7
20
5655
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
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St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
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Original Format
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M4A
Duration
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00:48:28
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Democracy, Empire, and the Pharmakon in Thucydides
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given by Larry George on February 28, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “Does Thucydides believe that empire and democracy are compatible? Do war, conquest, domination, and the exploitation of other polities actually safeguard and protect political space for imperial democratic regimes to flourish, or do they instead corrupt, sicken, and poison the democratic body politic? Does imperial wealth and power perhaps function like a powerful, addictive political drug—strengthening, invigorating and revitalizing the polis, while at the same time intoxicating its democratic way of life by rewarding injustice and inflaming internal factionalism and polarization, leading to the demonization and scapegoating of individuals and groups, tyranny, treason, civil war, and other forms of political derangement, including even plagues and epidemics, both biological and political? In this lecture, we will seek clues to the great historian’s own understandings and teachings regarding these matters, by casting a raking light on Thucydides’ use of the strange word ‘pharmakon’, whose various contradictory and complex meanings include both medicine and poison, as well as addictive drug, and which is etymologically related to the curing of political derangement through the apotrapaic expulsion of scapegoars. As Americans embark on a new political era, is it possible that Thucydides’ history (which he called a “possession for all times”) may offer insights into some of the unprecedented challenges facing our country’s foreign policy, and our fragile democracy, today?”
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
George, Larry Nelson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2025-02-28
Rights
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
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mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War
Democracy
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_GeorgeL_Democracy_Empire_and_the_Pharmakon_in_Thucydides_2025-02-28
Friday night lecture
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
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St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
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M4A
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00:59:44
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Title
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Euclid vs. the Indivisible: The Mathematical Battle over the Shape of Modernity
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given by Amir Alexander on February 21, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “On August 10, 1632, the Revisors General of the Society of Jesus met in Rome to pronounce on a simple question: Whether a straight line is composed of an infinite number of distinct points. The proposition seemed trivial, but their decision proved momentous, launching a decades-long battle between two competing visions of mathematics, and of truth. On the one side were the champions of inviolable hierarchy and unchallengeable order; on the other, the advocates of increased pragmatism and tolerance. The battleground was the infinitely small. At stake was the face of modernity, then coming into being.”
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alexander, Amir
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2025-02-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Euclid. Elements
Indivisibles
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_AlexanderA_Euclid_vs._the_Indivisible_2025-02-21
Friday night lecture
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Image Collection—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p>
To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
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St. John's College
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
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imagecollectionannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
tif
Resolution
Resolution of the image in dpi.
300 dpi
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Eva Brann in conversation with a student, 2004
Description
An account of the resource
Photograph of Annapolis tutor Eva Brann in conversation with a student, taken in 2004.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<strong>In Copyright</strong> <br /><a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en</a>
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from St. John's College. See the Greenfield Library's <a href="https://libguides.sjc.edu/policies/collection">Archives Policy</a> for more information about rights and permissions. <br /><br />Please make sure to credit St. John's College using the citation provided in this record.
Type
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still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpg
Subject
The topic of the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Conversation
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
COM-FAC-BRANN-P-0017b
Deans
Tutors
-
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25b2ed298f375570b8142723fc6fa22e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Image Collection—Annapolis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p>
To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Publisher
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St. John's College
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
imagecollectionannapolis
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
tif
Resolution
Resolution of the image in dpi.
300 dpi
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Eva Brann, 2004
Description
An account of the resource
Portrait of Annapolis tutor Eva Brann taken in 2004.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<strong>In Copyright</strong> <br /><a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en</a>
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from St. John's College. See the Greenfield Library's <a href="https://libguides.sjc.edu/policies/collection">Archives Policy</a> for more information about rights and permissions. <br /><br />Please make sure to credit St. John's College using the citation provided in this record.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
still image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpg
Subject
The topic of the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
COM-FAC-BRANN-P-0014b
Deans
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ecaeac5456a2101ba9d47afd1486ee50.mp3
7f66169b9fb2241df458cbab8de793b2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
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M4A
Duration
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00:54:41
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
The Politician as Opthalmologist of the Soul: Aristotle's Conceptions of the Soul and the Aims of Inquiry
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given by Rory Hanlon on February 7, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “In Nicomachean Ethics (NE) I.13, Aristotle asserts that a politician should know the human soul as an eye-doctor knows the whole body. I will try to make sense of this odd claim, arguing that it illuminates crucial features of Aristotelian psychology and our understanding of ‘the human’. Given the size of his corpus, it might be not surprising to find some apparent inconsistencies in his employment of the notion ‘the soul’. Perhaps the most infamous concerns its divisibility: In De Anima (DA) III.9, Aristotle criticizes those, like Plato, who divide the soul in terms of rationality; yet in NE I.13, he asserts that the human soul divides into rational and irrational parts. I argue that we should see this apparent contradiction as evidence of his attentiveness to the different kinds of inquiries, and so the different ways in which we think about souls and persons—either in the theoretical mode of DA or the practical mode of NE. In practical inquiries, we are concerned with a claim’s contribution to some relevant practical goal. Hence, the politician seeks knowledge of the soul to the extent that it helps their practical aims (i.e. to improve souls)—much as an ophthalmologist seeks relevant ‘working knowledge’ of the whole body. Finally, I argue that ordinary life, filled with political and ethical deliberations, exhibits this approach to the human, and so is itself a practical inquiry.”
Creator
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Hanlon, Rory
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2025-02-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Aristotle. Ethica.
Aristotle. De anima.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_HanlonR_The_Politician_as_Opthalmologist_of_the_Soul_2025-02-07
Friday night lecture
-
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PDF Text
Text
ST JOHN'S
College
SANTA ~E • ANNAPOLIS
2024
CLASS OF
COMMENCEMENT
EXERCISES
Saturday | May Eighteenth
Two Thousand and Twenty-four
SANTA FE | NEW MEXICO
�For the Fifty-Seventh
Commencement of the
Santa Fe Campus
in the
Three Hundred and
Twenty-Eighth Year of
St. John’s College.
�PROGRAM
Academic Procession
String Quartet
Welcome
Mr. Mark Roosevelt
President, St. John’s College
Announcement of Awards and Prizes
Ms. Sarah Davis
Dean, St. John’s College
Mr. Roosevelt
St. John’s College Open Chorus
Ave Verum Corpus
William Byrd
Address to the Graduating Class
Mr. Mark Roosevelt
President,
St. John’s College
Sicut Cervus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
St. John’s College Open Chorus
Conferring of Undergraduate Degrees
Ms. Davis
Mr. Roosevelt
Conferring of Graduate Degrees
Mr. Ned Walpin
Associate Dean for
Graduate Programs,
St. John’s College
Mr. Roosevelt
Closing Remarks
Mr. Roosevelt
Academic Recession
String Quartet
Please stand for the academic procession and recession.
Graduates will process along the Evans Science Laboratory pathway.
Tutors and the platform party will process out of Weigle Hall.
JOIN US FOR A LIGHT RECEPTION ON MEEM PLACITA AFTER THE CEREMONY.
1
�2024 BACHELOR OF ARTS
Graciela Ann Alvarez Lehman
“Fair for the chase!”: The Providence of Spirit in Leo Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
Eleanor Jo Angelli-Neff
Sappho’s Aphrodite
San Diego, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Alexandra Claire Avina
Good and Evil Within the Citified World in
Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor
Santa Margarita, CA
Dihong Bai
Chongqing, China
Can We Go Beyond the City Walls? An Examination of
Shakespeare’s Othello and How He Failed to Become a Venetian
Olivia Anne Baze
Revenge and Justice in Euripides’ Medea
Houston, TX
Antonia Elise Bonnaire
Weinsberg, Germany
A Calculus of Individual Impact, Doing Good by
Choosing to Look, Examined in Scenes of War and Peace
Emil Borg
Virtue and Politics in Livy’s The Early History of Rome
Los Altos, CA
Minna Rose Brackett
Brooklyn, NY
“As You Desire You Do”: An Interpretation of The Book of Jonah
Calvin Alexander Bright
Sellersburg, IN
That Knife, Liberty Under Law: An Examination of Freedom,
Patriotism and Reclaiming Power in Livy’s Early History of Rome
Michael Johannes Brönner
On Existential Fanaticism in Hans Jonas’
The Imperative of Responsibility
Mainstockheim, Germany
Christopher John Campbell
Tucson, AZ
Sundering & Singularity, Concerning the Death of God & the
Collapse of Time, a Mystical Inquiry into Simone Weil & Eternity
Jacob Alan Chandler
Windows to the Soul: On the Mechanism of Perception
and the Requirements for Superlative Love in Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
Annapolis, MD
Kiva RedBear Chavez
Santa Fe, NM
Society’s Outlaws: A Mother and Daughter’s Tale of Liberation
and Self-Discovery in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
Taran Sawyer Clammer
Poulenc’s Cello Sonata, a Conversation in Music
2
Montpelier, VT
�William Kurt Stocker Crombie
Coos Bay, OR
An Infinite Expectation of the Dawn, Nature, the Human Soul,
and Their Convergence at Walden Pond
Ian Dean Dapkewicz
The Transcendental Conditions of Thought in Difference
and Repetition, an Investigation of Gilles Deleuze’s Critique
of the Image of Thought
Santa Clarita, CA
Lila Grace Dean
Tragic Affinities – William Wordsworth’s Poetics of Loss in
The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
Lakewood, OH
Noah Michael Demko
It’s the Evil That Men Do: St. Augustine’s Phenomenal
Conception of Evil
Houston, TX
Lillian Leah Dumas
Hold Him by the Hand: On Living within Contradiction and
Reconciling Suffering with Hope in the Hidden Heart of Genesis
Helper, UT
Lucy Amelia Edelen
Beauty at the Core of Thought: The Aesthetic Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment
Tucson, AZ
Alexis Christine Finch
Understanding the Tree of Life: Darwin’s Articulation of
Nature in Process
Denton, TX
Edward Martin Fleming
On the Symbol of A as Punishment, and on Transformation
of that A as Salvation
Carl Guttmann
Number as Relation in Edmund Husserl’s On the Concept
of Number: Psychological Analysis
Newton, MA
Freiburg, Germany
Jesse Herb
“Not What I Am”: An Analysis of Identity in Shakespeare’s Othello
Diana Hidalgo
Lessons of the Internal Self: Learning to Feel in
William Wordsworth’s The Two-Part Prelude of 1799
Elena Ann Hochheiser
Made in Whose Image? Man and God in Spinoza’s Ethics
Maebh Hurley
To All My Thoughts Their Forms They Blend: A Search for
the Substance of Dance in Giselle
Zane Kelly-Carmichael
Species-Being in Marx and the Human-Environment
Relationship
3
Salem, OR
Oakley, CA
Pittsburgh, PA
Austin, TX
Corrales, NM
�Michal Grace Kennell
Everything Ended and Everything Ends: Margarita and the
Spring Ball in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
Red Wassmuth Kingsbury
The Passion of the Moment: Learning in Kierkegaard’s
Philosophical Fragments
Kara, Togo
Evergreen, CO
Ryan Andrew Kohl
Tracing the Invisible Labyrinth: How Conflicting
Perspectives Affect Interpretation in The Garden of Forking
Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
Warrensburg, MO
Barbara Jordan Joy Leppala
Doubling, Prudence, and Daring in Sophocles’ Antigone
Albuquerque, NM
Conrad Larkin McConnell
A Study of Relationships in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
Eureka, CA
August Michael Attlehed McKenzie
Following the Thread: Pain, Pleasure, and Philosophy
in the Phaedo
Santa Fe, NM
Tamblyn Claire Mitchell
Kennett Square, PA
“Did you suppose, my father, that I could tear myself away
and leave you?”, An Exploration into the Role of
Fatherhood in Virgil’s The Aeneid
Deana Alayne Moss
A Life Worth Living, An Exploration of Happiness and
Virtue in Plato’s Symposium
Portland, OR
Zohar Aviv Naaman
Santa Barbara, CA
“Incomparably beyond and above you all”: An Exploration
of Education, Fairytale and Romance in Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
Nghia Duc Nguyen
Plato’s Republic: What is the foundation of virtues?
Hanoi, Vietnam
Emily Carmichael Oliphant
Action and Irresolution in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Washington, DC
Eamon Miguel Padilla
Cannibalistically Developed: Trophy-Taking and
Parallel Development in Moby Dick
Albuquerque, NM
John Milliken Parker VI
St. Thomas Aquinas on God’s Freedom
New Orleans, LA
Jonathan Zachary Pevow
Cedar Park, TX
The Development of Nosology and Death from the Mortuary:
A Selective Autopsy of Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic
Tay Lara Rafferty
Idealism’s Power in Narrow Circumstances
4
Dallas, TX
�Elise JaNeal Rockwell
The Accessibility of Philosophy: Aristophanes’ Critique
within the Clouds
Crystal Lake, IL
Anäis Magdalena Romero-Heesacker
The Education of Natural Consciousness in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
Athens, GA
Samuel Lucien Roy
Austin, TX
Human Destinies: Parallelisms between Psychological
Development and Human Cultural Evolution in Nietzsche’s Thought
Theodora Ngaio Ruschell
The Fleeting Search for Forgiveness in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Alexandria, VA
Khushi Salgia
Death Is Only Behind a Sheer Curtain: The Denial of Our
Own Mortality in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sacramento, CA
Diego Francisco Salinas
Observation and Imitation: Tracing the Development of
Tragedy in Aristotle’s On Poetics
Bayfield, CO
Enzo L Scarpulla
Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Individuality
Woodacre, CA
Sarah Josefa Schäfer
Suffering for the suffering of the other: the original and
ethical structure of subjectivity
Virlet, France
Aidan Carl Shannon
On Land-Use in The Social Contract
Shaw Island, WA
Eugenia Bergeron Simon
The Intellect’s Journey Toward Beatitude
Austin, TX
Catriona Elizabeth Sixbey
How to Live a Life of Love and Happiness through Portraits
of Characters in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Hampton, VA
Gabriel W Slidders
A Jewish Answer: Assimilation and Resistance in Karl Marx’s
On the Jewish Question
Brooklyn, NY
Peter James Sloan
Dwelling in Difference as Sameness: Understanding Essence
and Technology in Martin Heidegger’s Bremen Lectures
Ashland, OR
Stephen A Sloniewsky
What Is Sky: Living Poetically Through a Vision of the Divine
in Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Arlington, VA
Luke Alexander Spencer
Coppell, TX
Curios and Spiral Staircases – Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel
5
�Britton Paul Edward Sprouse
Rising from the Barbaric Slough, Why the Dialectic of
Aristotle’s Topics Is the Capstone of Education
Montgomery, LA
Amelia Quinn Stock Cummings
“I saw him, I blushed”: Desire and Shame in Racine’s Phèdre
Margot Elizabeth Tabakin
Becoming Good and Sane: Attaining Reality through
Fiction in Don Quixote
Santa Rosa, CA
South Orange, NJ
Joanna Patricia Thornhill
Chatsworth, CA
Homo Amicus: On the Friend in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Iris Thornton Gonzalez
The Feminine Other and Ethical Subjectivity in
Totality and Infinity
Vy Van Vo
Idleness as Technique and Freedom: On the Essays
of Montaigne
Albuquerque, NM
Vũng Tàu, Vietnam
Wyatt Jeffrey Matthews Vogelzang
Love and War in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale
Seattle, WA
William Kipp Wharton
The Sexual Politics of Ellison’s Invisible Man
Atlanta, GA
Samuel Gustav Tapuahi Wiek*
A Strange Old Man: An Exploration of Santiago’s Strangeness
in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
Savusavu, Fiji
Aidan Thomas Williams
Half Moon Bay, CA
Price as a Measure of Virtue: Understanding the Psychology
of Revenue and Profit in Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
Marc Andrew Wissman
Tristan’s Transfiguration: Music and Yearning in Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde
Hunter Michael Wright
Extracting a Stripped Screw: Reconciling Reason and
Consciousness in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
* Upon satisfactory completion of degree requirements
6
Austin, TX
Crested Butte, CO
�2024 MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL ARTS
SPRING 2024 AND DECEMBER 2023
James Besaw
Redmond, WA
Hannah Black
Santa Fe, NM
Anna Cain
Tucson, AZ (Dec. 2023)
Michael Foote
Seward, AK
Jason Gritman
Santa Fe, NM
Lorissa Jackson
Anchorage, AK
Kelly Kwon
Seoul, South Korea
Jackson Mauze
Seattle, WA
Emily Neifert
Carlsbad, CA (Dec. 2023)
Daniel Nichols
Billings, MT (Dec. 2023)
Joachim Rhaden
Munich, Germany (Dec. 2023)
Joseph Frederick Scibbe
Macedoniaw, OH
Matthew Smith
Albuquerque, NM (Dec. 2023)
Danielle Stone
Santa Fe, NM
Daniel Van Orden
Prairie du Chien, WI
Ryan Wechter
El Paso, TX
Sofya Yampolsky
Chimayo, NM
2024 MASTER OF ARTS IN EASTERN CLASSICS
Nicolae Federspiel-Otelea
Grass Valley, CA
Anina Medvinskaya
New York, NY (Dec. 2023)
David Metzger
Norfolk, VA (Dec. 2023)
Isla Prieto
Santa Fe, NM
Susan Sladek
Santa Fe, NM
MASTER’S ESSAY
Kelly Kwon
“The Moral Implications of Henri Bergson's Phenomenology of Time in
Creative Evolution”
Danielle Stone
“Hierarchy and Disciplinary Power in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison”
7
�AWARDS AND PRIZES
To the members of the Senior Class who have written the best senior essays,
the Richard D. Weigle Prize:
The Feminine Other and Ethical Subjectivity in
Class of 2024
Totality and Infinity
Iris Thornton-Gonzalez
Tristan’s Transfiguration: Music and Yearning in
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
Class of 2024
Marc Andrew Wissman
Honorable Mention:
On Existential Fanaticism in Hans Jonas’
The Imperative of Responsibility
Faculty Award for Sustained Academic Excellence
Class of 2024
Michael Brönner
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
Michael Brönner
Barbara Lepalla
Sarah Schäfer
For their Freshman annual essay
To Comprehend the Sphere Itself: Divine Introspection
in Plato’s Timaeus
For her Sophomore enabling essay
Worshipping Nature through Christian Pilgrimage
Honorable Mention:
Elihu’s Speech Illumines Maimonides’ Opinion
on Providence
For her Junior annual essay
Construction of the Self in Wordsworth’s
Two-Part Prelude of 1799
Class of 2026
Mia West
Benjamin Johnson
Class of 2025
Madeleine Taylor-Marks
Honorable Mention:
“Incomparably Greater”: Man and World in Leibniz’s
A New System of Nature
8
Class of 2027
Nico Rasmussen
Class of 2025
Sanyum Dalal
�For her undergraduate seminar and preceptorial essay other than annual
The Shape of Life
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
Honorable Mention:
Why did Akhilleus Stop Being So Angry
For her undergraduate tutorial essay
The Interior of a Heart
Honorable Mention:
Mechanism Kills the Soul
Class of 2027
Bruni Kushnir
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
Class of 2027
Jackson Calhoun
For their solution to the Set Freshman-Sophomore Level
Mathematical Problem
For his Solution to the Set Junior-Senior Level
Mathematical Problem
Class of 2027
Nico Rasmussen
Class of 2024
Marc Andrew Wissman
For their original music compositions
Piano Suite
Death of Sisyphus
Honorable Mention:
Rain on Monte Sol
Class of 2024
William Crombie
For their best original poetry
Odin Doubts
Class of 2024
William Crombie
Class of 2026
Clara Johnson
GILA
Kelly Kwon
9
�For her Greek translation, the William A. Darkey Translation Prize
(Sappho “Fragment 1”)
Class of 2026
Madeleine Finnegan
Honorable Mention:
Class of 2024
Eleanor Angelli-Neff
Class of 2025
Emma Malinasky
For their French translation, the William A. Darkey Translation Prize
(Baudelaire “Le Vieux Saltimbanque”)
Class of 2027
Nico Rasmussen
To a student from the Freshman, Sophomore, or Junior class in recognition
of originality of thought, the Philip Lecuyer Endowed Scholarship:
Class of 2025
Antonio Fox
To deserving students to help with the continuation of work at St. John’s College
through the cultivation of the liberal arts of Thinking—that is, aiming for and
acquiring knowledge; and of Friendship— that is, sharing inquiry and thought
joyfully and for its own sake, the Robert Neidorf Memorial Scholarship
Class of 2025
Cassi Maverick
Class of 2026
Seohyeon Shin
To members of the Freshman, Sophomore, or Junior classes in recognition of
academic achievement and constructive service to the college community, the
St. John’s Community Scholarship provided by faculty, staff and students
Class of 2025
Bersa Debebe
Class of 2026
Elliot Burchett
Mary Claire Fagan
Natalie Michaels
10
�To members of the Senior Class for excellence in public speaking, the
Senator Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize
Class of 2024
Lila Dean
The Don Cook Student Leadership Award
Class of 2024
Lillian Dumas
To members of the Senior Class who have excelled in service to the college,
the Dean’s Award for College Service
Class of 2024
Elena Hochheiser
August McKenzie
Diego Salinas
To the students who have most contributed to the academic support of
their peers, the Assistant Dean’s Award
Class of 2024
Carl Guttmann
Class of 2025
Avery Lin
Class of 2026
Indira Nadasen-Gladstone
To a member of the Senior Class who has demonstrated achievement
in the Arts and Literature, the Walter S. Baird Prize:
For her short story “Leah Stoval, 2005”
Class of 2024
Reese Matthews
11
�STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AWARDS
To the senior who, by her consistent modeling of exemplary leadership, spirit, and
integrity, has made an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s community, an award
offered by the Office of Residential Life:
Class of 2024
Tamblyn Mitchell
To the senior who, by his leadership, dedication, hard work, and good will, has made
an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s campus community, an award offered
by the Student Engagement Team:
Class of 2024
Aidan Shannon
STUDENT ACTIVITY AWARDS
To the senior who, by her leadership, enthusiasm, and devotion to the development
of the St. John’s Community has made an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s
College Intramural Program, an award offered by the Student Activities Organization:
Class of 2024
Deana Moss
To the seniors who, by their leadership, enthusiasm, and devotion to the development
of the St. John’s Community have made outstanding contributions to the St. John’s
College Outdoor Program, an award offered by the Student Activities Organization:
Class of 2024
Barbara Leppala
Marc Andrew Wissman
12
��STJOHN'S
College
SA.NU Fli •ANNA.POLIS
The seal of St. John’s
College shows seven open
books representing the
seven traditional liberal arts—
the trivium of grammar,
rhetoric, and logic; and
the quadrivium of arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, and
music. The balance, or scale,
in the center represents
modern science. Encircling
the symbols is a Latin
inscription, which means:
“I make free adults out
of children by means
of books and a balance.”
�
Dublin Core
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Santa Fe Commencement Programs and Addresses
Contributor
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St. John's College Meem Library
Text
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paper
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16 pages
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Title
A name given to the resource
Santa Fe Commencement Program, Spring 2024
Description
An account of the resource
Program for the fifty-seventh commencement of the Santa Fe campus in the three hundred and twenty-eighth year of St. John's College.
Creator
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St. John's College
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Santa Fe, NM
Date
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2024-05-18
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Subject
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Commencement (St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM)
Language
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English
Identifier
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SF Commencement Program 2024-05-18
Commencement
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PDF Text
Text
ST JOHN'S
College
SANTA ~E • ANNAPOLIS
2023
CLASS OF
COMMENCEMENT
EXERCISES
Saturday | May Twentieth
Two Thousand and Twenty-three
SANTA FE | NEW MEXICO
�For the Fifty-Sixth
Commencement of the
Santa Fe Campus
in the
Three Hundred and
Twenty-Seventh Year of
St. John’s College.
�PROGRAM
Academic Procession
String Quartet
Welcome
Mr. Mark Roosevelt
President, St. John’s College
Announcement of Awards and Prizes
Mr. J. Walter Sterling
Dean, St. John’s College
Mr. Roosevelt
St. John’s College Small Chorus
Chì mi na mòrbheanna
John Cameron
Address to the Graduating Class
Ms. Sarah Davis
Tutor and Dean-Elect,
St. John’s College, Santa Fe
Sicut Cervus
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
St. John’s College Small Chorus
Conferring of Undergraduate Degrees
Mr. Sterling
Mr. Roosevelt
Conferring of Graduate Degrees
Mr. Ned Walpin
Associate Dean for
Graduate Programs,
St. John’s College
Mr. Roosevelt
Closing Remarks
Mr. Roosevelt
Academic Recession
String Quartet
Please stand for the academic procession and recession.
Graduates will process along the Evans Science Laboratory pathway.
Tutors and the platform party will process out of Weigle Hall.
JOIN US FOR A LIGHT RECEPTION ON MEEM PLACITA AFTER THE CEREMONY.
