of Nature.
�DE GANDT
13
The strange thing is that there is a big misunderstanding in all that,
because Newton would have agreed. Newton was on their side, in fact. But
we have discovered it only recently, in the last 40 years or so, I would say. I
will try briefly to show how Newton would have agreed with the Romantic
view of Nature. First, is Newtonian science abstract? Is mathematics abstract?
No. Newton maintains that his fluxions are in Nature; they do exist in Nature.
There are fluxions; you can see them. They are the real operation of Nature.
For instance, I remember a passage in Colin Maclaurin, who is sometimes a
faithful Newtonian. He says: the French Cartesians have invented fictions:
they have invented infinitesimals and vortices. But our Newtonian concepts
are rooted in Nature, very deeply; they are faithful to Nature. And Newtonian
science tried not to be partial, not to explain just one domain of facts. The
concept of centripetal force should be useful in other domains, should be
extended to, for instance, the cohesion of bodies, to electricity, to chemical
properties, even to nervous transmission in the brain. That is, Newtonian
science tends to be also reflexive, to explain how knowledge is possible-it's
the limit of that program. Even sensibility, immediate knowledge, would be
explained in Newtonian terms if the program of Newton had been
completely achieved.
We have the traces of that immense program in various manuscripts,
but also in some published texts, where Newton says we should go from
phenomena to forces, and then classify forces into certain large classes of
forces, and then we come to the causes of those forces, which are different:
forces are not causes. Thus we proceed from the motions to the forces, from
the forces to the classes of force, from the classes of force to the causes, and
ultimately to God Himself, who is the highest cause. And philosophy, natural
philosophy, should go up to God, should attain God. And then, in that vast
program, the Principia is just a small part of the statue, just the torso or the
leg, I don't know; but it's only the beginning of a part of a vast program.
And then, in the second edition of 1713, Newton added a strange text
to the Principia, a text called "Scholium Generale," which I think you read in
your classes. It contains an extraordinary avowal of the shipwreck, of the
failure: "Causam gravitatis nondum assignavi." I have written 500 pages of
difficult physics, and I end the book by saying: "I don't know the causes."
But physics is about the causes. In Descartes, in Aristotle, all physics is
always about causes. So you end your book of physics by saying: I have not
found the causes; then it's useless!
Here is a little comparison that is not, I think, completely false. When
Daladier came back from Munich in the autumn of 193&-Chamberlain went
to London, Daladier came to Paris, after the discussion with Hitler, and they
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVlEW
said, "We have peace for the world," etc. in 193&--and Daladier in the plane
saw how crowded the airport was, there were thousands, tens of thousands
of people waiting for him at the airport, and he said to his counselor, "I shall
be lynched." And the counselor: "No, no, no, they are just here to cheer
you." And then Daladier said "Ah, /es cons." It's untranslatable, it's not very
good French. It means something like, "How can they be so stupid? How can
they be so stupid to applaud when I bring back such a failure?" He knew
that Munich was really a failure. But apparently the other people did not
know it. I think that Newton must have at some time had that sort of feeling
in his mind: they cheer me, they applaud the Principia, but they don't know
how enormous the task was, and this was not what I wanted. I gave that, but
I wanted much more . ... "Ah, les cons."
In the Scholium Generate Newton added a small addition, very strange,
which gives you a hint, a trace, of that vast program which extends to the
whole domain of Nature, about a certain spirit. The last paragraph of the
Principia begins: Adjicere jam liceret nonnul/a de spiritu quodam
suhtilissimo. You are good in Greek but not in Latin, I've heard. "Let it be
allowed to add something [that hypocritical manner of Newton's]-about a
certain spirit, vety subtle . .. , etc." And that spirit has many active operations,
as you know. And that spirit could be, in some. sense, the most overt way in
which Newton gave an indication of his larger philosophy of nature.
Probably he had the hope of proving mathematically that nature is active,
living, operative. But the road was too long, and he covered only a very
small part.
So Newton was called by John Maynard Keynes "the last magician." Is
that program about the life of nature a sort of dead end? Because the
Principia was taken as a complete system; and in the 18th century there
were few people who cared about the spiritus quidam, etc., and all that
hidden part of the program of Newton. And all those vague statements about
God and spirit were almost without influence. Actually, it's not so simple;
you should look more closely at the definition of "natural philosophy" in
English authors. For instance, on the last page of Locke's Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, you have a definition of "physics," which includes
angels, spirits, and God. So physis for Locke includes spirits, even up to God.
And I have found authors that were influenced by Newton and were
influential in their turn, who should be studied more. I am thinking for
instance of a certain David Hartley. In his book, Observations on Man, his
Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749), Hartley has a complete theory
about vibrations and that notion of spirit, pervading a sort of aether,
pervading all nature. It even penetrates our nerves and brain and explains
�DEGANDT
15
the functioning of our brain. He speaks of a sort of harmony that can
establish itself between things that are at a distance from one another. His
theory includes even psychology, morality, and theology. So Hartley has a
complete Newtonian philosophy of nature and spirit and God, based on that
Newtonian notion of spirit. And strangely enough, that man Hartley
influenced Jeremy Bentham as well as Joseph Priestley. And he is sometimes
associated with the birth of utilitarianism and the theory of the association of
ideas. But there is almost no study on Hartley except a French one, Elie
Halevy, La naissance du radicalisme philosopbique, Vol. 2. And I have found
a sort of Hartleyan or Newtonian quotation in an unexpected place: Laurence
Sterne, A Sentimental journey. In the chapter, "The Bourbonnais," we read:
Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our
joys, or costly in our sorrows! ... 'thy divinity which stirs within me'not that in some sad and sickening moments, 'my soul shrinks back upon
herself' . .. but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond
myself-all comes from thee, great SENSORIUM of the world! ["sensorium"
is the Newtonian word for the presence or place of God] which vibrates
[I'm not sure he isn't confusing "spirit" and "sensorium," but those
notions are so strange] if a hair of our heads but falls upon the ground, in
the remotest desert of thy creation . ...
That is action at a distance. If a hair of a creature falls in a desert, you
feel it, because there is that universal vibration of the aether. And that
explains sensibility. That explains also why we are sometimes pushed
outwards, and we can perceive what happens elsewhere-not in our body
only. And sensibility was an important slogan in the 18th century. It has
something to do with the Newtonian program.
I had here a digression about the logic of that Newtonian program, and
what could be called the Paracelsian mode of science. At that time there was
not only the mechanical picture, but also something else, another way of
doing philosophy, another way of looking at nature, at life, at knowledge,
which was influenced by Neoplatonism and by Hermetism and well
represented by the alchemists and the Paracelsians. But that can be a theme
for later discussion.
Maybe we could be cynical and say that all that hidden program of
Newton, all those speculations about spirits and sensorium, have not much
to do with real science, that they remain marginal. Hartley is mostly
forgotten. Maybe that's just right, and the fame of Newton rests not on
alchemy and theology, but on the mathematical theory of gravitation.
Our usual reading of the Principia is far removed from the unified and
vital conception of nature. Is it totally unfaithful to Newton to read the
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Principia just as a piece of mathematical physics? I think Newton is also
responsible for that.
Newton accepted another tradition just by writing physics
mathematically. Newton accepted the tradition of mathematical physics,
which is an old thing. This is what I could call the Archimedean tradition.
You have read Archimedes' treatises on the equilibrium of planes and on
floating bodies. The natural charge is at the beginning, or maybe at the end.
That is, you put the real thing in the principles, and then you draw the chain,
you tum the crank. It's not so easy to tum the crank, but the real physical
charge is at the beginning. You pose a certain assumption, you postulate
lambanomena or aitemata at the beginning of the theory. So it's not a study
of the causes, but it's building a deductive apparatus.
And this is exactly what Galileo does. The name of Galileo appears
here in a very essential way, because Galilee is in some sense the father of
Newton, or Newton is the son of Galileo. They do the same job. And Galilee
accepts the restriction of not dealing with causes, whereas Newton is more
embarrassed ("I have not found causes"). Galileo says: We shall not study
causes; we shall just assume a certain definition of accelerated motion, and
then we turn the mathematical crank, we arrive at a certain consequence,
and we try to see if the consequence works in the real world. That's the way
we have to deal with Nature in our science. Of course, it is a deceiving
science, because we don't deal with causes. But that is not the job of this
sort of science.
I'm just paraphrasing an important passage from the Third Day of
Galilee's Discourses on Two New Sciences; I believe it is part of your
curriculum. So, Newton does the same. He has the physical charge in the
principles, and then comes the mathematical deduction. And at the end, you
can see whether it works, whether it is adjusted to the physical facts. And the
Galilean influence is much deeper also. I mean that the very notion of
gravitation is Galilean gravitation. What is gravity? We don't know the cause
of it, we don't know whether it is impulsive or attractive, whether it is a
question of pushing something, or being drawn, being pulled, being
attracted. We don't know that, we don't have to decide that. The only thing
that we know and that is important for the rest is that gravity implies a
certain law of acceleration around the particle having mass. Every particle
creates around itself a field of acceleration. This is the only thing we need to
know. And it's the basic thing at the beginning of the Principia. That is,
universal gravity is generalized Galilean weight, nothing more, nothing less.
Everywhere in the world, at each instant, there is action of Galilean weight.
�DEGANDT
17
And we just observe it by observing accelerated motion. We know nothing
more and we don't need to know anything more.
That deductive frame-you put the physical charge at the beginning,
and then you draw mathematically, deductively the consequences-that
frame is not so new. It is a Greek frame, it is a Greek_ pattern, a Greek
invention: deductive science. Deductive science applied to physical reality.
And I think many commentators on modern science have not been
sufficiently aware-myself, I have discovered it progressively-of the
immense importance of the four mixed sciences. What are the four mixed
sciences? Music, astronomy, optics, mechanics. This is the list you have in
Aristotle's Metaphysics 13.3 or Physics 2.2. And you have the same list in
Galileo's Discorsi. You know that place [Third Day, following Cor. I of Prop.
II of On Naturally Accelerated Motion] where Salviati has unrolled his text in
Latin, and then Simplicio says, Well, all this is very good, but I would like to
see the experiments. And Salviati doesn't say, Oh, Simplicia, you are a
university scholar, always fond of Aristotle. No! He says: you are perfectly
right! He says: Voi, da vera scienziato, which is slightly ironicaL You are a
real scientist, Simplicia. And why are you a real scientist, Simplicia? Because
you ask what is usually asked in those sciences which apply mathematical
demonstration to natural conclusions, as is the case [and here come the four
sciences] ne i perspettivi, negli astronomi, ne i mecanici, ne i musici [in the
writers on optics, astronomy, mechanics, and music].
So Galileo accepts the traditional frame of those mixed sciences. What
he does is nothing else than renewing and extending those ancient sciences.
For instance, when he wanted to demonstrate the isochronism of the
pendulum, in the letter to Guido Ubaldo of 16o2, he says: I want to prove it
senza trasgradire i termini meccanici-without trespassing beyond the
boundaries of mechanics. For him the isochronism of the pendulum should
be proved inside traditional mechanics.
So I have much to say about those four mixed sciences. And I think if
we really want to discuss the question, Do we have real knowledge of nature
in Newton's science? we should first deal with the question of the relation of
those four disciplines to nature. For instance, there is a very important fact,
which I discovered recently, one month ago, in the last issue of Early Science
and Medicine (February 1999). Ulrich Taschow from Halle discusses music in
Nicole Oresme. Maybe Oresme is a well~known name for you-a figure at
the end of the medieval period. And Oresme uses music as a very important
example for his latitudines formarum. And Tasch ow discusses the
importance of music, and he remarks (p. 44) that it is strange that all the
sciences apply to nature but only in a certain, special sense. Astronomy has
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to do with the celestial spheres, which are not ordinary matter; they are
made of quintessentia, the fifth substance, which is not ordinary matter.
Optics has to do with species, which is not material. And music, which was
the theme of the article in Early Science and Medicine, has to do with ratios
between sounds, and these, too, are nothing material. Thus the three upper
sciences have to do with things which are in nature but are not exactly
material, which are quasi-material, of some sort of super-essential matter; it is
thus, you see, in the case of sound, of planetary orbits or heavenly spheres,
and of the rays of light, or the rays which come from your eye.
But mechanics is an exception because mechanics is a very terrestrial,
down-to-earth discipline. It has to do first with military engines, and with
levers, pulleys, cranks, fortifications: that is mechanics. Mechanics is really
down-to-earth, an everyday science. Astronomy, optics, and music are not
everyday sciences. They have not much to do with the real world. So
mechanics is an exception, and it would be very interesting but difficult to
try to follow the strange evolution of mechanics, and even of the
word, mechane, mechanika, mechanike. What is it exactly? Mechane is a trick.
You are a mechanician when you are clever, you are tricky, you know the
roundabout way, you don't deal directly with the thing. You are like Ulysses:
Ulysses is a master of mechanics. Whereas Achilles goes straight on, Ulysses
knows a trick: polumechanos Odysseus-maybe you remember that.
And then, does all that deal with nature? What is the link between
mechane and nature? I will not answer, but I'll just finish with a small
quotation from Sophocles' Antigone. You know the text. You remember
probably that the chorus says that Man is something extraordinary among
extraordinary things, a marvel of marvels or enigma of enigmas, polla ta
deina k'ouden anthr6pou deinoteron, etc. And you remember that Man does
violence to the Earth, and the word has some sexual connotation, apotruetai.
The poor Earth is fecundated at a certain price each year by the man with
the plow and the horses. And Man is a king of tricks. The word mechane
_occurs at various places in this chorus of Antigone. For instance, you have
the strange phrase, to miJcbanoen tecbnas, etc. And so Man is able to keep
away from Nature, to keep away from natural dangers. He has his shelter, his
weapons. The mecbane is a way to avoid the direct contact with Nature, in
some sense. Man has created another world, another realm, which is the
domain of mechane.
If we admit that in that text, the hymn to Man in Antigone, there is a
certain flavor of disrespect, almost blasphemy against Nature, then we should
not say, we should not believe that we have lost a certain contact with
Nature which was a privilege of the ancient world. The ancient world was no
�DEGANDT
19
more in contact with Nature than we are, in some sense. They admitted that
a certain mechane was there to protect them against Nature. That mechane
was also the genius of Man, because mechane goes up to the creation of
speech and laws, in the text of the chorus of Antigone.
In the beginning I spoke of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a noble and sweet
feeling. And Nature is in some sense our paradise lost. For every people,
every country, every century, Nature is always in some sense a paradise lost.
So, nostalgia is a sweet feeling. But the higher attitude seems to me to admit
almost to blasphemy or at least to attifact in our life, and to live with it.
Notes
1. Frans;ois de Gandt, Force and Geometry in Newton's Principia, trans. Curtis Wilson
(Princeton University Press, 1995).
2. Isaac Newton, Philosopbiae Natura/is Principia Mathematica, (first edition, 1687).
References are to the third Latin edition (1726) with variant readings edited by
Alexandre Koyre and I. Bernard Cohen, Harvard University Press, 1972. I will refer
to this work throughout as Principia. All English translations are by William H.
Donahue.
�Newton's New Theory
of Light and Colors
William H. Donahue
Isaac Newton is known for having invented many things: the Newtonian
telescope, universal gravitation, and the cat door among them. It is not
widely known, however, that he also invented the scientific journal article.
His invention appeared in the form of a letter, and was published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1672.' It was about light
and colors, and began with an account of his famous experiment with 'two
prisms, which he called "the E;xperimentum Crucis," by which he hoped to
show that sunlight consists of differently refrangible rays, each with its own
characteristic angle of refraction. This experiment, and Newton's description
of it, is my topic this morning, and so I shall begin by reading the pertinent
parts of Newton's article.
Newton begins:
Sir,
To perform my late promise to you, I shall without further
ceremony acquaint you, that in the beginning of the Year 1666 (at which
time I applyed my self to the grinding of Optick glasses of other figures
than Spherical,) I procured me a Triangular glass-Prisme, to try therewith
the celebrated Phaenomena of Colours. And in order thereto having
darkened my chamber, and made a small hole in my window-shut
[shutters], to let in a convenient quantity of the Suns light, I placed my
Prisme at his entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to the opposite
wall. It was at first a very pleasing divertisement [diversion], to view the
vivid and intense colours produced thereby; but after a while applying
my self to consider them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see
them in an oblong form; which, according to the received laws of
Refraction, I expected should have been circular.
William Donahue, a graduate of St. John's with a Ph.D. in the history of science from Cambridge
University, is the translator of Kepler's Astronomia Nova, and is now completing a translation of
Kepler's Astronomiae Pars Optica. With Dana Densmore he operates the Green Lion Press,
which publishes works of importance in the history of science. Mr. Donahue illustrated his talk
at appropriate moments with a video portr.1yal of the experiment prepared by Mr. Howard
Fisher and Mr. Adam Schulman. In the printed version of the talk, the illustrations will be three
diagrams drawn by Newton himself.
�21
DONAHUE
[2] They were terminated at the sides with streight [straight] lines,
but at the ends, the decay of light was so gradual, that it was difficult to
determine justly, what was their figure; yet they seemed semicircular.
[3] Comparing the length of this coloured Spectrum with its
breadth, I found it about five times greater; a disproportion so
extravagant, that it excited me to a more than ordinary curiosity of
examining, from whence it might proceed .... ( 47-48)
p
" "'
Fig. 1. XY is the Sun, F the hole in the window shutter,
ABC the prism, and PT the oblong image on the wall.
And having placed [the prism] at my window, as before, I observed, that
by turning it a little about its axis to and fro, so as to vary its obliquity to
the light, more than an angle of 4 or 5 degrees, the Colours were not
thereby sensibly translated from their place on the wall, and
consequently by that variation of Incidence, the quantity of Refraction
was not sensibly varied. [See Fig. 1.] By this Experiment therefore, as well
as by the former computation, it was evident, that the difference of the
Incidence of Rays, flowing from divers parts of the Sun, could not make
them after decussation [the point where nonparallel rays cross] diverge at
a sensibly greater angle, than that at which they before converged; which
being, at most, but about 31 or 32 minutes, there still remained some
other cause to be found out, from whence it could be 2 degr .49'. ( 49-50)
Note that there is a lowest position which the spectrum can attain, no
matter how the prism is rotated. When the spectrum is at its lowest position,
the prism is said to be in the position of minimum deviation.
This position has theoretical importance since one can show from the
sine law of refraction (which was known in Newton's day) that it is a
position of symmetry with respect to both incoming and outgoing beams;
and therefore that a light beam refracted by the prism should pass through
with its angular width unchanged. Newton refers to such a calculation in
Paragraph 6. During the experiment the prism was never rotated very far
from its position of minimum deviation, once that position was found . Thus
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the spreading out of the beam in one direction cannot be explained by the
reference to the ordinary law of refraction alone.
We return to Newton's letter at paragraph 9:
[9] The gradual removal of these suspitions, at length led me to the
Experimentum Crucis, which was this: I took two boards, and placed one
of them close behind the Prisme at the window, so that the light might
pass through a small hole, made in it for the purpose, and fall on the
other board, which I placed at about 12 feet distance, having first made a
small hole in it also, for some of that Incident light to pass through. Then
I placed another Prisme behind this second board, so that the light,
trajected [passed] through both the boards, might pass through that also,
and be again refracted before it arrived at the wall. This done, I took the
first Prisme in my hand, and turned it to and fro slowly about its Axis, so
much as to make the several parts of the Image, cast on the second board,
successively pass through the hole in it, that I might observe to what
places on the wall the second Prisme would refract them. [See Fig. 2.]
Fig 2.
And I saw by the variation of those places, that the light, tending to
that end of the image, towards which the refraction of the first Prisme
was made, did in the second Prisme suffer a refraction considerably
greater then the light tending to the other end.
And so the true cause of the length of that image was detected to
be no other, then that Light consists of Rays differently refrangible, which,
without any respect to a difference in their incidence, were, according to
their degrees of refrangibility, transmitted towards divers parts of the
wall. ( 49-50)
The rest of my talk will consist largely of a careful reading of these
last two sentences, to try to understand what they mean and on what
�DONAHUE
23
grounds we might be able to judge of their truth. I say "we" because I hope
you will be participants in the reading. I'm not a Newton scholar, and am
approaching the text in the tradition of St. John's, as a thoughtful reader
rather than as an expert.
So let's jump in. I'll read Newton's conclusion again:
And l saw by the variation of those places, that the light, tending to that
end of the image, towards which the refraction of the first Prisme was
made, did in the second Prisme suffer a refraction considerably greater
then the light tertding to the other end. And so the true cause of the
length of that image was detected to be no other, then that Light consists
of Rays differently refrangible, which, without any respect to a difference
in their incidence, were, according to their degrees of refrangibility,
transmitted towards divers parts of the wall.
The first remarkable thing we notice is that Newton does not use the
word "color," even though it is the colors of the refracted spectrum
(Newton's word) that one notices, almost to the exclusion of anything else.
Indeed, he goes through considerable verbal contortions to avoid using the
c-word: "the light, tending to that end of the image, towards which the
refraction of the first Prisme was made, ... the light tending to the other end."
Instead, the question Newton sets out to answer is why the form of the
image is oblong:
It was at first a very pleasing divertisement, to view the vivid and intense
colours produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider
them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong
form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction, I expected
should have been circular.
The distinction here is between something about which he had few
expectations, though it was interesting and fun, and something else that was
not behaving as current theory predicted-a serious matter. In refractions,
the sine of the angles of the incident and refracted rays (let's accept this
term, for the moment) were believed to maintain a constant ratio
characteristic of the two media transmitting the ray. Had the ray behaved in
accordance with this rule, it would have had about the same shape after
refraction as before. This expectation had nothing to do with color: the
refracted ray could have exhibited various colors in various places without
being elongated, or it could have been elongated while remaining white.
And the elongation was considerable: Newton found the image to be about
five times as long as it was wide.
�24
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton's conclusion is remarkable for more than just the lack of any
mention of color: nothing in the way of an explanatory mechanism is
proposed. In fact, the conclusion seems excessively modest, stating the
obvious-not the sort of brilliant theoretical leap we would expect of
Newton. Nevertheless, far from being obvious, it received considerable
criticism, some of it from respected scientists such as Huygens and Hooke.
So it appears that we are missing something, and need to look more carefully
at what Newton says.
And I saw ... that the light, tending to that end of the image, towards
which the refraction of the first Prisme was made, did in the second
Prisme suffer a refraction considerably greater then the light tending to
the other end.
He says "I saw." Well, this is stretching things a bit. He didn't "see"
these things in the way that one says "I saw the son of Diares here
yesterday." But it does tell us what Newton intends. He hopes to convince us
that his conclusion falls directly out of observation, without the intervention
of theories or hypotheses. Has he succeeded?
Let us continue reading.
"And I saw ... that the light, ... " Notice that he doesn't say "I saw the
light": indeed, light itself, whatever it may be is not simply visible, as one
learns in the optical part of the Junior Lab at St. John's. It becomes visible
when it falls on something. In our video of the experiment, we saw that the
first prism was illuminated by the Sun, and that the screen placed beyond it
was illuminated by something that came from the first prism. Our
understanding has to come into play here, in tracing the relationship
between the Sun, the prism, and what we see on the board. If, for example,
a cat were looking at this same scene, she would see the spectrum as an
independent thing, and probably try to catch it. But once we understand the
connection, I think it's fair to say that we "see" that something has happened
somewhere between the Sun and the screen. A few ancillary experiments,
such as those described by Newton, would serve to locate the change in the
prism itself.
So what is the nature of the event that occurs in the first prism? Is this,
too, something that we "see"? Newton is careful to avoid terms that would
suggest an explanation or hypothesis. He uses the language that was
commonly accepted in geometrical optics-ray optics-in describing the path
of a "ray" of light passing from one medium into another: it is said to be
refracted, and all this means is that its path is bent. So can we be satisfied
that this language is perfectly neutral?
�DONAHUE
25
The troublesome term here is not "refraction" but the term "ray" (I'm
lifting it from the next sentence, but it is obviously implicit here), which
carries a lot of baggage with it. Optics, like astronomy, had long existed in
two forms: the mathematical discipline and the physical/physiological theory,
Geometrical optics, as far as we know, originated with Euclid, and was a
mathematical treatment of how things appear. It involved what is called an
"extramission" theory of vision, in which the eye was thought to emit rays
that reach out to objects and, as it were, feel them, as a blind person senses
objects by feeling them with a stick. This type of optics explained why
distant things appear small, how binocular vision works, and so on. The rays
in this theory were visual rays, not light rays: it does not deal with light as
such, and in fact there doesn't seem to be any reason why a light source
would be needed in order to see.
Then there was the other side of optics, which concerned itself with
what light is and how the sense of vision works-the big picture. Aristotle's
account in De Anima and On Sense and Sensibles is an example. Aristotle
was familiar with ray explanations of reflection, and so set out to say why
vision could occur only in the presence of light. His opinion was that light
only served to act on a medium that is transparent in potency so as to make
it actually transparent. In other words, we don't see things in the dark
because the air is opaque. Nothing is travelling from the Sun to the prism:
the colors that we see are only there in the colored object-the screen, the
ceiling, the prism support, and so on.
Now, of course, there are problems with this account. Nevertheless, it
was widely taught and widely accepted, and could be made consistent with
the extramission theory, though Aristotle himself rejected the latter. And, as
you can appreciate, it's hard to know what to make of the prism and its
refraction on this view. If there is no such thing as a ray of light coming from
the Sun, but only rays between the eye and the thing seen, there can't be a
refraction of the ray. We are almost left without language to describe what
we have seen. And, of course, it would seem perverse to speak of what we
have seen without mentioning color, since what is seen is nothing but color.
Perhaps, if we were trying to see through Aristotle's eyes, we would say that
without the prism we see a white shape at a certain place on the screen, and
with the prism we see an elongated and multicolored shape higher up on the
screen. Possibly Newton could convince us Aristotelians that something is
forming a straight line on one side of the prism, and that on the other the
succession of images (imagining the screen to be placed at different
distances) spreads out. But I don't think we could be made to see light
passing from the Sun in a straight line and being refracted, because that isn't
what light, as we understand it, does.
�26
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It's evidently hard to get a conversation going between Aristotle and
Newton: they're not speaking the same language. But that in itself says
something about the "experimental philosophy." Experiments are not just
perceptions; they aren't just experiences either. Experiments must be
expressed in language, and the language in which they are expressed is
never neutral. Language implies some level of shared understanding upon
which further discourse can be based.
In this example, the language Newton was speaking came chiefly from
the work of Kepler and Descartes. Kepler had reworked the tradition of ray
optics into a comprehensive physical theory that began with the nature of
light, gave an account of reflection and refraction (including an accurate
mathematical law of refraction), and described light's path from a luminous
source to an illuminated object and on to the retina of the observer's eye.
Kepler was a careful reader of Aristotle, and explicitly rejected Aristotle's
view that nothing actually flows from the Sun to the scenery.
Descartes acknowledged his debt to Kepler, but gave Kepler's
conclusions a Cartesian foundation and replaced Kepler's refraction rule with
Snel's. Although he believed that light is instantaneously transmitted through
a medium by impulse, he retained the ray optics as a useful mathematical
device.
Newton had read works of Descartes and other contemporary authors
of the mechanical tradition as an undergraduate. Interestingly, what little he
says about Aristotle's views seems to have come from a seventeenth-century
textbook writer: Newton may not have read Aristotle at all. His remarks in
early optical lectures display impatience and contempt for what he took to
be Aristotelian opinions. His intended audience had clearly outgrown such
puerilities.
So perhaps we should agree to speak his language, and to accept
tentatively whatever baggage it brings with it. And near the beginning of our
inquiry, before we became Aristotelians, we had agreed that something
happens in the first prism: the rays (whatever they are) are refracted through
a range of angles, even though the incident rays meet the prism at nearly the
same angle. What is the nature of this event?
To answer this question, Newton performs what he calls an
experimentum crucis. He got this term from Hooke, who used it in the
course of investigating colors in his Micrographia (1665).' Hooke brought in
the example of colors produced by thin films and plates to refute Descartes's
proposal that colors are somehow created by a spin imparted to particles in
refraction, there being no refraction in these instances. He remarks,
�DONAHUE
27
This experiment therefore will prove such a one as our thrice excellent
Verulam [i.e., Francis Bacon] calls Experimentum Crucis, serving as a
Guide or Land-mark, by which to direct our course in the search after the
tme cause of Colours. (54)
Now Bacon did not use this exact language, but in Aphorism 36 of
Book II of the Novum Organum he introduces instantiae crucis, or "crucial
instances." 3 The "crux," or "cross," in question was actually a road sign,
pointing out which road to take. Bacon writes,
They operate as follows. When in the investigation of nature the
understanding stands evenly balanced, unable to decide to which of two
... natures the cause of the nature in question should be ascribed ... ,
Crucial Instances show the union of one of those natures with the nature
in question to be constant and unbreakable, but that of the other
breakable and separable. The inquiry is then over, and the former nature
is accepted as the cause, the latter dismissed and denied. (210)
If we can assume that Newton was using this term in its full Baconian
sense, the crucial or signpost experiment was not intended as the sole means
of revelation of the truth expressed in the conclusion following it. Rather, it
was a way of deciding which of two competing alternatives to accept.
Although Newton does not give us another alternative in this letter, the other
fork in the road would have been that the prism materially altered the light,
spreading it out into an oblong shape. If this were the case, then we would
expect the light to be similarly affected if it were passed through a second
prism; that is, any small part of the light from the first prism, passed through
a second one, would also be spread out over an angle of nearly three
degrees. If, however, the different angles of refraction belong to the rays
themselves, each kind of ray having its own specific refraction, then the
second prism would not spread out the beam of light, but would bend each
kind of ray through the same angle through which it had been bent by the
first prism.
Although he did not make this alternative explicit in the 1672 paper, he
considered it in the Gpticks: '
Considering therefore, that if in the third Experiment the Image of the
Sun should be drawn out into an oblong Form, either by a Dilatation of
every Ray, or by any other casual inequality of the Refractions, the same
oblong Image would by a second Refraction made sideways be drawn
out as much in breadth by the like Dilatation of the Rays, ... I tried what
would be the Effects of such a second Refraction. For this end I ordered
all things as in the [single prism] Experiment, and then placed a second
Prism immediately after the first in a cross Position to it, that it might
again refract the beam of the Sun's Light which came to it through the
g~~~ n~:~~
f2k\
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Q~~
s ..
D
R-
V ··N
H
Fig. 3.
And, in fact, this experiment was. also included in his optical lectures,
which were given before the present paper was written. So his omission of
the alternative was deliberate, and therefore we should be cautious about
drawing conclusions here.
I have described this situation much as I think Newton would have
characterized it (if he had chosen to make the alternatives explicit). Once it
is put this way, I think the result of the experiment is very clear and
compelling. But even if we concede that the two stated alternatives are the
only possibilities, some doubts remain. In particular, it is not self-evident that
the alteration option would necessarily require the light to spread out in
passing through the second prism. The light might well be altered in such a
way as to retain its new refraction angle in subsequent refractions.
And, in general, one can always find some way around a supposedly
crucial experiment, though often the detour is so obviously fictive as not to
merit serious consideration. In this instance, Hooke and Huygens remained
unconvinced; Newton believed their dissent to spring from excessive
fondness for their own hypotheses. But what really seems to have been at
issue was not a question of logical necessity but the much larger matter of
how to understand nature. The prevailing view was that science was done by
finding plausible explanations or hypotheses for the phenomena, basing
such explanations as much as possible on mechanical principles. According
to this view, Newton's experiment would be seen as designed to test two
competing hypotheses, with the idea that one of them would be logically
incompatible with the phenomena described.
I think Newton would object to this in two respects. First, he did not
believe he was evaluating hypotheses, and second, he did not consider the
evaluation to be a matter of strict deductive logic.
�DONAHUE
29
Newton's dislike of hypotheses is notorious. In a letter to Henry
Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society,' regarding criticism of the present
paper, he wrote,
If I had not considered [these properties of light] as true, I would rather
have them rejected as vain and empty speculation, than acknowledged
even as an hypothesis. (264-65)
As for what he would propose as an alternative, his replies to Hooke
and others who expressed doubts about his conclusions give perhaps the
clearest testimony.
To the French Jesuit Ignace Pardies, he wrote,
For the best and safest method for philosophizing seems to be, first to
inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those
properties by experiments and then to proceed more slowly to
hypothesis for the explanation of them. (285)
And to Oldenburg,
You know, the proper Method for inquiring after the properties of things
is, to deduce them from Experiments! And I told you that the Theory,
which I propounded, was evinced to me, not by inferring 'tis thus
because not otherwise, that is, not by deducing it only from a confutation
of contrary suppositions, but by deriving it from Experiments concluding
positively and directly. (285, n. 24)
Thus Newton's experimentum crucis seems not to be Bacon's or
Hooke's experimentum crucis. He had hoped that the experiment itself could
be described in sufficiently neutral terms, and could be clearly enough
organized, that the theory would simply fall out of it. In response to Hooke's
view, that Newton supposed light to be corporeal, Newton wrote,
I chose to ... speak of Light in general terms, considering it abstractly, as
something or other propagated every way in streight lines from luminous
bodies, without determining, what that Thing is.
When the experiment is expressed in such general terms, the correct
"reading" of the events would be natural, obvious, and direct. Other readings
would be possible, but, in Newton's view, would involve the assumption of
more than is evident in the phenomena. And this would constitute the
unwarranted introduction of hypotheses.
Many years later, in the "General Scholium" to the second edition of the
Principia, he stated the procedure more succinctly:
�30
TI!E ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Hypotheses . . . have no place in experimental philosophy. In this
philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and
rendered general by induction.
Let's return to the sentences with which we began, keeping Newton's
intentions in mind while still reserving our judgment. First sentence:
And I saw by the variation of those places, that the light, tending to that
end of the image, towards which the refraction of the first Prisme was
made, did in the second Prisme suffer a refraction considerably greater
then the light tending to the other end.
In the language of the General Scholium, this is the "particular
proposition inferred from the phenomena." We know from his reply to
Hooke that when he says, "light," he only means to point at that "something
or other" that goes from the Sun through the prisms to the screen. The claim
is that no assumptions are made about its nature.
Second sentence:
And so the true cause of the length of that image was detected to be no
other, then that Light consists of Rays differently refrangible, which,
without any respect to a difference in their incidence, were, according to
their degrees of refrangibility, transmitted towards divers parts of the wall.
In the language of the General Scholium, this is the "particular
proposition" (first sentence) "rendered general by induction." All that has
been done here is to restate the proposition generally, without reference to
the apparatus involved (prisms and places on the wall). Yet it makes a
sweeping statement about the nature of light that represented a marked
departure from currently held views. Certainly, objections could be raised,
and were in fact raised. But Newton would claim that these involve making
further assumptions that are not supported by the phenomena. For example,
one could claim that to bundle all the rays together under the single name
"light" begs the question of whether it is all really unchanged in the course
of being refracted. Newton would reply that, though a change is conceivable,
there is no evidence supporting such a "hypothesis," and so it should not be
entertained. Should one devise another experiment that would demonstrate
such a change, Newton happily grants the "correctibility" of his conclusions.
As he said in the Principia, in the fourth of his "Rules of philosophizing,"
In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by
induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true
notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenornen:1.
make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.
�DONAHUE
31
What, then, are we to make of this? Do we agree with Newton that his
procedure is the true one, or have we instead been rather persuasively sold a
bill of goods? Is Newton's method a way of avoiding hypotheses, or is it just
another set of rules about how to make them up? Do we now really know
something about the true nature of light itself, or is light still a slippery
demon, about which neutral statements can't be made?
Notes
1. Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy. 2nd ed. ed. I. B. Cohen
(Harvard University Press, 1978)
2. Robert Hooke. Micrographia (New York: Dover, 1961).
3. Francis Bacon. Novum Organum. trans. and ed. Peter Urbach and John Gibson
(Chicago' Open Court, 1994).
4. Sir Isaac Newton. Opticks (New York: Dover, 1952).
5. Letters quoted by A.l. Sabra. Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (London:
Oldbourne, 1967).
�How Did Newton Discover
Universal Gravity?
George Smith
As satisfying to our romantic conception of genius as the story of the apple
may be, Newton surely did not discover universal gravity in a flash of insight
while sitting in his mother's garden in 1667. For one thing, universal gravity
is much too complicated for that. His discovery involved a sequence of ten
increasingly problematic theses:
1. Orbiting bodies are retained in orbit, rather than moving forward
uniformly in a straight line, by forces directed toward central bodies.
2. These forces, and hence the resulting "centripetal" accelerations, vary
inversely with the square of the distance from the central body.
3. These forces act not only on the principal bodies orbiting the central
bodies, but on other bodies as well.
4. In the case of the Moon, the force in question is simply terrestrial
gravity.
5. In all celestial cases, the force in question is one in kind with terrestrial
gravity.
6. There is a force of this same kind on the central body directed toward
each body orbiting it, so that the two bodies-e.g. the Sun and
Jupiter-interact.
7. There are mutual forces of this kind between all celestial bodies----e.g.
between Jupiter and Saturn, as well as between each of these and the
Sun.
8. The forces in question vary in accord with the law of gravity-i.e., the
"motive" force on a body directed toward another body is proportional
to the product of the masses of the two bodies and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them.
9. The force of gravity is universal-i.e., the law of gravity holds between
any two particles of matter in the universe.
10. The force of gravity is one of the fundamental forces of nature-i.e., it
is not composed out of forces of other (known) kinds.
Now Newton, who by 1667 knew the principles of uniform circular
motion, may well have conjectured about some variant of the first few of
George E. Smith is both a philosopher of science in the Philosophy Department. of Tufts
University and a practicing engineer.
�SMITII
33
these theses in the late 1660s. Hooke and Wren were entertaining versions of
at least the first two in the late 1670s, after the account of uniform circular
motion Huygens published in 1673. We can even find a vague conjecture
along the lines of the third, fourth, and fifth in Streete' s Astronomia Carolina
of 1661, the work from which Newton learned his orbital astronomy. The last
five theses, however, reach increasingly far beyond prior thought. The last
two, we should not forget, were little short of mind-boggling at the time,
even for Newton himself.
A second reason for thinking that Newton did not discover universal
gravity in a flash of insight in 1667 is the little store he put in conjectured
hypotheses. His distrust of hypotheses did not appear for the first time in the
second, or even the first, edition of the Principia. We see it in his exchanges
over light and color in the early 1670s, where he complains that too many
disparate hypotheses can be made to fit the same facts. Indeed, given the
outspoken remarks he made about hypotheses after 1710, Newton would be
guilty of the rank hypocrisy with which Imre Lakatos charged him if he had
initially thought up universal gravity as a conjectured hypothesis, only to be
misled by bad data from Galilee in the "Moon test" of the late 1660s.' What I
am going to do in this essay is to free Newton of this charge of hypocrisy by
proposing a step-by-step sequence of reasoning by which he could have
arrived at these ten theses, one by one. We will never know for sure how
Newton arrived at universal gravity. All I can claim for the sequence I will
propose is that it is entirely compatible with the available manuscriptsespecially so when they are read in their own right, as they would have been
at the time, and not in the light of the subsequent Principia.
In fact, Newton's manuscripts and correspondence give us the best
reason for thinking that he had not discovered universal gravity before late
1684. Of particular note is his response at the time to the comet of 1680-81
(see Figure 1). Flamsteed had concluded from the bilateral symmetry of the
trajectories of the two comets observed in late 1680 and early 1681 that they
were one and the same comet that had approached the sun, only to be
repulsed by the latter's magnetism. When Newton heard of this, he became
very interested, informing Flamsteed of the alternative that the comet had
button-hooked around the sun, which Flamsteed proceeded to show was
also compatible with the observations. After intensely scrutinizing the data
and attempting to calculate trajectories, however, Newton concluded that this
is just not what comets do:
But whatever there be in these difficulties, this sways most with me that
to make the Comets of November and December but one is to make that
one paradoxical. Did it go in such a bent line other comets would do the
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
like and yet no such thing was ever observed in them but rather the
contrary. . . . Let but the Comet of 1664 be considered where the
observations were made by accurate men. This was seen long before its
Perihelion and long after and all the while moved (by the consent of the
best Astronomers) in a line almost straight. (Letter of 16 April 1681Y
This shows that, regardless of what Newton thought at the time about
the inverse-square governed trajectories of planets, he did not think the
centripetal force governing them extends to comets as well. His celestial
forces of 1681 were definitely not universal.
Newton's Alternative
Flamsteed's Idea
D
:
.
n
:
El
Flamsteed's Trajectories
Fig. 1. The Comet(s) of 1680/81.
Reprinted by permission from The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Vol. 2 (Cambridge at
the University Press, 1960)
�35
SMI1H
Circular Motion and the Moon Test
The obvious question, then, is what are we to make of his so-called
"Moon test" of the late 1660s? This test is presented in a brief tract written in
Latin, as if for publication. The tract begins with an analysis of circular
motion, concluding that the tendency or endeavor of the object to recede
from the circle varies as v2/r, and hence as radius or diameter over period
squared (see Figure 2). A corollary of this is that if several bodies in uniform
circular motion about a central body satisfy Kepler's 3/2 power rule--that is,
the square of the periods of revolution vary as the cubes of the radii of the
orbits-then the endeavors of these bodies to recede are inversely
proportional to the squares of the radii of their orbits. The "Moon test" itself
compares the endeavor of the Moon to recede with the known value of the
acceleration of gravity at the surface of the Earth, using 60 Earth radii for the
radius of the Moon's orbit and Galileo's incorrect value for the Earth's radius
(taken from his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems). Newton
concludes that "the force of gravity is 4000 and more times greater than the
endeavor of the Moon to recede from the center of the Earth," much greater
than the 3600 it should be if the inverse-square rule holds around the Earth
as well.
Fig. 2. The "Moon Test" of the late 1680s.
Newton considers the body revolving in the circle as being subject to an
"endeavor to recede" from the center C. This endeavor would accelerate it
through BD in the time it moves over the arc AD, were there not a
counteracting force. But by Galileo's Dialogue, the distances traversed in
accelerated motion are as the squares of the times, and by Euclid 111.36, AB1 =
DB·BE. From these propositions Newton deduces that the acceleration
produced by the "endeavor to recede" is given by:
lim[Bn]= lim[ 2AB' ] = v' oc v' oc.!...'
2
rz
t •BE
2r
r
p
where the limit is to be taken as t or AB goes to zero, and P is the period.
Figure reprinted with permission from john Herivel, The Background to NewtonS
Principia (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1965).
�36
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
How can I deny that what Newton is doing here is testing the
hypothesis that inverse-square terrestrial gravity is holding the Moon in its
orbit? My answer is simple.
Keep in mind that the most celebrated question in 17th century
astronomy was whether there was some way to choose between the
Copernican and Tychonic systems, where the latter (see Figure 3) has the
five planets going around the Sun and the Sun and Moon going around the
Earth. (By a simple relative motion argument, these two systems seem to be
observationally indistinguishable, for every object in each system will be in
the same position relative to all the others at all times.) Newton had read
Galilee's argument for the Copernican over the Tychonic system in the
Fourth Day that culminates the Dialogue and Descartes's argument for the
same in his Principia, and we can be confident that he found both wanting.
I
i
I
Fig. 3. Copernican vs. Tychonic World Systems
A Possible Line of Argument for the Copernican system: (I) The Earth conforms
perfectly with the 3/z power rule around the Sun. (2) The Sun does not
conform at all with the 3/z power rule around the Earth. Therefore, the Earth is
in orbit about the Sun, and not the Sun about the Earth. Lacuna: Why should
the 3/2 power rule hold around the Earth? Response: It does hold if the
endeavor of the Moon to recede is inverse-square! But is it?
Figure reprinted with permission from N.M. Swerdlow and 0. Neugebauer, Mathematical
Astronomy in Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, Part 2 (Springer-Verlag, 1984).
The 3/2 power rule, which Newton had learned from reading Streete, offers a
prospect of settling this issue, for the Earth fits in perfectly if it is going
around the Sun, while the Sun and Moon definitely do not conform with the
rule if they are going around the Earth. The trouble is, why should the 3/2
�SMIT1I
37
power rule hold around the Earth? I submit that with the "Moon test" of the
late 1660s Newton was trying to show that the 3/z power rule has to hold
around the Earth as well, by showing that the endeavor of the Moon to
recede is inverse-square. In other words, Newton was looking for a decisive
argument for Copemicanism. The fact that the other main calculation in the
tract shows that the endeavor of objects to recede from the surface of a
rotating Earth is small compared with the force of gravity, thereby answering
a prominent objection to Copernicanism, gives supporting evidence that
Newton was preoccupied in this tract with Copernicanism, not gravity.
I hope you noticed that all the talk in the "Moon test" tract was of the
endeavor to recede from the center, and not of centripetal forces. Newton
appears to have shifted to thinking in terms of centripetal forces only
following the correspondence with Hooke at the end of 1679. In his initial
letter of 24 November, Hooke asks
particularly if you will let me know your thoughts of that [hypothesis of
mine] of compounding the celestial motions of the planets of a direct
motion by the tangent and an attractive motion towards the central body.
(Correspondance 2:297)
In his subsequent letter of 6 January, after calling attention to his
supposition that the attraction is inverse-square, Hooke adds
not that I believe there really is such an attraction to the very center of
the Earth, but on the contrary I rather conceive that the more the body
approaches the center, the less will it be urged by the attraction .... But
in the celestial motions the Sun, Earth, or central body are the cause of
the attraction, and though they cannot be supposed mathematical points,
yet they may be conceived as physical and the attraction at a
considerable distance may be computed according to the former
proportion as from the very center. This curve truly calculated will show
the error of those many lame shifts made use of by astronomers to
approach the true motions of the planets with their tables. (2:309)
And finally, in the last letter of the exchange (dated 17 January
1679/80), Hooke says,
It now remains to know the properties of a curve line (not circular nor
concentrical) made by a central attractive power which makes the
veloCities of descent from the tangent line or equal straight motion at all
distances in the duplicate proportion to the distances reciprocally taken. I
doubt not that by your excellent method you will easily find out what
this curve must be, and its properties, and suggest a physical reason of
this proportion. (2,313)
The "excellent method" alluded to here is what we call the calculus.