1
�2023 BACHELOR OF ARTS
Krobi Akua Ababio-Gyebi *
Ofankor, Ghana
Nicholas Budwine
A Morphology of the Human Spirit in Goethe’s
Metamorphosis of Plants
Shijie Chen
Seeking in Absurdity—Camus’ Philosophy of life
in La Peste
Tucson, AZ
Zhumadian, China
Cecil Elliot Connelly
On the Road to Find Out: Embracing Life in the Realm
of the Dead Through Dante’s Purgatorio
Ferndale, MI
Maia Tyler Cummings
Colorado Springs, CO
Diverging Estates: The Displacement of the Aristocratic
Roots of Wealth in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Daniel Adam Davis
Augustine’s Development as a Reader Throughout
the Confessions
Lexington, TN
Anh Hoang Van Do
Thanh Hoa, Vietnam
In the Glimmering Amber of Time Past Lies Our Paradise:
The Gradual Coming of the Self in Marcel Proust’s In
Search of Lost Time, Book 1: Swann’s Way, Part 1: Combray
Henry Bradford Fitzmorris
“Removing the Wrappings” an Exploration of Meaning
in Anna Karenina
West Hills, CA
Thomas Wilson Flanigan
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick: Ahab as the Technological Man
Sara Maria Fors
The Voice of the Dead: A Legacy of Death in the Iliad
Bryn Aria Frye-Mason
Infinite Mirrors: An Exploration of Self in
Leibniz’s Monadology
William Tiberius Furnish
Art, Corruption, and the Fateful Consequence of Creation
in The Picture of Dorian Gray
2
Santa Fe, NM
Karlskoga, Sweden
Albuquerque, NM
Wichita, KS
�Julia Dannel Hapke
Mothers of Morals: The Mind of the Past and the Political
Rebirth of Athens in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia
Astrid Heinz
Existing as a Red-Haired Owl: An Inquiry into the
Relationship Between Man and Abstraction in
Albert Camus’s The Plague
Portland, OR
Upper Black Eddy, PA
Anne Culver Hodgman
“Hurrah for Karamazov!”: An Exploration of Love
and Brotherhood
Thomas Daniel Hutcherson*
Washington DC
Elizabethtown, KY
Chinazor Ozichi Ike-Njoku
The New Order: Recognizing Machiavelli’s Prince as
Mankind’s Political Redeemer
Abuja, Nigeria
Phoebe Katherine Jackson
“Whatever walked there, walked alone”: A Study of
Absolute Reality as the Ghost Within Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting of Hill House
Santa Fe, NM
Elsie YeaLim Jang
Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method: For the Proliferation
of Scientific Thought in the Marketplace of Ideas
Shanghai, China
Elizabeth Beatrice Jurich
Absurdity in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus
Lincoln, NE
Benjamin Blackwell Keyse
A View of the Words: Learning to See Faithfully in
Flannery O’Connor’s "A View of the Woods"
Denver, CO
Kashvi Khanna
Gurgaon, India
A Manual for Those of Us Who Are Not Children of the
Sunshine: The Place of Free Will in William James’ Psychology
Isabelle Rose Kirschbaum
West Hartford, CT
Toward Perfection and Decrepitude: Naissance and
Perfectibility in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
MacKenzie Callaghan Krider
Satan’s Process of Self-Recognition in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Michael Douglas Langer*
Reston, VA
Ventura, CA
3
�Jun Lee
How Can We Reach the True Definition of
Something? Essence, Definition, and Teleology
in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Changwon, South Korea
Bridget Adele Lynch
Being Human by Becoming Human: The Perfection
of Nature in Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s The Social Contract
San Antonio, TX
Jane Caroline Maberry
Finding Meaning in the Mundane: Discovering Tarrou’s
Role in Camus’ La Peste
Bakersfield, CA
Leah Adair March
From Truth to Beauty and Back Again: An Exploration
of Einstein’s Imagination in the Theory of Relativity
Boise, ID
William Isaac MacGillivray Mason
If on a winter’s night a traveler: Readers, Writers, and the
Infinite Possibilities of Literature
Santa Fe, NM
Peter Wilcox Brown Mathews
Becoming the Person You Are: The Conflict and Concert
of the Conscious and Unconscious Minds in Nietzsche’s
The Gay Science
Richmond, VA
John Richard McCombs
Nietzsche’s Philosophical Poetry in The Joyful Science
Molly Quinn McGrath
On a field, sable, the letter A, gules: Beauty and the
Puritanical Aesthetic in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
Santa Fe, NM
Denver, CO
Connor Alexander Aodhán McWeeney
Hobbes and the Word
Asbury Park, NJ
Joseph Donald Megill
The Wonderful Creativity of Incomplete Truth: The Story
of How Kurt Gödel Proved Logic Beautifully Flawed
Rio Rancho, NM
Shaheer Naveed
Islamabad, Pakistan
The Mirror of Our Beloved: Exploring the Self’s Highest
Ideal Through Islam in Iqbal’s The Secret of the Self
Spencer Oresman
The Stakes of God in Man: A Jungian Examination
Jonathan Ryan Rascon
Tolstoy’s War and Peace: On the Development of Character
in Society
4
Los Lunas, NM
Albuquerque, NM
�Alejandro Diaz Ross
Why don’t we tell the Truth? Lies and Justification in
Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War
Menlo Park, CA
Joseph Robert Scholhamer
Will and Necessity: An Exploration of the Life and Death
of Andrei Balkonsky
Pleasanton, CA
Kabita Sen
Kathmandu, Nepal
The Sailboat, Butterfly, and Dream: Women in Nietzsche’s
Beyond Good and Evil and The Gay Science
Allison Lynn Sharkey
Nature in Flux: An Exploration of the Natural in
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Galesville, MD
Alexandra Cydney Shenson-Collins
Mendeleev’s New System: How the Periodic Table
Shows Causality
Portland, OR
Parker Stahl
On the Importance of Fighting Against Corrupted Colossi
in the Modern Age
New Paltz, NY
Tim Steinebach
Chemnitz, Germany
Broken Promises: The Limits and Possibilities of Identity
Thinking in Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
Taylor Robert Aidan Strongheart
The Art of Madness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
San Francisco, CA
Noah Tamas-Parris
Journeying to Infinity and Beyond in Galileo’s Two
New Sciences
Emma Louise Theis
A Portrait of Midge: When Art Offends Fantasy in
Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Brandon Alexander Turner
The Nature of Philosophy in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil
S. Aurora Wayne
Glimpses of Consciousness: On the Ascension and
Regression of the Self in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death
Sydney Mischel Whitten
On the Economics of Marriage in Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
5
Shelburne, VT
Denver, CO
Las Vegas, NV
El Paso, TX
Noblesville, IN
�John Mason Williams
Vision and Ritual in Virgil’s Aeneid
Sedgwick, KS
Anders Nicolas Wondrick
Ought One to Treat Life as an Absurdity: The Consequences
of Camus’ Philosophy on the Appraisal of Life’s Worth
Twin Falls, ID
Jasmine Marie Wright
Gilgamesh and Women’s Civilizing Charms
Sally Yijia Yang
Seeing the Sky: A Reading on Chekhov’s Gusev
Victor Zatorski
The Concept of the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz in
Freud’s “Repression”
* Upon satisfactory completion of degree requirements
6
Harrisburg, PA
Xi’an, China
Hartville, MO
�2023 MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL ARTS
SPRING 2023 AND DECEMBER 2022
Julia Buys
Espanola, NM (Dec. 2022)
Jeremey Paul Freestone
Everett, WA (Dec. 2022)
Mike Sumner Frost
Crestone, CO
Ruben Juarez
Albuquerque, NM
Elena Mary Petersen
Laguna Beach, CA
John Petroff
Parker, TX
Bryan Anthony Phillips
Las Vegas, NV
Joseph Francis Shortsleeve
New Haven, CT
2023 MASTER OF ARTS IN EASTERN CLASSICS
Laura Alexandra Cleveland
Nevada City, CA (Dec. 2022)
Eli Samuel Sneider
Palo Alto, CA
Rebekah Morgan Sturgill
Wichita, KS
MASTER’S ESSAY
Elena Mary Petersen
Manifesto for the Second Subject: The Image of Thought in Gilles Deleuze’s
Difference and Repetition
Bryan Anthony Phillips
"Big Time Sensuality" On the Origin of Sin and Human Nature as Law
7
�AWARDS AND PRIZES
To the member of the Senior Class who has written the best senior essay,
the Richard D. Weigle Prize:
Nietzsche’s Philosophical Poetry in The Joyful Science
Class of 2023
John McCombs
Honorable Mentions:
A View of the Words: Learning to See Faithfully in
Class of 2023
Flannery O’Connor’s "A View of the Woods"
Benjamin Keyse
A Manual for Those of Us who are not Children of
Sunshine: The Place of Free Will in William James’
Psychology
Faculty Award for Sustained Academic Excellence
For her Freshman annual essay
What are the erotic things Socrates Understands?:
The Relationship Between Eros (love) and philosophy
Honorable Mention:
Lucretius and Life-Stirring Venus: The Purpose of the
Poetic in The Nature of Things
For her Sophomore enabling essay
Reason, the Common Good, and Man’s Last End
In Aquinas’ Treatise on Law
For her Junior annual essay
Drawing the Ways to Cognition
Honorable Mention:
Identity and its Ambiguities in Rousseau’s
Social Contract
For their undergraduate essays other than annual
Is the Reader Guilty of Voyeurism?
Class of 2023
Kashvi Khanna
Class of 2023
Elsie Jang
John McCombs
Class of 2026
Yoomin Hong
Class of 2026
Romany Stover
Class of 2025
Emma Mughal
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
Class of 2023
Elsie Jang
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
Class of 2024
Michael Brӧnner
What is Conserved?
8
�Honorable Mentions:
How can a Legal Document Assure a Fictitious Character Class of 2024
of his Reality? The relationship between life and
Antonia Bonnaire
story for Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Class of 2023
Joseph Megill
Can Nature Possibly be as Absurd as
Atomic Interpretation?
For her Graduate Institute Liberal Arts preceptorial essay
Trouble in Paradise
For his Graduate Institute Liberal Arts Tutorial essay
Who is the Great Sailor?
GILA
Rachel Brown
GILA
Mike Darmiento
For his solution to the set freshman-sophomore level mathematical problem
Honorable Mention:
Class of 2026
Ben Freedman
For his solution to the set junior-senior level mathematical problem
Class of 2023
Jun Lee
Honorable Mention:
Class of 2024
Michael Brӧnner
For his original mathematical proof
Calculating the Distance Between Earth and Outer
Planets in a Simplified Heliocentric Model
Class of 2025
Theo McCormick
For her original fiction
Artifact of the Ursatz’ “Archive of the Ancestral Home,
Long Gone”
Class of 2024
Reese Matthews
For their French translations, the William A. Darkey Translation Prize
(Selection from Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way)
Class of 2023
Anh Do
Class of 2024
Michael Brӧnner
Honorable Mention:
Class of 2024
Marc Wissman
9
�To a student from the Freshman, Sophomore, or Junior class in recognition
of originality of thought, the Philip Lecuyer Endowed Scholarship:
Class of 2024
Antonia Bonnaire
To deserving students to help with the continuation of work at St. John’s College
through the cultivation of the liberal arts of Thinking—that is, aiming for and
acquiring knowledge; and of Friendship— that is, sharing inquiry and thought
joyfully and for its own sake, the Robert Neidorf Memorial Scholarship
Class of 2024
Alex Finch
Sarah Schäfer
To members of the Freshman, Sophomore, or Junior classes in recognition of
academic achievement and constructive service to the college community, the
St. John’s Community Scholarship provided by faculty, staff and students
Class of 2024
Lila Dean
Elena Hochheiser
Tamblyn Mitchell
Diego Salinas
To members of the Senior Class for excellence in public speaking, the
Senator Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize
Class of 2023
Thomas Flanigan
Leah March
Alejandro Ross
The Don Cook Student Leadership Award
Class of 2023
Molly McGrath
To members of the Senior Class who have excelled in service to the college,
the Dean’s Award for College Service
Class of 2023
Elizabeth Jurich
Jun Lee
Joseph Megill
Taylor Strongheart
10
�To the students who have most contributed to the academic support of
their peers, the Assistant Dean’s Award
Class of 2024
Lillian Dumas
August McKenzie
Class of 2025
Sanyum Dalal
Tobias Smit
In recognition for her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award
to teach English in the Czech Republic.
Class of 2023
Leah March
To a member of the Senior Class who has demonstrated achievement
in the Arts and Literature, the Walter S. Baird Prize:
For her short story “Breaking”
Class of 2023
Chinazor Ike-Njoku
To a member of the Senior Class who has demonstrated achievement
in Mathematics and Science, the Walter S. Baird Prize:
For his essay “How is Gravitating Mass Related to
Class of 2023
Inertial Mass?”
Jonathon Rascon
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AWARDS
To the senior who, by her consistent modeling of exemplary leadership, spirit, and
integrity, has made an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s community, an
award offered by the Office of Residential Life:
Class of 2023
Bridget Lynch
To the senior who, by his leadership, dedication, hard work, and good will, has made
an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s campus community, an award offered
by the Student Engagement Team:
Class of 2023
Cecil Connelly
11
�STUDENT ACTIVITY AWARDS
To the senior who, by his leadership, enthusiasm, and devotion to the development
of the St. John’s Community has made an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s
College Bike Program, an award offered by the Student Activities Organization:
Class of 2023
Jonathon Rascon
To the senior who, by her leadership, enthusiasm, and devotion to the development
of the St. John’s Community has made an outstanding contribution to the St. John’s
College Outdoor Program, an award offered by the Student Activities Organization:
Class of 2023
Allison Sharkey
��STJOHN'S
College
SA.NU Fli •ANNA.POLIS
The seal of St. John’s
College shows seven open
books representing the
seven traditional liberal arts—
the trivium of grammar,
rhetoric, and logic; and
the quadrivium of arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, and
music. The balance, or scale,
in the center represents
modern science. Encircling
the symbols is a Latin
inscription, which means:
“I make free adults out
of children by means
of books and a balance.”
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Santa Fe Commencement Programs and Addresses
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Santa Fe Commencement Program, Spring 2023
Description
An account of the resource
Program for the fifty-sixth commencement of the Santa Fe campus in the three hundred and twenty-seventh year of St. John's College.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-05-20
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Commencement (St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF Commencement Program 2023-05-20
Commencement
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76dfa75faf84d097137df4fab9e32949
PDF Text
Text
Colloquy
SPRING 2024
On Character
�Cover art: Achilles 1&2 - Paul Harland-White
�Table of Contents
4. Poetry
10. Short Stories & Musings
32. Essays
54. Translations
65. Toasts & Prize Essays
74. Year in Review: Growing & Flourishing
�Poetry & Musings
Oblivion
Sorrow
4
�Contributors
Austin Suggs
Stacey Rains
5
�Oblivion
Austin Suggs
I walk down shaded city streets, eyes low
To miss the gaze of a man who begs for
Just enough to eat, or not feel. Hungry?
Or nothing at all. Who am I to judge
The one who wishes for oblivion
When my gaze betrays I’ve long lived there too?
They say the rich and the poor inhabit
Different worlds. I think they just enter
Through separate doors to find the same bleak
Nothingness they sought, or stumbled into
Or were forced down. It’s all so hard to say.
But soon enough, in life as in their deaths
They sink down into the deep, dark, dank ground
Having lived life chasing, but never found.
6
�Poet’s Nature Trail - Nadine Bucca
7
�Sorrow
Stacey Rains
There is a reason that
hollow and hallowed
echo the same.
The word you mean to say
is not quirk or coincidence
but rather power, providence.
Like a hole made ready for planting
Like a pestle in mortar preparing the flavor
Like a discordance that yearns for the melody
Good redounds to good
and the painful echo
makes space
for the necessary silence.
Now I can hear “I am here.”
8
�Ripples - Paul Harland-White
9
�Short Stories & Musings
Reading
TRANSLATIONS
Enkidu’s Dwelling
Lady Sagredo
The Mode of Pi
I am. Working?
10
�Contributors
Martha Franks
Nadine Bucca
Cynthia Crane
Stephen Borsum
Melissa Hicinbothem
11
�Reading
Martha Franks
It was three o’clock in the morning, and Alison’s mother sighed as she got up
to go to Alison’s room. Alison’s father stirred and groaned at being woken
untimely on yet another night. Again, again, again. Every night when she
should have been sleeping and letting her parents sleep, Alison read books.
Every night one of Alison’s parents would come into her room at eleven or so,
turn off the light and tell Alison to sleep. Alison would wait for her mother or
father to leave, wait an extra few minutes for the coast to be all the way clear,
and then turn the light on to read some more. Hours later one of her parents
would get up again to turn off the light, hoping that by this time Alison had
fallen asleep over her book and would not start the weary round again.
Punishment did not help. Alison submitted to whatever her parents imposed
as if to a piece of bad luck unconnected to any cause and kept on reading.
Once her exasperated parents tried removing the light entirely, but Alison
found an answer to that. After waiting for the household to quiet down that
night, she got up to curl in a nest behind the orange chair in the living room
to read with the crystal glass lamp lowered to the floor. After Alison’s mother
had found her asleep behind the chair a few mornings running, the reading
light was restored. Her parents decided that it was better to hope that Alison
would eventually fall asleep in bed rather than behind the chair. They could
see that there would be no surrender in this war.
Maybe war was the wrong word, as there was no malice in it. Alison needed
to read and night was the time she had to do it in. She had no wish to battle
or defeat her parents, it was just that reading was essential. Reading made
the world livable. It made the world wide enough to dream of being somewhere else and someone else. The characters in books did not judge her or
ask anything of her or shout at each other; they rescued her from the things
that were hard about her life. She could ride along on their shoulders and
feel with them as if she was experimenting with being them, making their
mistakes and being proud of their successes in worlds that she could not have
imagined on her own. Both of her parents understood all that, really, having
12
�themselves loved to read as children. The battle among the three of them also
united them.
On Christmas Alison found in her stocking a book with a French name, Les
Miserables. It was fat and long, but it had amazing pictures and the first page
drew her in immediately. Her mother, rushing around to arrange for Christmas dinner and celebrations, sighed as she always sighed at her own conflicting feelings about Alison’s reading. She could have used some help with the
cooking and table-setting, but her heart was glad when she saw Alison settle
into a corner with her new book, the book that Alison’s mother had loved
most as a child.
Alison did not hear the bustle around her. She was in France, with Jean Valjean, stealing bread for his sister’s children, being sent to be a galley slave
as punishment, escaping and on the run from the police, the whole world
against him. Then he was brought up short when, after he stole some silver
candlesticks from a Bishop, the Bishop forgave him, and told him to keep
them. Jean Valjean was paralyzed by this incomprehensible generosity just
at the moment when Alison’s father called her for Christmas dinner. She startled, looking up groggily into her suburban American home, nearly paralyzed
herself by the contrast with her book. It took a while to remember who she
was and what was expected of her.
Her imagination began to clear, though, after which it was fun to be with her
aunts and her cousins. Alison spent the first part of dinner staring at the silver candlesticks on the table, lighted and glowing for the celebration. She
watched the family’s reflections moving and changing in the candlesticks’
polished, elegant contours. No wonder Jean Valjean had tried to steal them—
the images in them were beautiful, no matter how hard the life that they reflected. No wonder he had been paralyzed when the Bishop had given them
as a gift—it’s a world-changing thing to own something that can make a hard
life beautiful, like books. The Bishop’s gift was part of a bargain, Alison suddenly remembered, that Jean Valjean would no longer steal but become a part
of society. She shook herself out of her reverie and joined the laughter of her
family around the Christmas table.
School was out, so Alison could read all the next day. Jean Valjean began the
13
�new life that the Bishop had demanded, disguising himself from the police.
He did well for a while until the honesty he had promised to the Bishop forced
him to reveal himself and return to his punishment in the galleys. Alison
marked her place in the book and closed it in order to think about this dramatic moment of self-revelation. Her mother was cooking and Alison noticed for the first time how tired her mother looked. She put down the book
entirely—she wanted to stretch it out and savor it anyway—and set the table
for dinner without even being nagged. She was obeying the Bishop’s bargain.
That night Alison and her parents slept undisturbed. In the morning Alison went eagerly back to the story to read about Jean Valjean running away
from the galleys a second time. Having escaped, he went to find a little girl,
the daughter of a woman to whom he had made a promise. The little girl
was having a hard time where she was living. She had no books to help her,
Alison thought, with pity. Jean Valjean rescued her and became her foster father, finding refuge in the shelter of a convent, in which she grew up.
Reading about those thick convent walls with the quiet garden inside, Alison
felt the enclosure of the book protecting her, too. Her parents had given her
this world for Christmas.
There was a lot that Alison did not understand about the rest of the book. It
centered around characters who rebelled from their parents and their country and fought for better, freer lives. She felt the power of it but it frightened
her, as she was too young to imagine breaking with her own parents, no matter what their conflicts. It was not important, though, that she did not understand. The bargain struck between Jean Valjean and the Bishop held fast
whether it was understood or not. On the night that she finished the book
she wept over the death of Jean Valjean, reunited with his child at last in a
poor, barren room graced and lit only by the flames of the silver candlesticks
on the mantle.
Her mother found her asleep, the tears on her face, and turned off the light.
14
�Forbidden Fruit - Nadine Bucca
15
�Enkidu’s Dwelling
Nadine Bucca
After they slew the forest demon, Enkidu and Gilgamesh celebrated their
victory with great shouts and cries. They kissed each other.
“What great glory we have received,” said Gilgamesh. “Tomorrow we shall
cut seven cedars, but for now let us wash in the river and rest.”
So, Gilgamesh and Enkidu bathed in the cool clear river at dusk, the sun’s
warm colors shining in the waters before disappearing with it behind the
horizon.
Under the stars, they rested. They found a spot with few roots, a small clearing, and laid their cloaks there. The sky was bright with all its little lights.
There were many cedars in the forest, tall and dark, reaching up to the heavens. They found a space between them, settled among them for the night.
In Humbaba’s forest, there lived a great many creatures. Owls made their
nighttime calls. They could hear a twig break, with a loud snap, as a fox
roamed about.
It was not quiet like how the rest of the world seemed to still when they first
wrestled each other or when Enkidu first laid his hand on Gilgamesh’s heart.
Enkidu spoke. “Gilgamesh, my dear friend whose love is better than the love
of Inanna, the goddess of love, we have slayed the forest demon. As he fell,
so one day we must all fall. Do you fear death?”
“I have never known death.” Gilgamesh looked up at the many stars, more
than he had seen in the city. The dark sky seemed an endless river, with
many small drops of sunlight sparkling on its surface. “Before I was only a
thought, a small seed of a being,” he said.
“Were you dead?” Enkidu asked.
16
�“Yes, but I was waiting.”
“What if you had not become yourself? What if you had become a rock or a
tree?”
“Then that’s what I would have been.”
They listened as another owl called and after, in the stillness that followed,
there was the sound of the flowing river. Gilgamesh thought better of his
answer.
“I do not know if I was dead before or if my mind was merely dormant. But
Enkidu you came from clay, from the earth. Aruru shaped you. Were you
content when you ate and drank with the gazelles? Were you alive?”
“My mind was wild but I was free. The priestess—she clothed me.”
“The priestess—she made you human.”
Enkidu turned from the stars to gaze at Gilgamesh, to see the dark rounds of
his eyes. “No,” he said, taking his hand. “You did.”
“I didn’t feed you bread or give you drink. I didn’t pour forth knowledge for
you.”
“Do you wish you had?” Enkidu whispered.
“I’m not jealous of a priestess.” Gilgamesh’s voice held firm.
Enkidu turned his gaze back to the stars, back to the slow moving clouds,
covering and uncovering the light of the moon.
“I am,” he said, at last. “She is wiser than me.”
“I wish I’d done those things for you, but you have already gained all the
knowledge you need.”
17
�“Yet, I am ignorant,” said Enkidu.
Gilgamesh said nothing, but brought his hand to caress his lover’s knuckles,
the grooves between his fingers, interlacing them with his own. Gilgamesh
and Enkidu slept under the stars, resting in each other’s arms.
“Make me more human,” Enkidu said. “Make me more human than I am.”
Gilgamesh spoke, “What knowledge can we share together? We may hold
each other, and you may kiss me, but what can two men hope to create?”
Enkidu replied, “We shall make what it is in our power to make.”
“Very well then. You are my companion formed from the earth. I cannot
tame you.”
The next morning brought a chill over the water, a light fog. They gathered
wood for a fire, ate the bread they had. The bread was still soft in the middle.
It tasted to Enkidu like sweet grain, and nothing like the grass of the gazelles
which now he hardly recalled.
“Do you understand,” Enkidu said. “The goddess made me because of the
outcry against you—she made me to fight against you, to be your equal. You
were a tyrant.”
“I know.”
“You were the worst tyrant. This pitcher wants water. The city down to its
earth wants restitution.”
“I’ll make a monument then, build a wall. Maybe I’ll even make it to you,”
Gilgamesh laughed and Enkidu followed.
“I expect more from someone who is one-third god.”
“Two-thirds actually.”
18
“Let me be your other third.”
�“Why not half?”
“You must be careful, for then I may overtake you. You’re mostly god; I am
completely man. I do not wish to be divine, but only as I am. Here, I have
collected the seeds of a cedar,” Enkidu said. “Before we build, let’s plant.”
Enkidu held out in his palm, the small seed cones.
“I wouldn’t take the hand of a lesser man,” replied Gilgamesh. He took the
cedar seeds, then Enkidu’s hand, and they embraced.
“You have a great many questions and observations Enkidu,” said Gilgamesh.
“We will cut down seven trees and build a raft, but first let this earth grow
and nourish these little cedar trees to be, you who were born of clay.”
Enkidu blessed the earth. For seven days the two friends planted cedars
placing each seed in the earth, and covering them, digging with their hands,
washing in the stream. Both men found rest in their planting, a sweetness
like honey, as strong as fermented grain, as potent as death.
And at the end of seven days, Gilgamesh dreamed. He saw the beginning,
the separation of deep waters, the making of the gods.
The world became dark to Gilgamesh’s eyes.
Then Gilgamesh said, “I must run through a tunnel to catch the sun.”
And Enkidu responded, “Our days are numbered. Let me be your sun.” As he
said this the leaves above him glittered with light.
“If only you were my sun,” Gilgamesh said.
In that garden, Gilgamesh and Enkidu lived.
19
�Lady Sagredo
Cynthia Crane
Giovanni Francesco Sagredo (1571 – 1620) was a mathematician and
scientist, and a friend of Galileo, who immortalized him as one of the
interlocuters in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
He attempted to solve the problem of measuring longitude with magnetics, and the English physicist William Gilbert called him the “great
Magneticall man.” I imagine that like many know-it-all Renaissance
men, he might have been diff icult, if charming, to live with. Since he
never married, I thought a bit of a romp with a nonexistent wife might
serve us all to remember that even in the midst of greatness, we still
want wine and chocolate for dessert, and we still want Galileo to talk
about the stars.
“He’s coming tonight!”
“Who’s coming tonight?”
“Him!”
“Oh . . . him . . . ,” Lady Sagredo said, and laughed at her husband the same way their son would laugh at Cook panicking
about nothing.
“Stop that,” Sagredo said.
His wife said, “Stop what, darling Marito?”
“Stop smiling like that.”
“You want me to be sour?”
“I do,” he said, “I want you to be sour and rushed and hurry
about and send Cook to market for f ish and make the evening
magnif icent.”
“He wrote me last week,” she said.
20
�“Last week?” Sagredo ran his f ingers across his bald head as
though his curls were still there.
“Hmmm,” she said, remembering his hair.
“Last week?” Sagredo repeated. “You didn’t tell me?”
“I assumed, darling, I assumed,” she said, pulling him close and
interrupting his words with a long kiss.
Don’t worry, she explained, the menu is set, we’re having the
cheese you like from town, and the peppered olives, as though
cheese and peppered olives would put his mind at ease.
“And the Asti,” she added. He looked alarmed.
“ The Asti? Are you sure?”
“Not with dinner,” she explained with some exasperation. He
had stopped listening to her and was playing with the lace at her
neck. He missed the pretty way the old ruff had framed her face
when they f irst met, but he had to admit, the view behind the
soft lace was lovely, enticing, suggestive.
“Stop, Marito, stop,” she said with a completely different laugh,
and pushed his hand away, though not quickly and not with much
force.
“ The Asti will be perfect,” she reprimanded, “I got chocolate.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
Sagredo stopped himself from asking about the money.
“It’s going to rain tonight,” he added.
“I know,” she said, “I know everything.”
She kissed him again.
21
�“ Therefore, chocolate,”
she added.
“And Asti.”
He wanted to know if that was the dress she was wearing. No, she
assured him, she had worn this dress last time they met in Venice, Galileo would remember it, and Maria Celeste would want to
hear about something new. Sagredo objected, “but she’s at San
Matteo,” meaning the convent where Galileo’s daughter had taken
orders. “Precisely,” said his wife.
Ms. Sagredo turned to go but the locket at the end of her long
necklace was stuck to one of the buttons of her husband’s vest.
She pulled it away, though it was more than a little stuck.
Sagredo reddened.
“It’s magnetic,” she said indignantly. “You told me this was gold.”
She held the locket up to him.
“I did,” he said, “say that. I did say that it was gold, and it is
gold, kind of.”
“Plate?”
“Not plate, better than that, but yes,” his voice petered out.
Making a disgusted sound, she turned away and left for the kitchen, not really angry, but also not ready to let him see her smile.
She thought how Galileo would flirt and drink too much Asti and
she would be able to get him to talk about the wandering stars
and the rugged moon, and then it would be worth all the time
and money she’d spent for an evening out of the kitchen and
away from her books, dreaming of, well, she wasn’t sure what.
22
�Tea at Laterna - Nadine Bucca
23
�The Mode of Pi
Stephen Borsum
The air in the courtroom was stifling. So much so that it would choke
the sturdiest of lungs, drying the trachea like the deep desert under
a hot sun; save for the fact that the entire congregation was holding
their breath. No breath, no air to choke on. A fly nipped at my ear, that
droning driving the hair on my neck to stand at attention. Perhaps in
my ignorance I should have slowed my mind to listen to its secret. But
I neglected this opportunity, not recognizing it for what it could have
been, for the prosecutor approached the bench, and seven pairs of
eyes from the jury, confused, angry, concerned, watched every twitch
of my face.
“Is it not true, that you are here on trial for the pursuance of fundamental truths of the Universe?” It was a misdirecting question from
the prosecutor, delicately crafted, but asked too early to have the impact he clearly intended.
“It is true, that is what I’m on trial for.” I reply. The cold, procedural
questioning was meant to envelop the emotions surrounding my case.
Be they wonder or terror. And to discard that envelope, tossing it into
the ever-burning fire of principle and logic.
“And you maintain your innocence?”
“Clearly.”
His wry grin flashed. The chase was on. He turned now to the jury, his
audience.
“Please, if you’d answer this question for the jury, we might continue, all sharing an understanding of certain facts.” The prosecutor
paused. This was a simple trick, one that school children learn when
they share stories. The congregation would strain forward, pointing
ears towards the forthcoming question. Each moment would raise the
tension, increasing the stakes of my answer. No question in the trial
until now bore such weight nor may any after, if handled deftly by the
prosecutor.
“Would you deny,” another pause, delicately placed, precise, “that
24
�your research and subsequent applications thereof, contain the possibility, no... the probability,” a self-correction wielded like a dagger,
concealed within the sleeve, “of altering the human soul, perhaps irrevocably?”
I did not hear the myriad of reactions from the room, but my heart
sensed them. As if the jury and congregation had been shown irrefutable evidence, the murder weapon in my hand moments after using
it, the bated breath was released and the heat of the room grew sticky
with humidity. As if the capillaries of the lungs saturated the exhalation more deeply with moisture.
In fact this was only a baited question. My biting of this lure would
open a new line of questioning from which I would be unable to return. To deny such a grandiose suggestion was to deny what my work
had yielded, a fate worse than conviction, and death. To assent to this
question was to guarantee such a conviction and to never see my work
flourish as it could. As it must.