�38
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton himself coined the term "centripetal force," adapting it from
Huygens's "centrifugal force." Huygens used this term to designate the
tension in the string holding a ball in uniform circular motion, or equally the
static force exerted on the wall of a spinning surface restraining the ball. It
was a trivial step from that force to the balancing static force on the ball,
normal to the spinning surface.
A natural thought when trying to generalize uniform circular motion to
motion describing other curves is to treat it as involving an instantaneous
uniform circular component and a second component that displaces the
object from one such circle to another (see Figure 4). Huygens's theory of
evolutes, published in 1673, displayed the power of this approach. Newton
explored it further in the 1670s, developing a significant fragment of the
differential geometry of curves in terms of normal and tangential
components, but without getting anywhere on orbital motion. The difficulty
with this approach for that purpose is that it allows two seemingly
independent degrees-of-freedom, making the problem of determining a
specific motion underspecified. The shift to the idea that every departure
from inertial motion that an orbiting body makes always has to be directed
toward a single point in space in effect eliminates one degree-of-freedom.
?-·:::....:._:_:_:_:_:~- c
I
.. -
._._:-.:~.
G
Huygens's Centrifugal Force (a)
Huygens's Centrifugal Force (b)
Reprinted with permission from Joelle G. Yoder,
Unrolling Time (Cambridge University Press,
1988), p. 21, Fig. 3.2
Reprinted with permission from Oeuvres
Completes de Christiaan Huygens, T. 16
(LaHaye: M. Nijhoff, 1929) p. 308.
~p
iI
•
s
The Natural Generalization
Centripetal Force
Fig. 4. Centrifugal Force vs Centripetal Force
�SMITI!
39
Hooke almost certainly deserves credit for leading Newton into this shift.
One can think of the orbiting body as held in orbit not by a string, but by a
spring-for example, one obeying Hooke's law of elasticity. Newton himself
thought of the orbiting body, at least initially, as being pushed by impulses
toward the central point.
The Public Version of De Motu
We are now getting into the more documented part of the story. We
know that while he was visiting Newton in the summer of 1684, young
Halley told him of discussions in London about the trajectory described by
an orbiting body governed by an inverse-square force directed toward a
central body. Newton told Halley that the answer is an ellipse and that he
had proved this earlier. Unable to find the proof among his papers, he
promised Halley that he would forward it. The 1 0-sheet tract De Motu
Corporum in Gyrum was sent to Halley in November 1684. 3 It ·prompted
Halley to make a second visit to Cambridge, where he saw what was later
called a further "curious treatise," for Newton was continuing his efforts.
Halley had the initial tract entered into the Royal Society's Journal Book in
early December, in anticipation that more would be coming from Newton.
This registered version of the tract (see Document 1, Appendix) opens with
the coining of the term "centripetal force" followed by two other definitions
and four hypotheses. For my purposes here, the main thing to notice about
these is the absence of the second law of motion. In its place are two weaker
principles: the parallelogram rule for changes of motion resulting from two
forces compounded and the Galilean rule that in the very beginning of any
change of motion the displacement of the body from where it would have
been had it continued in uniform motion in a straight line is proportional to
the square of the elapsed time.
Newton derives 11 propositions from these hypotheses, the last two of
which reach beyond motion under centripetal forces to consider motion in
resisting media. The first proposition (see Document 2, Appendix) in effect
says that, if the only forces causing changes of motion of a body are always
directed toward a single point in space, then that body sweeps out equal
areas in equal times with respect to that point. In other words, centripetal
forces imply Kepler's area rule. This does not license an inference from the
area rule to centripetal forces. De Motu is throughout stipulating that the
forces are centripetal. What it does license is that, of the several ways in
which time can be represented geometrically in uniform circular motion-for
example, by angle or arc length-the preferred one for generalizing beyond
such motion to motion under varying centripetal forces is area. While the
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
point remains implicit, it also shows that the stipulation of centripetal forces
eliminates what I was calling a degree-of-freedom in the problem of
curvilinear motion. (The figures in Documents 2-4, Appendix, by the way,
are facsimiles of Newton's own hand-drawn figures.)
The second proposition gives results for uniform circular motion,
emphasizing in Corollary 5 the tie between the 3/2 power rule and the
inverse-square, stated now for centripetal forces. A scholium (or
commentary) immediately following announces that this corollary holds true
in the case of the heavenly bodies-that is, the major planets orbiting the
Sun and the minor ones orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.
The third proposition then provides the basis for generalizing beyond
uniform circular motion by establishing a rule for inferring how the
magnitude of the centripetal force must vary along a curvilinear path from
the geometric features of that path. It is a beautiful proposition, combining
the approach Newton took to inferring the magnitude of force in the uniform
circular case with the use of area to represent time in the general centripetal
case. It is the crucial theorem, opening the way to a general theory of motion
under centripetal forces.
After giving a couple of examples of application of this theorem,
Newton turns to the case of a body orbiting in an ellipse with the centripetal
forces directed toward a focus (see Document 3, Appendix). He concludes
first that the centripetal force acting on such a body has to be inverse-square
and second that the 3/2 power rule holds as well for any system of bodies
held in such orbits by inverse-square forces directed toward the same point.
In a scholium between these propositions Newton announces that
the major planets orbit, therefore, in ellipses having a focus at the center
of the Sun, and with their radii drawn to the Sun describe areas
proportional to the times, exactly as Kepler supposed.
Newton has been criticized for sloppy reasoning here on the grounds that he
has not really proven that the planetary orbits have to be perfect ellipses,
even under the assumption of centripetal forces. Still, he has answered an
important question under discussion at the time. From the near circularity of
the planetary orbits, Newton and several others had concluded that, at least
to a first approximation, an inverse-square force is governing these orbits.
The question was whether some secondary force superposed on the inversesquare force is then displacing the body from circular into elliptical or
otherwise oval orbits. Newton has shown that no such secondary force is
needed for the case Kepler laid out; the same inverse-square forces inferred
from the 3/2 power rule for circular orbits can yield Keplerian orbits as well.
The Keplerian circle is just a special case of the Keplerian ellipse.
�SMITH
41
Newton next takes advantage of the 3/2 power result to provide two
ways of determining the specific ellipses (see Document 4, Appendix). The
first, presented in a scholium, determines the ellipse from a sequence of
observations. One important feature of this method, evident in the figure, is
that it locates the other focus by taking the mean of several determinations.
The advantage ... [Newton says] is that to elicit a single conclusion a
large number of observations, no matter how many, may be employed
and speedily compared one with another.
An even more important feature is that it uses the 3/2 power rule to
determine the length of the major axis from the more accurately known
period-a controversial practice that theretofore had been adopted only by
Horrocks, and Streete following him.
The 3/z power rule plays an even more crucial role in the other
method, which determines the ellipse, given only a position and. velocity of
the body. The obvious further .ingredient needed for the solution is the
magnitude of the centripetal force acting on the body at this location. As the
figure suggests, Newton uses a second orbiting body to determine this force
(Document 4, Appendix). Specifically, his method, when reformulated
algebraically, amounts to using the semi-major axis and period of the
reference orbiting body to determine the value of th~ invariant quantity
[a3/P'] for the center of force about which the motion is taking place, and
then to obtain the force at the location a distance r from this center as
[a'/P']/r'. In other words, Newton has taken the step of using [a'/P'] as a
measure of the strength of the centripetal forces associated with any center
of inverse-square forces.
He adds that this method can be used to determine the trajectories and
then the periods of comets. So, at this point, late in 1684, he seems to have
abandoned his reservations of three years earlier about comets buttonhooking around the Sun. I have no idea what has changed his mind.
De Motu goes on to treat the problem of vertical fall under inversesquare forces and then motion under resistance, but these results have little
to do with the question of how he discovered universal gravity. What is
striking about De Motu when considered with this question in mind is how
few of the ingredients of universal gravity are to be found in it. There is no
sign of interactive gravity; the only things treated are what we now call "onebody" problems. All that he says about gravity is that his vertical fall solution
is "in accord with the hypothesis that gravity is reciprocally proportional to
the square of the distance from the Earth's center," adding that "gravity is one
species of centripetal force." More dramatically, mass is entirely absent. The
one place he categorically needs it is for resistance forces, where, after giving
�42
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a method for measuring the ratio of the force to the force of gravity-more
precisely, the ratio of the deceleration from resistance to the acceleration of
gravity-for a single body, he says that the resistance force on any other
body can be obtained by compounding the ratios of the surface areas with
the density of the two mediums; he then adds that "the force of gravity is
ascertainable from its weight." He is in effect telling the reader to let the
deceleration from the resistance of the medium vary not inversely with mass,
but inversely with weight, from one body to another:
v .
reSISt OC
Pmedium Asurface V
WEIGHT
(where I am using his dot notation from five years later to denote the
decelerative effect of the resistance). Here force amounts to nothing more
than departure from uniform motion in a straight line. Further, in the earlier
centripetal force propositions, just as in the resistance propositions, his talk
of forces is somewhat superfluous, for he employs only what he
subsequently came to call the accelerative measure offorce. In other words,
everywhere Newton speaks of centripetal forces in this tract, he might just as
well have spoken of "centripetally directed departures from uniform motion
in a straight line." If you will let me speak anachronistically, the 11
propositions involve only what we now call "kinematics," putting them
totally within the tradition of Galileo and Huygens.
In sum, if we ask the question, how much of universal gravity had
Newton discovered as of November 1684, and we take the registered version
of De Motu at face value, then the answer is, not much at all-the first three
of the ten propositions I listed earlier and perhaps the fourth, but not any of
the others. Mind you, in saying this I do not mean to be denigrating De
Motu. Had Newton published just it and stopped, it would have been the
most important contribution to a~tronomy in the 70 years of the 17th century
following Kepler. Saying this, however, is just to call your attention in still
another way to how remarkably monumental the Principia truly was.
One last point about the registered version of De Motu. It gives rise to
some obvious questions that it neither addresses nor even acknowledges. Its
propositions refer the motion of an orbiting body to a single point in space,
the point toward which the centripetal forces governing the motion are
always directed. But the point to which the forces governing the satellites of
Jupiter are directed, the center of Jupiter, is not a single point in space, for
Jupiter is orbiting the Sun. Our planetary system, with its multiple centers of
orbiting motion, thus invites the question, to what point in space should all
�SMITI!
43
these motions be referred? Remember, this was what the issue between the
Copernican and Tychonic systems was all about.
Worse, since Jupiter and Saturn are centers of force, as well as the Sun,
what happens when a comet comes close to one of them? Do the centripetal
forces directed toward each of them affect it? For that matter, do the forces
directed toward each of these two planets affect the motion of the other?
Even further, do the centripetal forces directed toward, say, Jupiter extend all
the way to the Sun, and if they do, is the Sun put into motion, interacting
with Jupiter? If all the different centers of force in our planetary system are
contributing to the motions of every other body, then indeed to what single
immobile point in space should the motions be referred? Members of the
Royal Society reading the registered version of De Motu would have required
no prompting to raise these questions.
The Augmented Version of De Motu
De Motu was entered into the Journal Book in December 1684. The
manuscript of Book 1 of the Principia was delivered to London in April of
1686, with the manuscripts of Books 2 and 3 following in March and April, a
year later. To examine how Newton got from De Motu to universal gravity,
we will have to consider some documents that did not become fully public
until long after Newton died. The most important of these is an augmented
version of De Motu. This document is written in the hand of Humphrey
Newton with deletions and insertions by Isaac, the most famous of which is
the change from "hypothesis" to "law" on the first page. The precise date of
the document cannot be established. I am going to put it in later 1684, with
the suggestion that Newton, like so many of the rest of us, had a flood of
further thoughts as soon as the manuscript of the earlier version left his
hands. The eleven proved propositions of De Motu remain the same in this
augmented version, as do their proofs. The augmented version has three
important changes: (1) the opening section has been recast, with a new set
of hypotheses; (2) a paragraph now known as "the Copernican scholium"
has been added to the scholium in which the first method for determining
the ellipse is given; and (3) the very short scholium leading into the section
on resistance forces has been replaced by three paragraphs, which I will call
the "resistance scholium."
Let me start with it. It opens,
Thus far I have explained the motions of bodies in non-resisting
mediums, in order that I might determine the motions of the celestial
bodies in the aether. For I think that the resistance of pure aether is
either non-existent or extremely small. Quicksilver resists strongly, water
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
far less, and air still less. These mediums resist according to their density,
which is almost proportional to their weights, or rather (one could almost
say) to the quantity of their solid matter. Therefore the solid matter of air
may be made less, and the resistance of the medium will be diminished
nearly in the same proportion until it reaches the tenuousness of aetber ..
. . If air flowed freely between the particles of bodies and thus acted not
only on the external surface of the whole, but also on the surfaces of the
single parts, its resistance would be much greater. Aether flows between
very freely, and yet does not sensibly resist. All those sounder
astronomers think that comets descend below the orb of Saturn, who
know how to compute their distances from the parallax of the Earth's
orbit, more or less; these therefore are indifferently carried through all
parts of our heaven with an immense velocity, and yet they do not lose
their tails nor the vapour surrounding their heads, which the resistance of
the a ether would impede and tear away. Planets persevere in their
motion for thousands of years, so far are they from experiencing
resistance .... [emphasis added} (Math. Papers 6:79, Prelim. Man., 22-23)
What Newton seems to be invoking here is Descartes's conception of
density and weight, according to which gravity arises from the pressure
exerted by aethereal particles on bodies, with density corresponding to the
extent of the impediment which the larger "solid" particles put up against the
free flow of the aethereal matter through the body. In particular, Descartes
expressly denied that density reflects the total quantity of matter in a body,
for included in this matter are all the aethereal particles. I will come back to
this point in a moment.
In the second paragraph of the "resistance" scholium, Newton repeats
the assumption of the earlier version that terrestrial gravity is inverse-square,
and now mentions a re-performance of the "Moon test" of the late 1660s:
Motion in the heavens, therefore, is ruled by the laws demonstrated. But
if the resistance of our air is not taken into account, the motions of
projectiles in it are known from Problem 4 and the motions of bodies
falling perpendicularly from Problem 5, assuming indeed that gravity is
reciprocally proportional to the square of the distance from the center of
the Earth. For one kind of centripetal force is gravity, and from my
computations it appears that the centripetal force by which our Moon is
kept in its monthly motion about the Earth is to the force of gravity on the
sutface of the Earth reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the
center of the Earth, more or less. From the slower motion of pendulum
clocks on the summits of high mountains than in valleys it is clear also
that gravity diminishes with increase of distance from the center of the
Earth, but in what proportion has not yet been observed. [emphasis
added] (6: 79-80; 24)
�SM!lli
45
Newton's remark about the slowing of pendulum clocks on mountains
-undoubtedly alluding to observations Halley had made at St. Helena, of
which Newton first learned more from Hooke in the correspondence at the
end of 1679-is mistaken, the effect being undetectably small. But the key
point is the new and successful result for the "Moon test." If in fact Newton
used Picard's value for the circumference of the earth, the number he would
have ended up comparing with 3600 is 3611.8, reducing the greater than 20
percent difference between the two he had found in the late 1660s to 0.3
percent.
The third paragraph of the resistance scholium opens with the
sentence:
The motions of projectiles in our air, moreover, are to be referred to the
immense and indeed motionless space of the heavens, not to the moving
space which is revolved along with our Earth and our air, and is naively
regarded as immobile. (6;80; 24)
This takes me back to the new laws, nee hypotheses, at the beginning
of the augmented tract (see Document 5, Appendix).
Newton has now changed the parallelogram and Galilean rules that
served as hypotheses in the registered D~ Motu into lemmas, replacing them
with a version of his second law of motion:
A change of state of motion or rest is proportional to the impressed force
and occurs along the straight line in which that force is impressed. (6:76;
13)
He gives no definition here of "motion," but from earlier unpublished
work and various work published by others on impact, we can infer that he
means the product of the bulk of the moving body and its velocity. (The
terminology, "laws of motion," at the time generally referred to laws
governing motion before and after impact of bodies, usually spheres; these
spheres were typically taken to be of the same material, so that bulk
amounted to their volume. The law Newton gives here, as stated, would not
have seemed new or unusual to anyone familiar with earlier papers on the
subject published by Wallis, Wren, and Huygens.)
Following this are two very different laws;
Law 3. The relative motions of bodies contained in a given space are
the same whether that space is at rest or whether it moves perpetually
and uniformly in a straight line without circular motion.
Law 4. The common center of gravity does not alter its state of motion
or rest through the mutual actions of bodies. (6,76; 13)
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
These two, which are never referred to in any of the demonstrations of
the proved propositions, are obviously responsive to the questions I posed a
little way back. The relativity principle is the same as Huygens had used in
his investigations of motion under impact. Newton himself had come upon
the center of gravity principle in his unpublished work on impact. It would
not have caused any consternation, for what it amounts to is a generalization
of the law of inertia to apply to a group of interacting bodies.
The only place where these two new laws make a difference is in the
added paragraph we may call "the Copernican scholium." The first part of
this reads:
Moreover, the whole space of the planetary heavens either rests (as is
commonly believed) or moves uniformly in a straight line, and hence the
common center of gravity of the planets (by Law 4) either rests or moves
along with it. In either case the motions of the planets among themselves
(by Law 3) are the same, and their common center of gravity rests with
respect to the whole space, and thus can be taken for the immobile
center of the whole planetary system. Hence in truth the Copernican
system is proved a priori. For if in any position of the planets their
common center of gravity is computed, this either falls in the body of the
Sun or will always be close to it. (6:78; 20)
The obvious question is, hasn't Newton now discovered universal gravity, for
how else can he be saying this? Let me answer by showing how else he can
be saying it.
Consider, for simplicity, the case of Jupiter moving uniformly in a
circular orbit, interacting with the Sun (see Figure 5). (The generalization to
the case of an ellipse can be found in Book I, Section 11 of the Principia.)
Now, as those at the time thought of it, the distance of two bodies from their
common- center of gravity formed a ratio, r1 to rH in the diagram, where the
former is the distance of Jupiter and the latter, the distance of Helios, that is,
the Sun, from their center of gravity. The center of gravity principle
expressed by Newton's Law 4 entails that this ratio must remain constant as
the two bodies move and interact with one another. (This is what Newton
had discovered in his early work on impact.)
The only way this ratio can remain constant and Jupiter be moving in a
circular orbit is for the Sun to be moving in a circular orbit as well, the center
of both orbits be their center of gravity, and Jupiter and the Sun always be
on directly opposite sides of this center (see Figure 6). Newton had already
shown that the force retaining Jupiter in such a circular orbit is proportional
to r/P/. Now, if this force is stemming from an inverse-square centripetal
force directed toward the Sun, then this last quantity must be proportional to
�47
SMITI!
;
;
/
,
.,. _.
....
----- ........... '
''
/
'\
I
\
I
\
I
Hellos
\
i 0 ~
r."'""'
I~~
r
..!!.._ =
I
I
\
constant
~
I
\
I
\
I
\
''
/
' ',
....... ____ .......... , ,
/
/
Fig. 5. Jupiter Interacting with the Sun.
the invariant quantity, [a3/P 2]H, characterizing the strength of the centripetal
forces directed toward the Sun, divided by the square of the distance
between Jupiter and the Sun, r,". Analogous reasoning holds for the Sun in its
circular orbit, so that rH/Pn 2 must be proportional to [a3 2 1 where the
/P ]/r l,
bracketed quantity with subscript J characterizes the centripetal forces
directed toward Jupiter.
For ease of exposition, I am now going to proceed algebraically where
Newton would likely have used Eudoxian reasoning. Dividing these two
proportions into one another, and taking into account that Law 4 requires the
periods of Jupiter and the Sun to be the same in this "two-body" problem,
we obtain the conclusion that the fixed ratio r./r1 must be equal to
, .......
....
----- .... ........ ....
/
/ /
''
\
/
\
I
, - - ...,
I
@:Hello;/
:
'
I
\
\\
'\
6)
I
/
I
'--""
\
loml
I
\
''
v.
11
rml
........ .......
_____ .... ... ... ,
~
[a'!P']"
2
~
r ;11
r,
[a /P'L
p~
r;ll
I
/
'
~)_
P'
J
I
\
~
\Jupiter
~rJ
'
\
v.
\
II
/
/
Fig. 6. Determination of ru
r,
PJ
3
2
[a'/P']J
[a 3/P']H
----
�48
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
[a3/P']/[a3/P'ln. Now both of the bracketed terms on the right were known in
astronomical units, that is, units in which the mean distance from the Earth to
the Sun is 1.0---the bracketed term in the numerator from the satellites of
Jupiter and the one in the denominator from Venus, Mars, or whichever
planet you prefer. So, Newton could now just calculate the ratio of rH to ~11
finding that it is around 1 in 1000, so small that their common center of
gravity has to lie more or less within the body of the Sun. In other words, he
could reach this conclusion not only without having the law of gravity, but
without even having yet expressly formed the concept of mass.
It is a short step from this two-body case to his so-called a priori proof
of the Copernican system (see Figure 7). Suppose, for the worst case, that
there are inverse-square centripetal forces directed toward each of the five
planets and the Earth. The greatest distance between the Sun and the
common center of gravity of all these bodies will occur when the Earth and
the planets all lie in a single straight line on the opposite side of this center
of gravity from the Sun. Saturn's satellite Titan could be used to determine
[a3/P 2] for it in astronomical units, from which Newton could conclude that its
effect on the Sun is only a fraction of that of Jupiter. Similarly, even though
he did not have an accurate value in as.tronomical units for the distance of
our Moon from the Earth, using the estimated value he had at the time to
obtain [a'/P'] for the Earth would have shown him that the effect of the Earth
on the Sun is much smaller than that of Jupiter. Even if, to be on the safe
side, one were to multiply the value of rH obtained from the Jupiter-Sun case
by 6 to obtain an upper bound on the distance of the center of gravity from
the center of the Sun, the result would be only around 3 Sun diameters, less
than 10 percent of the distance between the Sun's center and Mercury. Given
the much smaller values for Saturn and the Earth, Newton could conclude, as
he says, that the common center of gravity "either falls in the body of the
Sun or will always be close to it." Moreover, the reasoning just presented is
neutral between the Copernican and Tychonic systems insofar as the Sun and
Hello~
M
J
S
(){) Ct
Fig. 7. Generalizing to the "Proof."
The worst case: ru is at most 6 times the value obtained from the Jupiter-Sun case.
Thus Newton may fairly conclude that "... if in any position of the planets their
common center of gravity is computed, this either falls in the body of the Sun or will
always be close to it .... "
�SMITII
49
the other bodies can all line up in the manner shown in Figure 7 in either
system. So the reasoning is not question-begging; it does give a proof of
Copernicanism.
The glaring lacuna in this reasoning is that the effect on the Sun of any
centripetal forces directed toward Mercury, Venus, and Mars is no larger than
the effect of the centripetal forces directed toward Jupiter. There were no
known satellites of these three planets, and hence [a 3/P'] could not be
directly calculated for any one of these three. An upper bound for it,
however, could be determined. If you fully carry out the two-body problem
for Jupiter and the Sun that I outlined before, you find that the relationship
between the period and the mean distance between the two bodies is
slightly different when the two are interacting from what it is in the one-body
case. In other words, Kepler's 3/2 power rule requires a small correction
when the orbiting body is interacting with the central body. The correction
factor in the particular case of Jupiter interacting with the Sun is shown in
the following expression:
1
[a 3/P'lJ
1 +-::--::--::[a3/P')H
P'J = rJ"
'
Although the fraction [a3/P']/[a3/P']" is small in the case of Jupiter, it is not
negligible. Now, if any of Mercury, Venus, or Mars is interacting with the Sun
and the effect of this interaction on the Sun is greater than the effect on it of
an interaction with Jupiter, then a comparison of the numerical values for
this planet's period and mean distance with the numbers for the other
planets' periods and distances should show a small, but not negligible
discrepancy. The comparison shows no such discrepancy. Hence, it can be
concluded that if Mercury, Venus, and (or) Mars are interacting with the Sun,
then the effect of this interaction is less than that of Jupiter.
Did Newton already know this in December 1684? We have strong
evidence that he did. In late December, he initiates a brief correspondence
with Flamsteed, asking for various astronomical data, including the mean
distances and periods of the orbits of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. In
thanking Flamsteed for the data in his last letter in the sequence, dated 22
January 1685, Newton asks for
the long diameters of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn assigned by yourself
and Mr. Halley in your new tables, that I may see how the sesquiplicate
proportion fills the heavens together with a small proportion which must
be allowed for. (Correspondence, z, 413)
�so
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The only small proportion which must be allowed for that shows up in
any of Newton's subsequent writings is the one I have just presented. The
reasoning I have attributed to Newton was therefore entirely within his
command.
So much for the first part of the "Copernican scholium." The remainder
of it is no less remarkable.
By reason of the deviation of the Sun from the center of gravity, the
centripetal force does not always tend to that immobile center, and hence
the planets neither move exactly in ellipses nor revolve twice in the same
orbit. There are as many orbits of a planet as it has revolutions, as in the
motion of the Moon, and the orbit of any one planet depends on the
combined motions of all the planets, not to mention the actions of all these
on each other. But to consider simultaneously all these causes of motion
and to defme these motions by exact laws admitting of easy calculation
exceeds, if I am not mistaken, the force of any human mind. Omit those
minutiae, and the simple orbit and mean among all the deviations will be
the ellipse of which I have already treated. If any one tries to determine
this ellipse by trigonometrical computation from three observations (as is
customary), he will have proceeded with less caution. For those
observations will share in the minute irregular motions here neglected and
so make the ellipse deviate a little from its just magnitude and position
(which ought to be the mean among all the deviations), and so will yield
as many ellipses differing from one another as there are trios of
observations to be employed. Therefore there are to be joined together
and compared with one another in a single operation a great number of
observations, which temper each other mutually and yield the mean ellipse
in both position and magnitude. (Math. Papers, 6:78, Prelim. Man., 20)
Suppose, then, we take the augmented version of De Motu at face
value, dating it just before the correspondence with Flamsteed, and ask, how
much of universal gravity had Newton discovered by the end of 1684? He
had completed a successful "Moon test" and so presumably had concluded
that the Moon is retained in orbit by terrestrial gravity. Insofar as he still
spoke of gravity as one kind of centripetal force, he may not yet have
equated celestial centripetal forces with terrestrial gravity. But he surely had
developed the idea that orbiting bodies can be interacting with the central
body; and his remark about the actions of all the planets on each other
indicates that he had extended this to interactions of the orbiting bodies with
each other. (Indeed, as we shall see in a moment, one of the topics in the
correspondence with Flamsteed was the action of Jupiter on Saturn.) The key
point, however, is that he has not gone beyond this in my list of claims
comprising universal gravity. Nothing in the augmented version of De Motu
�SMITII
51
gives evidence that he had discovered the law of gravity, or even had yet
singled out the concept of mass, given his remark about density being almost
proportional to the quantity of solid matter. The audience for whom Newton
wrote this tract would have found it perfectly intelligible without their having
any inkling of the law of gravity, or his concept of mass.
I should add that, however struck we may be by Newton's discouraging
remark about the actual orbits being beyond the force of the human mind,
his contemporaries would have been neither surprised nor dismayed by it.
Galileo and Descartes had argued that a science of resistance is impossible,
and hence, so too is a science of real motions of objects near the surface of
the Earth. Huygens had discovered that a cycloidal pendulum is perfectly
isochronous if the bob is a mere point, but then found himself unable to
define mathematically the isochronous curve when the bob is a real physical
body. The general view within the tradition of Galileo and Huygens-the
tradition in which, as I said before, De Motu falls-was to pursue a
mathematical science of the ideal case and then live with the fact that the
real world is not ideal. Some, like Kepler and Horrocks, had expressed
hopes for the perfectibility of orbital astronomy, but Descartes had suggested
to the contrary that planetary trajectories were sure to be subject to
intractable irregularities. Newton's expression of resignation was par for the
course at the time.
The Law of Gravity
Nevertheless, Newton himself had good reasons not to be so
comfortable conceding that the exact motions are beyond human reckoning.
The proved propositions of De Motu were opening the way to a bold
sequence of reasoning from Kepler's findings to a knockdown argument for
Copernicanism. The fact that our Moon, whatever its orbit may be, definitely
does not conform with Kepler's rules and hence poses a prima facie
counterexample undercutting this reasoning was bad enough. To concede
that the planetary trajectories are all incomprehensibly irregular is to invite
suspicions that the account of orbital motion in De Motu, while a pretty story,
is but one of any number of possible stories. Insofar as this was the very sort
of objection that Newton had raised against hypotheses in science generally,
he had good reason to look for some way of getting beyond just resigning
himself to the incomprehensibility of the motions.
When you think of the problem as one of finding the simultaneous,
coordinated adjustments that the six planets and the Sun have to make in
order to satisfy the global constraint imposed by the center of gravity
principle, the problem really does seem intractable (see Figure 8). But there
is another way of thinking of the problem: you can consider the motion of
�52
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
\
.);i·'"'"
Fig. 8. From a Global Restraint to Individual Forces
"... In my last I made an allowance for the distance of Jupiter and Saturn one from
another diminishing their virtue in a duplicate proportion of the distance. But yet I
spake there but at random not knowing their virtues till I had your numbers for
Jupiter, by which I understand his virtue is less than I supposed. But I am still at a
loss for Saturn .... Now I am upon this subject I would gladly know the bottom of it
before I publish my papers .... " Newton to Flamsteed, 12 Jan 1685
any one planet under forces directed toward the other bodies. The degree to
which the planetary orbits approximate Kepler's rules shows that the other
forces have to be small in comparison to the centripetal force toward the
Sun. If these forces are small, however, the deviations from Keplerian motion
they produce must be small. Consequently, when considering the forces on
any one planet directed toward the others at any one moment, little error
will result from t.reating the other planets as in their Keplerian location at that
moment. Assuming all the forces are inverse-square with distance, this
approach will enable values of their magnitudes to be determined at least to
a high approximation. At a minimum, then, this approach should allow the
principal secondary force on each planet to be determined and the
circumstance in which it reaches a maximum, and from this, estimates of the
maximum deviation from the Keplerian ideal, and perhaps insights into the
pattern of the deviations, can be obtained for any one planet.
The clearest evidence that Newton was thinking this way at the end of
1684 comes from the correspondence with Flamsteed. One of Newton's
principal questions in initiating this correspondence was whether "you ever
observed Saturn to err considerably from Kepler's tables about the time of his
conjunction with Jupiter." Newton had clearly made a calculation of the
relative magnitudes of the Sun's and Jupiter's force on Saturn at their
conjunction and was looking for confirmation that the latter was large
�SMITI!
53
enough to have an observable effect. In response to Flamsteed's negative
response, Newton remarks,
In my last I made an allowance for the distance of Jupiter and Saturn one
from another diminishing their virtue in a duplicate proportion of the
distance. But yet I spake there but at random not knowing their virtues
till I had your numbers for Jupiter, by which I understand his virtue is
less than I supposed. But I am still at a loss for Saturn .... Now I am
upon this subject I would gladly know the bottom of it before I publish
my papers.
The remark about Saturn, which is in response to Flamsteed's having
been unable to observe the newly discovered satellites of Saturn, points to a
problem with this force approach. In contrast to the Earth and Jupiter,
Newton had no way of confirming that the centripetal force holding the one
fully established satellite of Saturn in orbit is inverse-square. Worse, the
absence of satellites around Mercuty, Venus, and Mars left him with no
effective way even to resolve the question of centripetal forces toward these
three, much less to assign values to their magnitudes. Is there some way
besides relying on [a'/P'] to get at their forces?
One way to attack this question is to revert to the two-body problem of
Jupiter and the Sun, asking what feature of each of these bodies their
respective [a~/P 1 l's are proportional to. The center of gravity principle
provides a second relationship that we have ignored so far: the product of
the weight and the distance of the two objects from their center of gravity
must balance one another. Applying this to the Jupiter-Sun case (see Figure
9) would then yield the conclusion that their [a3/P'l's are proportional to their
respective weights. The obvious problem with this, especially in the light of
···-- ....
',
/
/
,
r"
[a 3/P']"
/P']3
/P']
=_:__:_--"'-)
[a 3
[a 3/P']"
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[a 3
r,
/
....
I
--
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'
\
\
....
'
r
I
. ··1
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'
�54
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton's conclusion that gravity diminishes above the Earth's surface in an
inverse-square proportion, is that weight is a parochial quantity; thinking in
terms of what Jupiter and the Sun would weigh at the Earth's surface is not
going to accomplish much. This raises the question, what besides the
acceleration of gravity, which seems to be the same for all bodies, is weight
proportional to? The Cartesian answer, the quantity of solid marter in the
body, was not very promising, for how is one to determine how much solid
matter is in Saturn or Mars?
How Newton proceeded beyond the augmented version of De Motu
and the correspondence with Flamsteed is not so clear. The only document
we have before the first draft of Book 1 of the Principia is a fragment,
entitled "The Motion of Bodies in Regularly Yielding Mediums." It consists of
very worked-over drafts of some 18 definitions, 6 laws, and the two lemmas
from the augmented De Motu. This fragment, which opens with definitions of
absolute time, space, and motion, reflects very careful thought that Newton
must have been giving to concepts of motion and force, especially for
purposes of inferring forces from motions. Three of these definitions are
important for our purposes (see Document 6, Appendix). Quantity of motion
is now expressly defined as the product of velocity and the "quantity of the
body," which he says "is to be estimated from the bulk of corporeal matter
which is usually proportional to its gravity," indicating how a pendulum
experiment can serve this purpose. The term "corporeal matter" here
presumably contrasts with "aethereal matter." Next, the internal or innate
force of a body to preserve its state of motion or rest is said to be
"proportional to the quantity of the body." Newton appears to have thought
back through prior work by himself and others, most notably Huygens, on
motion under impact and conical pendulums in reaching these
pronouncements, and he is now equating the change of motion referred to
in the second law with the change in the product of velocity and the total
quantity of matter in the body. The definition of centripetal force is the usual
one, though notice that he is here still not identifying celestial force with
terrestrial gravity.
Finally (see Document 7, Appendix), the laws include a new one, "as
much as any body acts on another so much does it experience in reaction,"
the version of the third law of motion from his earlier work on impact. As
then, he does not expressly equate action with the product of quantity of
matter and change in velocity. When he restates this law in the first draft of
Book 1, he does expressly add, "By these actions the changes not in their
velocities but in their 'motions' (momenta) will come to be equal." In giving
�55
SMITil
Laws 3 and 4 of the augmented De Motu after this new law, he adds that
these three "mutually confirm each other."
On a separate page are two further definitions to be inserted into the
tract, forcing a renumbering of the original definitions. The first, Def.6, is for
density, which is defined as "the quantity or bulk of matter compared with
the quantity of space occupied." The second, Def.7, reads as follows:
By the heaviness of a body I understand the quantity or bulk of matter
moved apart from considerations of gravity as often as it is not a matter
of gravitating bodies. To be sure the heaviness of gravitating bodies is
proportional to their quantity of matter by which it can by analogy be
represented or designated. And the analogy can actually be inferred as
follows. The oscillations of two equal pendulums of the same weight are
counted and the bulk of the matter in each case will be inversely as the
number of oscillations made in the same time. But careful experiments
made on gold, silver, lead, glass, sand, common salt, water, lignite and
twill led always to the same number of oscillations. On account of this
analogy and Jacking a more convenient word I represent and designate
quantity of matter by heaviness, even in bodies in which there is no
question of gravity.
Newton shortly thereafter switched to the word "mass." The important
point here is that he has taken the trouble to carry out an experiment to
establish that weight is precisely proportional to quantity of matter, the
quantity entering into the second law and hence entering into the inference
from a change of motion to the magnitude of the force responsible for this
change.
Newton could have proceeded in either of two ways from this point to
the mathematical statement of the law of gravity. On the one hand, he could
have now concluded that the [a3/P'l's of Jupiter and the Sun are proportional
to their respective masses:
[a 3/P']1
W1
[a'/P']H
WH
Then the accelerative effect of the centripetal force on Jupiter toward the Sun
is proportional to the mass of the Sun and inversely proportional to the
square of the distance between the two:
MH
oc - - ,
r'
JH
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and analogously the force on the Sun toward Jupiter is proportional to the
mass of Jupiter, etc. But then, in accord with the second law, the force on
each is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them:
MH
Jrl
"" M-,F
M,
M __.:_, thatis
2
oc
Hf
Hcem
JH
JH
mM
'
foe--·
r
Alternatively, he could have first used the second law to conclude that
the force on each is proportional to its mass, the [a3/P'l of the other, and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them:
F
lcetl/
oc
M
[a 3/P']"
J
f2
JH
ocM
,p
Hce1ll
[a 3/P'] 1
H
•
f2
JH
He could have then invoked the third law to equate these two forces,
F
11cem
~F
lcen/
,
allowing him to conclude that their [a 3/P']'s are proportional to their
respective masses,
[a 3/P']1 ~ M1
[a'/P']"
M" '
again yielding, when generalized, the law of gravity,
mM
F"" - - ·
r'
The second of these two ways is the one he follows in the Principia,
while the first fits in with the attention he had given in early 1685 to the
question whether weight is exactly proportional to quantity of matter. Of
course, he may well have played these two ways off against one another,
using each to support the other.
Regardless, Newton would then have had the law for the inversesquare centripetal forces governing motions of the planets. By the same
reasoning as above, but now applied to the two-body problem of the Sun
and the Earth, he could conclude that the accelerative effect of the
centripetal force around the Earth is proportional to its mass, and hence the
centripetal force on the Moon must be proportional to the product of its and
the Earth's mass divided by the square of the distance between them. In
other words, the very same relationship that characterizes the centripetal
forces on the planets characterizes terrestrial gravity. But then no reason
remains for maintaining a verbal distinction between the centripetal forces on
�SMITII
57
the various celestial bodies and terrestrial gravity. That is, in all cases the
force in question is one in kind with terrestrial gravity, giving license to call
the governing relationship simply "the law of gravity." In saying this,
however, you need to understand that what we have so far is an account of
inverse-square celestial gravity, not inverse-square universal gravity. Many of
Newton's contemporaries who objected strenuously to universal gravity were
at least prepared, subject to empirical confirmation, to grant him his account
of inverse-square celestial gravity. Still remaining, then, in the discovery of
universal gravity is the step from the first eight theses to the last two.
Universal Gravity
Consider what the law of gravity is saying: if even so much as one tiny
particle of the Sun were removed from it, then the centripetal acceleration
Jupiter experiences toward it would be different, however slightly. This
suggests that the centripetal forces directed toward the Sun are somehow
composed out of forces directed toward the individual particles of matter
comprising it. Moreover, every particle of Jupiter must experience a
centripetal acceleration toward the Sun, and assuming they are interacting,
every particle of the Sun must experience a centripetal acceleration toward
Jupiter. It is a small step now to conjecture first that the mutual gravitational
force between Jupiter and the Sun is actually the resultant of mutual
gravitational forces between every pair of particles of matter comprising
these two bodies. But then, if other bodies experience centripetal forces
toward the Sun and Jupiter, the same conclusion extends to them, resulting
in the remarkable-and at the time exceedingly controversial--claim that the
law of graviry holds between every pair of particles of matter in the universe.
As was evident to everyone at the time, Newton included, this step involved
a much larger conjectural component than any of those preceding.
The last step-to the suggestion that the force of gravity is one of the
fundamental forces in nature (which occurs only in the Preface to the first
edition of the Principia, not in the text)--<:an be thought of as a corollary to
the universality of gravity. If indeed there are mutual gravitational forces
between every pair of particles of matter in the universe, then it is hard to
see how these forces can be resulting from the action of matter of some sort,
aethereal or otherwise, on these particles. The very universality of the force
of gravity is testament to its being more fundamental than other kinds of
force then known.
Such, then, is a step-by-step line of investigative reasoning that could
have led Newton from the first couple of theses about inverse-square
centripetal forces, which he had come to appreciate following the
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
correspondence with Hooke at the end of 1679, to the full complement of
theses comprising universal gravity, which he had command of a few months
into 1685.
In saying this, I do not want you to underestimate how many loose
ends there are in this extended line of reasoning. First of all, the nonKeplerian character of the lunar orbit still poses a potential counterexample
standing in the way of the increasingly wide generalizations Newton is
reaching with each new step. Also, the step from celestial to universal gravity
is assuming that the celestial forces can, as a mathematical fact, be composed
out of forces directed toward individual particles. Newton himself later said
that he was not confident that the law of gravity is anything more than just
approximate until he had proved that, in the case of spheres, the combined
action of all the individual particles is exactly the same as if all the mass
were concentrated at the center of the sphere-something that is not
generally true, but is so in the special case of inverse-square forces.
In addition to these are several empirical loose ends. Newton preferred
to have what he called, following Hooke, an experimentum crucis or crossroads experiment to select among alternative physical possibilities. The
trajectories of comets provided such a crossroads for the question of whether
the centripetal force directed toward the Sun acts on bodies other than the
planets; but he had yet to confirm this by successfully calculating actual
comet trajectories. The small correction to the ,;, power rule that he had
mentioned to Flamsteed provided a crossroads between Jupiter simply being
drawn toward the Sun and the two of them interacting with one another; and
similarly an appropriate perturbation in the motion of Saturn would
distinguish between pairwise interaction only, between the central and
orbiting bodies, on the one hand, and interaction among the planetary
bodies as well, on the other. On both of these Flamsteed had reported that
the data then available did not show the indicated effect. Finally, Newton
surely felt he needed an experimentum crucis separating universal gravity
from inverse-square celestial gravity. The one he came up with in the
Principia concerns the nonspherical shape of the Earth and the variation of
surface gravity with latitude. Even a century later, however, at the time
Laplace was writing his Celestial Mechanics, there were still residual
difficulties in the data on this question.
Newton had said to Flamsteed that he wanted to know the bottom of
the subject before he published his papers. In fact, however, he had not
really gotten to the bottom of it when he published the first edition of the
Principia in 1687, or even the third edition in 1726, the year before he died.
Empirical results that went a long way toward tying up the loose ends
�SMITH
59
continued to emerge throughout the 18th century, but as I just indicated
there were still residual difficulties in some areas at the beginning of the 19th
century. Even as late as 1875, when the American G. W. Hill was embarking
on his seminal researches in lunar theory, he remarked:
None of the values hitherto computed from theory agrees as closely as
this with the value derived from observation. The question then arises
whether the discrepancy should be attributed to the fault of not having
carried the approximation far enough, or is indicative of forces acting on
the moon which have not yet been considered.
And, of course, the theory of gravity in general relativity shows that we are
still in the process of gelling to the bottom of it. What Newton did was to see
with extraordinary clarity an evidential pathway along which remarkable
progress in getting toward the bottom of it might be possible.
Given Newton's deep distrust of conjecture, he was surely fully aware
of the loose ends when he published the Principia. Nevertheless, he
published it. This was more remarkable than you may realize. Here he was
in his mid-forties. He had carried out research in mathematics, optics, and
chemistry and alchemy for two decades, and had started several books, only
to abandon them unfinished or to limit the manuscripts to private circulation
among a few people. The only thing he had published was his "Light and
Colors" paper covering a tiny handful of the experiments in optics he had
conducted, plus his replies to correspondence elicited by this paper. With the
Principia, for the first time he finished and published a large-scale work.
Why the Principia, when nothing earlier? I submit that a large part of the
answer was the scope and majesty of the line of reasoning that I have laid
out in the present essay.
�60
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Appendix
Documentl
De Motu Corporum in Gyrum
Definition 1. Centripetal force I call that by which a body is impelled or attracted
towards some point regarded as its center.
Definition 2. And the force of-that is, innate in-a body I call that by which it
endeavours to persist in its motion following a straight line.
Definition 3. While 'resistance' is that which is the property of a regularly impeding
medium.
Hypothesis 4. In the ensuing nine propositions the resistance is nil; thereafter it is
proportionally jointly to the speed of the body and to the density of the
medium.
Hypothesis 2. Every body by its innate force alone proceeds uniformly into infinity
following a straight line, unless it is impeded by something from
without.
Hypothesis 3. A body is carried in a given time by a combination of forces to the
place where it is borne by the separate forces acting successively in
equal times.
Hypothesis 4. The space which a body, urged by any centripetal force, describes at
the very beginning of its motions is in the doubled ratio of the time.
Document2
De Motu Corporum in Gyrum
Theorem 1. All orbiting bodies describe, by radii
drawn to their center, areas proportional to the times.
Theorem 2. Where the bodies orbit uniformly in
the circumferences of circles, the
centripetal forces are as the squares of
arcs simultaneously described, divided
by the radii of their circleS.
Corollary 5. If the squares of the periodic times are
as the cubes of the radii, the
centripetal forces are reciprocally as
the squares of the radii. And
conversely so.
Theorem 3. If a body P in orbiting around the
center S shall describe any curved line
APQ, and if the straight line PR
touches that curve in any point P and
to this tangent from any other point Q
of the curve there be drawn QR
Figures from DoGUments 3 and 4 reprinted by permission from Tbe Preliminary Manuscripts for
Isaac Newton's 1687Principia 1684-1685, (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
�61
SMITII
parallel to the distance SP, and if QT
be let fall perpendicular to this
distance SP: I assert that the
centripetal force is reciprocally as the
"solid" SP' x QT'/QR, provided that
the ultimate quantity of that solid
when the points P and Q come to
coincide is always taken.
Document3
De Motu Corpornm in Gyrnm
Problem 3. A body orbits in an ellipse: there is
required to find the law of
centripetal force tending to a focus
of the ellipse.
Scholium. The major planets orbit, therefore,
in ellipses having a focus at the
center of the Sun, and with their
radii drawn to the Sun describe
areas proportional to the times,
exactly as Kepler supposed.