My defense attorney caught my eye. His were welling with tears as
this was the question we had always prepared for. The undeniable
question. And in no retort we had crafted had there ever been a convincing way through. When your attorney becomes an ally, beyond
litigator, there must be power in what you’ve done. Even he denied
me at first. Suggested that pleading guilty and discontinuing the work
would be the only certain path to safety. But now he sees. He knows.
Damn safety.
“Do you feel I have altered your soul, prosecutor?”
The judge spat at me, sharply, without a patience that was never granted in the first place. “You will answer the question in a statement. A
dialectical maneuver will not suffice.”
The prosecutor smiled a venomous grin.
“Yes, your honor.” My turn to pause. To breathe. Perhaps this was my
last free heartbeat and I would soak in the moment as if it could be
stripped away. The room grew dry again, but I was careful to not let it
linger so long as the prosecutor. His pension for showmanship was my
only saving grace. “Not just the human soul, but that of the Universal.”
It was certainly nonsense to most of the people in attendance. And the
prosecutor recoiled. It was this essence of power that had faced the
25
�least ridicule, for it was the least sensical to their ears. But the prosecutor recovered, too quickly for my liking.
“There we have it. Admission, and delusions of grandiosity. This, man,
ladies and gentlemen here assembled, wishes himself a god!”
This drew chuckles, as the prosecutor turned to address the crowd,
encouraging their pity and scorn for my contemptuous delusions.
“Not wishes. Wills.” I said, partially to myself but with enough volume
to my baritone that the ears nearest me keyed in on it.
In this moment my mind returned to a series of memories that lay
coiled in my conscience. There were first the resonances that established held a sacred balance akin to that of the celestial orbits. Inalterable, it was said they were. Yet a thoughtful nudge might disrupt
such balance. Thoughtful, or reckless, I was warned on occasion. But
who might undue the orbits of the planets themselves save the hand of
God? And was I to supersede him? Or was I an act myself?
Flashing forward to two frequencies, one and the other containing a
balance of sameness and difference together, threads of unison passing between both that would wax and wane as dissonant undertones
built.
“It’s beautiful” she said. She had been the most apprehensive, and
her skepticism was at first my only source of apprehension. Now her
skepticism was not that it couldn’t be done, but what may happen if it
worked? The nuclear age ushered in the power for mankind to undo
itself, but this? The power to ascend, decay, evolve, dissolve, many
possible paths that the frequencies alone would be the arbiter of. The
slightest miscalculation meant a causal chain, the results of which
could not be anticipated. Why had I pressed forth in the face of such
potentialities?
“What remains in flux is how this emanates throughout the heavens.”
The philosopher asked. And I returned a question that had not come
to my mind until this moment.
“Is God’s soul that of the cosmos, or something beyond? What is the
part and what is the whole?”
26
The smile he turned to me with was one of pensive reflection, apprehension and anticipation mixed in a swirl of emotion. “That is the
�question, isn’t it? Would that we could know the wholeness of creation. I fear you may learn the truths as you change them, if the Universe is constructed in one way rather than the other.”
And then the final experiment. A tone slowly bending up, the tri-tone
filling the resonant chamber, and the overtone singing the voice of
heaven. But from which direction would the wave pattern collapse?
Inwardly or outwardly, both were possibilities, with drastically different consequences. The overtone peaked as the rising tone angled back
down, through the tri-tone, down past unison of the second and third
octaves below the overtone, into something new. The undertone, and
the ground began to tremble.
What my calculations never determined is how long the tone would
have to sink and how far the undertone might fluctuate. I had never
expected it to take days, even weeks. And then I was arrested. I was
out on the street going to buy bread and a bottle of wine to distract
myself for an evening because I had nothing to do but wait. And waiting seemed like a prison unto itself. But I had seen the signs, there
would be a result that no one could control, and yet would alter everything. It was something that could not be resisted by stopping it,
resonant waves expanded.
I was shaken from this reflection by realization. The courtroom around
me had swelled to an uproar. Cries of heretic, blasphemer, and heathen rang of the walls of this stone room. The prosecutor even reeled
for a moment before seeing the opportunity to deal the finishing blow.
“You see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he confesses! This is no
mere tinkerer but one who’d assume you can supplant the will of God!”
The judge pounded at his desk with the gavel, crying for an order
that he could not wrest from the crowd, not until the prosecutor, now
firmly in control of the narrative, raised his hands.
“What I cannot be certain of,” he turned to the judge, “your honor, is
whether or not the defendant is insane.” I hereby request that the trial
be paused until such a time as we’ve had him evaluated both spiritually and psychologically, to allow the jury to fully assess the qualities
of the defendant before delivering a verdict.”
It was a smart move on his part. It showed a touch of sympathy, whether feigned or not. And it would lend credibility to the sentence the
prosecution had originally sought, death by ostracization. A volun-
27
�tary sentence that would cast me out and let me die how I pleased,
removed from civilization so as to inflict no further harm upon it.
The judge was quick to acquiesce. In mere minutes I was once again
chained and thrown into the back of a transport. Feeling the rumble
of the road beneath me as it passed the waiting miles to the prison. I
can’t feel the rumble of a vehicle any longer without remembering the
undertone. And they threw me back into my cramped cell. There I had
several books, at this point nearly memorized and only used to pass
the time. I felt I had milked all their secrets long ago, and every time
I opened them now was just for a hit of nostalgia or to notice some
hidden quirk of translation. Plato’s Timaeus, Einstein’s Relativity, The
World as Will and Representation, and Marie Shelley’s Frankenstein.
It was a short list, but they all offered a kind of creature comfort.
Days passed. Then weeks. And I endured a barrage of tests designed
for no other purpose than to assure I was as condemnable as it appeared. All the while I had only the ability to wonder about my experiment. The calculations supported a theory that even if they found it,
destroyed it, sundered the equipment and stopped the tones, they had
already emanated. But how long before I knew some sign of the impact
was impossible to tell. Localization of experiment does not correlate
to localization of phenomena, and a question the Philosopher once
asked me was, “We know the speed of light, and the speed of sound. It
remains to be seen if the speed of truth is beholden to such obstacles.”
28
�I am. Working?
Melissa Hicinbothem
When I considered what it meant “to be” I was unable to discover anything tangible. I could not grasp anything intrinsic to myself that revealed what it was to be. Considered another way “to be” might mean
“I am”. Well, the problem emerges, I am, what exactly? How can I
know what I am without something external? What condition tells me
what I am in any given moment?
In this awkward position I began to consider my personal circumstances. Following seven months of unemployment I began a new job.
My question took on a new cast. What does it mean “to be” working?
What does it mean “to be” not working? Now, I found myself at a convenient demarcation point to consider my inquiry about being.
What did it mean to be working when previously I had not? Was my
time more engaged? Was I less idle? The short answer is no. My new
employment did not mean any greater engagement. It did not mean
less idleness. I had a job now, but I spent a large amount of my working hours engaged in nothing purposeful. Certainly nothing urgent.
Indeed, for the first time that I can recall, my new employers urged
me to “relax” to “take it easy”.
What does this mean? It seems to mean that “to be” working involved
or required no change internal to me. Nothing inside of me needed
to change. So, nothing inside of me changed. Here I was, working
again after a long hiatus, and I found no evidence that any change in
my state had produced a change internal to me. I was not required to
be more purposeful or serious. By the measure of my internal life “I
am” working was just as intangible as “I am”.
Still, I was at a demarcation point and I knew that some change had
taken place. “To be” working was indeed different from not working.
If my internal life was unchanged by the demands of employment perhaps, I should look to more external factors. “To be” working meant
that my time was no longer unstructured. Any given time of the day
could no longer see me anywhere. Even if I had nothing important to
do at work I still needed to be there. Did “to be” working mean that I
was physically present at times dictated to me by my employer? Was
this the absence of idleness? Even though I was doing very little, I was
29
�structuring my presence around someone else’s demands. There was
nothing substantially different with me, but I was sharing external
conditions with someone else.
Another possible answer for what it meant “to be” working was that
I was earning money. Admittedly, this might be the best example.
Money does seem to be an important distinction between gainful employment and unemployment. I had no sense of vocation integral to
me, but as the result of meeting my employer’s conditions I could expect to receive a paycheck. An agreed upon amount of money would
be exchanged for my presence at dictated times.
Is this what it means “to be” working, the shared understanding of external conditions between my employer and me? If I cannot discover
what it means “to be” working independent of any external conditions, have I established a phenomenological account of myself?
It seems to be Hegel’s conjecture that the Greeks possessed shared
external conditions similar to those between my employer and me.
In the case of the Greeks, they had a shared aesthetic sense. A shared
understanding of what was beautiful. My employer and I only come
together for the expectations of work, and the Greeks lived in separate city-states that were bound only by a shared aesthetic. I know
virtually nothing of my employer beyond what it is necessary to meet
the shared conditions of work. Yet, we are able to work together because of that shared understanding. Is the unity of Spirit a shared
understanding of external conditions?
I do not think so.
Hegel believes the Greek unity was fragile. That it was undone by
Thought. Does this mean that a shared understanding of beauty could
not hold the Greeks together in the face intellectualism? If a culture
cannot be held together by a set of shared external conditions what
is necessary for prolonged survival? If not, what role does intellectualism play in building the unity of spirit? If the Greeks did not have
unity of Spirit, were they the first step in a long historical journey to
find the unity?
30
Let me assume that the Greeks do not have unity of Spirit. They are
indeed missing something. The Greeks see beauty as I see my employment. A set of shared external conditions. Am I missing something
too? I have already remarked that upon commencing my new job I felt
no internal change. When I perform my duties, I know neither what
�I am doing in a meaningful sense, nor why I am doing them. I know I
am working, but I do not know why.
I suppose I am in the same position I was in when I began this essay.
And now I am running out of time to reach a conclusion. Like Hegel’s
reading of the Greeks, I have observed phenomena in my life. The
phenomena (presence and compensation) occur as the result of my
shared understanding with my employer. But, does this shared understanding prove any unity of Spirit in my life? Will I come undone at
the emergence of Thought?
31
�Essays
A Bug’s Life
Kar ña in the Round
The Ultimate Desire of Le Misanthrope
Intertextuality and the Elixer of Character
Is Odette Odile?
32
�Contributors
Johnathan Wright
Jay Gold
Kelly Kwon
Gus Kraus
Cynthia Crane
33
�A Bug’s Life
The Brothers Karamazov’s Dimitri as
Fallen Man
Johnathan Wright
In Dostoevsky’s masterwork, The
Brothers Karamazov, it quickly becomes clear to the imagination that
the pious, innocent Alyosha is an
“angel,” and that the secretive, cold
Ivan is a “grave,” but the characterization of Dimitri, the eldest Karamazov
brother, requires a subtler analysis.
Dostoevsky himself names him a vile
insect. Indeed, it is true that Dimitri
has many dehumanizing vices; he is,
in his own words, “just a brute of an
officer who drinks cognac and goes
whoring”. Nonetheless, the author’s
label of “insect” is not meant to be
a revocation of his humanity, but an
emphatic affirmation of it. This becomes apparent over the course of
several poems which Dimitri recites
to Alyosha during their dialogue in
Fyodor Pavlovich’s neighbors’ backyard. The first excerpt that Mitya
recites is from Schiller’s “Eleusinian Festival;” it narrates Ceres’ coming to earth and finding the world
hostile, barren, and desolate due to
“man’s universal fall” (pp. 106). With
all of his unholy revelry and rampant
womanizing, Mitka himself presents
34
the reader with the picture of a man
who has been utterly enthralled by
his base desires, a true product of the
Fall. Nevertheless, he is still a man.
By way of Aristotelian example, he is
not so controlled by his base desires
that he becomes a beast, who does
not know and want the good; he is a
torn human being who knows what
is good, but simply lacks the self-control to bring that good about. Despite
his brutishness, Mitenka preserves a
strong sense of honor and propriety.
Mitya’s heart is tormented by this internal conflict between good and evil:
“Let me be cursed, let me be base
and vile, but let me also kiss the hem
of that garment in which my God is
clothed; let me be following the devil
at the same time, but still I am also
your son, Lord,” (pp.107). Is this not
the very struggle which we all, imperfect yet noble as we are, undergo in the silence of our own hearts?
As Mitka’s third excerpt, from Schiller’s “To Joy,” asserts, our tendency
toward earthly pleasures renders us
“insects”— but also makes us human.
Dimitri, then, is indeed an insect, but
according to Dostoevsky, so are we.
Dimitri’s relationship with Katerina
reflects such human complexity. It
begins because of his ever-present
pride and lust; he seeks to blackmail
her into intercourse, simply because
she spurns him. When the moment
�comes, however, something about
her character breaks his wicked resolve. Her defiance and strength
penetrates past his base sensuality
and touches something more noble,
something even akin to reverence in
his dark heart. It makes him uncomfortable, and for that he even hates
her for a moment, with “the kind of
hatred that is only a hair’s breadth
from love” — it causes him to let her
go free. This act of mercy in turn
moves her, and for that she falls madly in love with him. Baffled by this
unexpected reaction, Dimitri sinks
into an acute self- consciousness that
wavers between humility and pride.
He is keenly aware of his faults, and
feels as if he is not worthy to marry
someone as noble and virtuous as
Katerina. It would be easier to call
his insecurity “humility” if he were
willing to accept mercy and reform
for the sake of love, but even in the
face of Katya’s tender forgiveness of
his faults and trespasses, he refuses
to besmirch her reputation by wedding her, protesting that he cannot
change. In this way, Dimitri is more
self-destructive than humble; he is
too unwilling, too cowardly to turn
and face his vices, even if it means
the loss not only of Katerina, but ultimately, of his soul. Katerina herself
is not without some self-destructive
tendencies of her own; her brazen
confidence and proactiveness errs
on the side of excess, and leads to her
allowance of the ruthless Grushenka
into her home, a decision which ends
in disaster.
Though Dimitri is considered “the insect,” his complex character and relationships teach more about the plight
of fallen man than either his brother
“the angel,” or his brother “the grave.”
35
�Karña in the Round
Jay Gold
INTRODUCTION
E. M. Forster once distinguished between two different kinds of literary
characters. Flat characters are simple and two-dimensional, frequently a single quality writ large. Round
characters, on the other hand, are
complex and harder to characterize briefly. Forster offers Dickens’s
Mrs. Micawber as an example of a
flat character, and Thackeray’s Becky
Sharp as an example of a round one.
To this reader, there is no rounder
character in the Mahābhārata than
Karña. While he is portrayed as a coherent personality, it is difficult to
assert anything about his character
without qualifying that assertion in
important respects. There is no need
to demonstrate Karña’s roundness;
that will be obvious to every reader.
My intention in this paper is to answer the question, What is it about
Karña that makes him so obviously
round?
KARÑA’S CASTE AND FAMILY STATUS ARE EXTREMELY COMPLICATED
Karña, while he admits that Kŗşņa
has stated the law correctly, rejects
this interpretation for himself. For
Karña, Kunti’s having abandoned
him destroyed any parental claim she
36
might have on him, and the love with
which Râdhâ and Adhiratha raised
him established such a claim in his
eyes.
Thus Karña is by history and by inclination the son of a sûta, and by
heredity and by law a kṣatriya. But
there is another way in which he can
be said to be a kşatriya: in his physical capabilities, particularly his ability to withstand pain.
After he gives Indra his earrings and
accepts from him the Never-failing
Spear, Karña flays his entire body,
“mov[ing] no muscle in spite of the
pain.” That such fortitude demonstrates his kṣatriya-ness may be seen
in the following story:
Karña had asked to study with Drona, but Drona turned him down,
saying he would teach only “[a] brahmin who has correctly performed
the right vow” or “a kṣatriya who has
performed asceticism.” So Karña betook himself to Râma Jâmadagnya
and made the same request, this
time purporting to be a brahmin.
Some time later a fearsome insect bit
Karña, who “stifled the intolerable
pain with his fortitude,…not moving
in the least.” Râma, when he became
aware of this, was angry enough to
curse Karña: “No brahmin could
endure this extreme pain. Your fortitude could only be a kṣatriya’s.” In
other words, Karña’s physical characteristics, as well as his heredity and
the law, show him to be a kṣatriya.
�I add that frequently in the
Mahābhārata we see characters who
are the sons of gods, but who also are
considered the sons of their mother’s
husbands. This is true in particular
of Karña’s Pandava brothers. Karña
is unique in that there are three male
characters who could be said to be
his father: the sun, Adhiratha, and
Pandu.
KARÑA IS COMMITTED TO CARRYING OUT THE OBLIGATIONS TO
OTHERS THAT HE HAS TAKEN ON
On the face of it, Karña looks utterly principled, committed to truth, to
loyalty, and to generosity. Yet at different points he takes actions that
arguably violate these commitments.
1. Truth
Karña says, speaking to Kṛṣṇa, “[N]either joy nor fear, nor all of earth nor
piles of gold can make me a traitor to
my word.” This seems to be Karña’s
fundamental principle, as it includes
his vows involving the loyalty and
generosity that also characterize him.
This is the principal reason Karña
gives Kṛṣṇa for rejecting Kṛṣṇa s directive to assume his position as the
eldest Pandava. One would think
Kṛṣṇa’s charge would be compelling
to Karña for several reasons. Karña
would become king, in a ceremony
at which Kṛṣṇa himself would officiate. By this act he would bring about
peace between the Kauravas and the
Pandavas. His acknowledging his
place in the Pandava family would be
entirely consistent with the law, even
more than the path he does take. (He
tells his mother Kunti, who urges him
to follow Kṛṣṇa’s directive, that he
does not “deny that for me the gateway to the Law is to carry out your
behest.”) And he would be obeying
the instructions of the supreme lord
Kṛṣṇa. Yet, he says, his obligations to
Râdhâ and Adhiratha and to Duryodhana keep him from doing so.
I do not see where Karña actually
pronounces a vow of loyalty to Râdhâ
and Adiratha; his obligations to them
seem to come from love and felt loyalty. To Duryodhana, on the other
hand, he does take a vow . Even before he has gotten to know Duryodhana, Karña tells him, “I choose
to be friends with you.” And again,
when Duyyodhana asks for his eternal friendship, Karña responds, “So it
shall be.” Afterwards, his felt loyalty
plays a prominent if not a predominant part in his devotion to Duryodhana.
Another example of a vow that Karña
refuses to break is his gifting to Indra
the earrings with which he was born
that make him invulnerable in battle.
Both Karña and his father the sun say
that “all the world knows” his vow
to refuse nothing to the brahmins.
So when Indra appears to him in
the guise of a brahmin, Karña, even
knowing it is a god and not a brahmin,
grants his request for the earrings.
(One might think he does so because
37
�it is a god who asks, but Karña has no
problem defying Kṛṣṇa and the sun
god.) This despite his knowledge that
giving up the earrings will make him
vulnerable on the battlefield. He does
receive in return the Never-failing
Spear, but with the restriction that
he can use it only once. So the spear’s
protection is rather less reliable than
the earrings’. And, as discussed infra,
as it turns out he uses the spear on
somebody other than Arjuna, whom
he had planned to be its target and
whom he knew would otherwise kill
him. Hence Karña’s keeping of this
vow leads directly to his death on the
battlefield.
Sometimes Karña proclaims his absolute devotion to truth. “I do not fear
death as I fear the lie,” he tells Kṛṣṇa.
Vaiśampāyana calls him “truthful,”
and at one point says, “Karña’s mind
did not falter, for he stood fast by the
truth.” But Karña is not above employing deception to obtain what he
wants. We see this in the story of his
apprenticeship to Râma. In order to
study with Râma, he lies to him about
his origin. In this willingness to deceive when he thinks the ends justify
the deception, Karña is no different
from Yudhiṣṭhira or Kṛṣṇa, who do
the same despite their own reputations for honesty.
Furthermore, such devotion to truth
as Karña possesses does not include a
devotion to transparency. After Kṛṣṇa
tells him of his true legal status, he
asks that Kṛṣṇa “suppress word of our
taking counsel here,” as Yudhiṣṭhira
38
would not accept the kingdom if he
knew Karña was his elder brother.
While secrecy may not be as great a
violation of commitment to truth as
deception is, it is some distance from
the total honesty that Karña claims
to represent.
2. Loyalty
Apart from his vows of loyalty, Karña
claims that his actions derive from
feelings of loyalty based upon how
other characters have and have not
acted towards him.
The loyalty is pronounced in the case
of Râdhâ and Adhiratha, Karña’s
foster parents. When we first meet
Adhiritha, Karña had just “hung his
head in shame” when asked about
his lineage. But Karña treats Adhiratha with reverence, despite likely
knowing that acknowledging this
sûta as his father would elicit scorn
from such as Bhîma. In explaining
to Kṛṣṇa why he will not assume his
position as a Pandava, Karña speaks
of his adoptive parents’ love for him
– Râdhâ breastfeeding him and dealing with his body wastes, Adhiratha’s
having his birth rites performed,
marrying him to wives with whom
he has “sons and grandsons” with
whom his heart has bonds of love.
“How,” Karña asks, “could a man like
me deny [Râdhâ] the ancestral offering?”
The obverse of his loyalty to Râdhâ
and Adhisthira is his antipathy to his
biological mother, Kunti, who, he
�tells Kṛṣṇa “cast me out as though I
had been stillborn.” Karña speaks of
“the irreparable wrong” she has done
him, and goes on,
“Born a kṣatriya, I have not yet received the respect due a baron. What
enemy could have done me greater harm than you have? When there
was time to act you did not show me
your present compassion. And now
you have laid orders on me, the son
to whom you denied the sacraments.
You never acted in my interest like a
mother, and now here you are, enlightening me solely in your own interest.”
It might be thought that the fact of
parentage would be enough to garner
a child’s loyalty. But this is not Karña’s
way. His loyalty derives from how he
has been treated.
This also is true of Karña’s loyalty to
Duryodhana. The latter begins their
relationship by giving Karña a kingdom so he can fight a duel with Arjuna, and defends him against Bhîma’s
taunts. Karña tells Kṛṣṇa. “For thirteen years I have enjoyed unrivaled
royal power in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s lineage
by relying on Duryodhana…[who]
has raised arms and prepared for war
with the Pandavas, because he relies
on me,…Therefore he has confidently
chosen me to be the main opponent
of the Left-handed Archer in a chariot duel in the war.”1 Karña gives all
these as reasons not to break his vow
to Duryodhana. And when Karña’s father, the sun, tells him to do as Kunti
says, Karña responds:
“The Dhārtarāṣṭras have let me share
in all their comforts and honored me
much at all times: how could I, I betray them now? Now that they are
embroiled in a feud with the others,
they attend to me at all times and
honor me as much as the Vasus honor Vāsava? How could I shatter their
hopes now, if they think that with my
prowess they can engage their enemies? How could I desert them now
when they see in me the boat they
need to cross over this impassable
battle and find the farther shore of
this shoreless ocean. Now the hour
has struck for all the men who have
lived off the Dhārtarāṣṭra, and I have
to discharge my duty heedless of
my life. Those evil men who, after
having been well supported to their
heart’s content, pay no heed to what
has been done for them and fecklessly undo past benefactions when the
time of duty arrives, wicked despoiler of their kings and thieves of their
masters’ riceball, gain neither this
world nor the next.”
It might be countered that Duryodhana is a villain, unworthy of Karña’s
loyalty.2 And, indeed, Karña may be
accused of being loyal to a fault in
the way he treats Draupadi, calling
her a whore and a slave wench. He
tells Kṛṣṇa that he regrets insulting
the Pandavas, a very “round” thing
to do. The reason he gives for his
behavior is that he wanted to please
Duryodhana.
39
�Finally, this section presents an opportunity to raise a question. When
Kṛṣṇa issues his directive to Karña,
the latter replies, “If I…were to obtain this large, prosperous kingdom,
I would hand it over to Duryodhana.”
Well, then, why doesn’t he do just
that? There would be no war, and his
friend would obtain the kingdom he
desires. The text provides no explanation.
3. Generosity
As we have discussed, Karña gives up
his earrings of invulnerability to Indra disguised as a brahmin. He claims
he does so because of his vow never
to refuse anything to a brahmin, a
vow taken on the basis of reverence
and generosity. A later incident is if
anything an even stronger example
of that generosity.
It will be recalled that in exchange
for the earrings, Indra gave Karña a
Never-failing Spear that would unerringly kill anybody, with the proviso
that it could be used only once. Karña
had planned to use it to kill Arjuna,
the one warrior capable of killing
him. But at one point during the war
with the Pandavas, Bhîma’s demon
son Ghaṭotkaca terrorized the Kaurava army:
“The Kaurava warriors pleaded with
the Suta’s son, “O Karna, kill the Rakshasa soon before he destroys the
whole army. Use your Shakti weapon given to you by Indra, the King of
Heaven…. Karna decided to use his
40
Shakti weapon. …[He] remembered
how…he had exchanged it for his
natural golden armor and earrings.
It was meant to kill Arjuna. Not finding any other way to save the army
from extermination, Karna picked
up that dart and readied himself to
release it. It could only be used once,
and after being released, it would
again return to Indra. Karna then
released the mighty weapon.…That
dart soared through the sky, and…
struck Ghaṭotkaca in the chest depriving him of his life… Lord Krishna was joyous on the occasion…. ‘I
know that Karna can now be killed,
because he no longer has possession
of that celestial dart.’”
So Karña, out of his generosity and
loyalty, and knowing of the consequences to himself, uses his weapon to save the Kaurava army. This
exemplifies the reasons that both
Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Vaiśampāyana call
him “compassionate.” Karña’s use
of the Never-failing Spear against
Ghaṭotkaca has practical reasons
as well: had he not used it, his side
would have been defeated, and he
never would have had the chance to
use the spear against Arjuna.
WITH ALL THAT, KARNA’S OVERRIDING MOTIVATION IS HIS DESIRE
FOR FAME
Karña says on any number of occasions that he hungers for fame even
more than for life.3 In turning down
the sun’s directive to refuse Indra his
earrings, he says, “I shall give him
�my earrings…, and my superb armor,
lest my fame vanish.” He goes on, “I
choose fame on earth, sun, even at
the cost of my life.. [T]he famous man
attains to heaven, the inglorious man
perishes. For in the world fame gives
life to a man like a mother, while infamy kills life be the soul alive.” He
then cites a verse from “the Placer
himself”:
“In the world hereafter is fame
The highest estate of a man;
In this world fame if pure
Increases that man’s life.”
Karña then says that by giving away
his earrings and armor, by offering
up his body in war and vanquishing
his foes, and by protecting others,
he will “win supreme fame in the
world….I have vowed to protect my
fame with my very life.” Karña brushes off without comment the sun’s advice that “[o]nly the fame of a living
man is good….what use is fame to a
dead person who has been reduced
to ashes?...The fame of a dead mortal
is like a garland on a corpse.”
could have had.” He goes on, “In killing Arjuna on the battlefield I shall
find my reward, or reap fame if the
Left-handed Archer kills me.”
CONCLUSION
I began this paper with the following question: What is it about Karña
that makes him such a round character? I have analyzed aspects of his
character and his story in order to
provide an answer to this question.
A characteristic of round characters
is that even after they have been discussed at length there is more to be
said about them, and there are elements of Karña’s personality – like
his self-confidence or his braggadocio – upon which I have not touched
here. Like other round characters
in literature, Karña combines two
seemingly opposed characteristics:
he has a complexity we would expect
to find in those we encounter in real
life, and there is no one else – in life
or in literature – quite like him.
One of Karña’s reasons for not accepting Kṛṣṇa’s directive is that if
he were to avoid combat with Arjuna it would bring disgrace to both
of them, and he tells Kunti that he is
concerned about “being called a coward” and “what…the baronage [will]
call me.” He blames Kunti for having “destroyed the name and fame I
41
�The Ultimate Desire of
Le Misanthrope
Kelly Kwon
What does Alceste ultimately want?
It is nothing but commitment that
Alceste demands from his friend
Philinte and his partner Célimène.
He yells at Philinte: “Monbleu! Vous
n’êtes pas pou être de mes gens. L’ami
du genre humain n’est point du tout
mon fait.”. He detests that his friend
Philinte is everybody’s friend. Also,
he shrieks at Célimène when she
opens the door for Basque without
hesitation: “Quoi! L’on ne peut jamais
vous parler tête à tête? A recevoir le
monde on vous voit toujours prête?”
He is extremely unhappy about his
partner welcoming other people.