Theorem 4. Supposing that the centripetal force
be reciprocally proportional to the
square of the distance from the
center, the squares of the periodic
times in ellipses are as the cubes of
their transverse axes.
Document4
De Motu Corpornm in Gyrnm
Scholium.
Hereby in the heavenly system from the
periodic times of the planets are
ascertained the proportions of the
transverse axes of their orbits. It will be
permissible to assume one axis: from that
the rest will be given. Once their axes are
given, however, the orbits will be
determined in this manner.
Problem 4. Supposing that the centripetal force be reciprocally proportional to the
square of the distance from its center, and with the quantity of the force
known, there is required the ellipse which a body shall describe when
Figures from Documents 4 and 5 reprinted by permission from Tbe Mathematical Papers of Isaac
Newton, 6. ed. D.T. Whiteside (Cambridge University Press, 1974)
�TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
62
released from a given position with a given
speed following a given straight line.
Scholium. A bonus, indeed, of this problem, once it
is solved, is that we are now allowed to
define the orbits of comets, and thereby
their periods of revolution, and then to
ascertain from a comparison of their
orbital magnitude, eccentricities, aphelia,
inclinations to the ecliptic plane, and their
nodes whether the same comet returns
with some frequency to us.
[a'/P'ls
DocumentS
De Motu Spbaericornm Corpornm in Fluidis 4
Law 1.
Law 2.
Law 3.
Law 4.
Law 5.
Lemma
Lemma
A body always goes uniformly in a straight line by its innate force alone if
nothing impedes it.
A change of the state of motion or rest is proportional to the impressed
force and occurs along the straight line in which that force is impressed.
The relative motions of bodies contained in a given space are the same
whether that space is at rest or whether it moves perpetually and uniformly
in a straight line without circular motion.
The common center of gravity does not alter its state of motion or rest
through the mutual actions of bodies. This follows from Law 3.
The resistance of a medium is as the density of that medium and as the
spherical surface of the moving body and its velocity conjointly.
1. A body describes by the action of combined forces the diagonal of a
parallelogram in the same time as it would describe the sides by the action
of separate forces.
2. The space described by a body urged by a centripetal force at the
beginning of its motion is as the square of the time.
Document6
De Motu Corpornm in Mediis Regulariter Cedentibus'
Definition 11. The quantity of motion is that which arises from the velocity and
quantity of a body conjointly. Moreover, the quantity of a body is to be
estimated from the bulk of the corporeal matter which is usually
proportional to the gravity. The oscillations of two equal pendulums
with bodies of equal weight are counted, and the bulk of the matter in
both will be inversely as the number of oscillations made in the same
time.
Definition 12. The internal and innate force of a body is the power by which it
preserves in its state of rest or of moving uniformly in a straight line. It
is proportional to the quantity of the body, and is actually exercised
proportionally to the change of state, and in so far as it is exercised it
can be said to be the exercised force of the body, of which one kind is
the centrifugal force of rotating bodies.
�SMITI!
63
Definition 16. I call centripetal force that by which a body is impelled or drawn
towards a certain point regarded as its center. Of this kind is gravity
tending toward the center of the earth, magnetic force tending to the
center of the magnet, and the celestial force preventing the planets
from flying off in the tangents to their orbits.
Document7
De Motu Cotporum in Mediis Regulariter Cedentibus 6
Law 3. As much as any body acts on another so much does it experience in reaction.
Whatever presses or pulls another thing by this equally is pressed or pulled. If
a bladder full of air presses or carries another equal to itself both yield equally
inward. If a body impinging on another changes by its force the motion of the
other then its own motion (by reason of the equality of the mutual pressure)
will be changed by the same amourit by the force of the other. If a magnet
attracts iron it is itself equally attracted, and likewise in other cases. In fact this
law follows from Definitions 12 and 14 in so far as the force exerted by a
body to conserve its state is the same as the impressed force in the other body
to change the state of the first, and the change in the state of the first is
proportional to the first force and the second to the second force.
Law 4. The relative motion of bodies enclosed in a given space is the same whether
that space rests absolutely or moves perpetually and uniformly in a straight
line without circular motion. For example, the motions of objects in a ship are
the same whether the ship is at rest or moves uniformly in a straight line.
Law 5. The common center of gravity of bodies does not change its state of rest or
motion by reason of the mutual actions of the bodies. This law and the two
above mutually confirm each other.
Notes
1. Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Philosophical
Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) 201-222.
2. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 2 ed. H.W. Turnbull. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1960)
3. The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton 6: 74-80 (abridged) and Preliminary
Manuscripts for Isaac Newton's Principia, 1684-85 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989) 12-27.
4. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, The Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac
Newton (Cambridge at the University Press, 1962) 267-68.
5. John Herivel, The Background to Newton's Principia (Oxford at the Clarendon
Press, 1965) 311.
6. Ibid. 312'13.
�·.~ REe-dbol~nhg. Newthonp's Exp~rime_nt fofr
1
sta 1s mg t e roportlona 1ty o
~ Mass and Weight
~
'
Curtis Wilson
Introduction
Newton was the first to draw an operationally verifiable distinction between
mass and weight. In the earliest manuscript in which he describes his
experimental confirmation of their proportionality (it is probably assignable
to the spring of 1685), he uses for mass the word pondus, which is Latin for
heaviness, but immediately says he means by it the bulk or quantity of
matter, independently of its weight. 1 Later he introduces the word inertia,
which is Latin for slothfulness, to characterize the quantity of matter. Kepler
had used this word in his Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae to describe the
tendency of a body to stay put; Newton instead means by it the resistance of
a body to changing its state of rest or uniform rectilinear motion. Just at the
time he was imagining and canying out the experiment that our title refers
to, Newton was in the process of formulating his second law of motion,
generally expressed now as F = Ma. For a given force F, the acceleration
produced is inversely as the mass M. This relation characterizes the action of
all motive forces, electrical, magnetic, gravitational, and so on.
But gravitational force, weight, is peculiar. A ball bearing and a boy's
marble of equal size and shape, weighed on a spring balance, have different
weights. But dropped from a height, they fall side by side, and reach the
ground simultaneously, or would do so in a vacuum. Here the weight is the
force in Newton's second law: W = Mg, where g is the acceleration of
gravity. For the accelerations of the two bodies to be the same, the weight
must be proportional to the mass.
Newton had noted that the same thing happens with the planets. By
Kepler's third planetary law, the accelerations of the planets toward the Sun
Curtis Wilson is Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College. In the planning and execution of the
experiment here described, the author was assisted by Howard Fisher and Adam Schulman of St.
John's College; the design and construction of the pendulums and other equipment was carried
out by Otto Friedrich and Alfred Toft of the laboratory shop; and Mark Daly, Superintendent of
Laboratories, assisted in both the planning and set-up of the experiment.
�WILSON
65
are inversely as the squares of their solar distances, independent of whatever
their masses may be. Thus a body placed at any given distance from the Sun
has an acceleration toward the Sun that is determined simply by its distance
from the Sun, and is independent of its mass.
This proportionality of weight to mass, fundamental in Newton's System
of the World, is also fundamental in Einstein's theory of General Relativity,
where it is referred to as the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass.
The inertial mass is the M that appears in the above equation W - Mg, and
the gravitational mass is a factor to which W is proportional. Since 1890, tests
employing the torsion balance have repeatedly confirmed the equivalence,
with ever improving precision; the most recent confirmation (in 1971)
achieved a precision of one part in 9 x 10n.
The empirical confirmation of the proportionality of mass and weight
constitutes a pivotal step in Newton's argument for universal gravitation.
Newton describes the experiments he uses for this purpose at the beginning
of Proposition 6 of Book III of his Principia:
That the descent of all h.eavy bodies toward the Earth (allowing for the
unequal retardation arising from the very small resistance of the air) is
made in equal times, others for a long time have observed. The equality
of times can be observed most accurately by means of pendulums. I tried
the thing with gold, silver, lead, glass, sand, common salt, wood, water,
and wheat. I prepared two wooden boxes, round and equal. One I filled
with wood, and the same weight of gold I suspended (as exactly as I
could) in the center of oscillation of the other. The boxes, hanging by
equal threads of 11 feet, constituted pendulums altogether equal as to
weight, figure, and the resistance of the air. Placed side by side, they
went back and forth together, with equal oscillations, for a very long
time. Therefore (by Corollaries 1 and 6 of Proposition 24 of Book II) the
quantity of matter in the gold was to the quantity of matter in the wood
as the action of the motive virtue on all the gold to its action on all the
wood; that is, as the weight to the weight. And similarly in the other
cases. By these experiments, in bodies of the same weight, a difference
in mass of even less than the thousandth part of the whole could clearly
have been detected. [My translation]
Newton regarded these experiments as deeply significant. Earlier, for
instance, in a paper he sent to the Royal Society in December, 1675, he had
imagined gravity as due to an aether rushing into the Earth, and pressing
down each body it passed through, by impinging on the surfaces that the
internal parts of the body presented. Such a hypothesis was in accord with
the mechanical philosophy put forward by Descartes, Huygens, and others,
and for a time adopted by Newton himself. But by the spring of 1685,
�66
1BE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton had reached a new understanding. Gravity, for him, had become a
force acting on the very innards of matter so as to be proportional to a
body's inertia; it was an immechanical force, its cause unexplained. At the
same time, it had become quantitatively tractable-measurable-even in its
action on celestial bodies. The very masses of those bodies, millions of miles
away, had become measurable.
In the spring of 1998 the committee planning the conference on
Newton decided to seek an answer to the question: Can the experiment
described by Newton in the foregoing passage be carried out with the
precision he claims for it, using only such means as were available to him
(no stopwatches!)?
The Experimental Setup.
To replace Newton's round wooden boxes, we purchased plastic
containers, all of a size, such as are used for kitchen storage of flour and
sugar. For materials, in the trials reported here we chose three from Newton's
list of nine: sand, lead (Pb) in the form of lead shot, and glass in the form of
glass beads. (Originally we tried copper shot, but the shot was not uniform
in size, and the smaller pieces could sift down betwixt the others, so that the
center of gravity was not securely fixed.)
We wanted the bobs to have an inertia sufficient to keep them going
against the resistance of the air for a half hour or so. Filling one of the
containers with glass beads, we found we had some 7 kilograms. The next
problem was how to position equal weights of sand, lead shot, and glass
beads so that their centers of gravity would be similarly situated in their
respective containers. To our rescue came Alfred Toft, a retired engineer and
machinist, and Otto Friedrich, a retired carpenter, of the laboratory shop;
they have given many hours and much thought to our project. Their design
for the pendulum bobs is shown in Plates I and II. Each plastic container is
closed at top and bottom by two circular plywood plates. Within each
container are two additional circular plywood plates, placed symmetrically
from the ends, to position the material. The plates are held in position by
three carriage bolts supplied with nuts.
The pendulums were erected on the auditorium stage, where the
ceiling is about 5.9 meters from the floor. Each bob is supported by two
suspension wires, so as to prevent the bobs from rotating. As Plate II shows,
the suspension wires are not kinkless.
Now for a simple pendulum 5.8 meters long, a millimeter's difference
in vertical position of the center of gravity makes a difference in periO<;l that
is easily detectable, adding up in 25 minutes to about an eighth of a period,
�WILSON
67
or making a difference in the period of
each swing of one part in about 2500.
The lengths of the four suspension
wires were determined by stretching
them tightly between the same two
bolts, fixed in place; but we could not
be sure that they agreed to less than a
millimeter. Similarly, we could not
guarantee that the centers of gravity of
the three materials were similarly
situated in their containers to within
less than a millimeter. Newton left no
clue as to how he dealt with this
difficulty. To achieve the greatest
possible prectston, it appeared
important to avoid dependence on
length measurements.
Plate I. The lead (Pb) bob
The solution that we eventually
settled on was twofold. First, each
pendulum bob was made invertible,
with hooks at top and bottom, so that it
could be hung rightside up or upside
down. By averaging the period
determinations for a bob in these two
positions, we would obtain the period
for an ideal pendulum with center of
gravity in the center of figure exactly
midway between the endplates.
Secondly, we designated one bob,
hung on the downstage suspension, as
a standard clock; the periods of the
other two bobs, hung rightside up and
upside down on the upstage
suspension, could then be determined
Plate II. The lead and sand bobs
in comparison with the standard.
swinging together.
Because the clock bob was always
hung on one suspension, and the bobs
under test on the other, we could ignore the difference, whatever it is, in the
lengths of these two suspensions.
In making the bobs invertible, it was important to ensure that, when a
bob was upended, the contained material (glass beads, lead shot, or sand)
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
did not shift position. Messrs. Friedrich and Toft achieved this condition by
inserting a thin pad of styrofoam on top of the material, and compressing it
with the inner plywood plates. All three bobs were adjusted to the same
weight of 7150.5 gm, accurate to a tenth of a gram.
To set the pendulums (the standard and the one under test) in motion
simultaneously, we used a gate built by Messrs. Friedrich and Toft. The gate
was so placed that the swings would have an initial amplitude less than 10%.
Before a given run, we marked on the floor the shadows of the rest positions
of the two bobs, cast in each case by a light source directly above.
The Mathematics Involved
L
Figure 1.
Newton refers to
Corollaries 1 and 6 of
Proposition 24 of Book II
for the mathematics he requires in order to conclude,
from the equality of the
periods of two pendulums
of equal length with bobs of
equal weight, to the
proportionality of the
masses and weights of the
bobs. The essential argument is as follows.
Imagine two pendulums with suspensions of
nearly equal
length.
Consider these pendulums
when they have exactly the
same amplitude, and let this
amplitude be divided into
small equal segments (see
Fig.l). In each segment, the
driving force will be the
component of the weight W
acting along the bob's path;
if the distance of the bob
from the vertical line passing
through its rest position is x,
and the length of the
�69
WILSON
suspension is L, then this component is Wx/L. By Newton's second law, this
force will be proportional to the mass of the bob multiplied by its change of
speed in the segment considered divided by the time to traverse the
segment:
w~
L
oc
Mllv.
Llt
(1)
For corresponding segments in the paths of the two pendulums, x will
be exactly the same. The quantity t varies as the period T of each pendulum,
and the quantity /l,v varies inversely as T. We thus deduce from (1) that the
period squared varies as the length and the mass, and inversely as the
weight:
(2)
Suppose that our knowledge of the quantities T, L, M, W is uncertain or in
error by the quantities liT, oL, oM, and oW, which can be either positive or
negative. Now the uncertainty in a product or quotient, expressed as a
fraction of the whole, is the sum of the respective fractional uncertainties of
the individual factors. Thus the fractional uncertainty in T' is 2oT/f, and the
fractional uncertainty in L• MfW~• is the sum of SL/L, oM/M, and oW/W.
(These results can be obtained algebraically by substituting for each quantity
in (2) its supposed value augmented by the uncertainty, then ignoring
quantities that are the products of uncertainties.) Hence
(3)
Thus, the fraction 2ST/T is at most the sum of the terms on the
righthand side of (3). In our experiment, oW!W is 1 part in 71505, or about
.000014, and our procedure eliminates the more controllable causes of
variation of oL/L. Hence we can expect that
Z~T = 0~
+ .000014.
(4)
Thus if oM/M is .001, then ST/f will be (.001 + .000014)/2, or about
one part in 2000. Conversely, if pendulums whose weights are equal to
within .000014 of the whole weight agree in period to better than 1 part in
2000, we can infer that their masses are equal to within better than one part
in 1000.
�70
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Experimental Results
Mark Daly, Director of Laboratories, attached the suspension wires and
shadow-casting lights to the ceiling; he had also to let down the wires for
each experimental session, and take them up afterwards, since the stage was
used for other purposes between times. We held experimental sessions in
August and November, 1998, and in January and March, 1999. The idea of
making the bobs permanently invertible emerged only after the sessions in
March; it was carried out by Messrs. Toft and Friedrich during April and May.
Finally, on June 1, 1999, we determined the differences in period between
the redesigned bobs, as reported below.
In the first set of measurements the lead (Pb) bob was hung upright
from the downstage suspension, to serve as our clock. The task was then to
determine the difference between the periods of the downstage and upstage
pendulums, with the upstage pendulum carrying either the sand (Sa) or glass
(Gl) bob, hung in either upright or inverted position; this difference was to
be expressed as a fraction of the period of the Pb bob. Before beginning the
trials, we marked the rest position of each bob, indicated by one edge of the
shadow of the bob cast by the overhead light, on a sheet of paper taped to
the floor.
In each trial, the two bobs (the standard and the bob under test) were
released simultaneously from the gate, and the oscillations of the clock
pendulum were counted. When a measurable difference had built up
between the two pendulums, one observer barked out "Pip!" as the bob
under test crossed its rest position. (Originally, we had used "Now!" to mark
this moment; Fran(:ois De Gandt, hearing of it, observed that the French
"maintenant" would hardly serve. We then shifted to the more explosive
"Pip!" as our vocable marker.) The two other observers (one at floor level,
the other standing) determined where the standard bob was at this moment;
immediately· before and after this determination, the positions of maximum
amplitude of the standard bob were also determined. In all cases the upstage
pendulum was found to lag the downstage, standard pendulum.
Suppose (as in our first trial, with the sand bob in inverted position) the
lag in phase after 97 oscillations was x ~ 17.75 em of the standard bob's
swing, while the maximum amplitude of the swing just before this
measurement was 52.5 em, and just after, 49.0 em; we used the average of
these numbers as the amplitude (A) when x ~ 17.75 em. Then from the
fraction xJA we needed to deduce the fraction of the period T that it takes
the bob to move x units from its rest position (we will designate this fraction
as tiT).
�71
WILSON
The relation we need is deducible from equation (1). When the
amplitude of the pendulum's oscillation is small, as in our case (it was less
than So/o when this measurement was made), the solution is given by
X
·
--=s1n 21t•t ·
A
T
(5)
We shall not here undertake to derive (5) from (1), but merely remark that it
is an instance of the projection of uniform circular motion onto a diameter
of the circle. Imagine a circle of radius A, with a point moving uniformly
round it; imagine further that a perpendicular is dropped from this moving
point to a given diameter of the circle. At any moment t the projected point
will be x units from the midpoint of the diameter, in accordance with
equation (5). Thus, given measured values of x and A, equation (5) permits
us to solve for t/T.
The difference t has accumulated in the present case in a certain
number N of swings (97 in the particular measurement here used for
illustration). Then
(6)
where ~TIT is the fraction of the standard bob's period by which the test
bob's period exceeds the standard bob's period.
In the first determinations, the Sa bob was run twice in inverted
position and then twice in upright position against the Pb bob, and the
results of the two trials in each position were averaged, with the following
results ("i" stands for inverted, "u" for upright):
Expt. I
x(cm)
A( em)
N
l>T
1. Sa(i)
17.75
50.75
97
.000586T
2. Sa(i)
18.0
55.5
78
.000674T
.000630T
average
1. Sa(u)
5.5
54.5
81
.000199T
2. Sa(u)
6.5
50.75
94
.000217T
average
.000208T
The average of the two above averages is .000419T. This implies that
the period of the Sa bob, if its center of gravity were precisely at the
�1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
72
midpoint of the cylindrical container, would be 1.000419 times the period of
our clock.
In a similar set of measurements using the Gl bob, we found:
Expt. II
x(cm)
A(em)
N
t.T
1. Gl(u)
14.0
55.25
79
.000516T
2. Gl(u)
18.0
54.25
84
.000641T
.000579T
average
1. Gl(i)
14.5
55.25
79
.000535T
2. Gl(i)
14.5
53.25
84
.000523T
.000529T
average
The average of the two averages in Experiment II is .000554T. Thus
if the Gl bob had its center of gravity midway within the cylinder, it would
swing with a period equal to 1.000554 times the standard period.
This result differs from the period we found for the (centered) sand
bob (namely l.000419T) by 0.000135, or about 14 parts per 100,000.
In the remaining experiments, we made the sand bob our standard,
identifying its period as T', and used it to compare the glass and lead (Pb)
bobs. For the glass bob we found:
Expt. III
x(cm)
A(em)
N
t.T
1. Gl(i)
18.5
55.25
82
.000663T'
2. Gl(i)
18.5
57.35
75
.000697T'
.000680T'
average
1. Gl(u)
17.0
54.5
80
.000631T'
2. Gl(u)
24
55
81
.000888T'
3. Gl(u)
21.5
55.5
80
.000791T'
4. Gl(u)
21.5
56.25
80
.000780T'
average
.000773T'
The average of the two averages in Expt. III is .000727T'. Thus if the
glass bob had its center of gravity midway within the cylinder, it would
�WILSON
73
swing with a period equal to 1.000727 times the period of the sand bob here
used as standard.
In the final experiment the period of the lead (Pb) bob was compared
with the sand bob as standard:
Expt. IV
x(cm)
A(cm)
N
t.T
1. Pb(u)
20.5
55.25
83
.000729T'
2. Pb(u)
21.0
56.0
81
.000755T'
.000742T'
average
1. Pb(i)
12.0
55.5
83
.000418T'
2. Pb(i)
10.0
56.25
79
.000360T'
average
.000389T'
The average of the two averages is .000566T'. Thus if the Pb bob had
its center of gravity midway within the cylinder, it would swing with a period
equal to 1.000565 times the standard period T'.
This result differs from that for the (centered) glass bob in Expt. III
(namely 1.000727T') by .000162, or by about 16 parts per 100,000.
Thus the periods of the ideal (centered) glass and sand bobs as
determined in Experiments I and II, and the periods of the ideal (centered)
glass and lead (Pb) bobs in Experiments III and IV, agree to within about 1
part in 6000. We can therefore conclude that the masses in these three bobs
agree to within about 1 part in 3000.
How do these results compare with the precision of our individual
trials? The greatest spread of values occurred in the four trials with the
upright glass bob in Experiment Ill. There we found the phase differences
per standard period to be .000631, .000888, .000791, .000780. The standard
deviation of these values is .000092, which suggests a limit of precision of 10
parts in 100,000. The overall performance of this apparatus (including timing
by our "pip" method) seems to be fairly consistent with this specific instance.
Notes
1. john Herivel, 7be Background to Newton's Principia (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1965) 316-317.
2. Hans C. Ohanian, Gravitation and Spacetime(New York: W.W. Norton, 1976) 19.
�The First Six Propositions in Newton's
Argument for Universal Gravitation
William Harper
I'm going to take you through Propositions 1-6 of Book Ill of the Principia,
so I'm going to miss the high point of the whole argument, but I'll leave you
all set to get it from Dana Densmore in the essay following mine.
What I will do will illustrate the feature of Newton's methodology that I
claim makes it so interestingly superior to mere hypothetico-deductive
inference. According to hypothetico-deductive method you make up a
hypothesis and then try to find out whether or not the predictions that follow
from this hypothesis fit the data you can realize in experiment. What backs
up a hypothetico-deductive inference is the fit between the predictions that
follow from the assumed hypothesis and the empirical data. I will be
emphasizing the background assumptions supporting Newton's famous
inferences from phenomena, inferences that open the argument for universal
gravitation. For each of the central inferences-the inference from the arealaw or area-rule behavior for an orbit to the centripetal direction of the force
deflecting a body into that orbit; the inference from the harmonic law for a
system of orbits to the inverse-square relation among those forces; and the
inference from the stability of a single orbit, that is, from the absence of
apsidal precession in that orbit, to the inverse-square variation of the force
maintaining a body in that orbit-! will be stressing the important way in
which it is backed up by systematic dependencies that go beyond the
requirements of hypothetico-deductive inference.
In all three of these classic inferences from phenomena, the theorems
that Newton cites from Book I to back up the inference are always in a
group of theorems. If you look at the whole group of theorems, you'll see
that in every one of these cases, it's not just that a theorem would give you,
say, from the assumption of inverse-square variation the harmonic law for
the system of orbits, or from the assumption of the harmonic law the inversesquare variation. It will turn out that we are getting systematic dependencies
that go beyond just making these equivalent to each other. Thus, if the rule
William Harper is Professor of Philosophy at University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.
�HARPER
75
relating periods to distances gives less than the 3/2 power, then the force
falls off less rapidly than in the inverse-square relation, and if the rule gives a
power higher than 3/2, then the force falls off more rapidly than in the
inverse-square relation. So you have systematic dependencies that are
making the phenomenal parameters measure corresponding values of the
theoretical parameters that are inferred. This, I will claim, illustrates a kind of
empirical success that informs Newton's applications of his rules of
reasoning-a success stronger than mere prediction. To realize this kind of
success, a theory has not only to predict the phenomena, but also to have
the parameters be accurately measured by those phenomena. And we'll see
in the classic application of the first two rules of reasoning-in the Moon-test
(the first part of a unification of the celestial domain with the terrestrial
domain)-we'll see that the appeal to these rules of reasoning is supported
by a striking example of this kind of empirical success. And then, when we
get to Proposition 6, I will go through the series of phenomena, all of which
are measuring proportionaliry of weight to mass. The first of these was
illustrated for you in the pendulum experiment just presented. And I will
argue that these are all phenomena giving agreeing measurements, bounding
toward zero a single universal parameter which I shall call 11. The
methodology that is used in this argument in the Principia is in fact the
methodology that informs an important part of the testing programs for
General Relativiry. Indeed, I will mention some later experiments that bound
this !1 toward zero far more precisely than the data available to Newton.
We're going to start with Jupiter's moons, then we'll go to the primary
planets, then to the Moon and the Moon-test, then to Proposition 5, and that
most wonderful Rule of Reasoning, the fourth rule of reasoning. And we'll
end with Proposition 6 and the third Rule of Reasoning. That is the order in
which the rules get applied in the Principia, and the order in which I'll be
presenting them.
To begin: here's the first proposition in the argument for universal
gravitation.
Proposition 1
The forces by which the circumjovial planets [or satellites of Jupiter] are
continually drawn away from rectilinear motions and are maintained in
their respective orbits are directed to the center of Jupiter and are
inversely as the squares of the distances of their places from that center.
The first part of the proposition is evident from Phen. 1 and from Prop. 2
or Prop. 3 of Book I, and the second part from Phen. 1 and from Corol. 6
to Prop. 4 of Book I.
The same is to be understood for the planets that are Saturn's
companions (or satellites) by Phen. 2.
�76
lHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Ilke the proposition, the cited phenomenon (Pheno. 1) consists of two
parts. According to the first part, "The circumjovial planets, by radii drawn to
Jupiter's center, describe areas proportional to the times." Notice that the first
part of the proposition, the centripetal direction, follows from the first part of
the phenomenon, the area rule. The second part, "And their periodic times,
the fixed stars being at rest, are as the 3/2 power of their distances from that
center," is Kepler's harmonic law. This is the phenomenon from which
Newton is inferring the inverse-square part of the proposition. If you look at
Phen. 2, it's the same combination of the area law and the harmonic law for
Saturn's satellites.
Now we want to look at the argument, and so let's start with the first
part: the area law as a criterion for centripetal force. The proposition that is
referred to explicitly in Prop. 1 of Book III is Prop. 2 of Book I:
EveJY body that moves in some curved line described in a plane, and that
by a radius drawn to a point, either unmoving, or moving uniformly
forward with a rectilinear motion, describes areas around that point
proportional to the times, is urged by a centripetal force tending toward
that point.
If the body is moving in a plane, and by a radius drawn to a point is
sweeping out areas at a constant rate, then the force deflecting that body into
that orbit is directed right at the center.
Proposition 1 of Book I, the very first proposition of the Principia,
reads:
The areas by which bodies made to move in orbits described by radii
drawn to an unmoving center of force lie in unmoving planes and are
proportional to the times.
For an unmoving center, if the force is directed right at the center, then the
body will move in a plane, and will satisfy the area law with respect to radii
from that center. Now notice, Newtoh is talking about unmoved centers here.
His definitions and the scholium on space and time are designed to allow for
absolute rest. But look at Carol. 6 of Proposition 1:
All the same things hold by Coral. 5 of the Laws of Motion when the
planes in which the bodies are moving, together with those centers of
force which are situated in those planes, are not at rest but move
uniformly straight forward.
So Proposition 1 would work for any inertial center. And Carol. 5 of the
Laws of Motion tells us that the motions of bodies in a given space are the
same among themselves, whether the space is at rest, or moves forward in a
straight line with any uniform velocity. This is Galilean relativity.
�HARPER
77
But, the thing I want to focus on here is Corol. 1 to Prop. 2 of Book I:
In nonresisting spaces or mediums, if the areas are not proportional to
the times, the forces do not tend toward the point where the radii meet,
but deviate forward from it in the direction in which the motion takes
place if the description of areas is accelerated ...
So if the rate at which areas are being swept out is increasing, the
center of force is off center in the direction of motion.
But if the description of areas is retarded, the forces deviate backward, in
a direction contrary to that in which the motion takes place.
If the rate at which areas are being swept out is decreasing, then the force
that is deflecting the body is offcenter backwards.
We can sum up our main result as follows. Prop. 1 says that a centripetal force gives you a constant areal rate; Prop. 2 says that a constant
areal rate gives you a centripetal force. And Corol. 1 to Prop. 2 asserts that if
the areal rate is increasing, the force is directed off center in the direction of
motion, and if the areal rate is decreasing, it is directed off center against the
motion. So these results follow from the proposition: The areal rate is
constant if and only if the force is towards the center. If the areal rate is
increasing, the force is off center in the direction of the velocity, and if it is
decreasing, the force is off center backwards. Newton has much more than
just the equivalence between constancy of areal description and the
centripetal direction of the force; he has systematic dependencies, which
make a constant areal rate measure the centripetal direction of the force
maintaining a satellite in its orbit.
These propositions are proved on the assumption that the center can
be treated as inertial. But the application is to Jupiter and Jupiter's moons.
This system is subject to a tremendous centripetal acceleration, as the whole
system revolves around the Sun. So Newton in Prop. 3 extends the results of
Props. 1 and 2 with their corollaries to systems that are not in inertial motion:
Every body, that by a radius drawn to the center of a second body
moving in any way whatever, describes about that center areas that are
proportional to the times, is urged by a force compounded of the
centripetal force tending toward that second body, and of the whole
accelerative force by which that second body is moved.
The proof is based on Corol. 6 of the Laws of Motion, which is a much
bigger generalization than that of Corol. 5, which just extends results to
Galilee invariance.
If bodies are moving in any way with respect to one another, and are
urged by equal accelerative forces along parallel lines, they will all
�78
TI!E ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
continue to move with respect to one another as they would if they were
not acted on by those forces.
So, to the extent that the actions of the Sun on Jupiter and Jupiter's moons
can approximate equal and parallel accelerations, they can be ignored.
Newton gives a way of getting evidence that such things can be ignored. If,
he states in Corol. 2 of Prop. 3, the areas are very nearly proportional to the
times, the remaining forces will tend toward body T very nearly, and
conversely if, he adds in Corol. 3 of the same proposition, the forces tend
very nearly toward T the areas will be very nearly proportional to the times.
(In Prop. 3 the letter T stands for Terra, the Earth, and L for Luna, Earth's
Moon; but of course the proposition and its corollaries apply just as well to
Jupiter and its moons.) So the fact that the motions of Jupiter's moons very
closely approximate area-law motion carries the information that the
accelerative forces on Jupiter and on Jupiter's moons are very nearly equal
and parallel.
Now in stating the first part of the evidence for Phen. 1, Newton says
that the orbits of these planets [satellites] do not differ perceptibly from
circles concentric about Jupiter, and their motions in those circles are found
to be uniform. These are observational results. The fact that this holds shows
that you are not going to go very wrong in treating the Jupiter-system as
though it were inertial. We'll see how close the approximation to circular
orbits is in a moment.
Before we do, I want to talk about the second part, the harmonic law
as a phenomenon carrying information about the inverse-square relation
among the forces maintaining the satellites in their system of orbits. Here is
Corol. 6 of Prop. 4 of Book I:
If the periodic times are as the 3/2 power of the radii, and therefore the
velocities are inversely as the square roots of the radii, the centripetal
forces will be inversely as the squares of the radii, and conversely.
Therefore the harmonic law proportion is equivalent to the inversesquare relation of the accelerations in the various orbits.
But I want to pay even more attention to Corol. 7 of Prop. 4:
And universally, if the periodic time is as any power Rn of the radius R,
and therefore the velocity inversely as the power Rn·l of the radius, the
centripetal force will be inversely as the power Rln- 1 of the radius; and
conversely.
Having the periods vary as R" is equivalent to having the force vary as
R'"'". Corol. 6 immediately follows from this by plugging in 3/2 for n. We are
thus able to infer from the phenomenon-the harmonic law for Jupiter's
�79
HARPER
satellites-that Jupiter's force on the satellites is inverse-square. Now we also
have the systematic dependencies that tell us what happens in alternatives to
the phenomena. The index n could be higher than 3/2, in which case 1 - 2n
would be less than -2, so that the force would fall off more rapidly than in
the inverse-square proportion, while if n were less than 3/2 the forces would
fall off more slowly than in the inverse-square proportion. And so we have
alternative values of this phenomenal magnitude carrying information about
alternative power laws. These systematic dependencies make the harmonic
rule phenomenon (n ~ 3/2) for a system of orbits measure the inverse square
(-2) power rule for the centripetal forces maintaining bodies in those orbits.
These relations may be summarized as in Chart I (where "iff" stands for "if
and only if').
Chart 1:
Harmonic law for a system of orbits measures inverse-square law
Prop.4, Book I, Corals. 7 & 6 are proved for concentric circular orbits,
but can be extended to ellipses; t= period; R = radius of orbit;
Corol. 6 follows from Corol. 7 when n
Harmonic law
3/2.
Accelerative measure
phenomenon
t
<X
RVZ
iff
t
Corol.6
Corol.7
~
oc
R"
iff
of centripetal forces
fac oc Rl
fac
oc Rl·2n
Additional systematic dependencies follow from Corol.7.
Alternative phenomenon
n > 3/2
n < 3/2
iff
iff
Alternative power laws
(1-2n) < -2
(1-2n) > -2
We need to say something about the data available to Newton. First let
me give you, from the most recent Explanatory Supplement to the
Astronomical Almanac, the present-day values for the orbital eccentricities of
the four satellites of Jupiter; in each case these are the distance of Jupiter's
center from the center of the orbit, divided by the orbit's radius. The four
numbers are:
1. Io
0.004
2. Europa 0.009
3. Ganymede
4. Callisto
0.002
0.007
As you see, they are very small; thus the orbits are really close to
concentric circles.
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Next I give you Newton's values for the periods of the satellites
(expressed in decimal form), compared with the periods given by the
Explanatory Supplement, with the differences.
Satellite
Newton's values
E.S.N.A. values
Differences
Io
1.769143518
1.769137786
+0.000005733
Europa
3.551180555
3.551181041
-0.000000485
Ganymede
7.154583333
7.15455296
+0.000030373
Callisto
16.688993055
16.6890184
-0.000025344
The biggest difference here is less than three seconds in a revolution.
Evidently these periods could be established rather precisely by the
techniques available in Newton's time.
Newton gives a table with determinations of the radii of the orbits of
the four satellites; the table below is the one he gives in the second and third
editions of the Principia, with observational results due to Borelli, Townly,
and Cassini. The numbers are in semi-diameters of Jupiter, with the largest
semi-diameter used as unit (Jupiter is visibly flattened). To the table I have
appended the corresponding present-day values from the Explanatory
Supplement, with the differences from Newton's numbers.
1
2
3
4
Borelli
5l/3
8%
14
241
/3
seffii-
Townly by micrometer
5.52
8.78
13.47
24.72
diameters
Cassini by telescope
5
8
13
23
of Jupiter
Cassini by eclipses
5113
9
14~!..
253/m
From the periodic times
5.667
9.017
14.384
25.299
From Explan. Suppl.
5.903
9.386
14.967
26.34
-.236
-.369
-.583
-1.041
Mean distances
From the observations of:
Differences in last two rows
In addition to the data in the table, Newton cites observations by
Pound, carried out in 1719 and 1720, using a 123-foot focal-length telescope,
the lens for which had been presented by Christiaan Huygens's brother
�81
HARPER
I
i"
'
l
'
..
Fig. 1.
Reprinted with permission from King, H.C. 1be History of the Telescope, (New York: Dover, 1979)
Constantin to the Royal Society a number of years before. Newton paid to
have erected a huge maypole in Wanstead Park; the lens was attached at the
top of the maypole, and the micrometer was fixed separately near the
ground. The lens was apparently controlled by wires (see Figure 1). Pound's
data are much more precise than the data given in the above table, as the
comparison shows. Of the earlier data, Cassini's data from eclipses are the
most precise.
Mean distances in
semidiameters
1
2
3
4
From Pound's data
5.965
9.494
15.141
26.63
From Explan. Suppl.
5.903
9.386
14.967
26.34
.062
.108
.174
.29
Differences
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Now I want to look at the fit of the harmonic law to the data. Newton
compares them by just computing distances from the periods, using the
harmonic law. For that he uses a certain constant for the R3/P 2 value; it's the
one that he takes from Cassini's or Townly's estimate for Io, the first satellite.
Suppose, instead, we compute the standard deviation of the values of R3/P'
for the four satellites; this is given by
(J
-~~')
,
where L(x') is the sum of the squares of the deviations of the four values of
R3/P 2 from their mean value, and N is the number of items, 4 in our case. The
standard deviation for the average of the Borelli-Townly-Cassini values is
.079, that for the Pound data is .0003.
Another way to show how the harmonic law fits the data is to plot the
logarithm of the period against the logarithm of the distance measured in
semi-diameters of Jupiter. To have the periods be given by some power-law
of the distance is to have there be a straight line that fits the data when one
log is plotted against the other. To have the law be the three-halves power is
to have the slope of that line be 1.5 (see Figure 2). The first line, to the left,
has slope 1.5. Solid squares stand for Borelli's values, triangles for Townly's
values, diamonds for Cassini's values obtained with eclipses, stars for
Cassini's values obtained with the telescope, hollow squares for Pound's
values. You can see that even the earlier, cruder data in Newton's table fit
the harmonic law very well. In the case of Pound's values, the line with
slope 1.5 is just a line connecting his data-points; and you cannot see that it
is not straight. Also, note how close it is to the three-halves power law.
3.0
2.5
Slope 1.5
2.0
•
,,
Borelli
•
f
~
Townley
Cassin! E
Cassin! T
LO
-e-
Pound
~
0.5
'5
3.0
35
3.0
Fig. 2.
3.5
Log (Distance) (r I Rj}
�83
HARPER
So the empirical support for the harmonic law in the case of Jupiter's
moons was very strong in Newton's day. And the investigation that Newton
got Pound to do improved the precision considerably.
Prop. 2 parallels Prop. 1, but concerns the primary planets.
Proposition 2
The forces by which the primary planets are continually drawn away
from rectilinear motions and are maintained in their respective orbits are
directed to the Sun and are inversely as the squares of their distances
from its center.
The first part of the proposition is evident from Phen. 5 and from Prop. 2
of Book I, and the latter part from Phen. 4 and from Prop. 4 of the same
book. But this second part of the proposition is proved with the greatest
exactness from the fact that the aphelia are at rest. For the slightest
departure from the ratio of the square would (by Book I, Prop. 45, Coral.
1) necessarily result in a noticeable motion of the apsides in a single
revolution and an immense such motion in many revolutions.
Phen. 5 reads as follows:
The primary planets, by radii drawn to the Earth, describe areas in no
way proportional to the times but, by radii drawn to the Sun, traverse
areas proportional to the times.
There is a famous diagram that illustrates this wonderfully; it is from
Kepler's Astronomia Nova (see Figure 3). 1bis gives an Earth-centered view
of the motion of Mars starting in 1580 and ending in 1596. With respect to
the Earth, Mars's motion is sometimes progressive, sometimes ceases
altogether (is stationary), sometimes retrograding: it is not close to the area
law. But with respect to the Sun, the area law is very closely approximated.
Newton provides a separate phenomenon stating that the orbits of the
primary planets-here he does not include the Earth-encircle the Sun.
Phen. 3
The orbits of the five primary
and Saturn-encircle the Sun.
planets~Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
This phenomenon does not beg the question berween the Tychonic
and Copernican systems; it is compatible with either.
Here is Phen. 4:
The periodic times of the five primary planets and of either the Sun
around the Earth or the Earth around the Sun~the fixed stars being at
rest~are as the 3/2 power of their mean distances from the Sun.
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TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Let me go directly to the graph, plotting log [periods] against log
[distances] (see Figure 4). Here I am using as unit for the periods the period
that Newton cites for the Eatth, and as distance-unit the distance from the
Eatth to the Sun. In the graph the Earth appears exactly at the origin. You
again see a very nice straight line; we've got data from Kepler and data from
Boulliau.
But we do have a problem with the application of the harmonic law to
the planets: the proof that the inverse-square law follows from the harmonic
law is carried out for concentric circular orbits. For Jupiter's moons, the best
data at the time did not show any departure from uniform motion on
concentric circles. But for the planets there were appreciable eccentricities,
already known. Many commentators have suggested that there is a real
difficulty here: how do you apply a theorem that holds for circular orbits to
the non-circular orbits of the planets?
Fig. 3. This is the accurate depiction of the motions of the star Mars, which it
traversed from the year 1580 until 1596, on the assumption that the earth
stands still, as Ptolemy and Brahe would have it.
Reprinted with permission from Johannes Kepler, New Astronomy (Cambridge University Press,
9 )
�HARPER
85
4
i
"'
'8
3
--Stope 1.5
-~
!0.
a
D Kepler
2
0
~
t Boulliau
-1
2
3
Log (Distance) (AU)
-1
-2
Fig. 4.
The result for circular orbits, however, goes over directly into a result
for elliptical orbits. Figure 5 is derived from a diagram in Newton's De Motu
of November 1684; it shows an elliptical orbit, and a circular orbit with the
same center of force, and a radius equal to the semimajor axis of the ellipse.
Fig. 5.
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
At the point P the force maintaining the body in the circular orbit is identical
with the force maintaining the body in the elliptical orbit. The period in any
elliptical orbit having that same focus as center of force and having the same
semimajor axis will be equal to the period of the body moving in the circle.'
So the periods in the ellipse and the circle are the same.
Prop. 11 of Book I shows that the power law for the force that is
directed towards a focus of an elliptical orbit and maintains a body in that
orbit must be inverse-square. This result, however, is compatible with a
system of elliptical orbits about a common focus, where, even though for
each orbit, the force is inverse-square over the distances tested by this orbit,
yet the centripetal forces for the different orbits are not related to one
another inversely as the squares of the distances. Suppose that the periods
for those several elliptical orbits are as some power n of the semimajor axes.
This is equivalent to having the periods in the corresponding concentric
circular orbits as the power n of their radii (see Figure 6). Then we can apply
Coral. 7 of Prop. 4 Book 1: the centripetal forces maintaining bodies in those
corresponding concentric circular orbits will be as the 1-2n power of their
radii. But this, again, is equivalent to having the values of the forces at the
Fig. 6. A circle and corresponding ellipses of eccentricities .2, .4, .6, and .8,
respectively. Given the same inverse-square acceleration field, the periods of all these
elliptical orbits will be the same as the period of the circular orbit having its radius
equal to the common semi-major axes of the ellipses.
�HARPER
87
semi-major axis distances be as the 1-2n power of those semimajor axes.
Thus Carol. 7 of Prop. 4 carries over directly from circles to ellipses, however
eccentric they are.
The second proof of the second part of Prop. 2 of Book III appeals to
the precession theorem, Prop. 45 of Book I. What is orbital precession? If the
planet returns to aphelion after precisely 360° of motion, there is no orbital
precession. But if it returns to aphelion after moving through (360 + pY, that
would be to have p 0 of forward precession in an orbit. Carol. 1 of Prop. 45
of Book I tells us that if the centripetal force is as any power of the radius,
that power can be found from the motion of the apsides, and conversely. If
the whole angular motion with which the body returns to aphelion is to the
angular motion of one revolution, or 360°, as m to n, the force will be as the
power [(n'/m') - 3] of the radius. Now if you have a stable orbit with no
precession, p - 0 and n!m - 1, and that gives exactly the (-2) power. If you
have forward precession, p > 0 and n/m < 1, so that the exponent in the
power law is less than -2, and the centripetal force is falling off faster than an
inverse-square force. If you have backward precession, p < 0 and n!m > 1,
so that the exponent in the power law is greater than -2, and the centripetal
force is falling off more slowly than an inverse-square force. These relations
are summarized in Chart II.
Chart II
Corol. I, Prop. 45 of Book 1: Zero orbital precession measures inverse-square law for
distances explored by orbit. Precission p is expressed in degrees per revolution, x is
equal to 36° - 3. The sketch show positive precession, that is having the same
36O+p
direction as the orbital motion
~
Precession is p degrees
p > 0
p
0
p < 0
iff
iff
iff
iff
Power law is f~, oc Rx
X < -2
-2
X
X > -2
i
Newton proves this result for orbits with negligible eccentricity, but it can be
extended to orbits of arbitrary eccentricity. 2
So again we have systematic dependencies: absence of precession
carries the information that the force toward the central body is inversesquare. As Newton puts it in The System of the World, his earlier version of
Book III of the Principia,
�88
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But now, after innumerable revolutions, hardly any such motions have
been perceived in the orbits of the circumsolar planets. Some
astronomers affirm there is no such motion [e.g. Streete]; others reckon it
no greater than what may easily arise from causes hereafter to be
assigned, which is of no moment in the present question.
If you can account for all of the precession by perturbation (Newton
did not know how to do that), then for any planet for which this can be
done, the zero leftover precession measures inverse-square variation of the
centripetal force. The only planet for which such an outcome has failed has
been Mercury. In 1859 Le Verrier found that some 38 arcseconds per century
of the precession of Mercury's apse could not be accounted for on the basis
of Newton's inverse-square law, and in 1882 Simon Newcomb revised this
estimate upward to 43 arcseconds per century. The unaccounted for 43" per
century of precession would measure a -2.00000016 for the exponent of the
force.
We now turn to the Moon. Prop.3 of Book III reads:
The force by which the Moon is maintained in its orbit is directed toward
the Earth and is inversely as the square of the distances of its places from
the center of the Earth.