Célimène grumbles: “Mais de tout
l’univers vous devenz jaloux.” Alceste counters: “C’est que tout l’univers est bien reçu de vous.” It is true.
Alceste feels jealousy of the whole
world. Why? He is both unwilling to
and unable to fawn over other people, whereas Philinte and Célimène
are capable of acting gregariously.
They seem to have a lot of options to
choose their friends, but Alceste cannot hang out with people other than
these two, who he has carefully selected.
And, as such Alceste is such a misanthrope—what makes Philinte and
Célimène exceptional enough to
qualify for his circle? Are Philinte
and Célimène as genuine as Alceste?
42
Definitely not. They do know how to
be diplomatic: to flatter, to smile and
to conceal. For instance, Philinte is
far from being squeamish to butter
up Oronte as “La chute en est jolie,
amoureuse, admirable!” Célimène is
kind to everybody; not only their potential ally, Basque, who will be helpful in the court, but also to her unwanted suitor, Oronte. Furthermore,
to her enemy, Arsinoé, Célimène
seems soft on her on the surface—
even though these two women were
delivering malicious messages in
a passive-aggressive form. “Si l’on
était sage, ces avis mutuels seraient
mis en usage.”, Célimène fools her
with a gentle tone—this adroitness
is impossible for Alceste, who unintentionally provokes Oronte to file a
lawsuit against him.
Philinte and Célimène are two of the
handful of people capable of appreciating the beauty of Alceste’s candidness, and regardless of Alceste’s
anti-social character, they adore and
trust his straightforwardness. We
can see Philinte holding his laughter
while Alceste gives an acerbic critique of Oronte’s sonnets. Célimène
introduces annoying Arsinoé to Alceste, because she trusts Alceste to
be faithful to her. Perhaps she had
figured out that Alceste would see
Arsinoé’s hypocrisy, and Alceste does
point out Arsinoé’s shady intentions,
of course. He asks in askance: “Mais,
en disant cela, songez-vous, je vous
prie, que cette personne est, Madame, votre amie?” He also refuses
her flatteries. He begins to disavow
�his thoughts so that he can avoid any
involvement with Arsinoé, by humbly saying: “Le ciel ne m’a point fait,
en me donnant le jour, une âme compatible avec l’air de la Cour.”
Nevertheless, it is worth remarking that Alceste acquiesces to the
possibility of Arsione’s false accusation: Célimène could be unfaithful to him. Alceste keeps petitioning
Célimène not to hang out with other guys.—“Perdez votre proces, Madame, avec constance, et ne menagez
point un rival qui m’offense.”, he says;
but he begs to declare that Alceste is
the one who she chooses: “Mais plus
d’amusement, et plus d’incertitude: Il
faut vous expliquer nettement la-dessus. (...) Je saurai, de ma part, expliquer ce silence, et me tiendrai pour
dit tout le mal que j’en pense.” This
distinguishes the simmering jealousy of Alceste. He merely scoffs at
Philinte’s flattery—showing just an
allergic reaction to Philinte’s false
compliments. Although Alceste expresses his strong irritation at Philinte’s excessive philanthropy, he is
not as anxious at seeing Célimène’s
affection for other men. Perhaps Alceste is afraid of losing her. He asks
for exclusivity as her romantic partner, while he does not, or cannot actively do so to his friend, because he
is a friend.
And thankfully, according to her letter, it turns out that Célimène’s inclination has always been toward Alceste, while she put in a lot of effort to
conceal her disgust toward Oronte.
She has been faithful, indeed. It is,
therefore, shocking that Alceste announces that “Mon coeur a present
vous detesté(,)” right after he confirms her faithfulness. He breaks up
the relationship with the last word:
“Allez, je vous refuse, et ce sensible
outrage de vos indignes fers pour jamais me degagé.” How can his abandonment be juxtaposed with her
affectionate confession? Isn’t this
confirmation what he wanted ? What
does he want?
First of all, Alceste seems to make a
dichotomy between those who value
him and those who do not. He despises Oronte’s incapability of accepting
his true judgment; He despises the
world full of sycophants. Whereas
he loves Célimène because she loves
him, and we can infer from his contrapositive statement: “Je ne l’aimerais pas, si je ne croyais [être donc
aimé d’elle].” Even if his love “ne
ferme point mes yeux aux défauts
qu’on lui trouve”, it does not hinder him from loving her. Even if he
finds a piece of (false) evidence that
Célimène loves Oronte, he cannot
help loving her, and fails to avenge
her by using Eliante. He deplores
himself: “O ciel! De mes transports
puis-je être ici le maître?” This insinuates that Alceste desperately needs
her while Célimène seems to have a
variety of options among her suitors.
Unfortunately, Célimène frustrates
Alceste by being continuously ambiguous. She blames his jealousy and
doubt, but she never explains or elu43
�cidates. This can explain why Alceste
becomes bizarrely credulous enough
to believe Célimène’s affectionate letter is for Oronte. He has been made
ill by his doubts, and now he gets a
tangible piece of evidence that can
validate his cumulative jealousy. He
takes an opportunity to vent his rancor. “Moi, je veux me facher.”; He
wants to be angry, and he becomes a
little bit satisfied, just as we might become happy to figure out the nomenclature of illness long after suffering
from its unknown symptoms. Before
long, though, he realizes that “C’est
[lui-même] qui [il] viens plaindre,
et c’est [lui-même] qu’on querelle!”;
(and?) Célimène turns out to be innocent. Instead of apologizing, now
he pretends to be angry, labeling
her reaction a brazen excuse. He tenaciously probes her as to how the
expression of the problematic letter
could be written without romantic
connotations. All he wants is her assurement—to express how much she
is devoted to him and how aloof she
actually is from other men—but he
receives no answer. She is not willing
to enter his game.
Later on, he tenaciously asks if she
will choose him or Oronte. She procrastinates in giving him an answer;
instead, it is other people, Acaste and
Clitandre, who confess her mind instead. She did not have to hesitate
when deciding whom. She just had to
speak up and say, ‘I will choose Alceste, and Oronte is not even on my list,’
but she does not—she does not want
to hurt Oronte’s feelings. However, to
44
what extent does she take care of Alceste?
The longer she weighs those two on
the scale,—unnecessarily—the more
Alceste turns weary and is made miserable. When he figures out he has
won this love competition, instead of
rapture, he feels a deep disappointment. He thinks it is meaningless for
him to feel anxious due to Célimène’s
courtesy, and he is not willing to endure this anymore. “Et s’il faut qu’à
mes feux votre flamme réponde, que
vous doit importer tout le reste du
monde? Vos désirs avec moi ne sontils pas contents?”, he questions. Most
of all, when Célimène hesitantly offers him marriage by saying “Si le
don de ma main peut contenter vos
voeux, je pourrai me résoudre à serre
de tels nœuds; Et l’hymen…”, Alceste
finally explodes in anger, crying out
that he detests her, and he therefore
refuses her.
He then turns to Eliante, confessing
that he finds that she is the only one
who he finds sincere. However he acknowledges that he himself is too unworthy of her love, and that he does
not fit with marriage by nature. This
indicates he is now too traumatized
to pursue his desire for commitment.
Now he begins to seek freedom instead: “Je vais sortir d’un gouffre où
triomphent les vices, et chercher sur
la terre un endroit écarté où d’etre
homme d’honneur on ait la liberté.”
(1808) This is the very moment that he
changes the orientation of his aspirations: from commitment to freedom.
�London Mer - Nadine Bucca
45
�Intertextuality and The
“Elixir” of Character
Gus Kraus
Through his counsel to Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa
weaves together plentiful references to other Sanskrit texts. But in the
tenth chapter of the Bhagavadgītā,
he uses these allusions to teach yoga
to Arjuna, providing him a litany of
magnanimous characters - Gods, sages, heroes, astrological bodies, scriptures, syllables and more. Kṛṣṇa does
not simply present Arjuna with an
array of moral exemplars. He avoids
giving a straightforward Plutarchian
exposition of heroes that Arjuna
ought to emulate in acting according
to dharma; the ethical purport of “I
am the a among syllables”1 is not immediately apparent. Instead, Kṛṣṇa
declares himself the seed (bījaṃ2)
of the greatness of each character he
lists. In tying the quality of each character to himself, Kṛṣṇa’s ‘who’s who’
of excellence in Sanskrit literature
transforms reading - or, in this historical context, “listening” - into a meditative and devotional practice itself.
The Gītā’s intertextual warp and weft
of characters becomes a meditative
focus for the yogic sādhaka.
In the middle of their dialogue, after
covering numerous philosophical
topics and yogic practices, Arjuna
asks of Kṛṣṇa,
46
“Pray tell me of all your divine ubiquities (vibhūti), by means of which
you permeate these worlds. How may
I know you, yogin, in my constant
meditations? In what various modes
of being may I meditate on you, my
lord? Tell me again fully of your yoga
and your ubiquity, Janārdana, for I
am not sated of listening to your Elixir (‘mṛtam)”
Arjuna seeks in these “ubiquities”
to relish the amṛtam - the “Elixir”
in context, but in the word’s literal meaning, that which is “immortal”4. Kṛṣṇa’s response affirms within
each character an undying aspect, of
which he is the source. He hears the
unsated Arjuna, and graciously pours
the sweetest mixture, made from the
most resplendent characters of Sanskrit literature. The verses which
follow use a formulaic structure, the
genitive plural and either written or
implied asmi in each metrical foot,
‘among the x, I am y’.
The earliest identifications among
the vibhūti center on retinues of divine beings, their vehicles and weapons, and mythical beasts. Kṛṣṇa yokes
together in himself figures from both
Vedic and Purāṇic mythology:
“Of the Ādityas I am Viṣṇu, of the celestial lights the shining sun, of the
Maruts I am Marīci, to the constellations I am the moon … [o]f the Rudras
I am Śaṃkara, the God of Riches I am
to Yakṣas and Rākṣasas … of marshals Skanda … I am Vāsuki among
the Snakes. I am Ananta among the
Serpents (nāgānāṃ), Varuṇa
among sea creatures, Aryaman
�among the Fathers, Yama among
those who tame...Garuḍa among
birds.”
Kṛṣṇa affirms in himself a diverse cast
of divine characters. Many of these
references are crucial to the historical development of Vaiṣṇavism, notably the theonym Viṣṇu, meaning
“all-pervader”, among the children of
Aditi. In the same vein, Ananta (also
called Śeṣa) among the Nāgas and
Garuḍa among the birds both serve
as Vedic ‘vehicles’ (vāhana) of Viṣṇu.
Equally noteworthy, however, is how
references to Śiva are interwoven
with them: Śaṃkara being one of the
Rudras (a host of Vedic deities which,
in later Śaiva reception, are identified
as avatars of Śiva), Vāsuki being depicted as a snake around Śiva’s neck,
and Skanda being the offspring of
Śiva and Pārvati (the story on which
Kālidāsa based his Kumārasaṃbhava). Others still have no direct connection to the post-Vedic bhakti
movements. The Yakṣas and Yama do
make important appearances in the
Kena and Katha Upaniṣad, respectively, while a devatā like Aryaman is
largely absent in post-Vedic religious
developments. Each of these divine
references functions metonymically: they connect Kṛṣṇa through with
a larger text or body of texts, including a broad range of Vedic hymns,
Purāṇic storylines and bhakti-cults
outside of his own. Each of these
identified characters then transform
into a new, meditative focus for the
bhakta.
The four sages (Nārada and Kapila,
Vyāsa and Kavi Uśanas) Kṛṣṇa assumes are each significant characters in their own right, but in vibhūti
tie together three important bodies
of Sanskrit literature: the Vedas, the
Sāṃkhya philosophical school and
the Itihāsa (chiefly, Mahābhārata).
The latter of these marks the beginning of increasing self-referential
attitude to the Gītā by Kṛṣṇa. Uśanas
was a Vedic sage, while Nārada features prominently in the Purāṇas.
The founding of the Sāṃkhya school
is traditionally attributed to Kapila;
with this identification Kṛṣṇa retroactively deepens Arjuna’s choice to
become his student by bringing him
directly into the Sāṃkhya lineage (returning ad fontem). But most significantly, Kṛṣṇa takes on the traditional
authorship of the entire Mahābhārata, within which the Gītā is embedded. Through the character of Vyāsa,
Kṛṣṇa speaks obliquely to the audience of the Gītā, declaring himself the
source even of this very text. Through
the characters of these sages, Kṛṣṇa’s
intertextual cosmos expands in a
similar metonymic manner as was
done with divine identifications. He
stitches together Vedic metaphysical speculation, the heroic pursuit of
dharma in the Mahābhārata, and the
unity of metaphysical and practical
discourse in Sāṃkhya-Yoga as having
one source for their greatness and a
single purport.
Kṛṣṇa lists three heroic characters
(Prahlāda, Vāsudeva and Arjuna)
which deepen the self-referential
47
�commentary on the Gītā and further
interlace it in an intertextual matrix.
Naming Vāsudeva is the most directly
self-reflexive moment in the vibhūti,
as it is the specific character of Kṛṣṇa
in the Mahābhārata. But by declaring
himself to be Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa takes on
both personae in this (self-)dialogue.
But he displays an important contrast to Arjuna with a third character;
Prahlāda’s story, told in full by the
sage Nārada in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa
as well as the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, shows
him to be a character marked by natural and authentic bhakti. Despite
an onslaught by his asura father, Hiraṇyakaśipu, he always maintains his
devotion to Viṣṇu:
put to death by Viṣṇu in the form of
the man-lion (Narasimha), Prahlāda became the sovereign of the Daityas”. By interweaving Prahlāda into
the vibhūti, Kṛṣṇa allows this Purāṇic
tale to foil the Gītā. Arjuna, a reluctant warrior who must turn back to
his dharma, contrasts strongly from
Prahlāda’s status as an unwavering
devotee both by nature and in spite
of his nature. But between these juxtaposed heroes within the vibhūti,
Kṛṣṇa reaffirms himself as cause.
The contrast of Arjuna and Prahlāda
highlights Kṛṣṇa’s final conclusions
in the chapter, that he is the universal
essence behind the qualities which
make each hero great.
“Prahlāda who was the worshiper of
the Exalted Being was preeminent
amongst [Hiraṇyakaśipu’s sons] by
his virtues. … In dangers and calamities, his mind (always) remained unruffled. He cherished no desire for
enjoyments, heard (as obtainable in
the next world) or seen (in this world),
as he regarded them to be unreal. He
had controlled his senses, vital airs
(the life-breath), body and intellect.
He completely controlled his desires
and kept his mind calm and serene.
Though he was a demon by birth, he
was devoid of demonic characteristics. [He] had a natural love and devotion to the glorious Lord Vāsudeva.”
Kṛṣṇa’s vibhūti recount a cosmogonic
act on two levels. Firstly, with respect
to Arjuna’s world, it equivocates in
essence (their “transcending power,
luster and might”) the Gods of the
Vedas and Purāṇas, Sages of various
lineages, heroic characters from the
Mahābhārata and elsewhere, syllables, the Gayatri meter, and elements
of the human person (mind, consciousness) by including among the
vibhūti. He reminds Arjuna to “know
that each and every one of [the vibhūti] has its source in a particle of my
splendor”; ascribes to himself the
causal role of their greatness as their
“seed”. Everything which is great is
an effect of Kṛṣṇa’s own greatness: “I
support this entire universe with but
a single portion of mine”. Secondly, it
creates an intertextual cosmos across
diverse genres, by including within
the vibhūti the Vedic Samhitas, the
After many attempts to kill his virtuous son, this episode concludes
with Viṣṇu taking an incarnate form
as Narasimha to vanquish the asura-king: “After his father had been
48
�Upaniṣads, the Purāṇas and Itihāsas,
and more. Kṛṣṇa links each of these,
through the “splendor” or “Elixir” of
their respective metonymic characters, in his own person.
and as the support the entire literary
universe as such.
In this textual universe, Kṛṣṇa details ‘characters’ which are not only
literary persons, but also elements
of the Sanskrit language. These reveal another layer at which Kṛṣṇa has
planted the ‘seed’ of his greatness.
He states that “I am the a among
syllables”, referring to the Devanagari script, wherein each consonant
character in fact represents a syllable
with an implied a unless otherwise
accented (to indicate other vowels).
The ubiquitous a vowel links each
character within a word, mirroring
on the morphological level what occurs at the narrative level. Not only
are the divine, sagely and heroic figures rooted in the Kṛṣṇa, but even the
words by which their tales are told
are composed of Kṛṣṇa.
Kṛṣṇa teaches a meditative, practical
approach to literature: recognizing
and savoring the greatness of a character - literary, linguistic, or otherwise - as having their source in the
supreme being. Each character within the infinite vibhūti becomes a new
‘mode of being’ on which the devotee
may meditate. Further, these characters each represent a single point of
intersection in a vast cosmos of Sanskrit literature. Kṛṣṇa stresses that
through this meditation, the bhakta
comes to know him as the seed of
each characters’ particular greatness
49
�Is Odette Odile?
Ambiguity and Inference in Proust’s
Names
Cynthia Crane
One of the blessings of being a St.
Johns student, sticking to the text, is
also one of the greatest frustrations.
This semester, I read Marcel Proust’s
Swann’s Way (1913), which is the
first volume of his magnum opus, In
Search of Lost Time. While the average reader, or even the devoted reader
on an average day, lacks the patience
to get through Proust on their own,
reading the book in preceptorial has
been a joy thick with ambiguity, reflection, revelation, and more ambiguity, the “arbitrary joys” of imagination. Since I found myself languishing
in free time at the end of the semester--in other words, frustrated with
my preceptorial paper and cramped
for time--I decided to distract myself /
undertake the foolish, and take Proust
to the internet. Following his lead in
Part 3 of Swann’s Way, “Place-Names:
The Name,” where he freestyles about
the meanings of names of places, I
started to dig into the names of the
characters in the book and do a little
freestyling of my own. I do not imagine I have made an exhaustive survey,
but I can offer you a quick glance into
the thick density of Proust’s language.
Many references to French history,
particularly military history, appear
in the names of characters, evoking
an embattled and historical context
for this story, so social and psycholog50
ical on the surface. In Part One, “Combray,” we meet Leonie. The name Leonie refers to a lion, a diminutive one.
The lion was the symbol of England
during the One Hundred Years War
between England and France (13371453). A gossip and hypochondriac,
Leonie is waited on by her servant,
the vigorous and small-minded Francoise. The two, named England and
France, engage in increasingly petty
unending and unresolvable battles.
References to the history of England
and France, as well as the class conflict
embodied in the Leonie-Francoise relationship, continue as the book goes
on. We can add Germany and Türkiye
to the mix as well, and throw in some
cultural references.
Charles Swann, the main character
of Part 2, “Swann in Love,” is richly
named.
• Charles is a common name, but one
with royalist connotations. From Charlemagne to Charles X to the Ultraroyalist Prince Charles, Count of Artois, the
Charles’s make up a substantial number of the kings of France. Through his
friendship with the Prince of Wales,
Swann is further associated with European royalty. I am put in mind of the
idea that in many ways royalty is more
loyal to the people than to the landed
aristocracy, with whom it is in many
ways in competition. The son of a successful financier, Swann is likewise
both accepted and rejected by the aristocracy. Are we to believe he is of a
new brand of royalty?
�• Swann engages his friend, Charlus
(same name), in his efforts to spy on his
lover, Odette, while the reader broadly understands that Charlus is having
an affair with her. Swann considers
Charlus an honest man, perhaps the
good doppelgänger to Swann’s evil? Or
the reverse?
• Swann is a bastardization of the German name Schwann, which means
“swan.” We can legitimately make the
leap from Swann to swan. When I picture a swan I picture an elegant bird
floating on the water, “paddling like
hell underneath.” This is the picture of
Swann, the psychologically tortured
urbane sophisticate, moving smoothly through Parisian social circles
while worrying constantly about who
Odette is sleeping with when they are
apart and whether she is lying to him.
• Odette cheats on Swann with another
woman while at a picnic in the Bois du
Boulogne. Odette and the other woman kiss behind a rock at the Île des
Cygnes, the Island of the Swans. There
is an Île aux Cygnes in the Seine, but
no Île des Cygnes in the Bois. Proust
moved an island for his convenience
to get the swans where he wanted
them.
• Swann and Odette’s first sexual encounter happens in his carriage as
they kiss over the cattleya orchids
she has tucked into the bodice of her
dress. I don’t want to carry this too far,
but I guess I do . . . the cattleya orchid
was first bred in Europe by an Englishman named Cattley. The original flowers were sent to him from Brazil by a
man named Swainson.
Odette de Crécy, Swann’s lover and the
subject of his obsession:
• In the German folk tale and the
Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake (first
produced in Moscow, 1877), the virginal white swan is named Odette
while the conniving black swan is
named Odile. I do not know that Swan
Lake was performed in Paris during
the decade Proust was active there
around the turn of the century. I feel
sure he knew the story, through the
ballet or the folk tale. According to the
tale, the royal Prince Siegfried loves
Odette. Siegfried is a German name
meaning peace-victory. We will see
the name Odette is associated with its
opposite, violence and loss in battle,
implicating that she is innately bad
for Swann. Also in the story Odette is
enchanted by the evil sorcerer, Baron
von Rothbart—Charles Swann’s supposed friend Charlus is also a baron.
• Odette is the diminutive of Otto, a
name which in two ways evokes the
brutality of French wars in the late
19th century as breech-loaded guns
replaced cavalry and muzzle-loaded
guns.
• In the Crimean War (1853-56), France
fought alongside Germany and England against Russia and the Otto-man
Empire. France suffered terrible losses during the war. Modern Türkiye
was the heart of the Ottoman Empire.
It appears again as a place Odette
cruises to when she leaves Swann to
spend a year away from him with his
51
�former friends, then it reappears in
the final unhappy dream sequence
which leads to the end of his love affair with Odette, embodied by a young
man in a fez.
• Otto von Bismarck was the chancellor
of Prussia then German emperor who
defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, ending the hegemony of France in Europe as well as ending monarchic rule in France. Proust
was born three months after the war
ended. Although the Prussians won
and the war led to the unification of
Germany, they suffered brutal losses
at the hands of the superior contemporary French artillery.
• Odette’s last name, deCrécy, is derived from a decisive battle in the One
Hundred Years War between England
and France. At Crécy, or Cressy in English, the English with their long bows
soundly defeated the French (1346),
who used the older crossbow. Like the
battles above, it was a slaughter.
Finally:
• Forcheville, one of Odette’s other lovers, bears a name invented by Proust.
It appears to be Anglicized from the
French, fourche, which means pitchfork, as in a tool of the common farmer, while ville means city. A fork is a
fourchette. A snake’s forked tongue is
la langue fourche. The verb translated
“to have a forked tongue,” in English,
means to lie, or to deceive, although
the connotation of “having” rather
than “speaking with” seems to me to be
even more damning of the liar. Here’s
52
a bit of trivia that could only have appeared in this day and age: a Google
scan of published works shows the
French phrase avoir la langue forchue
was basically unused between the
middle of the 19th and the middle of
the 20th centuries. It did have a small
blip of usage between 1908 and 1917,
when the book was being written.
Forcheville and Odette both lie to
Swann about their affair.
The connections among these words
cannot be systematically rationalized.
It is enough to know that Odette’s name
elicits historical battles based on technological defeats, and those on more
than one front. It is enough to know
that questions of France’s place on the
European stage concerned Proust, as
did the morality of the various classes. I am not educated enough to completely decode the many ways Proust
uses the names of the characters in
Swann’s Way to tell his story, but I get
the gist. Sometimes with Proust that is
the most you can hope for. After all, le
cygne, swan, in French is pronounced
the same as le signe, sign. Is Proust
invoking the new study of semiotics?
Maybe, maybe not. He is at least embracing the ambiguities of modernity.
�Swann - Stuart Kenny & Cynthia Crane
53
�Translation
The Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
54
�Contributor
Charles Chapin
55
�The Steppenwolf
By Herman Hesse
Translation by Charles Chapin
I found myself again in a circular hallway, excited by the adventure of the
hunt. And everywhere, on countless doors, lured inscriptions:
————————————————————————————————
|
“Mutabor”
|
| Metamorphosis into Random Animals and Plants
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
|
|
Kamasutram
|
Instruction in the Indian Art of Love
|
Beginners’ Course: 42 Different Techniques
|
for Sexercise
|
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
Delightful Suicide!
|
|
You’ll Laugh Yourself to Death
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
Want to Sublimate?
|
|
Wisdom of the East
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
Oh, to Have a Thousand Tongues!
|
56
Only for Men
|
|
�57
�————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
Downfall of the Occident
|
|
Discounted Price. Still Unbeatable
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
|
Embodiment of Art
|
The Transformation of Time into Space
|
through Music
|
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
The Laughing Tear
|
|
Humor Chamber
|
————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————
|
Hermit Games
|
| Full-Fledged Substitute for Any Social Interaction |
————————————————————————————————
The row of inscriptions ran endlessly. One hailed:
————————————————————————————————
|
Personality Building Tutorial
|
Success Guaranteed
|
|
————————————————————————————————
That seemed attention-worthy to me, and I stepped into the doorway.
I was welcomed into a dim, silent space, in which a man sat on the floor without a chair, in the Oriental style, something like to a giant chessboard standing before him. He appeared to me, at first glance, to be my friend Pablo, at
least he wore a similarly colorful silk jacket and had the same dark, gleaming
eyes.
58
�59
�“Are you Pablo?” I asked.
“I am no one,” he said warmly. “Here we carry no names, here we are no persons. I am a chess player. Would you like a personality building lesson?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then please, kindly provide me with a few dozen of your figurines for teaching material.”
“My figurines…?”
“The personas, into which you’ve seen your so-called personality disintegrate.
Without figurines, I simply cannot play.”
He held a mirror up to me, and I saw, again, the unity of my person disintegrated into many selves, many “Me”s, their number seeming to have grown
even more than before. But the figures were now very small, about the size of
handy chess pieces, and the player took, with silent, sure grips of his fingers,
about a dozen of them and placed them next to the chessboard on the floor.
Monotonously, he spoke on his subject, like a man repeating a frequently given talk or lecture:
“You’re familiar with the flawed and doomed notion that a human should be
in permanent unity, a permanent unit. You’re also familiar with a human being made up of a host of souls, of many, many egos. To split the ostensible
unity of the person into these many figures, separating them from one other,
is regarded as mad, that’s why science invented the name schizophrenia for
it. Science is, in this respect, correct, as naturally no multiplicity, no plurality,
is tamed without leadership, without a certain order and grouping. Science is
wrong, however, in believing that only one unique, binding, lifelong order of
the sub-ego, the sub-Me, should be possible. This error of science has some
unpleasant consequences, its worth lies merely therein, that the state-sanctioned teacher and educator see their work simplified, and that thinking and
experimentation are put aside. Because of that mistake, many incurable nutjobs are validated as “normal” and socially desirable, and conversely, many
geniuses are viewed as a mad. We are supplementing science’s patchy doctrine of the soul with a concept we call ‘building’. To those who have experienced the disintegration of their ego, we show that, any time, they can put the
pieces back together anew, in any given order, and in doing so, that they can
achieve infinite variation in the game of life. Just as the poet, with a handful
of figures, makes a drama, so do we build, unceasingly, from the figures of
our fragmented ego, new groups, with new games and excitements, with ever
newer situations. Behold!”
60
�61
�With quiet, clever fingers, he snatched my figurines, all the aged ones, the
youths, the children, the women, all the cheerful and sad, strong and tender, nimble and clumsy figures, and arranged them swiftly on his board for
a game, where at once they set themselves up into groups, families, for play
and battle, for friendships and enmities, forming a small world. Before my
enrapt eyes, he let the bustling yet well-ordered little world move a while,
playing and fighting, closing alliances and fighting battles, courting one another, marrying, propagating; it was, in fact, a multi-character, moving and
exciting drama.
Then he swept over the board with a carefree gesture, overturned all the figurines gently, thrust them into a pile and built, thoughtfully, a selective artist,
a completely new game out of the same figurines, with completely different
groupings, relationships and interdependencies. The second game was related to the first: it was the same world, the same material, from which he had
built it, but the key had changed, the tempo altered, the motifs accented differently, the situations posed differently.
And so built the clever builder from forms, of which each was a piece of my
self, one game after another, all of them distantly similar, all recognizable as
belonging to the same world, obligated to the same origin, yet each completely new.
“This is the art of living,” he said didactically. “You yourself may, from now
on, continue to set up and invigorate the game of your life at will, to entangle
and enrich it, it is in your hands. Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the
beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy. Even the erudite have already half-recognized this, as one may glean,
for example, from the “Princes’ Magic Horn”, that enchanting book in which
the courageous and industrious labor of a scholar is ennobled through the
resourceful collaboration with a number of crazy and institutionalized artists. — Here, place your little figures close to you, the game will spark joy often. The figure who, today, has mushroomed into a forbidding bogeyman and
spoils your game, tomorrow you will downgrade to a harmless supporting
role. The poor little figure who, for a while, seemed condemned to terrible
misfortune and bad luck, in the next game you’ll make a princess. I wish you
much pleasure, sir.”
I bowed deeply and gratefully before this gifted chess player, placed the figurines in my pocket, and ducked back through the narrow doors.
I had actually thought that shortly I would sit on the floor in the corridor, and
for hours, an eternity, play with the figurines, but I had barely stood back in
the bright, round theater aisle when new currents, stronger than I, pulled me
out...
62
�63
�Queen Titania - Nadine Bucca
64
�Toasts
To the Tutors (Spring 2024) - Michael Connors
To the Tutors (Spring 2024) - William Houston Taylor III
To the Tutors (Spring 2023)* - Siobhán Petersen
65
�The Johnnie Conversation
Michael Connors - Toast to the Tutors (Spring 2024)
The Great Books are often described as containing ‘The Great Conversation’
of Western civilisation. Indeed, it has been said that there may be nothing
more Western than the ongoing dialogue of ideas. And there is nothing more
Johnnie than having that conversation anytime, anywhere, about anything,
and in front of anyone. This is ‘the Johnnie Conversation’.
If you haven’t found yourself mid bench press discussing state of nature theories with a fellow Johnnie, or if you haven’t done a deep dive on the relationship between truth and beauty within 3 seconds of bumping into a friend at
the shops, or if you have done anything other than talk about the Great Books
while you have been at St. John’s, you have missed the point. If Johnnie, then
existential analysis at the drop of a hat. This is the Johnnie Conversation. It
is true that at St. John’s the conversation really does not stop. Over these past
two years, I have had the distinct privilege of experiencing this with all the
graduating students. Here are some highlights.
Sylvie Bernhardt and I recently carried out a thought experiment involving
how a contentious argument between Plato and Aristotle might play out, and
its philosophical repercussions. A regular in the GI office on school days, Nick
Dacosta and I would discuss every topic we were reading each night, then
Kashya would pop out and tell us what Nietzsche would say. At the Ramsay
house, Dominic Escorpeso and I shared conversations about the impressive
oratory style of Cicero. Before class, Stuart Kenny and I discussed the merits
of the Kantian ‘moral imperative’ in the GI office. Living with my good friend
Yonas Ketsela at the Ramsay house, meant early breakfast breakdowns in the
kitchen about, let’s say, every possible aspect of philosophy. In the GI office
Jordan Klein and I discussed Hume’s scepticism. Ben Morgan explained to
me that everything is political… even the office MM’s. At the ASG, Luise Parrales and I have discussed the ways in which the texts of the Western Canon
are in dialogue, and what makes them great. Quinn Rifkin and I would chat
at the pub, at the gym, or at social events like Sunday Supper Club, hosted by
our good friend Sarah Ritchie. I would explain to Quinn what I was studying,
then Quinn would sum up the entire history of that idea perfectly in 20 seconds. He would tell me about Straussianism… but it was over my head… After
class Jack Ryan and I would continue to draw diagrams on the chalkboard,
in an attempt to map out Aristotle’s virtue. At mealtimes fellow Aussie Luca
Sudjovic and I would discuss every single topic we were studying. And lucky
last, who could forget my main man, Houston Taylor? Houston and I achieved
66
�something intellectually noteworthy. We discussed every topic imaginable,
while at the same time, managing to relate every single idea to either Plato’s
Timaeus, or Chattanooga, Tennessee. In all seriousness, we do owe a debt to
Houston for his work in the bookstore. Every time I went there to buy a book,
I hoped Houston was there to help me get the right one…and to explain the
whole book to me. I’m sure everyone in the GI has had similar Johnnie Conversations with these graduating students, and been enriched by them, as I
have.
Since beginning my studies at St. John’s, I have spent much time researching
the benefits of a liberal education. And I think there is one main takeaway
that should ring true for us all, an overarching purpose of a liberal education.
This purpose was once articulated perfectly to me, by Mr. Petrich who said,
‘Well Mr. Connors, I think it makes us more human’. I think this is true of my
experience, I have certainly connected more with humanity by reading the
Great Books. But when I graduate St. John’s, I will also be a bit more human
for having known you all, for sharing in the great Johnnie conversations, and
from the enriching friendships created in the Graduate Institute.
To my fellow graduating Johnnies, it has been a highlight of my life to undertake this education with you. I wish you all the very best for the future, and
I know that wherever life takes you, you will continue to enrich the lives of
others, as you have done in this community. May your future conversations
be as great as those we enjoyed together at St. John’s.
Now to some thank-yous.
I’d like to take this opportunity to recognise the relationship between the
Graduate Institute and The Ramsay Centre back in Australia. The Australians
in the GI are all generously sponsored by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, and without that support we would not be here. On behalf of the
Ramsay Scholars, I’d like to acknowledge the Ramsay Centre and thank them
for their support.
I’d also like to acknowledge our dean Mr. Brendan Boyle, and our former
Dean Ms. Emily Langston, who have not only worked hard to strengthen the
Ramsay-St. John’s relationship, but who have assisted the whole graduating
cohort in many ways over the course of our studies. Ms. Langston and Mr.
Boyle, thank you for your ceaseless positivity and enthusiasm for the mission
of liberal education at St. John’s, the generosity and guidance you have given
each of us individually, and your commitment to fostering a culture of collaboration and friendship in the Graduate Institute.
We must also acknowledge Ms. Kashya Boretsky, who works behind the scenes
67
�to make sure the GI runs like clockwork. The level of energy and enthusiasm
that Kashya brings to her work, and to discussing the Great Books, is infectious. She is also ninja-level at Johnnie Conversations. Kashya, all the graduating students have benefited from your administrative help throughout our
education, and all been touched by your friendship. Thank you.
Finally, I’d like to recognise those great stewards of the seminar, our masterful tutors, who have led us through these great ideas, and who make our intellectual journey possible. Tutors, the enrichment, wonder, and joy we have
experienced from the Great Books would not have been possible without your
guidance and friendship. You have encouraged us to think deeply, to strive for
understanding of the great ideas, and to clarify our opinions.
On behalf of the graduating students, a toast to the tutors: Thank you for your
patience, your wisdom, your good humour, and for your friendship. Thank
you for your guidance, for helping us to be more human, and for encouraging
our Johnnie Conversations. To the Tutors.
68
�Lead and I Will Follow
William Houston Taylor III - Toast to the Tutors
(Spring 2024)
In Gretel Ehrlich’s book The Solace of Open Spaces, she tells the story of a
rancher friend living in Wyoming. He’s an eccentric and recluse. He works
as a farm hand while his labor is in season. When it’s not, the man, she says,
holes himself up in a little shack on a vast plot of land and plunges himself
into total isolation. Ehrlich sentimentalizes this a bit. In one beautiful passage she compares the farm hand to the Zen monk Dōgen. Since she herself
moved to Wyoming following the early, sudden, and cancerous death of her
fiancé only a few years prior to writing, she is sympathetic to the man’s existential despair because she feels it, too—as all human beings do, from time
to time.
I love this story because I’ve also been known to be eccentric and reclusive,
prone to nutty beliefs, and quick to anger. I once moved all the way not to
Wyoming but to Japan—the home of Dōgen himself—looking for the kind of
solace that Ehrlich describes as I too am a human being—and I sometimes
act like it, from time to time.
I moved to St. John’s College two years ago, not ever having been to Annapolis, curious about these great books, but expecting just a little bit of isolation
and a little bit of solace. Instead, for two years now, time has stopped. Despite Annapolis’ geography, I’ve found perhaps the most spiritually open and
generous place left on the planet.
During my first tutorial, while reading Hamlet, Mr. Petrich instructed us to
consider in the first scene why Bernardo, who has just entered the scene,
should be concerned with identifying Francisco, who is already at the guard
post. After all, it would make more sense for the guard on duty to be doing
the guarding. But Bernardo is wary of the ghost. This, a perfect example of
the power of close reading, opened up the text in a bright, new way for me.
It showed that from the first, mundane lines, Shakespeare sets the dark tone
of Hamlet. After all, the Danes are at war. The state of war requires constant,
acute diligence. There’s no guarantee that anyone will find what just he expects around the next corner.
As with the state of war, so with the text. From Hamlet to the Republic, from
Chaucer to Rousseau, close reading has prompted text after text to bloom in
its significance for me. The entire world of literature, philosophy, science,
and politics has become much more open and thereby much more satisfy-
69
�ing, exciting, and sometimes even consoling. But even more significantly,
my experience at St. John’s has taught me—and, in particular, Ms. Axelrod
has been fond of reminding me—that philosophy need not be a solitary,
nasty, brutish, or isolating endeavor. In fact, as I myself have been known to
point out, Socratic philosophy seems very much to be about hanging out and
killing time with one’s friends.
So, we thank you all, our tutors, for modelling this behavior in the noblest
way one can. I’d like to thank the tutors I have not yet mentioned. Ms. Benson and Mr. Goldberg, for showing me—like Mr. Petrich—that when one
cedes pride of place to the text, that close reading—reading between the
lines, so to speak—pays back dividends. I want to thank some others, in
particular, for simply putting up with me—especially Mr. Goldsmith, Ms.
Paalman, Ms. Silver, and Mr. Crockett—because they’ve taught me that the
greatest intellectual rewards are not necessarily to be found waging dubious
intellectual battles—being eristic as Socrates calls it in the Meno—but are
much more often found when showing up to seminar ready to hang out with
one’s friends—to be a bit more dialectic.
Even though this is a toast to our tutors, I’d like also to thank my peers—each
and everyone of you—for being those very friends, as well as Kashya Boretsky, Ms. Langston, and Mr. Boyle for their work in helping to build a place
like the St. John’s College Graduate Institute, where philosophic that very
friendship is so carefully fostered.
So, without further ado, I propose a toast to our St. John’s tutors; as Glaucon
says to Socrates: “Lead, and I will follow.”
70
�In the Doing
Siobhán Petersen - Toast to the Tutors (Spring 2023)
*Ms. Petersen’s toast was unfortunately omitted from the Spring
2023 issue of Colloquy, our sincerest apologies.
One thing I’ve realized is I can only say something of real importance when I
speak personally, so if you’ll please indulge me, I’ll just speak for myself here.
Insofar as there’s a meaning to life, it seems I’m only going to find it in the
doing.
Being the sort of kid I was – that is to say, someone who would fall in with the
Johnnie crowd – I very early found myself lost in an existential haze. Who am
I, what are we doing here? You know, normal kid stuff. I could never shake
this feeling that we’re just here. Meaningful answers did not seem forthcoming.
I remember this moment last semester, as I’m doing my little pre-class ritual
– refilling my water, getting coffee and the like – when I suddenly stop, and
I realize I’d found it; this all felt meaningful to me. Getting a glimpse of Capital-M “Meaning” is kinda blink-and-you-miss-it – you go to seminar, you get
wrapped up in the next reading; the day to day, moment to moment; constantly bouncing around new and exciting conversations.
Yet, that moment; it’s like the clouds breaking, and realizing you’re standing
in the sun. Suddenly you realize it’s been a beautiful day for a while now;
perhaps it was the whole time. And even if the clouds close back in as you
rejoin the hustle, maybe we can keep in mind we know the sun is back there,
because we’ve felt its warmth.
Meaning, then, isn’t an articulable experience because it’s not an intellectual
experience. If that’s indeed the case, it’s a peculiar thing to note, given what
it is we do here all day every day Rather it seems meaning comes from a pattern of fulfilling actions. You can’t guarantee it’ll be “for anything,” you don’t
know if it really “means anything;” but if feels good now, it feels right now; it’s
important, now.
And that’s probably easier said than done. But, I’ve found that set of actions
through exploring important things with interested people. Sharing in our
own canon, but then more importantly our collective library of reflections on
them; knowing that I am among like minds who are looking for something,
71
�and who are willing to collaborate to find it.
I don’t think a life can’t just be meaningful, but perhaps it can continually become meaningful. Perhaps it must.
I can’t promise we’ll arrive at that fulfillment, because there is nowhere to
arrive. The spirit, if you like the term, perhaps always wants a project; I can
think of no project grander than ardently, bravely trying on every available
lens to attempt to glimpse something true. Even when you’re not sure it’s
there. Especially when you’re not sure it’s there. In dialogue we all get to try
each other’s lenses too; and for that I’m thankful to our learning community.
Over time you collect a lot of lenses, and I am certainly not quite ready to let
that go. How could you be?But this brings us to the tutors...
I have to imagine our tutors are just like us; earnestly searching for something
when they join us in seminar. I also have to imagine these kinds of questions
only get harder to resolve over time, not easier. Honestly engaging with an
idea requires a special kind of uncertainty, accepting that no matter what’s in
front of you, you might still have something you need to learn from it.
For me, the problem has only compounded the more things I’ve had in front
of me - I’ve never felt more uncertain in my life than I do right now. If that’s so,
it must take incredible patience to sit at the table and let us struggle through
it, to master uncertainty so it doesn’t rob anyone else of theirs.
I must then – I’d like to say “conclude,” but I’ll instead say speculate – that the
fulfillment I’ve glimpsed must be the source of some repose, and hope for
each of them that they’ve found enough of it here, in the doing, with us. That
they too have found genuine meaning in this project. Our tutors perpetually
display a flexibility of mind, a patience of contribution, and an attentiveness
to the unstated, all in service of profound enthusiasm for seeing us perform
that pattern of action. I’ve never felt more intellectually lost than right now.
But I’ve never felt better equipped than now to wander, either.
And so for that, I’ll ask us all to raise a glass to the tutors of St. John’s. Thank
you all so sincerely for becoming at the table with us. And, I’d like to particularly thank our outgoing Associate Dean, Ms. Langston, who’s meant so much
to the GI and who’s been unfailingly generous with her time, her thoughts,
and her mentorship; and to whom I never managed to turn in a tutorial paper
that wasn’t the length of a precept.
Cheers, to the tutors of St. John’s!
72
�Path Through Reeds - Nadine Bucca
73
�Year in Review
By Stephen Borsum
�Year in Review: Growing & Flourishing
It is with a gentle look back that we all prepare for a bold step forward. And in turning back to see this academic year as a whole, rather than living and experiencing its multitude of parts, we could perhaps venture to pinpoint some small number of the various exceptional
moments that have made up this year for the St. John’s College Graduate Institute.
First, in recognizing a banner year for the GI’s growth, it’s worth giving thanks to
the faculty and staff who work so hard to make the experience enriching for the
students, and to build it up to be a sustainable and effective agent of change in the
lives of students yet to come. In particular, we pause now to give thanks both to
Associate Dean Brendan Boyle, for his tireless efforts of advancing the GI within
the community and beyond, and his daily work to ensure the wellbeing of the students and GI community in general—always seen to be of paramount importance;
and also Kashya Boretsky, whose behind-the-scenes efforts, to the perception of the
student body, keep the GI operating seamlessly—not to mention she is always ready
to engage anyone, literally anyone, in a conversation about language or Nietzsche.
And now we come to a question about the Graduate Institute, one I think Colloquy
can help answer in small part: What are we here for, beyond simply trying to seek,
with some clarity, the higher things? Furthermore, if we’ve all digested the proper
amount of Aristotelian nutrition: If we are forming bonds of fellowship with others
attuned to the same search, are the various friends we make nothing less than true
friends?
This year we saw the flourishing of community, with Sarah Ritchie’s Sunday Supper
Clubs becoming a regular event beloved by many in Annapolis. We immersed ourselves in music, either through trips to the National Symphony in DC, or Mr. Crockett’s music preceptorial. There were the highs of seeing our dear friends graduate,
preparing to take yet another momentous step in their lives, and the lows of seeing
those same friends leave us to take such a step. We engaged with the question of
the soul’s salvation and eternal love with Dante, the beauty of verse with Proust, the
structure of the Universe with Galileo, and questioned how best to structure society
with Hobbes, Aristotle, and Rousseau. There were also bonds formed by pursuing
the Johnnie Project with texts outside the program: like the works of Mishima, or
the catalog of Mr. Boyle’s reading group texts.
I recognize I have missed many, many moments, big and small, in this note. In a
way, that’s the point. As we are constistenly becoming more whole as people, truly
capturing every moment of growth in our character is impossible. But the end result, who we have become and are today, is evident.
Stephen Borsum - Editor
75
�76
�77
�Thank you to all our contributors
78
Austin Suggs
Oblivion
Stacey Rains
Sorrow
Martha Franks
Reading
Nadine Bucca
Enkidu’s Dwelling
Cynthia Crane
Lady Sagredo
Stephen Borsum
The Mode of Pi
Melissa Hicinbothem
I Am. Working?
Johnathan Wright
A Bug’s Life
Jay Gold
Karña in the Round
Kelly Kwon
The Ultimate Desire of Le Misenthrope
Gus Kraus
Intertextuality and the Elixer of Character
Cynthia Crane
Is Odette Odile?
Charles Chapin
The Steppenwolf (Herman Hesse)
Michael Connors
The Johnnie Conversation
William Taylor
Lead and I Will Follow
Siobhán Petersen
In the Doing
Nadine Bucca
Visual Art
Paul Harland-White
Visual Art
Stuart Kenny
Visual Art
Cynthia Crane
Visual Art
�COLLOQUY
St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland
Volume 14: Spring 2024
Editor
Stephen Borsum
Editorial board:
Paul Harland-White, Nadine Bucca, Kyle Reynolds, Cynthia
Crane, Sylvie Bernhardt, Stu Williams
With thanks to: Kashya Boretsky, Associate Dean Brendan
Boyle, and the Graduate Student Council
And welcome to the new Editor-in-Chief of Colloquy for the
2024-2025 academic year: Nadine Bucca!
.....
Colloquy is a biannual publication of the Graduate Student Council and St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. The journal is
free of charge. Address correspondence to Colloquy, The Graduate Institute at St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland, 21401. Or email to colloquy@sjc.edu.
Students, tutors, and alumni of St. John’s College and the Graduate Institute are encouraged to submit their manuscripts in PDF or
Word format by email to colloquy@sjc.edu . The journal also accepts submissions of poetry, original art, and photography. Please
include your name, contact information, and the title of your work
with your submission.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the journal do not
necessarily reflect those St. John’s College, the Graduate Council,
or Colloquy.
79
�80
�
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Volume 14 of Colloquy, published in Spring 2024. The theme of the issue is On Character.
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Colloquy
FALL 2024
On Being
�Colloquy is an academic journal and biannual publication of the Graduate Student
Council and St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland featuring the works of students,
tutors, and alumni of the St. John’s Graduate Institute. The journal is free of charge.
The views and opinions expressed in the journal do not necessarily reflect those St.
John’s College, the Graduate Council, or Colloquy.
Printed with Cardo font
Cover: Vanity with Two Mirrors - Amelia Taylor Wolfe
oil on canvas panel 8x8”
�Colloquy
Issue 15 Fall 2024
On Being
Editor-in-Chief:
Bucca
Editorial Board:
Lola Bondar
Stephen Borsum
Cynthia Crane
Gus Kraus
Stafford Wood
Assistant Director for Graduate Student Services:
Kashya Boretsky
Associate Dean for Graduate Programs:
Brendan Boyle
Colloquy, The Graduate Institute at St. John’s College,
60 College Avenue,
Annapolis, Maryland, 21401
colloquy@sjc.edu
�Letter from the Editor
Dear Graduate Institute Community,
This is the third themed issue of Colloquy.
Last fall we had ‘on creation’ then ‘on
character’ in the spring. For this semester,
‘on being’ was a popular choice with our
editorial board, though it was not without
its contenders. I was drawn to ‘on wonder’
and ‘on passion’ as well, topics that might
inspire students all kinds of beautiful and
dramatic pieces. However, I wanted to keep
this semester’s theme broad.
Almost anything can tie back to the idea of
‘being.’ Within these pages are oil paintings,
still-lifes which capture the essence of
everyday objects. There’s a meditative
quality about them, how one can study a
subject and find the lines to represent it, not
as it is precisely but through a new created
form of representation. It’s the same with the
lithographs and prints, but with people as
subjects there seem to be many untold stories
that might begin to reveal themselves in a
single pose or expression.
While theme can inspire creators, it can
also dissuade them if they don’t see a strong
enough connection to their work. Like
many things, the proper balance must be
found. Theme is worth having because it
unites pieces and can encourage readers to
find connections between pieces in a way
that grants insights, those Aha! moments
when these links are discovered.
Within these pages, there are essays that
address education, the formation of a student
and what it means to be human. There are
philosophical quandaries exploring the idea
of being itself. There are poems which
deal with the nature of time, and how it
changes us. Throughout the journal, there
are numerous inquiries and all on some level
related to being.
Finally, there is the journal as an image and
physical object. There is the balance between
the ink on the pages forming words and
ideas, and the blank spaces, the non-being.
It is in some of these spaces, I’ve found small
homes for some of my own sketches and
drawings, occasionally inspired by the poetry
of the page. For Chaucer’s prologue, I took
inspiration from the Ellesmere manuscript.
Others are based on the world around me
and my own imagination. I hope they, along
with the rest of the work here, bring you
delight.
Sincerely,
Bucca
�Contents
Poetry & Musings
Wednesday Morning
Meditation the First
Gerund is Easier than Noun
Old Willow Man
I am Part of All That I have Been
Orange Sunset & Olive Pits
Champion Challenger
Achelous
The Fox
I Wish I Was
Obituary
Storage
7
8
9
10
11
12
14
16
18
20
22
23
Rachel Brown
Aaron Knight
Stafford Wood
Stephen Borsum
Laszlo J. Boesze
George Kalandadze
Michael Vigil
Travis Kyker
Travis Kyker
Tova Gannana
George Kalandadze
James Paul Rogers
25
26
28
Cynthia Crane
Deana Moss
Stephen Borsum
Short Stories &
Translations
Canterbury Tales
The House on Fargo Street
Being in Lisbon
Essays
Emile at the Place for Learning
31
Image, Imaginary, and Ignorance of
Real Being
45
Root to Rise
51
Charles Edward Chapin
Gus Kraus
Haley Prickett
Interviews & Toasts
Meet Tutor, Mr André Barbera
60
Becoming a Reader
62
Like Alyosha
64
What’s a Eureka Moment you had in
class?
65
Shirely Quo
Charmaine D’Souza
Emily Price
�Poetry & Musings
Dog Patch, 17x21” lithograph - Jesse Wood
6
�Wednesday Morning
Rachel Brown
A toadstool
White as a new-turned leaf
Sprang up last night
While I was sleeping.
This empty space
Will always be the hallowed place
Where a toadstool
Fleeting as a dream
Fresh as a stream of sunlight
Alighted one morning to
Grace for a day
The ground below my windowsill
That never felt empty before
And will ever feel full
Of a fragile strength
A slim silent speaking presence
Raised from darkness into life
Overnight
An extravagant, lavish
Testament to joy
Like wine pouring over from
Jugs of water
Pouring and pooling in
Thirsty goblets.
A toadstool Iike an inverted goblet
Poured out for me
Is new and newly baptized
Clean by sparkling morning dewdrops into
An innocence of grief.
!
7
�Meditation the First
Aaron Knight
Big D beside the fire—anyone else here from 2024?
After all, even more? This more here more there more.
Right now nothing really matters, literally anymore.
Doesn’t it seem painfully unreal?
Like snow? Like a snowball?
Just under the ear in front of the pineal gland say?
One’s rightful place among bugs and dust and supernovas –
Inventories of perception, liquid in the vessel.
Celebrating the cosmos.
Expand, fit myself inside
A grotesquely offensive form – I won’t stand out as much if
All continuous or infinitely discrete
Horns and graffiti and rain (so much rain), can claim membership too.
(I really couldn’t care less – just take the spotlight off me.)
So I’m awake? Not so sure about that.
Prove it.
Bundled up for winter
I fear you’ll see a black hole on your starboard,
(A compulsion to prevail and monetize is a favorite).
Shame and spite more than thought, prove existence,
I would say, if asked by a Deceiving God.
That my feeling insides,
Speechless, and that howling sound we hear in our ears –
You told me you heard it too – quieter silence but still loud.
(The eternal alarm of intrusion never goes silent?)
But whenever I say it never will –
Fools rush in and all that,
Commands and directives, metaphysics and epistemology
And ontological limits of signifiers –
Little Daddy Roughbones tonight folks,
Straight to bed when the sun goes down –
Let me tell you that I never signed up for this here thing –
I just know that I woke up at age 4 and realized I wasn’t 3 anymore –
Still my most profound insight.
8
�Gerund is Easier than Noun
Stafford Wood
Speaking is easier than being a speaker
Leading is easier than being a leader
Fighting is easier than being a fighter
Writing is easier than being a writer
Teaching is easier than being a teacher
Preaching is easier than being a preacher
Loving is easier than being a lover
Mothering is easier than being a mother
9
�Old Willow Man
Stephen Borsum
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10
�I am Part of All That I have Been
Laszlo J. Boesze
“I am a part of all that I have seen...”
Tennyson, “Ulysses”
In different carriers,
I exist in parts Coiled in a mysterious way That joined grow in a primordial ooze,
Take shape and find limbs and senses anew
And screaming face the world again:
Alive, a whole, and brand-new I
That is as old as from whence I sprang.
Wanted or not, I have sprung forth,
Demand my right to be,
And be cared for,
Till I can fend alone
And have parts of me form a new I.
And when I leave Blood-soaked or shriveled up What trace of me do I leave behind?
Am I a monumental tomb
Remembered better that I
Who left my bones in a sea of peat?
Did either me an impact make
In a world I cannot comprehend?
Still, I am a part of all
That was, that is, will be,
In ways I shall never know.
11
�Orange Sunset & Olive Pits
George Kalandadze
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12
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�Corrales II, 16x22.5” lithograph - Jesse Wood
13
�Champion Challenger
Michael Vigil
Work through challenges like any man would.
—
By crying out to father; Father, forgive me, for I know not what I have done.
—
Seeking mother’s touch. To Mother; caress my body in Myrrh, once laid to rest.
—
In a world of devotion, imitation, idolization, instant gratification. Seek a hand of
grace, not one of cruelty, seek the place where a babes cry, meets mother’s coo.
—
Present is a place, void of spirit, a babes cry, rings out; to no echo. To no warm
embrace. Dirty, soiled, bad-tempered; mother’s ears are deaf, to this babies falsetto.
No hand of grace, no mother’s touch, only torment; only whimpers.
—
Tears tread down narrow, undulating, swollen eyes; cradled in hollowed bones.
Down, down, tapping, dripping, dropping. Drooling onto dirty soiled frame,
hollowed by hatred, hallowed by shame.
—
Tread, tread, tread. Blop, drip, drop, tear, tear, tears. Travel the tunnel of birth.
A crap shoot of probabilities. Popped from the space between urine and feces.
Plopped upon the crap-table, arrival, unhappy, a-being, unexpected.
—
Confront the Law, not natural law; the law of averages. To a serpents hiss,
affronted by a woman’s whis-per, “you are departing unhappy.” Heel bruised, fork
tongue, slithers off, affronted.
—
Making out, then making off. Flicking classic movie poster post cards, from index
finger. Flicking an ear, to disturb a friend. “Dare I disturb the universe?”
—
Keeping time, not natural time, whistling “Giant steps” like a type of syncopated
jazz aves, barreling Geary ave. Gunning for the coast, rebelling, Jim and Buzz,
screaming, “let’s see who chicken!”
14
�—
The buzz fades, sipping whiskey, from a worn leather, stuffed in the side pocket,
tucked next to a Faulkner, novel. Not understanding my worries, limping,
strolling Geary ave.
—
Trimming the top off parking meters, I tread, the sulfur surface, and use the
change to tear out pages from newspaper dispensers. Disturbed by the mendacity.
Perturbed to trepidation. Tear drops, soak, wear through the pulp, diffusing the
ink, exposing the truth.
—
I tread through life on hot summer pavement, worn down, like a used tire.
Rotating round the circumference, axle grease spews out the hubcap like a boxer
spitting a tooth.