On average there is about 3°3' of precession per revolution. Thus, the
inference in Prop. 3 is made somewhat problematic by the known orbital
precession. Newton says that it can be neglected since it is caused by the
action of the Sun. We know that he never actually succeeded in showing that
the whole 3°3' of forward precession resulted from solar perturbation; it was
first demonstrated by Clairaut in a work published in 1752.
Newton uses the Moon-test (Prop. 4) not just to identify the force that
maintains the Moon in its orbit with terrestrial gravity, but as additional
evidence for the inverse-square proposition (Prop. 3). In the Moon-test he is
comparing two phenomena. The first of these is the length of a seconds
pendulum at the surface of the Earth as determined by Huygens in Paris.
From this value, Huygens showed that you could derive a value for the
distance fallen by a body in one second. Huygens's determination of this
distance was so stable over repetitions that his measured value for the onesecond-fall at Paris of 15.096 Paris feet could be trusted to about ±.01 Paris
feet. (The Paris foot, we note, is somewhat bigger than our English foot.)
The second phenomenon is the value of the Moon's centripetal
acceleration, calculated for the distance R of the Moon from the Earth's
center. Here Newton introduces a correction for the action of the Sun on the
Moon; the centripetal component of this action is on average subtractive
from the acceleration due to the Earth's action. Newton takes the subtractive
�HARPER
89
component to be 1/178.725 of the Earth's centripetal attraction, just enough
to cause the precession of 3°3' per revolution, in accordance with Carol. 2 of
Prop.45. In fact, as Newton knew, the centripetal component of the Sun's
action is only half as great as this.
If we take Newton's several estimates for the Moon's distance, and
introduce the correction, then, assuming the inverse-square law, we get an
incredible agreement with Huygens's value for the one-second distance of
fall at the Earth's surface. I want to claim that the outcome does not depend
on Newton's correction. If we do not apply that correction, and use all six of
Newton's cited lunar distances (59, 60, 60, 60 •;,, 60 '/,, 60 1 together with
h),
his cited circumference of the Earth (123,249,600 Paris feet) and lunar period
(39,343 seconds), we find
15.041 ± .429 Paris feet
as the measured value of the one-second fall at the surface of the Earth
corresponding to the centripetal acceleration in th<j lunar orbit. The
Huygens's value is well within these error bounds.
Thus the crude data for distances, yielding values for the Moon's
acceleration toward the Earth, back up Huygens's measurement of the
acceleration of gravity. They do this not by improving the precision of
Huygens's measurement, but by showing that big deviations from Huygens's
result are more improbable than they would be on Huygens's data alone.
The agreement in these measurements is an example of a kind of empirical
success that comes from having agreeing measurements of the same
parameter from two separate phenomena. The data from the two
phenomena reinforce each other, and increase what we might call the
resilience of the measurement, its resistance to large deviations.
Newton now appeals to his first two rules of philosophizing to infer
that the force maintaining the Moon in its orbit is terrestrial gravity.
According to Rule 1,
No more causes of natural things should be admitted than are both true
and sufficient to explain their phenomena.
And according to Rule 2,
Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must
be, so far as possible, the same.
Newton's conclusion is then:
And therefore the force by which the Moon is kept in its orbit, in
descending from the Moon's orbit to the surface of the Earth, comes out
equal to the force of gravity here on Earth, and so (by Rule 1 and Rule 2)
is that very force which we generally call gravity.
�90
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
I want to claim that this application of these rules is not an appeal to a
general commitment to simplicity. The application is a very particular kind of
simplicity: two phenomena count as agreeing measurements of the same
parameter. And that result exhibits a kind of empirical success: the theory is
succeeding empirically by having its parameters be accurately measured by
the phenomena it purports to explain.
I now turn to Prop. 5:
The circumjovial planets [or moons of Jupiter] gravitate toward Jupiter,
the circumsaturnian planets [or satellites of Saturn] gravitate toward
Saturn, and the circumsolar [or primary] planets gravitate toward the Sun,
and by the force of their gravity they are always drawn back from
rectilinear motions and kept in curvilinear orbits.
Thus, according to Newton, the inverse-square centripetal forces directed to
Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun are, all of them, gravitation. He goes on to
extend this result to the planets that do not have satellites,
for, doubtless, Venus, Mercury, and the rest, are bodies of the same sort
with Jupiter and Saturn.
The following scholium is offered in support of this generalization:
Scholium. Hitherto we have called "centripetal" that force by which
celestial bodies are kept in their orbits. It is now established that this
force is gravity, and therefore we shall call it gravity from now on. For
the cause of the centripetal force by which the Moon is kept in its orbit
ought to be extended to all planets, by Rules 1, 2, and 4.
Here is Rule 4:
In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by
induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true
notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena
make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.
This rule should be followed so that arguments based on induction may
not be nullified by hypotheses.
To understand this rule we need to know what is the difference between a
legitimate rival and a mere hypothesis that can be dismissed and should
carry no weight. I want to suggest that a mere hypothesis is an alternative
proposal that does not realize the ideal of empirical success sufficiently to
count as a serious rival, where the ideal of empirical success is accurate
measurement of the parameters of the theory by the phenomena that the
theory explains.
�HARPER
91
Finally, I want to illustrate this ideal of empirical success at work in the
case of Prop. 6, which reads:
All bodies gravitate toward each of the planets, and at any given distance
from the center of any planet the weight of any body whatever toward
that planet is proportional to the quantity of matter which the body
contains.
Let Q - f/m be the ratio of the gravitational force on a body to its
inertial mass, so that the acceleration will be equal to Q. The question is
whether, at a given distance from the center of a planet, Q is the same for all
bodies.
The first thing we have here is the pendulum experiment, to
demonstrate the proportionality of mass to weight in terrestrial bodies. For
pairs of samples of nine different materials, used as the equal-weighted bobs
of equal-length pendulums, Newton claims to find the periods equal to a
precision of .001. The equality of the periods counts as a phenomenon
measuring the equality of the ratio of weight to mass for laboratory-sized
bodies near the surface of the Earth to a precision of .001.
Next we have the Moon-test, which argues that-the Moon's acceleration
toward the Earth is such that, if the Moon were brought down to the surface
of the Earth, it would (by the inverse-square law) have the same acceleration
as other terrestrial bodies. Consider Huygens's pendulum measurement as
giving a value Q 0 , and take differences /!, from that. The six estimates of the
Moon's distances used in the third edition yield a bound on /!,of .03.
If we turn to the harmonic law for Jupiter's moons, and use the inversesquare law to adjust their accelerations to the distance of one of the moons
from Jupiter's center, from the data in the table we get about the same
bound on /!,(namely .03). If we use Pound's data, the bound is enormously
· more precise.
From the harmonic law for the primary planets, adjusting all the
accelerations to the Earth-Sun distance, we find a bound on /!,of .004.
Newton then cites bounds on the polarizations of the orbits of Jupiter's
moons. If the Sun's gravitational force on a moon of Jupiter has to that
moon's mass a ratio different from the corresponding ratio for Jupiter, then
the orbit of that moon will be polarized either away from or toward the Sun.
Newton claims to limit A in this case by a calculation which he does not
describe for us; no one has found the actual details of his calculation. The
numbers here are due to Kenneth Nordved~ who showed that the correct
results go in the opposite direction from Newton's results, and are
considerably less sensitive than Newton claimed.' Applying Nordvedt's
calculation to the tolerances for distance estimates exhibited by the data in
�92
1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Newton's table we get a bound on 11 of .034; applying tolerances estimated
from comparing Pound's data with distances from the Explanatory Supplement
we get a bound of .004. We could do the same with Saturn's moons.
Our moon is a great example to use for this. Laplace, it turns out,
carried out a calculation in 1825 to limit 11 to a few parts in 10·'; his
calculation has recently 0997) been defended by Damour, a present-day
celestial mechanician. And today we can determine the Moon's distance by
lunar laser-ranging; by this method Dickey et al. have shown that 11 is less
than (2±5)x1Q-". Thus the results obtained from celestial objects are now in
the same ball park as, or even slightly better than the Moscow experiment,
which is the best result achieved by using torsion balances on laboratorysized objects. So you can see that the calculations on astronomical bodies
and the experiments on terrestrial bodies are going in lockstep, pinning
down what we call the weak equivalence principle.
Chart III (see next page) summarizes the chief results obtained for 11
from Newton onward. As before let Q - f/m. For any given center c toward
which any given bodies 1 and 2 gravitate, let 11(c,1,2) - Q1 - Q2, where the
fs involved in the g·s are inverse-square adjusted to the same distance from
c. Following Newton's third rule of philosophizing, we can interpret the
phenomena listed in Chart III as agreeing measurements bounding toward
zero a single universal parameter A representing differences between ratios
of passive gravitational to inertial mass that would be exhibited by any
bodies at any similar space-time locations.
All these phenomena count as agreeing measurements bounding
toward zero a single general parameter representing differences between
bodies of the ratios of their inertial masses to their weights (inverse-squareadjusted if necessary) toward planets.
In Coral. 2 to Prop. 6 Newton generates his last rule of reasoning, a
rule that is directed precisely at this kind of investigation and this kind of
empirical success. Coral. 2 reads:
All bodies universally that are on or near the Earth are heavy (or
gravitate) toward the Earth, and the weights of all bodies that are equally
distant from the center of the Earth are as the quantities of matter in
them. This is a quality of all bodies on which experiments can be
performed and therefore by Rule 3 is to be affirmed of all bodies
universally.
So all bodies, however far from the Earth, are gravitating toward it with
weight proportional to their masses. And here is Rule 3:
Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended and remitted [that is,
qualities that cannot be increased and diminished] and that belong to all
�HARPER
93
bodies on which experiments can be made should be taken as qualities
of all bodies universally.
Rule 3 is explicitly applied to the terrestrial case, but it also applies more
generally to the constraints on A. Thus an ideal of empirical success of a
certain kind-agreeing accurate measurements of parameter values from
phenomena-is the centerpiece of the methodology that Newton's work
started. And it still guides science today-guides gravitation-theory
experiments that are testing General Relativity.
Chart III: Constraints on A
1. Pendulum
experiments
Newton 0685)
Bessel 0827)'
Eotvos 0922)'
Moscow 0972)'
I!.<
lQ·!l.
I!.<
.03
Newton"'"'
I!.<
Pound
A<
.03
.0007
I!.<
.004
I!.<
.034
.004
2. Moon test
3. Harmonic Law
1
Qupiter s moons)
4. Harmonic Law
(primaty planets)
5. Bounds on
Polarization
of satellite orbits
I!.< .001
A< 2 X }Q·S
I!.< 2 X 10-9
Jupiter's moons
Newton*"
Pound
A<
Our moon
Laplace 0825)"
Lunar laser ranging 0994)"'"'"'
0.54 X 10·'
/!.< (25) X 10"
A<
~wm, C.M., Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2d revised edition, 1993), 27
•• Isaac Newton, Pbi/osopbie Natura/is Principia Matbematica, Phenomenon I, Book Ill.
...Damour, T. And Vokrouhlicky, D., "Equivalence principle and the Moon," Pbys. Rev. D, vol.S3,
no.8, 1996, 4198-4199
.... Dickey et al., "Lunar Laser Ranging: A Continuing Legacy of the Apollo Program," Science,
vol.265, 1994, 485.
Notes
1.]. Bruce Brackenridge, Tbe Key to Newton's Dynamics (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995) 119-23
2. Valluri, Wilson, Harper, journal for the History of Astronomy, 27 0997), 13-27.
3. Kenneth Nordvedt, "Testing Relativity with Laser Ranging to the Moon," Physical
Review 170 0968), 1186.
�94
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Cause and Hypothesis:
Newton's Speculation About the Cause
of Universal Gravitation
Dana Densmore
Introduction
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) demonstrates in Principia' that gravity operates
on and between all bodies, terrestrial and celestial. The gravitational force is
found to be directly proportional to the quantity of matter in what we might
call the "attracting" body and directly proportional to the quantity of matter
in what we might call the "attracted" body, as well as inversely as the square
of the distance between the bodies. Furthermore, when one body "attracts"
another, the geometrical center of force is found to be at the center of mass
of the "attracting" body (assuming spherical bodies). Finally, Newton shows
that every particle of one body "attracts" every particle of every other body.
These are the elements of universal gravitation.
These characteristics of the phenomenon, and the fact that Newton is
no more able than we to avoid speaking of "attraction," suggest that the
power of gravitation lies in the bodies themselves, that it is an innate.quality
of matter. Thus, when two bodies "attract each other," that is, are impelled
each toward the other, as Newton shows they are, it seems to be a mutual
action of particle upon particle.
Newton says he would would like to keep any assumptions of cause
out of Principia. But he must repeatedly apologize for using the language of
gravity-as-an-innate-property-of-matter, and repeatedly warn the reader that
he means no such assumption. And, indeed, one can hardly imagine how we
could speak about the behavior of bodies and their motions and the forces
acting on them without using the language of some mechanism.
Dana Densmore, a graduate of St. John's College, is a scholar and author of Newton's Principia,
Tbe Central AJ8ument. She is Chief Editor at Green LiOO Press.
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But does he manage to keep the question open when it comes to the
actual demonstrations? As he develops his crucial propositions showing the
properties of universal gravitation in Book III, can we continue to keep the
open mind he advocates, or must we at some point abandon that bit of
principled naivete and settle on one particular hypothesis?
I'm going to invite you to think through with me whether Newton does
leave all these options open in his demonstrations by looking at the
culminating, or at least penultimate, proposition in the sequence that derives
what we now call universal gravitation. But first let's look more closely at
what range of mechanisms he seems to be allowing for, and also at what his
own speculations might have been.
Hypotheses on the Cause of Gravity
Tbe Range of Mechanisms Newton Mentions. What are the hypothetical
mechanisms Newton claims to keep open?
In the General Scholium which ends Principia (added in the Second
Edition, in 1713), Newton states that he does not "contrive hypotheses" about
the cause of gravity. By "contriving hypotheses" Newton means making up
something without a basis in the observed phenomena.
The reason for these properties of gravity, however, I have not yet been
able to deduce from the phenomena, and I do not contrive hypotheses.
(764)
We may infer from this that Newton found nothing in the phenomena
which suggested to him the mechanism of the operation of gravity; we can
infer that, could he have found such evidence, he would have put it forward
and built upon it.
In the Scholium following Book I Proposition 69, he spells out what
one may understand when he says "attraction":
By these propositions we are led by the hand to an analogy between
centripetal forces and the central bodies towards which those forces are
apt to be directed. For it is in conformity with reason that the forces
which are directed towards the bodies depend upon the nature and
magnitude of the same bodies, as it is in magnetic bodies. And whenever
instances of this sort occur, the attractions of the bodies are to be
estimated by assigning the appropriate forces to their individual particles
and gathering together the sums of the forces. (298)
This is a critical place: he has just demonstrated the proposition which
introduces the effect that the mass of the central body has on the quantity of
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centripetal force. But lest we get the wrong idea about the word "attraction,"
which, in addition to his use just above in this Scholium, he has used
repeatedly in the proposition, he immediately continues:
The word "attraction" I here use generally for any attempt whatever of
bodies to approach one another, whether that attempt arise from the
action of the bodies (whether mutually seeking one another or of setting
each other in motion by emitted spirits), or whether it arises from the
action of the aether, or of air, or of any medium whatsoever (corporeal
or incorporeal) in any way pushing bodies floating in it towards each
other. (298)
We are being told, and not for the first time, to keep our minds open to
encompass all of these possibilities whenever Newton speaks about
attraction, or, as he is often careful enough to put it, when a body is
impelled toward another body or toward a center of force or forces. In the
commentary after Definition VIII, for example, he says:
I use the words "attraction," "impulse," or [words denoting] any tendency
whatever towards a center, indifferently and promiscuously for each
other, in considering these forces, not physically, but only
mathematically. Therefore the reader should beware of thinking that
through words of this kind I am anywhere defining a form or manner of
action, or a cause or a physical account, or that I am truly and physically
attributing forces to the centers (which are mathematical points), if
perchance I should say either that the centers attract, or that the forces
belong to the centers. ( 46)
He says that he is speaking of the centers and forces mathematically,
and the mechanisms behind them may be whatever they happen to be. The
forces may belong to the centers, or they niay belong to some other agency;
he does not define the form or manner of the action.
Here Newton gives us a range of mechanisms. The tendency of bodies
to approach each other may come from the actions of the bodies themselves.
This could be some innate property of matter that operates directly on other
matter as they mutually seek each other. We might call this category where
the tendency to approach comes from the action of the bodies themselves
the "occult power of matter," since some hidden virtue of the bodies is
operating. In this case the bodies are operating on each other at a distance.
It could also be, according to Newton in this Scholium, matter
operating on other matter indirectly, for example setting each other in
motion by emitted spirits. Here, a power of matter is operating indirectly
through physical, quasi-physical, or incorporeal agents.
Or perhaps the action does not originate in the matter but outside it. It
might be pushes from behind. One could imagine gremlins there pushing or,
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with Newton, pushes from particles of the medium in which both bodies
move. This medium also, Newton says, could be either corporeal or
incorporeaL
Newton's Own Speculations About the Cause of Gravity Before and Around
the Time of the First Publication of Principia. Let's look into Newton's
indications of his own ideas about the cause of gravity. This could be our
best evidence about what he was thinking when he wrote both the
disclaimers about cause which we find in Principia, and the proofs which do
or don't make assumptions about cause.
We find two interesting things. First, Newton repeatedly put forward
hypotheses that fell squarely into the mechanism of impulsion by direct
contact, including one offered not long before the publication of Principia
And second, he claimed to be adamantly opposed to any supposition of
physical action at a distance.
Newton's writings before Principia show his attempts to explain gravity
by the collision of material particles.
His student notebook from the 1660s shows a thoroughgoing
mechanistic philosophy following Descartes and Boyle. Every action can be
understood as motions of matter, of a matter which fills space. A material
aether provided the explanation for all apparent actions at a distance. His
explanation of gravity from around 1664 consisted of a descending wind of
aether particles flowing into the earth and pushing heavy bodies down
with it.
The matter causing gravity must pass through all the pores of a body ...
For it must descend very fa~t and swift as appears by the falling of bodies
and the great pressure toward the Earth . . . The stream descending will
grow thicker as it comes nearer the earth .... 2
In 1675 Newton sketched out another aether theory of gravitation, in
"Hypothesis on Light," a document transmitted to Henry Oldenburg for the
Royal Society of London. The mechanical action of the aether is basically the
same: a wind of the aether particles drives the heavy bodies down.
For if such an aetheriall Spirit may be condensed in fermenting or
burning bodies, the vast body of the Earth, wch may be every where to
the very center in perpetuall working, may continually condense so much
of this Spirit as to cause it .from above to descend with great celerity for a
supply. In wch descent it may beare downe with it the bodyes it
pervades with force proportionall to the superficies of all their parts it
acts upon .... 3
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In a letter to Robert Boyle three years later, Newton speculates on the
cause of gravity. The mechanism has changed, but it is still entirely material
and mechanical: now, instead of the pressure of a downward flow of aether
particles, he pictures a pressure arising from a density gradient and a
transition from finer to grosser particles.
And, first, I suppose that there is diffused through all space an aethereal
substance, capable of contraction and dilation, strongly elastic; and, in a
word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtle ... When two
bodies, moving toward one another, come nearer together, I suppose the
aether between them to grow rarer than before ....
I shall set down one conjecture more ... it is about the cause of gravity.
For this end I will suppose aether to consist of parts differing from one
another in subtility by indefinite degrees: that in the pores of bodies,
there is less of the grosser aether in proportion to the finer, than in open
spaces; and consequently, that in the great body of the earth there is
much less of the grosser aether, in proportion to the finer, than in the
regions of the air and that ... from the top of the air to the surface of the
earth, and again from the surface of the earth to the centre thereof, the
aether is insensibly finer and finer. Imagine, now, any body suspended in
the air, or lying on the earth; and the aether being, by the hypothesis,
grosser in the pores which are in the upper parts of the body, than in
those which are in the lower parts; and that grosser aether, being less apt
to be lodged in those pores, than the finer aether below; it will
endeavour to get out, and give way to the finer aether below, which
cannot be, without the bodies descending to make room above for it to
go out into. 4
This speculation was written eight years before the publication of Principia.
We may draw this conclusion from these proposed theories. Before
writing Principia, at least at some time before, Newton himself looked to a
mechanical explanation as being the natural and plausible and scientific one.
The material impact mechanism is thus one that must be taken seriously
among the options, one that he would want to leave open. However, he
seems to mean Principia to be more general, allowing for these hypotheses
and others as welL
Our second piece of evidence for Newton's views comes from letters
written to Richard Bentley five years after publication of Principia In these
letters Newton expressed horror that, when the first edition of the book was
published in 1687, some attributed to him the hypothesis that gravity is an
innate property of matter acting at a distance. We saw that he had difficulty
avoiding that language in Principia and often fell into it, albeit usually
followed sometime soon by a disclaimer.
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You sometimes speak of gravity as essential & inherent to matter: pray,
do not ascribe that notion to me; for ye cause of gravity is what I do not
pretend to know, & therefore would take more time to consider of it. 5
'Tis inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter, should (without ye
mediation of something else web is not material) operate upon & affect
other matter without mutual contact; as it must be if gravitation in the
sense of Epicurus be essential & inherent in it. And this is one reason
why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity
should be innate inherent & essential to matter so yet one body may act
upon another at a distance through a vacuum wthout the mediation of
any thing else by and through web their action and force may be
conveyed from one to another is to me so great an absurdity that I
believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of
thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting
constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material
or immaterial I have left to ye consideration of my readers. 6
Newton here asserts that there must be some agent acting directly on
the attracted body; he seems willing to leave open the possibility of that
agent being incorporeal; but he says that the action at a distance of a
gravitational power innate in the attracting body strikes him as absurd.
One result of this statement of his view for our understanding of
Principia is to warn us away from jumping to the conclusion that innateforce-action-at-a-distance was his secret opinion, a covert hypothesis, and
that his protestations about keeping the question open were mere rhetorical
smokescreen, falsely pretending an open-mindedness he did not in fact bring
to the work.
But perhaps he did want to leave that option open as well. His many
disclaimers in Principia about meaning by attraction whatever impels bodies
together suggest that he intends a completely general demonstration.
Now we're ready to look at Newton's development of universal
gravitation and see whether he really was able to carry it all the way through
without resorting to any hypotheses about cause, explicit or implicit.
Development of the Principle of Universal Gravitation
The first part of this job was done by William Harper (see the preceding
essay). He wasn't looking particularly at this matter of the mechanisms, but
in fact, through those propositions, through Proposition 6 of Book III, there
was no step that eliminated any of the mechanisms or assumed any. I am
satisfied with that, and probably for each of you to be satisfied with that you
would want to yourself work through those propositions with this questions
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in mind. I am going to start with Proposition 7, which is where things get
interesting in terms of looking at whether he assumed any mechanisms.
Proposition III.? asserts:
That gravity is given in bodies universally, and is proportional to the
quantity of matter in each.
We will look carefully at the steps of this proof.
III. 7 calls upon Proposition 69 of Book I.
Let's see what 1.69 requires and proves. The proposition postulates a
system of many bodies in which every body "pulls" every other body, but for
the purposes of the proof he is looking at two bodies in particular. So he
says that A attracts all the other bodies and B attracts all the other bodies. He
says "pulls." And the proposition speaks of an "accelerative attraction" of all
bodies toward each body. We are also given that the accelerations produced
by that pulling are inversely as the squares of the distances from the pulling
body. These are all things that we are given. They are hypothetical in the
sense that all the propositions in Books I and II are hypothetical. They are
not grounded in the phenomena of our world. They are part of the
mathematical toolbox that can be used to be applied when we have
phenomena and experimental observations from our world. So we can't
complain about any of these assumptions. They are explicitly assumptions.
What 1.69 proves is that, given these stated conditions, the absolute
forces of the pulling bodies will be to one another as are the bodies
themselves. That is, the forces will vary as the quantity of matter in the
attracting bodies.
III.6 had shown that the motive forces, or weight, varied as the quantity
of matter in the attracted bodies. 1.69 is setting up another dimension for us
by bringing in the quantity of matter in the attracting body.
We have already noted the Scholium following I.69, which goes on at
length in asserting that when Newton says "attraction" he doesn't mean to
suggest a particular mechanism. We want to continue reminding ourselves of
that:
The word "attraction" I here use generally for any attempt whatever of
bodies to approach one another, whether that attempt arise from the
action of the bodies (whether mutually seeking one another or of setting
each other in motion by emitted spirits), or whether it arises from the
action of the aether, or of air, or of any medium whatsoever (corporeal
or incorporeal) in any way pushing bodies floating in it towards each
other. (298)
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Therefore, despite the strong suggestion in the wording of the
proposition that the condition being set up here is one of attraction, one at
least of pulling, if not of full-fledged "occult power of matter," Newton is
claiming to be using this word only for the observed effect of tendency
towards the center of force or forces. (He starts out in Book I talking about
"forces"; in Proposition 1 he was referring to a "center of forces." As he goes
along he drops that plural and starts talking about "center of force," but I
think it's worth keeping in mind that, at least originally, he meant to make it
general enough that it was not necessarily a single force.)
The disclaimer about the mechanisms is not contradicted by the
condition also made explicit in !.69 that the "attractions" appear in some
sense mutual. It is simply given as one condition that A pulls B with an
accelerative force inversely proportional to the square of the distance to B,
and as another condition that B pulls A with an accelerative force inversely
proportional to the square of the distance to A. (The Scholium that
immediately follows makes it clear that "A pulls B" means only that B tends
toward A.)
No mechanism for this pulling is presented, and no claim suggested
that there is a mutuality inherent in the mechanism. We will return to this
difficult question of mutuality very soon, and consider what it is, or rather,
what different things mutuality means to us in different contexts.
For now, we continue carefully stepping through Newton's argument.
Having mentioned 1.69, we must hasten to remind ourselves that 1.69 is a
hypothetical proposition. Before we can use it we must prove that its
conditions hold in our world.
That is the first piece of work in III.7. We must prove that all bodies
attract all other bodies inversely as the square of the distance between them.
Step 1:
That all the planets are mutually heavy towards each other, we have now
already proved ....
The first condition for I.69 is that each body attracts all other bodies.
III.6 established that all planets gravitate towards each other: that is, if we are
to use "attraction" for "any attempt whatever of bodies to approach one
another," III.6 established that each body is attracted to all other bodies. If
each body is attracted to all, the bodies to which it is attracted must be
"attracting," whatever that might mean. Thus all bodies must be "attracting."
If all bodies are attracting, then A attracts B and B attracts A. We have
fulfilled the first condition of I.69.
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Step 2:
... as well as that gravity in any one of them, considered separately, is
inversely as the square of the distance of places from the center of the
planet.
The second condition for invoking !.69 is that these attractions be all
taking place according to an inverse square force law. We got that from
Book III Proposition 1 for Jupiter and Saturn with their respective moons,
from III.2 for the circumsolar planets, and from Ill. 3 for the moon to the
earth.
So putting these things together, we have established that the
accelerative force of gravity towards each one of the planets varies inversely
as the square of the distances from the centers of the "attracting" planets.
Thus we have the required force law for Jupiter in relation to its
moons, Saturn in relation to its moons, the primacy planets in relation to the
sun, and the earth in relation to its moon. By the third Rule of
Philosophizing,
The qualities of bodies ... upon which experiments can be carried out,
are to be taken as qualities of bodies universally.
This reasoning applies equally to the universality of heaviness in bodies
and to the universality of the inverse square force law. Thus we have met the
two conditions of 1.69.
We've gone from what we can observe about Jupiter and Saturn and
the circumsolar planets and what we deduced about the moon (with a little
more difficulty, because there's only one body there), and we're now saying
that it is true of all bodies, or any potential planet that we might have.
Step 3:
And the consequence of this (by Book I Prop. 69 and its corollaries) is
that gravity in all is proportional to the matter in the same bodies.
The first Corollary of !.69 extends the proposition to any number of
bodies. Applying the proposition, we can conclude that gravity tending
towards any planet is proportional to the matter contained by the body at the
center of force.
We still haven't assumed a mechanism, although we must now wonder
how, under the various hypotheses, the size of the central body might affect
the amount by which the "attracted" body is impelled. By some mechanisms,
you might imagine that it wouldn't make a difference. It seems that we might
be learning something about what mechanisms are possible by the fact that
the attracting power is proportional to the quantity of matter there.
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Step 4:
Further, since all the parts of any planet you please A are heavy towards
any planet you please B ....
This is established in III.6. We use this in Step 7.
Step 5:
... and the gravity of any part is to the gravity of the whole as the matter
of the part is to the matter of the whole ....
This is also established in III.6 and is used in Step 8.
Step 6:
... and to every action there is an equal reaction (by the Third Law of
Motion).·...
Assuming that the gravitation of A towards B and B towards A are
mutual actions in the sense of Law 3, "the mutual actions of two bodies upon
each other are always equal and directed to contrary parts" by that law.
This is a crucial step and we will return to it. Here in this step he has
only made a statement of the law, and he has stated it accurately.
Step 7:
... [therefore] the planet B will in turn gravitate towards all the parts of
the planet A ....
Now he's drawn some conclusion from Step 6. Hidden between Step 6
and Step 7, there's something lying in that bracketed [therefore]. We'll have
to return to it, but let's take it provisionally for now.
Step 4 told us that all parts of any planet A will gravitate towards any
other planet B. By Law 3 and Step 6 we conclude that any planet B will
gravitate towards all the parts of planet A.
Step 8:
. and its gravity towards any particular part will be to its gravity
towards the whole as the matter of the part to the matter of the whole.
By Step 5, the gravity of a part of planet A towards any other planet B
is to the gravity of the whole of A towards B as the matter of the part of A is
to the matter of the whole of A.
By Law 3, the gravity of the whole of B toward each of the parts of A is
equal and opposite to the gravity of each part of A towards the whole of B.
Therefore the gravity of B towards any part of A will be to B's gravity
towards the whole of A as the matter of A's part to the matter of A's whole.
That is what was to have been proved.
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We have used Law 3 to go from the quantity of matter in the attracted
body to the quantity of matter in the attracting body. But we did leave an
assumption hidden between Steps 6 and 7 of III. 7 to be looked into more
closely. That assumption was that the gravitation of A towards B and B
towards A are mutual actions in the sense of Law 3. To evaluate the
legitimacy of that assumption, we must look carefully at the Third Law.
Mutuality and Attraction
The Third Law says "That to an action there is always a contrary and equal
reaction; or, that the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are
always equal and directed to contrary parts."
What does this mean? The law speaks about actions which are mutuali
it is these which are equal and directed to contrary parts. So we must look at
what we mean by mutuality.
Furthermore, we need to understand what attraction is, generally and in
the particular case that concerns us here, so as to assess whether this law
may be applied to gravitational attractions.
Mutuality. Let's start with mutuality.
In Book III Newton proves that every body is attracting every other
body (or, more generally expressed, every body is impelled toward every
other body; or, as he also puts it, there is a power of gravity towards every
body). Newton uses the word "mutual" for this situation: "all planets are
mutually heavy towards each other." A is attracted towards B, and B is
attracted towards A. There is a simultaneity, a symmetry, and a kind of
reciprocity.
Let us think what we mean by "mutual." It's important to get clear for
ourselves how we understand this word, in order to be alert to the way we
are interpreting it when we read the wording of proposition III. 7 and of the
third law of motion. Being clear about our common sense understanding of
the word is the first step to clarifying what may be a technical meaning for
Principia.
A series of thought experiments may help here.
I say, "I like you." You say, "The feeling is mutual." You mean, "I hear
that you like me, and it is also the case that I like you, and I recognize that
this means there is a symmetry. We like each other."
When things are mutual, they are reciprocal, but reciprocity can come
after the fact, and it can refer to only one side of the transaction. You do me
a favor, and I then feel an obligation (or a grateful desire) to do you a favor.
When I see an opportunity, I reciprocate and return the favor. The exchange
is then completed and we are mutual benefactors. But there may have been
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a cause and effect relationship. Perhaps I reciprocated because you did me
the favor.
This was not necessarily the case in our first mutual relation, in which I
said I liked you and you pronounced the feeling mutual. Let's assume that
this was not the case in which my liking you stimulates your gratitude or
sense of obligation to reciprocate. I liked you independently of anything you
felt. You similarly liked me not because I liked you, but because something
in your soul moved towards me. The mutual liking was simultaneous and the
one feeling was not caused by the other feeling. The relation is mutual,
reciprocal, simultaneous, symmetrical. But it is not mutual cause-and-effect.
Now let's say that I am attracted by the strawberries in the refrigerator.
As a consequence of this attraction, I move towards the refrigerator. My
moving towards the refrigerator is caused by the strawberries, but not by
anything the strawberries did. They may not even be in the refrigerator;
someone else might have gotten there first. My moving is caused by the
strawberries in the sense that something in my soul yearned towards them
and made me move in what I supposed to be their direction. This case is
clearly not mutual. The strawberries feel no inclination to move towards me;
in fact, should they be imagined to have any inclination, it would probably
be against being eaten.
But now suppose my husband and I see each other across the placita.
We each feel attracted to the other. We move towards each other as a
consequence of the attraction each feels inwardly. Nothing the other does
causes this movement; it is caused by our own inner inclinations. If one
paused, the other might still move under the influence of the attraction
which sprang up in his or her soul. But suppose neither pauses; we meet in
the middle. In common language, this is a mutual attraction and the coming
together is a mutual action.
Now suppose two billiard balls on a table are tapped by two agents
with sticks such that the balls approach each other in the middle of the table
and meet. Ball A has been impelled towards ball B, and ball B towards ball
A. The cause of the approach of one was different from the cause of the
approach of the other, and the motion of one did not cause the motion of
the other. But they approach each other in a simultaneous, symmetrical way.
In common language, we would say that they mutually approached.
Attraction. Now let's look more closely at what we mean by the word
"attraction."
We have seen that in Principia Newton stretches the term to cover any
tendency whatever of one body to move towards another. This of course is a
technical meaning which requires our constant attention to keep stretched.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Once we slacken the tension on the term, it snaps back to cover a much
smaller area. Let's look at its coverage in its relaxed state, that is, how we
mean the term in comrilon language.
Attraction is most comfortably understood in relation to besouled
entities. Its original sense is that of a movement of the soul towards
something the soul sees as good. We may be attracted to another soul, or to
a material thing, or to an idea. Any of those things can move us, that is,
cause a motion in our soul, and that motion in the soul may result in some
other motion, as when I move to the refrigerator because of the attraction I
feel for the strawberries.
It is rather by analogy that we speak of attraction among inanimate
things (such as "inanimate brute matter"). We see that the sttawberries seem
to attract with no mechanical mediation. By analogy, when we see no
mediating cause, we use the term attraction. So when the horse pulls a stone
using a rope, we don't call that attraction, we call it pulling. But if the horse
just stood there, and the stone approached, we might say the horse had
attracted the stone. Of course, we don't see that, but we do see iron filings
moving toward a loadstone with no visible means of pulling, and we call that
attraction.
Aristotle did not consider stones besouled, but by analogy with the
workings of souls, he said that stones had within themselves a tendency to
seek the center of the earth. They are not animate, and yet in a certain sense
they have a goal, and are heavy until they reach that goal. [They are active in
the sense of energein and not prattein; see Physics 255a28-30.l
Similarly, we can speak of attraction in the narrower sense as a possible
cause of gravity in Principia. In this narrower sense, it is a tendency of the
bodies, whether possessing souls or not (and I believe Newton did not think
of them as possessing souls, but that may be something for further
consideration), to seek to move towards other bodies, without being pushed
or pulled by a material mechanical mediating agent. This is the mechanism I
earlier called "occult power of matter."
Third Law of Motion. So let's now look at the 1bird Law of Motion and see
what it might mean in connection with attractions.
Law3
That to an action there is always a contrary and equal reaction; or, that
the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and
directed to contrary parts.
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Commentary:
Whatever pushes or pulls something else is pushed or pulled by it to the
same degree. If one pushes a stone with a finger, his finger is also
pushed by the stone. If a horse pulls a stone tied to a rope, the horse will
also be equally pulled (so to speak) to the stone; for the rope, being
stretched in both directions, will by the same attempt to slacken itself
urge the horse towards the stone, and the stone towards the horse, and
will impede the progress of the one to the same degree that it promotes
the progress of the other. If some body, striking upon another body,
should change the latter's motion in any way by its own force, the same
body (because of the equality of the mutual pushing) will also in turn
undergo the same change in its own motion, in the contrary direction, by
the force of the other. These actions produce equal changes, not of
velocities, but of motions-that is, in bodies that are unhindered in any
other way. For changes in velocities made thus in opposite directions, are
inversely proportional to the bodies, because the motions are equally
changed. This law applies to attractions as well, as will be proven in the
next Scholium. (55-56)
This last sentence is the one we need to be concerned about. It was
added in the second edition.
The Third Law has two parts. The first is that every action has an equal
and opposite reaction. The second is that in all mutual actions of two bodies,
the two actions will be equal and directed to contrary parts.
One might think that the second is merely a restatement of the first, but
it will help to recognize them as independent. The first part applies to every
action. The second speaks about particular pairs of actions.
First, every physical action has an equal and opposite reaction. If I
walk, I push backwards against the earth, and as much motion as I gain
forward the earth gains backwards. "Motion," or Newton's "action" (motus)
is defined in Definition 2. "The quantity of motion is the measure of the
same, arising from the velocity and the quantity of matter conjointly."
Therefore my small mass gets a noticeable velocity forward, while the great
mass of the earth gets an imperceptible velocity backwards. These opposite
directions are the "contrary parts."
Or suppose we are walking not on the earth but on a small boat whose
bow we have just rowed up to the dock. As we walk to the bow of the boat,
the boat moves back away from the dock. In the water with a friend and a
rope, we see that when we pull on the rope, our friend starts moving
towards us, but we also start moving towards the friend. Not only are these
examples consistent with our experience, but in addition we can understand
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
them mechanically. The Third Law seems true, at least for actions which
involve mutual contact.
And we notice right away that in the Law's statement and in the bulk of
its commentary, all the descriptions and examples do involve mutual contact.
It is only the last sentence that suggests anything other than pushes and
pulls. We will come back to consideration of that tacked-on last sentence,
and the question of attractions as Third Law mutual actions, in a moment.
The second part of the Third Law says that the mutual actions of two
bodies upon each other are always equal and directed to contrary parts. Here
we are given two actions which are said to be mutual. In light of the first
part of the Law, we know what sort of actions Newton is talking about when
he says mutual: they are the actions which are each other's reactions. When I
walk, the mutual actions are my being propelled forward and the earth (or
the boat) being propelled backwards. When I pull you with the rope the two
actions are our actions in moving towards each other.
Nowhere does the Third Law state or suggest that any two actions we
might select in the world are each other's equal and opposite reactions.
Indeed, such an idea is absurd. Even where there is some formal symmetry,
we have explored cases where there is clearly no cause and effect action and
reaction.
Let's go back to our billiard table with the two wielders of cue sticks
hitting two balls towards each other. Although, when we see the two balls
approach each other, we would say in common speech that they are
mutually approaching, we cannot say that the balls' two actions in so
approaching are "mutual" in the sense of the second part of the Law. They
are approaching each other, they are even directed to contrary parts; but,
impelled by independent taps of the different sticks, they are unlikely to be
approaching with equal quantities of motion. Even if the quantities of motion
are equal, it is by accident, or because the tappers have agreed to tap
equally, not because the approaches are each other's reactions.
We see that the word "mutual" in Law 3 is a very specialized sense of
the term, defined by the law itself as those pairs of actions which result from
each other and are equal and opposite. Many pairs of actions which are
"mutual" in the common language sense are not mutual in the Law 3 sense.
Not only are the two approaching billiard balls not displaying mutual
actions in this sense, neither are my husband and I when we walk towards
each other across the placita, attracted by each other and each desiring a
meeting. Every action, by the first part of the Law, has an equal and opposite
reaction, and so do these. The actions of the billiard balls have produced
their equal and opposite reactions in the cue sticks and arms of the human
agents. My walking towards my husband has had its equal and opposite
�DENSMORE
109
reaction in a motion of the earth, as does his movement towards me. But our
approaches, however simultaneous and symmetrical, are not mutual in the
sense of the second half of Law 3.
Gravitation Attractions as Third Law Actions. Well, do we assent to the
proposition that gravitational attractions are 1bird Law actions and reactions?
Or, perhaps more to the point, what could Newton be picturing as a
mechanism for these "attractions" that would make them fall under the Third
Law along with the pushes and pulls resulting from material contact?
Our first thought might be that including gravitational attraction under
the Third Law suggests that Newton is thinking that gravitational impulsion is
indeed mechanical, that he is picturing the mechanism as somehow,
somewhere, a result of something pushing or pulling.
Well, perhaps it is. Perhaps the planets are being pushed from behind
towards the sun. And perhaps the sun is being pushed towards the planets.
But is this mutual in the sense of Law 3? Not a bit: it's our two billiard balls
again.
Since to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the
gremlin pushing the sun will rebound back with a change in its quantity of
motion equal to that by which the sun's motion changes. The gremlin
pushing the planet will also move back with a change in its motion equal to
that change of motion with which the planet moves towards the sun. But
there is no reason to expect that the motion of the planet towards the sun
will be equal to the motion of the sun towards the planet, any more than to
expect the two billiard balls to have the same quantity of motion after being
tapped.
Even if a causal chain were postulated that went directly from the
action behind the sun to the action behind the planet, it would still not make
the resulting approaches Third Law mutual actions. In fact, no interaction we
might trace among successive aether particles connecting the sun to the back
of the planet is going to make those final actions mutual.
It does seem that the pushes of gremlins, or the impact or differential
pressure of aether particles (such as the two hypotheses mentioned above
which he had put forward earlier, before writing Principia), it does seem
that any of those mechanisms are simply inconsistent with the inclusion of
an appeal to the Third Law in the propositions on gravity.
Conclusion
Let's now tum back to the steps of Book III Proposition 7.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The first step of Ill.? showed that all planets are mutually heavy in the
common language sense. The sixth step of III. 7 asserts that to every action
there is an equal reaction by the Third Law. These assertions are both
unexceptionable.
Step 7 says "[therefore] the planet B will in tum gravitate towards all
parts of planet A".
This conclusion seems to be expressed a bit carelessly, conflating the
two parts of the statement of the Third Law. It is not because every action
has an equal reaction that Step 7 follows, since each could have its reaction
elsewhere, as in recoil of its pusher-gremlin or in aether particles bouncing
back. Rather, Step 7 follows (if it does) because the mutual actions are each
other's reactions.
This has not actually been proved, but we see from its invocation that
Newton believes it to be true of the mutual actions of gravitational tendency.
The proposition depends in another way on the applicability of the
Third Law to gravitational attractions: it invokes Book I Prop. 69, which
includes an application of the Third Law in its own proof.
Furthermore, Newton asserted the applicability of the Third Law to
gravitational attractions in IlLS cor 1 as the justification for the gravitation of
the sun towards the planets. This is not part of the main line of the
argument, but adds to the evidence that he believed the Third Law to apply
to gravitational attractions.
This is yet further supported by his arguments in the Scholium after the
Laws of Motion, combined with the final sentence of his Law 3 commentary.
Newton believed that whatever caused gravity was a mutual action
between the two bodies in the sense of Law 3. His use of this assumption in
Step 7 of Ill. 7 is not a fluke or a slip.
And yet aether pressure, as well as, it seems, any other strictly
mechanical explanation, depends on third party actions such that the two
movements cannot be each other's mutual Law 3 reactions.
In fact, what about our "proofs" that gravitational attraction obeys the
Third Law from the Scholium after the Laws? They depend on the First Law
of Motion and Corollary 4 of the Laws (that the center of gravity of a
collection of bodies will remain at rest or move uniformly), and that corollary
explicitly states that "external actions and impediments are excluded." Only
then will the system remain at rest, that is, only then will the forces look
equal and opposite. (That is what those thought experiments in the Scholium
deal with, that a system will remain at rest and therefore, he concludes, the
forces must be equal and opposite.) This requires that, in talking about "the
actions of the bodies among themselves," only the two bodies may be
�DENSMORE
111
considered. No gremlins, no bungees, no Cartesian vortices, no Newtonian
aether pressure.
We seem compelled to conclude that, by the time of Principia, Newton
had completely rejected the possibility that there was a material aether
impelling the bodies together.
Furthermore, he could not, or at least did not, derive his principles of
universal gravitation allowing that, or any other mechanical intermediation,
as a possibility. He may have declined to offer an hypothesis about cause of
gravity, but he could not, or at least did not, leave the full range of options
open.
So I leave you with the question to ponder: What might Newton have
speculated could make a Third Law interaction between two bodies (or
particles) once mechanical intermediation and action at a distance have both
been ruled out?
Notes
1. Isaac Newton, Phi/osophice Natura/is Principia Mathematica, (first edition,
1687). References are to the third Latin edition (1726) with variant readings
edited by Alexandre Koyne and I. Bernard Cohen, (Harvard University
Press, 1972). I will refer to this work throughout as Principia. All English
translations are by William H. Donahue.
2. University Library, Cambridge, MS 3996, ff 97, 121. Published in Certain
Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook, ].E. McGuire and
Martin Tamny, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). Transcription of
Newton's notes entitled "Of gravity and levity," 362-365 and 426-427.
3. Newton to Oldenburg, 7 Dec 1675, Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Vol I,
365, (Cambridge University Press, 1960). Hereafter this will be cited as
Correspondence.
4. Letter to Boyle, 28 February 1678/9, Correspondence, Volume II, 288-295.
5. Newton to Bentley, 17 January 1692/3. Correspondence, Volume Ill.
6. Newton to Bentley, 17 January 1692/3. Correspondence, Volume III.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
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Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
McShane, Anne
Wilson Curtis
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Flaumenhaft, Harvey
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