—
Racing down Columbus Ave., wailing “a love supreme”, speeding past a statue of
St. Francis of Assisi. Touched by stigmata, and a revelation; a truth, I sped through
life, heaven seeking, hell bound.
—
Tires bald, worn down, the psst of a nail wound, puncturing through a thin
layer. No more rotations, to a force greater than my own, strewn upon the cold
pavement, as my breath hisses into the aether.
—
Father forgives me, for he knows what I have done.
—
Crack of polyurethane window pane, under foot, Fanny, a flower, sprung on the
sidewalk adjoint the Café Trieste. An on looker, in Illumination (as dew turns to
mist) says, “The pane broke so well.”
—
Mother caress my body in Frankincense, once laid to rest.
—
Amen
15
�Achelous
Travis Kyker
The next time,
We walked our little way
Stumbling up like vagrants
Seeking the coals of comfort,
Prodding burnished ashes,
Listening into the dark
And shedding the rags of day.
I doubted then,
But learned how to cast it away.
Eyes, uplifted from afar,
Made us fervently glad
Unwitting worshipers
Beneath a cathedral of stars.
But at last,
Young and weeping
The road tore past our feet.
Backwards, rushing wrong,
Into a holy defeat,
A secret home, a fathom-call;
Up to the mouth of the father
Whose hungry love makes children of us all.
16
Yoked - Jesse Wood
14.5x10.5 intaglio print with monotype and aquatint
The first time we were there,
That river.
Water going by like silence, like silver,
God’s diamonds—
Mystery too beautiful to name.
All the precious moments
Dissolved there
Tumbled in dark time,
Churning to dust
Before our eyes.
You took my hand
And we knelt with the faith of fools
Praying hopelessly.
�17
�The Fox
Travis Kyker
Red fox rampant, eyes aloft—
Autumn is good for him.
A swath of crimson samite all-encompassed, lost
Amid the sea of swirling bronze admits
No gaze of lesser beasts
Who garrison the land with fearful watch.
Look! whisper of life—
The careless message races to its lord.
Spires of black ears prick up
As paws splash down,
The dew-drop scatters
Patterning a crystal ring about
His gallery of shining claws.
They sink into the earth to launch
A swift assault
And hammer to the ground
A speeding thunder, secret fire,
Racing through sun-spears
That dash across his pelt like beams
Of luminary shadow.
�Is this the fox thou lovest? Yes—
His splendor’s course to all men’s hearts doth run.
For he is as a law unto himself,
The law of will and hunger so endowed
That need, for him, and want together
Always bleed as one,
And rightful prize is always all that simple might beclaims.
But here he reads the scroll of nature’s heart—
A subtle work which guards its secrets well—
And fancies it admissible to deem
The plainest and true meaning as the same,
As a great king cruel and strong beholds
The wonder of his crown
And plunges without mercy on his liege.
For if war fathers all, and fire
Penetrates the very soul of life,
The bíos and the bow are truly one,
And nature’s song enchants itself
Upon a flash of white not long unstained,
Descending in a vicious revelation.
And now as red flows into red,
Behold thy saving truth:
The many into one resolved
Upon a tangle of dead roots,
A new whole self-engulfed emergent
Writhing on the forest floor—
Becoming is itself undone in this
Vermilion ouroboros.
19
�I Wish I Was
Tova Gannana
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20
�Lady of the Canyon, 11x15” monotype - Jesse Wood
21
�Obituary
George Kalandadze
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22
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�Storage
James Paul Rogers
I love the light of southern sunsets as
It lathes through the boughs of the red-oak trees,
Casting bars of bright and dark on the fields.
Such sights will ever mean home to me: the
Gentle hills rolling down toward the river
Crowned with maple and hickory; local
Lanes all swathed in shadow from the forests’
Graceful eaves; quiet river ripples lit
At evening from the west while waterbirds
Take silent flight, calling softly, toward the
East. Though I have seen a thousand thousand
Evening skies blushing lovely in the fall,
Each one retains the power to enchant,
Reminding me to be glad to be, to
Live yet one more day where fleeting beauties
Lie in wait for those with eyes to find them.
23
�Short Stories
& Translations
Clay Skull and Wineglass - Amelia Taylor Wolfe
oil on canvas panel 9x12”
24
�Canterbury Tales
First 18 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s General Prologue
Cynthia Crane
When April with sweet rain has sought
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
And pierced the roots of March’s drought,
The droghte of March hath perced to the
roote,
And bathed every vine in that liquor
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
That sires by nature every flower,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
When Zephyr with his breath ‘s beguiled
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete
breeth
On farmer’s land and in heather wild
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
First fragile crops, and the young sun
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Half through Aries’ course has run
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And little birds make melodies,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
And sleep all night with open eyes —
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
So Nature pricks up people’s courage
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Til they long to go on pilgrimage,
Thanne longen folk to goon on
pilgrimages,
And those who pray seek routes unclear
And palmeres for to seken straunge
strondes,
to distant shrines known far and near;
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry
londes;
And especially from every county’s side
And specially from every shires ende
Of England to Canterbury they ride,
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
Seeking the sainted martyr’s way
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That helped when they were sick with
plague.
That hem hath holpen whan that they
were seeke.
5
10
15
�The House on Fargo Street
Deana Moss
I take a deep breath. I stand under the overgrown tree, facing the long, narrow driveway that feels like a forgotten path stretching
into eternity. The gravel crunches underfoot, but the sound is swallowed by the eerie
stillness. The air carries a weight, thick and
oppressive, pressing down with each step.
I sighed, why did we even live here? The
house stands hidden, shrouded in the shadow
of another, as if deliberately concealing itself
from the world. It was the result of necessary
downsizing. A rental home that was never
meant to be permanent, simply a bridge between what we thought would be our forever home to what ended up becoming my
sole inheritance.
As I move closer, I see flickers in the periphery of my vision—familiar, yet out of place.
There, darting along the driveway, is the
ghost of my younger self, her laughter silent
but vivid, her bike wheels spinning in an
endless loop. A soft smile etched itself across
my face. I saved up every penny I had to
my name to buy that purple bike with tinsel
hanging off the handlebars. The image vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind an ache so sharp it feels real.
The house looms ahead, unassuming yet suffused with an unshakable melancholy. Its facade seems to sag under the weight of time,
and the windows, dark and opaque, offer no
reflection, only void. As I approach, a wave
of sadness crashes over me, cold and suffocating, as though the house itself mourns its
place in my story. Each step toward the door
feels heavier, the pull of the past growing
stronger, and I can’t tell if it’s the house or
my own heart that’s whispering, Why have
you come back?
Tears welled in my eyes, as if I was about
to sneeze–but the sneeze never came. The
house stands like a shadow of its former self,
26
its once light, inviting exterior now cloaked
in a somber, weathered brown. The vibrant
energy that once filled its halls has faded,
replaced by an unsettling quiet. The carpet
that once cushioned playful steps is gone,
stripped away and replaced by dark, polished
hardwood that seems to groan underfoot as
if mourning the past.
The space where laughter used to echo—my
childhood sanctuary of games and imagination—has been transformed into a cold,
sterile dining area. The table in the center
is tiny compared to the hardwood table that
belonged to a young pilot. The walls are devoid of the warmth one would expect to go
along with the sentiments that the words on
the wall seem to be expressing. The chairs are
stiff, their angles too precise, and the air feels
heavy, as though joy itself has been exiled
from the room. Shadows pool in the corners,
stretching longer than they should, as if the
house itself resents its transformation.
It feels as though the walls are watching,
bearing witness to the life that was once here,
now stifled by this chilling refinement. This
is no longer a home; it is a memory gone
hollow. But, as I look around, I remember,
this was never my home. This was temporary. This house was a meaningless fling. It
was a rental, it was never meant to be permanent–so why do I feel this way?
It’s just a house.
It’s just a house.
It’s just–but why do I feel like this?
The corridor leading to the master bedroom
stretches ahead, narrow and claustrophobic,
its walls pressing inward as though eager to
trap me. The air feels thick, stale, as if the
house itself is holding its breath. I reach the
bedroom, but it is not the room I remember.
�This was once a space I reluctantly shared,
filled with the chaos of three lives jostling
for room. Now, it feels eerily orderly and
unfamiliar—its transformation erasing even
the faintest echoes of what it once was. The
sound of two young girls and their mother
sharing a room have now been replaced by
the rustle of trees in the backyard, scraping
against the window.
I turn toward the closet, the one place that
had been mine, hoping to feel the solace I
felt when I was a child. It was a windowless
room. Spacious, even when it was filled with
clothes and photo albums. Stepping inside, I
am swallowed by its shadows. This was my
sanctuary, a haven where I could be unapologetically myself. Here, I had felt invincible,
untouchable by the rules and expectations
that waited outside the door. I would look
through all of my mother’s hidden treasures,
this was the place I discovered my mother
was the tooth fairy and Santa Clause. As I
stand and look up to the high ceiling, the air
is heavy, cloying, and the ceiling seems to
close in.
soot-streaked bricks bearing silent witness to
all that was lost here.
I collapse to my knees, the weight of the
house pressing down as if it is alive, feeding
off my despair. My sobs wrack my body, raw
and unrelenting, as memories pour out unbidden. The Christmas I refused to help decorate—such a small act of defiance—looms
large in my mind, a symbol of everything
I pushed away, everything I let slip through
my fingers. The sorrow washes over me like
a tidal wave, drowning me in its cold embrace.
What was once warm and alive has become
hollow, corrupted by its own emptiness.
It feels as though the house mourns too,
though not for me. It mourns the spark of
life it smothered until it was gone. Having
no other being to consume, it consumed itself. As I kneel before the cold hearth, I feel
something behind me. I turned; it was the
breeze coming in through the door I left
open.
A tightness grips my chest, sharp and unyielding, each breath shallow and strained as
if the air itself refuses to enter my lungs. My
pulse pounds in my ears, louder and faster,
drowning out every rational thought. My
hands tremble, my palms slick with sweat,
and the room feels impossibly small, spinning and tilting like a ship in a storm. My
mind screams for escape, but my legs feel
leaden, rooted to the floor.
Finally, with a desperate lunge, I turn and
push the door open. Cool air rushes in, and I
stagger out, gasping as if I’ve been underwater for too long. My heart begins to slow, but
the ache of the loss remains.
I can’t stay in this house a moment longer.
The walls seem to close in, each step down
the corridor echoing louder, mocking my
escape. I run, my breath ragged, my legs
trembling as I race through the suffocating
space. At last, I stumble into the living room
and stop, my eyes drawn to the fireplace. Its
27
�Being in Lisbon
Stephen Borsum
The city is beautiful, but in some ways more
so sleeping than when it’s awake. The port
in my glass is sweet but bold, complemented by the slow burn of a rich cigarette. It
was a short morning of strolling through a
museum of antique arts, remnants of Portugal’s famous discoveries, but really they were
just old paintings of Jesus and the martyrs,
which the occasional piece of Chinese pottery interjected itself between. I searched the
shops for nothing in particular, but seeking
28
something beyond another drink or another
cup of espresso. Another drag from the cigarette, another sip of port. To my left is the
sprawling mass of building-topped hills and
rolling green spaces, colors fade together like
an impressionist’s field of wildflowers. All of
this is interrupted by the church renovation
happening below, where workers in their
hard hats operate a crane that occasionally
obstructs my view of the city. Towards the
river, some gaudy multi-story office build-
�ing for a corporation breaks the otherwise
inviting skyline, interestingly blocking my
view of the massive statue of Jesus. The port
finished, I meander through a district that I
now realize is only a tourist trap, and isn’t to
be taken as the true heart of Lisbon’s artist
culture. That’s in the aged stone occasionally
covered with graffiti. Or the street performers. Or the hand-placed stone sidewalks with
black and white bricks interweaving into
various shapes, sometimes purposeful but
others chaotic. Perhaps the truest art of the
city is the flowers still blooming in late-November, but I won’t ask the locals such a
question. I don’t mean to render their city
knowable like some blog post. What is least
interesting is surface level. Like the Catholic references and churches on nearly every
block. So many built on destroyed mosques.
The return walk to my destination is all uphill, but thankfully this area of Lisbon is not so
steep. Still, I don’t resist stopping by the pastelaria, the bakery across the street for another glass of port and a pastel de nata, when the
desire to take a break comes over me. Each
time I try the little custard tart I like it more,
and even though it’s nearly the noon-hour,
I see hungover Lisboans rising for breakfast
at the cafes around. With some I can practice
just enough Portuguese to not be an asshole,
but quickly have to ask if we can switch to
English as their own tongue flows so easily
through them and immediately becomes ungraspable to my ears. I find myself enjoying
this port more than the others, but I’ve only
tried the red and for some reason won’t try
the white. Ignorance I presume. Still, I finish my glass and strike another cigarette, the
brand I found here is dangerously smooth.
And continuing my walk I finally find what I
was looking for without knowing. A simple
shop, where a Japanese man watches YouTube while waiting for tourists to wander
in. He’s selling sunglasses, and I desperately
need a new pair.
I return to the studio where we are planning to enjoy the evening. The proprietor
greets me, and we discuss tattoos, his collection of them and my lack of one. We drink
what seems to be the only beer people have
a preference for in Lisbon, Super Bock, and
talk about life in America and the animals in
Montana, namely the great many of them
that can kill you. The studio opens for the
evening and artists suddenly pour in, the
space awakens from contemplative to lively,
letting bloom an energy in the room that I’ve
already spent for the day walking the many
streets. And I remember the warm sun and
the port and cigarette from earlier in the day.
29
�Essays
Precarious - Amelia Taylor Wolfe
12x16” oil on canvas panel
30
�Emile at the Place for Learning
Rousseau and Oakeshott in College Campus Duet
Charles Edward Chapin
I. Orchestration
The teenage education of “Emile”
described by Jean-Jacque Rousseau in the
work’s third book, and the college described
in Michael Oakeshott’s “A Place of Learning”
present an opportunity for exploring dissonance and harmony in these two approaches to young adult education. Will the Rousseauian mantra, “What good is that for?”1,
doom Emile’s journey through the hypothetical halls of Oakeshott College, where faculty
and students abjure “the use which may be
made of the conclusions of their inquiries?”2
A student has been tutored to reject
scholarship. The tutor of his youth, himself an
eminent scholar, guided him instead to favor
practical applications of his lessons, and to sustain his financial independence as a craftsman.
Now eighteen years old and somewhere in
twentieth century America, he decides to attend a secluded liberal arts college to pursue
deeper meaning in life. How might his childhood tutor’s views interact with the pedagogical design of this campus, where, in favor of
intellectually productive leisure, “instrumental arts” are distanced from “liberal learning?”
To encourage this dialogue, I make
a few choices. First, Emile has a disposition
and maturity that matches this hypothetical
college. Readers may quibble with this premise, arguing that Rousseau’s Emile would see
higher learning as pointless.3 On the other hand, the character has a pensiveness that
lends itself to honest inquiry, and perhaps his
attraction to liberal arts is inevitable. In any
case, let us give him a chance to go to college.
Second, the Oakeshott faculty prefer dialectic
pedagogy and are oriented toward the individual flourishing of students. Emile’s training in experimentation and self-led discovery will not, therefore, cause conflict in this
setting. This choice allows us to focus more
exclusively on the concept of utility in education, rather than pedagogical process. Finally,
when Emile is faced with conflict between
Rousseau and Oakeshott, he chooses a path
that prioritizes interaction between them,
rather than retreating to one side or the other.
II. Melody
Oakeshott College stands before
him, an isolated, walled campus rimmed by
mountains of green and blue. “Adventures in
Human Self-Understanding,” (Oakeshott 15)
1
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “Emile: or On Education.” Translated by Allan Bloom. New York:
Basic Books, 1979. p. 179
2
Oakeshott, Michael. “A Place of Learning.” In What Is History? and Other Essays, edited
by Luke O’Sullivan, 1-34. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004. p. 22
3
Indeed, our reading focused exclusively on Book III, which takes place between Emile’s 12th
th
and 15 year.
31
�proclaim the banners on the lampposts. This
motto of the college’s founder and namesake
is what drew Emile here. He seeks adventure
and wants to understand.
The nearest town is two miles away
through dense woods, and to preserve the
intellectual purity of the college environment, students travel only on foot. Two miles
through the woods is an easy navigation
problem for Emile on a sunny day or a starry
night, but he is not here to escape. He is Robinson Crusoe, marooned anew, on an island
with uncharted possibilities. Earlier that day,
he had sold his craftsman’s tools for pens and
paper, then had saved the rest for books.
The tutor and friend of his early teens,
Mr. Rousseau, had never intended for him
to choose this path, or indeed any path that
involved so many books. He had been permitted to read, of course, and especially those
books that provided inspiration for martialing
the resources necessary to find his way in the
world (Rousseau 184). But to study humanities at a small, secluded college? It would have
seemed foolish to Mr. Rousseau. “It is by their
palpable relation to his utility, his security, his
preservation, and his well-being,” Mr. Rousseau had once advised, “that he ought to appraise all the bodies of nature and all the works
of men. Thus, iron ought to be much more
valuable in his eyes than gold, and glass than
diamonds” (Rousseau 187). Emile can imagine how the people in the market would roll
their eyes at the utility of prioritizing humanities and isolating oneself from the hic et nunc
(“Here and now” Oakeshott 10-11), two of
Oakeshott’s precepts. As he hears their voices
in his mind’s ear, He zips his jacket against the
32
wind and pulls down his simple cap.
He wonders now if Mr. Rousseau
ever fully understood that he has chosen this
path not in spite of his tutor but because of
him; Mr. Rousseau’s seeds of worldly, practical knowledge had sprouted into a growing
sense that these sorts of books were of greater
use than he had previously been told. Emile
had become accustomed to allowing objects
and information to appear in front of him,
without demanding answers from them.
Now, at eighteen, his own life had presented itself as one of these objects of curiosity.
He had studied it with his characteristic pensiveness and curiosity, but the essence of the
thing, the meaning of life, had eluded him.
Self-sufficiency and creative instrumentation
had begun to seem like virtues, not meaning. They were a way to live a good life, a
means to an end. But now, when he asks of
life, “What good is that for,” (Rousseau 179)
who is he asking? He lacked the instruments
to form an answer. The search for these tools
is what brings Emile to Oakeshott College.
And what an adventure it could be!
Mr. Rousseau and Mr. Oakeshott had this attitude in common. Both had described life as a
process of exploration that gave depth to one’s
existence. Mr. Rousseau may have preferred a
more individualistic, hands-on approach and
Mr. Oakeshott a more Socratic, theoretical
one, but surely there is room at the Oakeshott
seminar table for a student who likes to work
with his hands?
Besides, Emile’s love of testing things
fit in well with the study of natural science,
which was respected at Oakeshott. He under-
�stands that too much science is frowned upon
at the college, but Mr. Rousseau had shared
this view: “Not to teach him the sciences but
to give him the taste for loving them,” (Rousseau 172) he had prescribed. There was an apparent danger in going too far into one field
and losing sight of the big picture. Even if
Mr. Rousseau had made that argument based
on utility, it was rooted in a respect for balance between natural science and other concepts. Oakeshott College would do the same.
In fact, the Oakeshott curriculum prohibited
students from concentrating their studies in
natural science.4
Incidentally, Oakeshott College also
prohibited students from being employed
and being distracted by “the instrumental
arts,” (Oakeshott 13) as marketable skills were
called. Emile has an affinity for his craft, but
he is willing to take a break from it to pursue
life’s deeper meaning. Sacrificing his craft is
not a rejection of his Rousseauian values but
rather an embrace of them; he is making a
trade. Mr. Rousseau might have argued that
it was not worth what he was paying, since
“it is by money that goods of various kinds
become commensurable and can be compared,” (Rousseau 190) and since his time at
Oakeshott would not produce more money.
But Emile had decided that money was just a
representation of value, and that understanding how to live a meaningful life simply had a
higher personal value than practicing his trade
for four years.
Besides, study was a kind of work,
and he knew how to find love in his work by
doing it well and letting it speak for itself. He
feels sometimes like two people: an aspiring
philosopher, and an aspiring master craftsman. This is by his tutor’s design: “In all that
he will see, in all that he will do, he will want
to know everything; he will want to learn the
reason for everything. From instrument to instrument he will want always to go back to
the first; he will accept no assumption” (Rousseau 188-189). Well, Mr. Rousseau, he thinks,
I am here to go back to the very first questions. Why am I here? Why are we here?
He knows his former tutor and the
founder of this college had their differences, but he thinks the foundations are similar
enough to allow for an experience of great
personal significance. He enters campus
through a large gate in the wall. It shuts behind him with a definitive click.
II. Countermelody
Emile sits at the corner of his seminar table. “The Life of the Mind” is a required
discussion group for all first-year students.
Two months have passed since he last heard
the click of the gate. The readings have been
stimulating, but the wind is no longer at his
back on his expedition. He stays engaged, but
he sometimes wonders why his peers seem
content to just talk.
There is a term they keep using, “the
conversation” (Oakeshott 16, 30, 34). It seems
like an accepted end in itself, this conversation,
a kind of proper noun without a clear delineation. He is not always sure whether he is
4
Oakeshott 22. Since I am building a hypothetical college on Oakeshott’s writing, I choose
to imagine that the college has translated the spirit of his writing into academic policy.
33
�in “the” conversation or just “a” conversation.
The ideas that come up in these discussions
are wonderful. Yet whenever he tries to offer an opportunity to test them out after class,
like the time he proposes a system for measuring “soul” as a ratio like health, his peers seem
embarrassed and hesitant. Is this the limit of
learning at Oakeshott? The students seem like
cartographers who draw maps from descriptions but never travel, never measure the land
with their eyes.
The tutor, Ms. Vendredi, sits just to
his right, at the end of the table. She reads
from an essay by the founder of the college.
“Oakeshott wrote that ‘Liberal learning is a
difficult engagement’” (Oakeshott 30). She
pauses. “‘It depends upon an understanding of itself which is always imperfect; even
those who presided over its emergence hardly
knew what they were doing. And it depends
upon a self-confidence which is easily shaken
and not least by continual self-examination’
(Oakeshott 30). So,” continues Ms. Vendredi,
“What perplexes me is... What is it that we are
learning in such a difficult way?”
“Human self-understanding,” offers a
fellow student at the end of the table, reminding everyone of the school motto. “It is inseparable from learning to participate in what is
called a ‘culture’” (Oakeshott 16). She refers to
the text by Oakeshott. Emile writes this down
carefully. He finds satisfaction in the careful
script of his hand and the even flow of ink
from a well-designed pen. He thinks about
his craftsman tools. It helps him feel valuable
to make things that people pay him for, to re-
5
mind him that he can find his way through
a problem with his own wits. His compensation has been a source of self-confidence.
How are students compensated in their culture of learning? By grades? By affirmations
at the seminar table?
He is momentarily distracted, thinking of the instruments of the seminar. Pens,
printed texts on paper, the table, the chairs, all
invisible to his peers but designed by experts
to be perfectly invisible to their users. A pair of
glasses perches on his tutor’s nose, calibrated
by an optician. A lamp above the table holds
the light of engagement at a standardized level of lumens, using a predictable number of
watts. Are these instruments not part of our
culture here at Oakeshott? He wonders how
the college community fails to acknowledge
that the craftsmanship of its physical environment is part of its culture. Isn’t the tutor’s optician participating in the seminar, indirectly?
Ms. Vendredi seems to have caught
him staring at her glasses. Her eyes, distorted by the lenses, remind him of a lesson from
Mr. Rousseau about the refraction of light and
how a stick will appear to bend in water. She
invites him to share what is on his mind.
“Is this idea of culture measurable?”
he asks. “What could one use to determine
whether it is even real? And if it is, how might
participants in the culture know when or if
they are participating? And in the context of
learning about human understanding, surely
the economic output resulting from that understanding must be considered?”5
A hypothetical point of view, imagined based on a synthesis of Rousseau‘s emphasis of
instrumentation in the education of Emile. See Rousseau 169, 176, 184, 188-189
34
�A classmate across from him responds.
“I see what you’re saying. Maybe the measurement of learning is what you could use
to show how culture is developing, and then
furthermore how learning impacts local trade.
Consider this passage in the text: ‘A large part
of human conduct is, and always has been,
concerned with exploiting the resources of
the earth for the satisfaction of human wants,
and much of human learning is concerned,
directly or indirectly, with this endlessly proliferating intelligent engagement….’ (Oakeshott 11-12).
In the context of a culture of learning about
human self-understanding, she nods, Oakeshott would agree that, ‘This certainly is genuine learning’” (Oakeshott 12).
Another peer to his left jumps in, “I
think that economic output might be considered as a voice in the culture, but not the
culture itself.” He wonders what she means by
“voice.” Voices have ranges and are heard in
pitches. They emit sounds in octaves. They
can be transcribed onto staves of treble and
bass clefs with precision. That is not what she
means. She is talking about the conversation
again. She cites Oakeshott, “Perhaps we may
think of these components of a culture as
voices... Each the expression of a distinct and
conditional understanding of the world and a
distinct idiom of human self-understanding,
and of the culture itself as these voices joined,
as such voices could only be joined, in a conversation” (Oakeshott 30).
He does not quite follow. “Are you
saying that the mere existence of the conversation itself is the value? Well, what is that
conversation good for (Rousseau 179).
His peers appear non-plussed. A man
across the table retorts with a raised eyebrow,
“I mean, that’s kind of the whole point here
at Oakeshott. If you’re not here for the conversation,” he then looks around the table for
reactions, “then what are we even doing here,
guys?”
Emile tries to explain what he means.
“The idea of this conversation as ‘culture’
needs to have some utility and purpose that
helps us toward self-understanding. It needs
some property that allows one to use it to
measure progress towards that self-understanding. Like it says on the lampposts...”
He trails off and feels like he’s losing them.
“Ok, just imagine it like this.” He finds himself proposing the development of a series
of measurements, and then a data collection
plan, for extrapolating the relative influence
each “voice” might have on the outcome of
self-understanding. One could develop an
entire curriculum around this way of measuring impact, train experts in program management, advise governments on how to manage
grants effectively, change the world…!6 He
stops, seeing a mix of bemusement around the
table. Has he departed from the text again?7
Another peer to his left chimes in,
challenging him. “I feel like your idea matches what Oakeshott called ‘the relic of a dis-
6
A hypothetical train of thought, based on a description of Emile’s training in following his
curiosity. See Rousseau’s anecdotes about magnetism, navigation, and optics.
7
I imagine this feeling would come up frequently, given his training in applying concepts
that are not contained in his inspirational texts.
35
�position’ to value sciences ‘in terms of the
use which may be made of the conclusions
of their inquiries.’ An attitude like this ‘has
sometimes led to a proliferation of what may
be called semisciences - organizations of information in terms of the use which may be
made of it’” (Oakeshott 22). Emile can sense
that he is being cautioned against falling into
the rabbit hole of applied science.
arts, but to the continuous intellectual adventure in which human beings have sought to
identify and to understand themselves’ (Oakeshott 13). So, if you let people get dragged
into the tooling side of the learning process,
you’d never have the intellectual adventure.
You’d be so focused on the mechanics that
you’d lose the plot about the purpose of those
tools.”
“Ok, well call them what you will,
but these ‘semisciences’ sound important.” He
encourages the seminar to think differently. “Surely there is a need for instrumenting
these contributors to learning, these voices,
especially given their potential impact on
human understanding. The development of
such tools, or instruments, for advancing our
goal of self-understanding could drive entirely new ways of thinking. It is not a betrayal
of liberal learning to use tools,” he asserts, “if
they are being invented as part of the learning
experience. My old tutor used to say, ‘With
every tool I use, I do not fail to ask myself, “If
I did not have this tool, how would I go about
making one like it or doing without it?”’
(Rousseau 188-189). In this way, instrumenting the culture and conversation would be in
service to Oakeshott’s ideals, not a distraction
by an instrumental art.”
He ponders this response, more than
a little disappointed, and he starts to wonder
if he made a mistake by coming here. Oakeshott College had seemed to have the same
foundations of intellectual adventure as his tutor Rousseau, but he had not expected instrumentation to be so undervalued by his peers.
Another peer across the table disagrees. “The focus should be on the general
learning experience, not an obsession with
its mechanisms. Oakeshott wrote that, ‘What
comes into view is not merely an extension
of the field of instrumental learning but an
altogether different engagement of critical
self-understanding in which we relate ourselves, not to our inheritance of instrumental
36
Ms. Vendredi brings the conversation
back to center. “Oakeshott’s focus was that
‘Liberal learning is learning to respond to the
invitations of the great intellectual adventures
in which human beings have come to display
their various understandings of the world
and of themselves’ (Oakeshott 22). She might
have noticed Emile’s furrowed brow and the
beginnings of a doodle emerging from his
pen. Isn’t the development of tools just such
an intellectual adventure? He wonders. Is
Oakeshott – both the college and its namesake – denying him an invitation to allow
his own craftsmanship into the conversation?
He sketches an isometric drawing of a pair of
glasses next to the words “self-understanding”
and “relic.”
III. Dissonance
Twenty-six months have passed since
the click of the gate. Twenty-year-old Emile
�sits in an empty natural science laboratory, his
mind caught in a wrestling match between
Rousseau and Oakeshott.
His first year has been stimulating,
different from his life before college. Even
when he finds himself at odds with the college’s approach to learning, he could tolerate
the difference as novel. Just as Mr. Oakeshott
had written, the “voice” of the college was indeed just part of the conversation (Oakeshott
30). It was the loudest voice on campus, but
he still had Mr. Rousseau‘s voice in his memory.
But now, a microscope is on the
counter in front of him, and he is furious. The
instrument has been simple enough to learn
how to use. He has regretted, even, not having had one earlier in his tutelage. What infuriates him now is not the device itself, but the
memory of his peers’ attitudes toward the microscope during the lab earlier that day. They
were given precise instructions on how to operate the scope and what to look for through
its lenses. They each followed the instructions
to the best of their ability. And that was all.
Alone now, he pulls out a discarded
pair of glasses he has recovered from a campus trash can. One lens has been cracked,
but the other is perfectly intact. They were
simple reading glasses. He could see, in his
mind, how the lens could be removed from
the glasses, then how it could be edged to fit a
new component that could be placed over the
eyepiece. With the right angle, a mirror, and
with enough light from below, he might be
8
9
able to project the contents of the microscope
slide onto a screen. Students could share the
same experiences with one microscope, seeing the same things under the microscope at
the same time, instead of requiring multiple
microscopes and making students take turns.
As his mind wanders, he wonders if he could
find an old telescope, then try adding a layer
of magnitude to the projection without altering the microscope lens.8
What bothers him now is that his
peers took no interest in the microscope itself, only the contents of the slide. Indeed,
he felt like the college itself took no interest
in the microscope. Mr. Oakeshott himself
would have relegated it to the domain of the
“instrumental arts.”9 And yet, the instrument
had been so critical in the learning experience
for developing self-understanding among the
students. The achievement of learning was
directly proportional to the precision of the
instrument. The inextricable link between
instruments and learning meant that instrumental arts were the sine qua non of liberal
arts. Emile could see all the unrealized potential blocked by this prejudice against tooling.
Of course, the microscope was “just an instrument” to the single-minded goal of learning,
but in understanding how the instrument was
designed in the first place, Emile could imagine better instruments, better insights, better
learning experiences. His frustration building,
he begins feeling trapped on campus.
In their sophomore year, many of the
Oakeshott students have behaved less like curious peers and more like the arrogant buy-
Inspired by Rousseau 201
A hypothetical conclusion inspired by Oakeshott 30
37
�ers he used to see visiting the craftsmen in
the market. Being students at the college had
become their source of dignity and self-perceived status. Their isolation and rejection
of the instrumental arts marks their self-perceived intellectual purity. For people like this,
modifying a microscope would mean temporarily leaving their blessed journey of liberating their souls from ignorance.10 Let the
craftsmen worry about such things, he could
imagine them saying.
Now in his junior year, Emile clenches his fist around the discarded glasses thinking
about the attitudes of his peers. Honest labor
had been a defining part of his life’s meaning
before Oakeshott. Mr. Rousseau had said, “To
work is therefore an indispensable duty for
social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak,
every idle citizen is a rascal” (Rousseau 195).
The easygoing veneer of youth has worn off
for him and his peers, and now he confronts
the social experience of living among people
with no work experience, no sense of what
it feels like to translate ideas into reality and
then to receive the most concrete feedback:
a market-based compensation. Despondence
replaces Emile’s outrage. What is his place
here?
He begins to feel the walls of the secluded campus stifling his instincts and deadening his voice. The dignity of work being
stripped from this campus society, he notices
dignity instead being assigned in other ways:
the signaling of erudition with classroom performance, the carefree attitude towards life
outside class, the adaptation of speech and
dress to match the place and time and audi-
10
38
ence, and the exhibition of enlightened viewpoints ringing like an insistent bell in the hallways. Mr. Oakeshott had not written about
this culture of the young and the learned. Yet
here it was, the product of a secluded campus
that rejected the tempering influence of the
instrumental arts.
His peers from last year’s Life of the
Mind seminar have continued to cite Mr.
Oakeshott as the way to learn liberally, but
they have shared an unspoken consensus behind their eyes: that “liberal learning” is the
key to avoiding an unimportant life. He had
come to college to examine life’s meaning.
His peers were now habitually examining
whether anything they encountered rose to a
level of sufficient prestige.
He can sense that what he is experiencing is not necessarily what Mr. Oakeshott
had intended, but it was nevertheless precisely the kind of society that Mr. Rousseau had
cautioned him against. These students were
chasing the gold and diamonds of the benighted aristocrats, and he had been taught to
never forget the surpassing value of iron and
glass among the noble craftsmen, whose art
truly liberates. Mr. Oakeshott had sought to
create a campus protected from the corrupting influence of the hic et nunc, but in so doing, he had exacerbated the corrupting influence of endless leisure or of promoting liberal
learning as preferential to labor. Mr. Rousseau
had taught him to integrate learning and labor. He could see now that his tutor had driven him to innovate, to invent, and to disrupt
what he sees as ineffective or inefficient relics
of institutional inertia.
A hypothetical conclusion based on Oakeshott 22, 31, 34
�He wants to shout to his peers in
an editorial, or surreptitiously post a call for
change on the campus walls. They have misunderstood Rousseauian utility! “What is that
good for?” is not a relic of a disposition toward utility but rather a call to virtue, a conviction of consciousness, not with the aim of
economic impact but with the simple concept
that ideas should make a difference. “This is
now the sacred word,” he quotes Mr. Rousseau in his mind, “the decisive word between
and me in all the actions of our life” (Rousseau
179).
Here in the lab, without his craftsman’s tools, and with haughty judgments
about instrumental arts clouding his self-esteem, the target of his despondence transfers.
The disappointment is not with the college
but with himself. Mr. Rousseau had warned
him against the path of books. Mr. Oakeshott
would never have wanted him here with his
love of instruments and invention.
He wants to flee, to climb over the
walls. Or stage an insurrection, block the
doors, make threats. But he has made a commitment to himself to finish this adventure.
“No book other than the world, no instruction other than the facts,” (Rousseau 168). he
recalls from Mr. Rousseau. This campus, the
secluded world of liberal learning, is forcing
him to question the value of a community
that produces no goods and elicits no feedback from the outside world. He resents himself for studying here and yearns for the tools
he sold over two years ago.
He deftly pops the good lens out of
the glasses.
IV. Harmony
It is the second term of his junior year,
and Ms. Vendredi has invited Emile for a private conference. He notices the absence of her
glasses, then sees the faintest outline of contact
lenses around her green-blue irises. Apparently people do try new things at Oakeshott. He
wonders if the light, bouncing off the mountains outside her window, refracts differently
into her pupils than it did through her glasses
over two years ago.
“Would you mind if I read aloud?”
begins Ms. Vendredi. He politely consents.
She nods and raises the text to her eyes. “The
art of the master consists in never letting his
pupil’s observations dwell on minutiae which
lead nowhere but in bringing him ever closer to the great relations he must know one
day in order to judge well of the good and
bad order of civil society” (Rousseau 190). She
pauses, looking at him over her page. A slight
smile grows at the corner of her mouth.
Emile feels a touch of familiarity. He
frowns, then returns a flicker of a smile, like
a shaft of light through storm clouds, noticed
only by one looking for sun. Ms. Vendredi
goes on, her own smile growing, “One must
know how to match the conversations with
which one entertains him to the turn of mind
he has been given” (Rousseau 190). She puts
down the page.
“How do you come to know the
writings of my former tutor, Mr. Rousseau?”
he asks. His eyes are soft, nostalgic. Hers are
kind, with cordial distance, like an aunt who
knows better than her nephew.
39
�She corrects him gently and with a
wink, “Surely, you must mean my former tutor.” Emile is stunned. Mr. Rousseau was her
tutor, too? A mist forms at the edge of her
eyes. They share a common history.
She explains how she herself had
come to bridge the views of her Rousseauian tutelage with the call of Oakeshott College, at least two decades before he arrived.
She had her own journey from the market to
the secluded campus. “Mr. Rousseau and Mr.
Oakeshott did not agree, but that does not
mean you must choose one or the other. Will
you indulge me with one more reading, this
one from Mr. Oakeshott?” He consents, gladly. She picks up a separate page. “[C]hoosing
wants to satisfy is also something that has to
be learned, and […] the conditions to be subscribed to in making such choices are not the
terms of the instrumental arts and practices
in which chosen wants may be conveniently
satisfied” (Oakeshott 13).
“You see,” she prods Emile, “the desire to innovate and to invent, to challenge
and disrupt and improve, this is a want you
must learn when and whether to satisfy. It is
not the deeper meaning you are seeking but
a discipline, valuable in finding that meaning.
It is a desire that you can use your instrumental arts to fulfill when the time is right. But!”
She pauses and holds up a finger: a teaching
moment. “The time is not always right! There
are times when you must learn to concentrate
on the simple fact of “being,” not what could
be.”
Emile observes her skeptically. “Ms.
Vendredi,” he asks, “I think I understand
40
your advice, but where do you see this in Mr.
Oakeshott’s text?”
“Ah,” she nods, “let me continue.
“What comes into view is not merely an extension of the field of instrumental learning
but an altogether different engagement of
critical self-understanding in which we relate
ourselves, not to our inheritance of instrumental arts, but to the continuous intellectual adventure in which human beings have
sought to identify and to understand themselves” (Oakeshott 13).
“Do you see?” she asks. “Your ability to create instruments is a heritage, just like
your current adventure of liberal learning is
a heritage, passed down through generations
and inviting those who cannot help but feel
like there is something deeper to life. They
exist side-by-side, instruments and critical
learning. But you must also learn that there
is benefit in setting one aside to focus on the
other.”
“So,” Emile asks, “do you mean to say
that Mr. Oakeshott was not abjuring the instrumental arts but simply deferring them?”
“Well...” Ms. Vendredi looks down
and smiles at the question. When she looks up
again, her smile is framed by a warm frown.
“Maybe not. Oakeshott’s text keeps the instrumental arts at a distance from the liberal
arts. I can’t say that my own conclusions are
also his. And yet,” she added, “my experience
of the two arts is that their differences are
complementary.”
She continues. “There are plenty of
voices at Oakeshott College, if you learn to
�discern them. I sense that you have been hearing one dominant voice, the voice that devalues the instrumental arts, rather too loudly. I
don’t think that voice is Mr. Oakeshott’s. He
knew the instrumental arts had value. In fact,
their value was so great to the hic et nunc that
it might crush the flourishing of liberal arts
among students and faculty. Whether instrumental arts were to be abjured or deferred
among students of the liberal arts might depend on what the student does after graduating. But before that moment, he did argue
that they would be distracting.”
between your pupils’ knowledge and mine’s
ignorance! They know maps, and he makes
them” (Rousseau 171).
She nods in agreement, encouraging
him to reflect. He ponders. “Is this feeling of
being out-of-step with my classmates, of being ignorant, or being inferior... Is this just
how it feels to draw your own map when everyone else already knows how to read one?”
“Please remember,” adds Ms. Vendredi, “that you have a voice as well. And we all
need you to use it – judiciously, of course, and
respectfully, as we all must learn to do, even
in discord. But use it you must, or else the
chorus lacks harmony.” With this, she pauses,
looking at her bookshelf. He follows her gaze
to a well-worn copy of Robinson Crusoe. On
faded paper, a map drawn by the hand of a
child is folded up next to Defoe. Emile clears
his throat and quotes their tutor.
“Emile,” she says, “everyone at Oakeshott College is creating their map. And
yes, some people already have fine calligraphy whereas you can create your own pens
from scratch. But eventually, everyone has
to cobble together their own map for themselves when they realize that there’s a quieter voice leading them into new territory. In
the efficient market of the world outside, it’s
tempting to assume that the rational system of
compensation dictates real value. But there is
a dominant melody of appetite there, drowning out the voice that calls for deeper meaning and greater value that does not attract
compensation. Having heard that voice and,
like me, found your way here, you can learn
to discern the topography and listen to quieter voices, then join their harmony. Rousseau’s
voice is here at Oakeshott, just not the dominant melody.
“The goal is not that he know exactly the topography of the region, but that
he know the means of learning about it. It is
of little importance that he have maps in his
head, provided that he is able to get a good
conception of what they represent, and that
he has a distinct idea of the art which serves to
draw them. See the difference there already is
“Now I hope,” she adds, standing up,
“you will continue this conversation with me
as you complete your journey here at Oakeshott. You know, you can have more than one
mentor, and our Mr. Rousseau was just the
first of many voices whose melodies you can
recite simultaneously, in a lively interplay of
harmony and dissonance. Learning to accept
Emile begins to see her point. This
new interpretation allows for the warring
voices in his mind to coexist, without forcing
them to agree, and without accepting one at
the expense of the other.
41
�their invitation to listen, and sometimes to
sing, is part of the process.” She smiles again.
He looks out the window at the
mountains, thinking how shallow they would
be without the contrast of blue and green.
V. The Instrument
Emile is now twenty-one, a senior at
Oakeshott. He is not yet thinking about his
plan after graduation, but neither is he worried about whether he fits in. Even without the
freedom to innovate and invent, he is experiencing an active world of experimentation in
dialogue, in writing, and is finding sanctuary
in the willingness of some tutors and peers to
at least hear his ideas without judgment.
The aspiring philosopher within him
grows, happily, into a new kind of craftsman.
In so doing, this philosopher also admonishes
him to accept his own limits. There is indeed
more to be learned by developing empirical
instruments, but his mind is its own instrument, one that can only be made more precise
after first being acknowledged. As he walks
pensively along the perimeter of the campus, his hand trailing along the walls, he feels
cheeky. Mr. Oakeshott’s “place of learning”
may require him to defer his instrumental arts,
but if the mind itself is an instrument, Rousseau may be having the last laugh.
Emile remembers another of his tutor’s lines. “The surest means of raising oneself above prejudices and ordering one’s judgments about the true relations of things is to
put oneself in the place of an isolated man and
to judge everything as this man himself ought
42
to judge of it with respect to his own utility.” Here among the mountains of blue and
green, his own mind under the metaphorical
microscope, he has found and raised himself
above his own prejudices. Has he seen the
true relations of things? That would depend
on how well the microscope was instrumented! He laughs to himself. Every seminar is a
way of calibrating that microscope.
With Rousseau and Oakeshott in harmony, he hears their voices fueling a surge of
self-confidence for the remainder of his adventure in self-understanding. Rousseau, in
baritone: “Emile has a mind that is universal
not by its learning but by its faculty to acquire
learning; a mind that is open, intelligent,
ready for everything, and, as Montaigne says,
if not instructed, at least able to be instructed”
(Rousseau 207). And Oakeshott, in tenor: “To
be human, to have wants and to try to satisfy them, is, then, to have the use of particular
skills, instrumental practices and relationships.
There is no action which is not a subscription to some art, and utterance is impossible
without a language” (Oakeshott 12). He is a
human, a self, on an adventure related to his
particular skills, ready for everything.
He hums along absentmindedly, fingering a lens in one pocket and a pen in the
other, as the lamppost banners ripple in the
wind.
�Time, 8x8” oil on canvas panel - Amelia Taylor Wolfe
It is what it is,
Our sweet tautology—
A phrase so warn and tattered,
It’s seared in memory.
You have no metaphysics
When you say sweet nothings.
Easy to ignore the Ever Present,
The one and only True Being.
Joey Jekel
43
�44
�Image, Imaginary, and Ignorance of Real Being
The Myth of Narcissus in Plotinus’ Enneads and Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy
Gus Kraus
When we look into a mirror and say
that we see ‘ourselves’, we casually assume
an identity between an image and that of
which it is an image. This assumption, however, obscures the medium by which we face
‘ourselves’: the mirror. In fact, what we find
is not at all what we sought, but only an appearance. Generalizing from this example,
we may question the ‘given’ of the broader
data of sense-perception: by what medium
do we encounter reality? That is, not the
image but the real thing, which causes the
image?
In pursuing this question, it may
appear odd to pair a late Antique mystic
“embarrassed about having a body”1 and a
Jamesonian critic of “contemporary cultural aesthetics.”2 However, the intersections of
Marxism and Psychoanalysis are no stranger to Ancient Literature: with “Odysseus
or Myth and Enlightenment”, Adorno and
Horkheimer offered3 their own contribution
to a field of research in which Plotinus’ student, Porphyry, labored over a millenia before (eg. On the Cave of the Nymphs). This
is to say nothing of Freud’s own reception of
Sophocles’ Theban plays or, apropos of Plato, his tripartite division of the psyche (Greek
for “soul”). In this respect, Anna Kornbluh’s
2023 Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late
Capitalism carries on a well established tradition of both Critical Theory in particular
and of Philosophy generally. Despite writing
in different philosophical and historical contexts, Kornbluh rather interestingly parallels Plotinus in analogizing and allegorizing
myth, specifically that of Narcissus, in order
to critique a cultural ignorance of mediating
and symbolic layers between a given image
and reality.
Narcissus in Critique of ‘Immediacy’
Kornbluh’s investigation of the Image and the Imaginary is one component in
a broader project of aesthetic critique. She
designates “Immediacy” as a contemporary
cultural style that undertakes a “reification
of what merely appears” (Kornbluh 190). This
culturally dominant style demands immersion and eschews any form of mediating or
representational interference. Rather than the
cynicism and self-awareness of postmodernity calling attention to the work of art qua
art (the object of Frederic Jameson’s seminal
critique, which Kornbluh considers the cultural logic of an earlier period (Kornbluh 1213), Immediacy blurs formal delineations like
media or genres to cultivate supposedly unmediated, authentic experience as art’s unquestionable raison d’être. It thus extols, in
both form and content, effortless flow, or as
Kornbluh describes, “#NoFilter” (Kornbluh
6). Hoping to ground us, contra Immediacy
style, she calls our attention to one of its inherent contradictions: “[t]he paradox of immediacy is a cultural style that imaginesitself
unstyled” (Kornbluh 11). Amidst the swirling
sense of immediate urgency and aesthetic
flux, wherein “representation is slackening
… [m]edium dissolves, extremes effulge, exposure streams,” (Kornbluh 1) she discovers an
economic basis of this cultural aesthetic, as a
project of stylizing of the “intensification of
circulation” (Kornbluh 44) of capital.
Kornbluh uses this analysis of the
material, objective basis of Immediacy to
begin an investigation of the cultural style’s
subjective effects, among which is a kind of
Narcissism. Linking a Debordian account of
this intensified circulation, where commod-
1
“On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books”. The Enneads. Tr. Boys-Stones,
George et al. Ed. Gerson, Lloyd. Cambridge University Press, 2018. 17.
2
Kornbluh, Anna. Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism. Verso, 2023. 1.
3
Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Tr. Jephcott, Edmund. Ed. Noerr, Gunzelin Schmid. Stanford University Press, 2002. 35.
Facing Page: Hance, 15x11” intaglio print - Jesse Wood
45
�ities develop into spectacles4, to a Lacanian
‘reframing’ of psychological phenomena as
topoi of social critique5, she makes the move
from the Image to the Imaginary: “Too late
capitalism’s circulation-centricity expediates
a historical contingent inflation of the image, and arguably, the subjective corollary
is the inflation of the imaginary” (Kornbluh
47). Kornbluh explores prior attempts to account for this “subjective corollary” in the
the ‘trend’ of pop psychologizing today’s
culture as abundantly narcissistic (Kornbluh
46) However, to interrogate this supposed
“epidemic” of egocentricity within the image-economy “with a lens other than moral
panic,” (Kornbluh 53) she recounts a psychoanalytic retelling of the myth of Narcissus:
“When this ordinary entrance into the symbolic [as
the “terrain of alterity”] is
obstructed, the subject remains too much in the imaginary - the specular state we
commonly recognize as
“narcissism.” [...] The name
comes from the ancient
Greek myth of Narcissus, a
young man who found his
own reflection in a pool so
captivating that he could not
tear himself away from water’s edge and literally wasted
away into death. [...] Narcissism fundamentally pertains
to the image; the subject
invests libidinally not in a
substantiality like “ego” but
in a speculative effect of the
technology of the mirror. In
the ancient myth, the image
floats on water and might
4
therefore be construed as
naturally occurring. But in
Lacan’s retelling, the mirror
function encompasses glass,
photography, screens. Narcissism becomes qualified as
an attachment to the ego qua
effect of the mirror [...] Conditioning the very existence
of the narcissist, mirroring
also composes their primal
demand: the reflection must
be repeated. One selfie is
never enough. [...] An economy that prizes the circulation of images, human capital entrepreneurs, and the
data-fication of everything
into endless counting of the
homogenized same realizes
in plasma the mythic promise of the fluid screen. Narcissus’s mirror is industrially
ordained” (Kornbluh 51-52).
Kornbluh’s critique of Immediacy’s
psychological impact centers on
how the hyper-circulation of images creates a relationship between the
subject and those images analogous
to that of Narcissus as his reflection.
The subject, gazing into a screen as
a bottomless sea of spectacles, takes
as substantial, unmediated and real
what, when subjected to critique
(only possible via the Symbolic), is in
fact contingent, mediated and imaginary. Kornbluh advocates for the
mediating power of critical theory as
a way to overcome this assumption
of identity born of ignorance.
“”Drowning in a deluge of images without context, words without meaning, information without distinction - this is the subjective experience in an economy of immediacy. [...] A society of the spectacle in which sociality transpires through eyes, it can often seem to individuals as though our work is the
production of our own image …” ibid 45, 56; cf. “In societies where modern conditions of production
prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles [...] The spectacles is not a collection
of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Debord, Guy. The Society of
the Spectacle. Tr. Knabb, Ken. Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014. Theses 1, 4.
5
“The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan posits the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real as three distinct but interdependent orders of psychic experience. These reframe Sigmund Freud’s topography of the
ego, the superego and the id, respectively, elucidating that the domains of the subject are also objective
realms of the social.” Kornbluh 48.
46
�Narcissus in Inquiry into Beauty
Plotinus wrote two different
tractates concerning Beauty. According to his student, Porphyry, the
first treatise he had ever written was
I.6 “On Beauty”; years later, he revisited the topic in V.9 “On the Intelligible Beauty”6. Despite this gap between their composition, both make
recourse to the myth of Narcissus to
illustrate the transcendent and noetic
qualities of Beauty.
Following
his
dialectic
method, Plotinus begins his inquiry
into Beauty with a question: “[w]hat,
then indeed, that has actually made
us to imagine bodies to be beautiful
… what is this beauty?”7 The possibility that Beauty emerges from the
material substrate of bodies (BoysStones et al. (1.6.1.10-15)) or our perception of them is quickly dismissed.
For Plotinus, it would be an impossibility, insofar that he is searching
for Beauty as an existent and has said
elsewhere that “matter does not even
have existence [...] rather, we say
that ‘existence’ is said of it equivocally …” (Boys-Stones et al. (I.8.5.10-15)
114). Instead, Plotinus establishes that
the really-existent and immaterial
Soul recognizes in a material body
something else substantial, intelligible, “to which it has kinship” (BoysStones et al. (I.6.2.10) 94). A material
body becomes beautiful only by
participation in an undivided Form,
in the real existent, in Beauty itself
(Boys-Stones et al. (I.6.2.25; I.6.3.5-10)
95). The distinction between real
‘existence’ and the colloquial use of
the word allows him later, in analyzing immaterial virtues as beauties,
to connect Beauty to the real: “what
does ‘real Beings’ mean? In fact, it
means that they are beautiful Beings”
(Boys-Stones et al. (I.6.5.15-20) 97).
6
Plotinus uses the myth of
Narcissus as an exhortation to pursue
this real, intelligible Beauty. Because
Plotinus argues such a simple Form
subsists in the noetic, (Boys-Stones et
al. (1.6.9.40) 103) the apprehension
of beauty becomes a cognitive act
by the beholder. However, when
we depend on our sense-perception rather than our intellect, we are
unaware of the role our cognition
plays in aesthetic judgements. Plotinus notes that we habitually “pursue
external[ beauties], being ignorant
of the fact that it is the internal that
moves us. It is as if someone, looking
at his own image, and being ignorant of where it came from, were to
pursue it” (Boys-Stones et al. (5.8.2.3435) 612; Emphasis mine). This shorter
mythic allusion emphasizes the noetic quality of the Form in which
external Beauties pursue, and analogizes our ignorance of this fact to
Narcissus not knowing what causes
the image on the surface.
In I.6 “On Beauty”, Plotinus
recounts the story in more detail,
and calls attention to own analogical
readings. He enjoins the viewer that
“...when he does see beauty
in bodies, he should not run
after them, but realize that
they are images and traces
and shadows, and flee towards that of which they are
images. For if someone runs
towards the image, wanting to grasp it as something
true, like someone wanting
to grasp a beautiful reflection in water - as a certain
story (μῦθος) has it, hinting
(αἰνίττεται) at something
else, in an enigmatic way, I
think, who falls into the water and disappears - in the
identical manner, someone
who holds on to beautiful
“On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books”. The Enneads. Tr. Boys-Stones, George et
al. Ed. Gerson, Lloyd. Cambridge University Press, 2018. 20-21.
7
The Enneads (I.6.1.5-10). Boys-Stones et al, 92.
47
�bodies does not let them go
plunges down, not with his
body but with his soul, into
the depths, where there is
no joy for an intellect, and
where he stays, blind in Hades [...]”8
“[H]inting at something else” implies a
meaning for the story which is not immediately apparent. Plotinus posits a need for interpretation: the myth’s ainittetai (‘riddling’,
intimating, or hinting9) beckons the reader
to decode its ainigmata (“riddles”, whence
English ‘enigma’10). But further, by retelling
the myth in a self-referential way which calls
attention to himself as an interpreter (“... I
think…”). Following Plotinus’ lead, we
may say that the myth of Narcissus does not
merely portray a youth who chases not after
the beautiful but its image; the story presents itself as an image, signifying some other
meaning. The image discloses this hidden
meaning only when we “flee towards that
of which [it is an] image…” Plotinus uses
the myth as a practical example the semiotic
approach to material beauties he advocates,
building on ‘Diotima’s Ladder’ from the
Symposium11 as a hermeneutics of sense-experience via inward contemplation (theoria).
An Intriguing Echo
The Nymph, Echo, spurned by Narcissus, loses her bodily form and becomes
merely a “voice”12. So too does a sound echoing through a cave mutate as it bounces from
one surface to another. In the same way, the
echo of the myth in its retellings changes
through its successive receptions. Kornbluh,
whose primary references concerning Narcissus and narcissism are Lacan and Freud,
makes no indication of a noetic essence of
Beauty. Furthermore, Plotinus would not
8
find much “to which [the Soul] has kinship”
in Kornbluh’s materialist analysis of commodity circulation, which in a Marxist and
Lacanian sense makes up an objective, social
basis for the subject; thus, the outline of economic shifts necessarily prefigures her study
of an inflated imaginary as their “subjective
corollary”. But despite these retellings appearing within two discourses which could
not be more at odds in principles, they share
a stunningly similar rhetorical structure.
The viewing subject catches sight
of its reflection, and becomes erotically attached to this sensual datum (in a Plotinian sense, out of pursuit for the body and
‘plunging’ into matter; for Kornbluh, out of
libidinal overinvestment). Despite the object reflected appearing ‘real’, the growing
obsession obfuscates the role of the medium in constructing the object: as Kornbluh
says, the [“imaginged real” is not the real, but
the effect of the mirror], much like Plotinus
who distinguishes the image for that which
causes the image and that the body is merely
matter participating in form. Both Kornbluh
and Plotinus turn from telling the myth as
a portrayal of narcissistic self-deception to
telling the myth as moral, blending the descriptive and prescriptive. Therefore, both
make a similar prescription: the subject must
strengthen their awareness of symbolic mediation (via theoretical critique, via exegesis
of the ‘enigmatic’). The myth thus retains a
coherent, rhetorical effect despite striking
differences in philosophical context.
Boys-Stones et al. (1.6.8.6-16) 101; Emphasis mine. For the Greek text, Henry, Paul, and
Schwyzer, Hans-Rudolf. Plotini Opera I. Tomus I: Pophyrii Vita Plotini, Enneades I-III. Oxford Classical
Texts, 1964. 102.
9
Lidell and Scott. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford, 1889. 21.
10
ibid
11
Cf. Plato, Symposium 211b-c
12
“Corpus adhuc Echo, non vox erat…” Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.359. Ovid III Metamorphoses I.
Loeb Classical Library, 1916. 3.359. 148.
48
�Doors and Windows of Mexico City - Aaron Knight
There once was a thing in the void
Its predecessor’s been destroyed
Of being it’s not
Becoming’s its lot
It’s hard for the thing to stay joyed
Amelia Wolfe
49
�~ Paul Harland-White
50
�Root to Rise
Attachment in Xunzi
Haley Prickett
Xunzi opens the first chapter, “An
Exhortation to Learning,” rooting himself in
Confucius (through the invocation of something a gentleman says):”Learning must never stop… The gentleman learns broadly and
examines himself thrice daily, and then his
knowledge is clear and his conduct is without fault.”1 This is a particularly curious beginning that sets the stage for a project that
is ongoing. Learning (the very subject being
exhorted) cannot be finished, and must never
stop. This suggests to me that the root–or the
heart of this project Xunzi is undertaking–is
likewise something eternal, and constant.2 I
am perplexed by what learning is for Xunzi,
and how the initial natural images make that
less perplexing. Xunzi writes:
Blue dye derives from the indigo
plant, and yet it is bluer than the plant.
Ice comes from water, and yet it is
colder than water. Through steaming and bending, you can make the
wood as straight as an ink-line into a
wheel. And after its curve conforms
to the compass, even when parched
under the sun it will not become
straight again, because likewise the
steaming and bending have made it
a certain way. Likewise, when wood
comes under the ink-line, it becomes
straight, and when metal is brought
to the whetstone, it becomes sharp.3
Is natural learning different from education? I am understanding natural learning to
be the knowledge gained through survival
and getting older, a learning through experience–like that if you go underwater you
cannot breathe, or if you touch fire you will
get burned. Is Xunzi pointing us to a version of learning that is environmental learning? Do the people and the landscape among
which one lives provide a parallel (but distinct) path of continuous learning that is not
natural? This active learning, that the gentleman must never stop is growth in the present
tense. So, I wonder: what is the root of this
active learning and how is it possible to find
any sort of footing, foundation, or stability
with something that is constantly, by definition, in progress? I suspect that the images
we are given of trees (those natural beings
who transform, yet stand fixed and firm in
their community) will be helpful.
Two things Xunzi thinks about humanity seem initially clear: one, humans are
not just born, humans are made, and two,
we can only know what we see and hear.
If you never climb a high mountain, visit a
deep ravine, nor hear the wisdom of former
kings, then you will never know the height
of Heaven, the depth of the Earth, nor the
magnificence of learning4 He writes (not in
the words of a gentleman): “Children of [all]
peoples cry with the same sound at birth, but
when grown they have different customs,
because teaching makes them thus.”5 I think
I agree with him on this; people become
what they are taught. But, then we have to
1
2
Eric Hutton, . Xunzi, “An Exhortation on Learning”. Princeton University Press, 2014. p. 1
This notion seems to check out for me, as a human who truly values learning and growth,
learning does not have an end, learning is a way of being; learning is a continual process that must (in
the imperative) continue. Otherwise… otherwise, what? There is no purpose to living? That seems
extreme, but perhaps not too far off the mark. There is no growth? I think that is right, and supported
by the images we are given of roots throughout this chapter. There is no transformation? That makes
me wonder if transformation is a different sort of growth – one that requires intention, or cultivation.
3
Xunzi, p. 1
4
Xunzi, p. 1
5
Xunzi, p. 1
51
�wonder, what does it mean to be taught, and
what should the content of the learning be?
How does Xunzi use the examples of inanimate things that grow (and root and transform) to help us understand how the process
(and product) of learning that underlies everything actually works. Learning is an ever
ongoing event for Xunzi.
In its continuity and cyclicality, nature provides a mirror for us to understand
the proper form and purpose of ritual. Xunzi
writes, in “The Rule of a True King” about
the cosmic order: “Heaven and Earth are the
beginning of life. Ritual and yi6 are the beginning of order. The gentleman is the beginning of ritual and yi.”7 By making ritual and yi his default, and learning to follow
the form, the gentleman begins to accumulate virtue through his habits. The order of
Heaven and Earth rely upon the “unifying
guide” of gentlemen who tap into the “great
root”8 through the practice of ritual. In this
way, humanity gains cosmic relevance. The
consistency that ritual provides creates a fixity. The ongoing practice of ritual solidifies
and connects, across space and time, humanity. Ritual is a sort of glue that keeps us in
connection with our ancestors, and in dialogue with future generations.
Since reading Xunzi for the first time,
I have been unable to forget his use of plants
(silent, though living) to illustrate learning.
As a self-taught botanist, the natural imagery of plants resonates, and I am interested
to spend some time digging in (hah! pun
intended) to the way they function within
Xunzi’s project. In this essay, I will examine closely the images we are given of plants
(things with roots) to clarify for myself (and
ideally my reader) the way in which Xunzi uses the natural world to illustrate a truth
about the human experience of learning. Before exploring further, it will be helpful to
put the passage in question on the page:
6
In the south there is a bird called
the meng jiu. It makes its nest from
feathers, weaving it together with
hair, and attaches it to the slender
branch of a reed. When the wind
comes along, the branch snaps, the
eggs break, and its young perish.
This happens not because the nest
itself is flawed, but rather because
of what it is attached to. In the west
there is a plant called the ye gan. Its
stem is four inches long, and it grows
on the top of high mountains, so that
it overlooks ravines a hundred yards
deep. It has this view not because its
stem can grow long, but rather because of where it stands.
Likewise, when the peng vine grows
among hemp plants, it goes straight
up without being stood upright.
The root of the lan huai plant is
sweet-smelling angelica, but if you
soak it in foul water then the gentleman will not draw near it, and
the common people will not wear
it. This happens not because the
original material is not fragrant, but
rather because of what it is soaked
in. Therefore, the gentleman is sure
to select carefully the village where
he dwells, and he is sure to associate
with well-bred men when he travels.
This is how he avoids corruption and
draws near to what is correct.9
The images presented are seemingly different: 1. The reed where the meng jiu bird
builds its nest “fails” because of what it is
attached to. 2. Seeing everything, the little
plant (ye gan) “triumphs” because of where
it stands. 3. The peng vine, growing upright, likewise “triumphs” because of where
it stands. 4. The once sweet smelling roots
of the lan huai plant, becoming foul, “fails”
because of what it is soaked in. How do these
metaphors illustrate something about learn-
Since Hutton left yi untranslated, I shall do the same. It is worth noting what he says about
the senses of the meaning. It can mean ethical standards (duty), the proper way to act (virtue), or
righteousness.
7
Xunzi, “The Rule of a True King,” p. 75
8
Xunzi, “The Rule of a True King,” p. 75
9
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 2-3
52
�ing, and are the images consistent or distinct
ideas? I suspect it is a both/and situation; they
are both connected (there is consistency in
the purpose of the image), and distinct–each
has a unique nugget of wisdom. Each example deserves detailed observation.
1. The flimsy reed
It is striking to me here that Xunzi
first uses an example of a bird attaching to a
plant. Birds can fly, they do not have roots
or the limits of gravity in the same way, yet
they demonstrate something crucial. Despite the fact that the meng jiu bird has some
questionable parenting choices, the bird is
not extinct (or at least not yet). Using the
nearby reeds as a point of attachment, despite
the nest being well built (in its own form, as
a nest), the nest will ultimately render itself
useless. When a strong wind comes along
it is extremely likely, though not inevitable, that the baby birds will die. inevitably
(and invariably) causes the nest to break and
the baby birds to die. Are we to say, ‘what
a dumb bird, how could it be so careless?’ I
think no, the bird simply did what was natural, attached itself (and its future) to what it
was surrounded by. Though, I do think we
can wonder: ‘what a short-sighted bird, how
could it not see the reed would not support
the nest.’ This seems to be a pretty brutal
example (unborn birds falling to their death
before they even live), but also a pretty clear
message about parenting 101–pay attention
to the things you use to support your family.
If they are not sturdy, rooted, and fixed (like
virtue, or the Way), then there is no hope for
your family. It could also be a warning about
who you choose to surround yourself with–
if they are reed-like, and flimsy, then death/
failure to thrive of the children will follow.
They will not leave the nest and fly (as baby
birds, or as students off to college) if your
village lacks virtue.
I cannot ignore the ambiguity of
how it could be possible for this bird species
to continue if it inevitably follows this same
pattern?10 However, I think Xunzi is trying
to illustrate the importance of being prepared for the wind, and attaching ourselves
to things that are firmly rooted, and stable,
otherwise we are sure to lose our footing, or
our children! The nature of the reed is that
it is flimsy, and not suited to support a nest.
Since the meng jiu bird is not extinct, and
the other metaphors in this passage are of
plants, is the image actually about the reed?
The reed (knowingly, maybe) allows
the nest to become attached, for the time
being. When the nest falls, the reed is unaffected. It simply continues its reed life, firmly
rooted. Reeds are simultaneously flimsy and
rigid. If foreign objects are attached to their
stalks, if they are weighed down by something, then they do not panic and change
their own course. They wait patiently for
a strong enough wind to snap the “tumor”
(nest) off. The reed is both shaky and solid.
It is not capable of supporting life beyond its
own being, in the same way a redwood tree
might be.
2. The little ye gan
The little plant is circumstantially favored–it is on a big mountain, it has a great
view… but it does not ever get to be too tall,
or too useful for that matter. It just lives out
its little four inch life looking into the deep
valleys, “because of where it stands.” This
image of a tiny plant (smaller than the palm
of your hand) with the view of the whole
world from the top of a mountain makes me
wonder if Xunzi is (with extreme subtlety)
making a commentary on society.
The little plants are fortunate; they
have been born on a mountain top (perhaps
this is like the nobility, or the family of the
emperor–people who are born into “privilege” in society). Xunzi writes, “The gentleman is exceptional not by birth, but rather
by being good at making use of things.”11
The ye gan, through no merit of its own
root system, have been afforded the luxury
10
This is a potentially WILD turn of events, but what if this example of the bird is commenting on generational trauma… it will continue to shape those who do survive (invisibly) as they will
either die out early, and continue the cycle generationally, or they will break the cycle and attach
their nest elsewhere.
11
Xunzi, p. 2
53
�of an unobstructed view. They need not rely
on anything beside their origins to see completely, or become educated through learning. The gentleman becomes exceptional
because he is aware of what might be useful,
not because he was born that way. The gentleman is made through learning.
3. The upright peng vine
It grows straight (not through any
virtue of its own root system) because it is
supported by the hemp plant. Yet, because
of the sturdy and reinforcing hemp plant,
the vine can attain height. Like the ye gan,
where the plant stands, where its roots are,
is relevant. The peng vine (AMONG hemp
plants) does not need to be stood up because
it grows straight. The straight growth is the
result of what is around, not necessarily any
virtue of its own root system. It is the proximity in space to something else (something
notably different from it) that enables it to
climb.
The direct physical proximity provides the foundation; the habitat determines
the direction. If I am right, and this metaphor is a social commentary, does that mean
where one is born in society determines
where one’s learning begins? There is still no
end to learning, but perhaps this is illustrating
where one must start, from the perspective of
a commoner (born without a title); one must
learn from a teacher. The hemp plant guides
the peng straight. Through learning, the
vine climbs and is made straight, much like a
commoner who goes on to become emperor (like everybody’s favorite emperor Shun,
or Yu, the craftsman of the rivers), or any
commoner who happens to be attached to
the right teacher and learns the proper use of
ritual. In fact, Xunzi concludes the chapter
“Human Nature is Bad,” by twice exclaiming: “Everything depends on what you rub
up against!”12 What we attach ourselves to,
will dictate everything that follows.
The little plant and the upright plant
are connected “likewise,” suggesting similarity between the two images. Initially, I
thought that the function of these images in-
12
13
54
Xunzi, “Human Nature is Bad,” p. 257
Xunzi, “The Rule of a True King,” p. 77
cluded explaining what it means to be rooted, or the “virtue” of being rooted. But, it
is notable that they are “successful” as plants,
more despite than because of their root systems. Yes, it is due to external circumstances
that they are successful: the little plants have
the best view because of their “home” on a
mountain, and the vines grow straight because of the “village” of hemp plants supporting them. Potentially these two images
serve to amplify what is possible for plants in
a community, as opposed to relying entirely
on oneself. The importance of community is
not to be overlooked. In fact, Xunzi claims
that if humans do not have social order, chaos will follow: “If there is chaos then they
will disband. If they disband then they will
be weak. If they are weak then they cannot
overcome the animals. And so they will not
get to live in homes and palaces. This is the
meaning of saying that ‘one must not let go
of ritual and yi even for a moment.’”13 This
sets the direction Xunzi is going.
So far, the examples have brought
the danger (or advantage) of attachment and
position to the forefront. The nests attached
to the reeds that fall, the four inch plants that
grew on the top of a mountain, the help provided by the hemp plant encourages a supported and upright vine. The final example
though is different, it is only after the roots
are no longer rooted that they become relevant for the metaphor.
4. Smells like Teen Spirit
While rooted, the fragrance of the
lan huai is dormant. When uprooted the
smell is delightful. When soaked in something foul, the fragrance of the roots transforms–everyone now keeps their distance.
This image presents unrooted roots “soaked”
in something foul. Which makes me wonder why one would expect something marinated in something to smell anything but
likewise foul. It is possible there is something
important about the contrast between presoaked roots (a delight to the nostrils) losing
their fragrance when soaked, and absorbing
a different, and horrible odor (an offense to
the olfactory system). There is a transforma-
�tion, a material change, that happens when it
is detached from its origins.14 Is being rooted in a place and being uprooted and soaked
elsewhere really helping us understand the
same thing? Upon reflection, I think yes.
What we connect ourselves to, our
roots, what we hold dear, what we deem of
value does shape and transform us. Likewise,
what we allow to permeate us, will transform
us. Much depends on the nature of what we
are being soaked in; if it is good, we will
become good. If we study the ancients and
practice ritual, the wealth of things to learn
is infinite. If we gamble, and seek pleasure,
and hang around with foul smelling people, we will be transformed and have a foul
smell that repulses commoner and nobleman
alike. Both being rooted, and being uprooted (both attaching to and detaching from)
are examples of the external world influencing the internal. Does Xunzi think the
“virtue” of a thing (plant or person) is nearly
inseparable from the roots it has? Or is he
pointing us to consider the circumstances
as the real linchpin? Circumstances will always change; adaptability is crucial. It seems
pertinent that plants do grow towards light.
There is a natural inclination to use the energy being offered by the sun, the gentleman is
likewise resourceful.
5. Roots as a Metaphor/The Secret Life
of a Plant Parent–An Interlude
All plants rely on their root systems to sustain their life and encourage new
growth. They are in most cases subterranean(although air plants are a thing, and
plants do have ‘aerial roots’), providing invisible stability; in all cases, roots are crucial
to the health of a plant. Roots are what we
connect ourselves to. Roots do not consider the profit to be gained by growing, they
grow by instinct. Plants are different from
us, yet they have much to teach us about
how to live (and maybe, how to learn!) and
how to make more life. In the plant world,
people have “propagation stations” which
consist of cuttings from other plants in water
(or sometimes moss). As the cutting soaks in
the water, it miraculously (though naturally)
grows roots. You can keep some plants in
water for a long time–years if you want to!
It’s fascinating to see the root systems develop. It is also easy to notice if the roots are
healthy or not (more so than you can when
they are in soil, obviously); roots will turn
brown and soggy when they have rotted;
rotten roots are fatal. Trimming the rotten
roots will help the plant grow healthier and
potentially save the plant’s life. By observing
the health of roots, it is possible to discern the
natural growth pattern.
If we consider roots metaphorically
it seems only natural to think of where one
comes from. The two most influential forces in shaping minds are (I think): family and
education. What do family and education
provide a person with? That feels like a loaded question, but I think in an ideal world,
they provide the soil – where virtues are
cultivated. Thus, if the values are rotten, the
plant (and the person) will become likewise,
rotten. If I live a life rooted in honesty, I will
become an honest person. Not only what
roots are, but also where the roots are, is relevant in shaping the future. Xunzi is asking
us to look at the people around us, and if we
see that they are flimsy and unsupportive,
then we need to move! Or, we need to find
a teacher, because we (and all of our future
generations) are doomed otherwise. Now,
(because I do not suppose that Xunzi’s intention was for me, thousands of years later, to
use his ideas to explore my own understanding of roots as a plant parent), I will return
to the text explicitly, with the question of
how these images help the reader understand
learning.
6. What to Do? Where to Next? It’s a
Jungle Out There!
The conclusion of the image reveals
that the plants serve to explain that one must
exercise discernment in selecting one’s community. Xunzi corroborates: “the gentleman
is sure to select carefully the village where he
dwells, and he is sure to associate with wellbred men when he travels. This is how he
14
I have a hunch that the opening images of dye, freezing, and an uncarved block (being
made straight or round) might be a mirror for these images of roots and trees.
55
�avoids corruption and draws near to what is
correct.”15 The duality of motion (towards
what is right and away from what degrades)
requires a double awareness–what will be to
our benefit, and what will be to our detriment. Plants already know this inherently; they move towards the sun. The physical rootedness of plants (in the soil) limits
their ability to move away from corruption.
Luckily, we metaphorically rooted humans
have more sovereignty. With this sovereignty also comes an infinite number of possibilities and choices. How are we supposed to
know what is correct?
Based on the poem16 that follows, the
suggested technique for discerning what we
should seek lies in building our foundation.
What we build upon will dictate what is created. Just like in the natural world, bugs are
generated from “rotten meat,” and maggots
come from “fish that’s spoiled,” so too in human society. Ruin and misfortune emerge
from “lazy, haughty men who forget their
place.”17 If the foundation within (the roots)
are corrupt, anything built on top will be
building towards hatred. So, this makes clear,
the uncorrupt path would build towards yi.18
Xunzi expounds upon this poem
with more natural imagery. He writes, “You
may spread out firewood as though all of the
same kind, but fire will still seek out the dry
pieces. You may level out the earth so that it
appears all even, but water will still seek out
the wet places…Wherever trees create shade,
flocks of birds will rest. Wherever something
turns sour, flies will gather.”19 Here, the emphasis is not on things that are rooted, but
unrooted things that can move! Though the
purpose of the metaphors is linked (nature
can teach us about virtue), it feels like an in-
15
16
version from the four images of plants I have
been focusing on.
If not an inversion, it is certainly
a change in perspective. The idea that fire
will be able to perceive which wood is dry
(and therefore good for food and growth),
and likewise that water will be able to seek
its nature seems vital. If what is beneficial is
visible, this image is useless. I think the point
is that despite the effort made to disrupt what
appears (spread out firewood, as if you are
testing fire to see if it knows what it ought
to attach to), it will not disrupt the natural
course of things. It is biologically fundamental that birds and creatures on foot will flock
towards the place where there is shade, and
food. Xunzi declares: “Likewise, there are
words that summon misfortune, and there is
conduct that beckons disgrace, so the gentleman is careful about where he takes his
stand.”20 I am struck by the fact that in order
to know where to stand, there are words and
actions that are to be avoided (but not a clear
prescription of what is to be searched for).
This furthers Xunzi’s opening thought that
learning is unending. It is not just knowing
what there is to know; it is also being able to
build upon that foundation.
If you can accumulate enough earth,
you can make mountain (bringing wind
and rain!). If you can accumulate enough
water, you can create a pool (bringing the
dragons to live!). Xunzi boldly follows these
two natural examples in an axiomatic way:
“If you accumulate enough goodness to
achieve virtue, then you will naturally attain
to spirit-like powers and enlightenment, and
the heart of the sage is complete therein.”21
The transition here is profound. If you live
a good life, the “natural” progression appears
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 3
Ode? It’s unclear the source of the passage, but it is set off, suggesting it belongs to a different source that Xunzi is using to build his argument.
17
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 3
18
It is not obvious what the antonym of hatred would be in this context. Perhaps yi is the
closest? That would fit nicely with the emphasis Xunzi places on the combination of ritual and yi.
However, I think if we read it as love, that would also be a reasonable articulation of the antithesis.
19
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 3
20
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,”p. 3
21
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,”p. 3
56
�to be a categorical transformation towards
a higher self. It is with this enlightenment
that the heart of the sage is perfected. Wow!
Talk about a product of learning–“spirit-like
powers”!
This makes me wonder, how many
plants would it take to make the inside space
an “outside” space? Is there a quantifiable
way to distinguish that a place is more like
a jungle than an apartment? I wonder this
because, it looks like there is a change of state
that happens to the person who achieves these
“spirit-like powers and enlightenment.” This
appears to echo the opening images –ice being colder than water (its original state), and
the indigo dye being bluer than the plant (in
its original state). However, unlike the wood
that has been made straight or curved will
not revert in the sun. Yet, if the process of
accumulating virtue and goodness stops, a
regression is possible. Is this transformation
of the heart a change of state for the person?
Accumulating knowledge of plants
requires continual and consistent effort (you
must learn about your plants, care about your
plants—water, fertilize, make sure your plants
are getting enough light; you sometimes
have to deal with pests, or clean up spilled
dirt in the house, etc.) The parallel lines I see
between how learning is being understood
by Xunzi and my unending plant journey is
helpful. The layers and layers built on top of
one another are an accumulation of knowledge, there is always more to learn, but in
the learning there is (indeed) a transformation. Perhaps if I were a sage, and studying
ritual and not plants, my heart would not just
transform, but also complete!
Xunzi proceeds to explain that he
is not talking about anything easy; the lazy
and distracted will not triumph. He offers
the example of a carver. If he first tries to
carve rotten wood, he will not know how.
But if he is single minded, and practices, one
day he will be able to “engrave even metal and stone.”22 By analogy Xunzi compares
an earthworm and a crab. The legless earthworm is single-minded, its focus is unwavering; by contrast, the multi-limbed crab is
22
23
frenetic and relies on the snakes and eels for
finding water. By taking one step at a time,
with full focus, the next step will be easier. In
repeated action, behavior solidifies. It is by
means of consistent words that one’s character becomes trustworthy. It is by continued propagation and care of my plants that
approaching “jungle” status in my apartment
can even present itself as a possibility. It does
not come as a surprise Xunzi moves from
this idea of accumulation to ritual.
7. Ritual = the G.o.A.T. Root
The world around us repeats visibly
each year. As a Californian, I see the sun set
in the west over the Pacific. There are no deciduous trees that announce the fall, though
there is a subtle movement in where the sun
sets on the horizon. In autumn, the sun gets
closer in alignment with the view I have
from the beach, where I’m standing. After
the winter solstice, the sun slowly moves
farther to the northwest. Similarly, trees lose
their leaves in brilliant fashion, only to have
them return again in the spring. Both are a
form of ritual. They are a visible expression
of action. Nature is a sort of ritual. The expression of it will vary, but the root of it will
remain constant.
Ritual as a root provides a clear method, though little room for creativity. This
rigidity provides something to hold on to,
and something to build upon. The roots of
ritual extend far beyond the present moment
and offer an outline of what is “proper.” You
do not need to discern whether or not it is
“beneficial” for you–it has stood the test of
time. But, it is possible you could accumulate
virtue, but not have the proper clothing, or
offering or item needed to perform the ritual perfectly. The prescriptiveness of ritual
certainly complicates things. Luckily, Xunzi
reassures us not to despair and gives us an
analogy with sound. The ancients remark on
how animals draw near to music and that all
sounds are heard. Xunzi reassures us there are
no sounds “so small as not to be heard. There
is no action so subtle as not to be manifest…
If you do good, will it not accumulate? How
could it be that none hear of it?”23 Even the
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 5
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 5
57
�smallest step towards goodness, and virtue, is
a step closer. The only “wrong” thing to do
is to not take a step.
9. The “End” of this Essay
One must remember that the opening claim of Xunzi was that learning must
not stop. However, this essay must end, eventually. Yet, what the path of learning looks
like, or how one is to know if she is going in
the right direction or not, is still ambiguous.
Anticipating a good student would wonder
this, Xunzi rhetorically asks the beginning
and end of learning, only to introduce a parallel distinction between order and purpose.
The order of learning begins by reciting the
classics, and the end is the study of ritual. In
other words the end is an activity–an ongoing effort. Next Xunzi explains the purpose
“begins with becoming a well-bred man,
and ends with becoming a sage.”24 It is only
after knowing the order that the purpose is
illuminated. Xunzi provocatively concludes:
“to pursue it is to be human, to give it up
is to be a beast.”25 In every moment we are
alive, the purpose is in the present tense. The
pursuit of wisdom is what makes us more
than human. Learning is not something that
24
25
26
58
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 5
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 5
Xunzi, “An Exhortation,” p. 6
happens to us; it is a life-long task. If we do
not spend our lives continually learning, we
forsake our humanity. Could the stakes get
higher than that? There is not an “end” to
learning; there is death, which stops learning, and there is ritual, where learning stops.
The difference between a limit (or a stopping point) and an end is subtle, but significant. It is in this way that Xunzi can logically
make learning a continual way forward, inseparable from ritual. The vision of learning
Xunzi gives us is not pessimistic and offers a
relatively clear direction for the most expedient way to learn: “draw near to the right person… And exalting ritual comes second.”26
Who we surround ourselves with, who we
“draw near” and “imitate” will determine
who we become. Our attachments are paramount; where we are rooted is where we
will rise from.
Bibliography
Xunzi, The Complete Text. Translated By
Eric Hutton. Princeton University
Press, 2014.
�Interviews & Toasts
Vanity with Globe - Amelia Taylor Wolfe
5x5” oil on wood
59
�Meet Tutor, Mr André Barbera
Shirely Quo
sponsibility. But if we are not responsible, i.e., blameworthy, how can it be sin?
Sin implies culpability, and so we seem
to be suffering the consequences, indeed
the punishment for something that we
didn’t do.
Why must we be descendants of Adam
and Eve? Why couldn’t our first parents
have been obedient and blameless? We
never asked to be descended from Adam
and Eve.
St. Augustine asserts: “be a man guilty
of unbelief, or a perfect believer, he does
not in either case beget faithful children,
but sinners; in the same way that the
seeds, not only of a wild olive, but also of
a cultivated one, produce not cultivated
olives, but wild ones.” (On Original Sin,
ch. 45)
6 December 2024
Mr André Barbera hails from Connecticut
where he studied at Wesleyan University.
He completed his PhD in 1980 at the University of North Carolina. The title of his
thesis was ‘The Persistence of Pythagorean
Mathematics in Ancient Musical Thought’.
He taught at the University of Notre Dame
in Indiana before coming to St John’s College in 1990 to teach at its Annapolis campus.
Recently, Mr Barbera completed his latest
book, ‘Original Sin and Time’ which explores the idea that God is not bound by
time. It is written from a Judeo-Christian
perspective. His new book will be available in early 2025. The following blurb was
kindly provided by Mr Barbera:
We generally don’t like to talk about sin,
and we especially don’t like to talk about
original sin, a sin for which we deny re60
The vast majority of biblical exegesis,
commentary, and preaching on original sin attempts to temper the apparent
harshness of this notion. We rush to
contextualize the condemnation, historically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Things aren’t that bad.
But what if they are? This book explores
the possibility that each and every one of
us is guilty for all misery and woe, for
our willful transgressions, for the cruelty
of others, and for so-called natural disasters such as earthquakes. We commit
the sin of self-reference, we say “I,” and
thereby we temporalize ourselves. Original sin and time are the same thing.
Although it is a standalone book, it continues a discussion about Augustine which he
began in his previous book called ‘On Faith,
Works, Eternity, and the Creatures We Are’.
In that book, which forms part of a series,
Reading Augustine, Mr Barbera considered
�the question of faith, how an individual
may act faithfully, and what good (if any) is
faithful action. Drawing on the letters of the
Apostle Paul and the work of philosophical
thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Mr Barbera explored numerous aspects of faithful
living, from religion, original sin, and tests
of faith, to the power of prayer, and even the
concept of atheism. Mr Barbera formulated
a postulate drawn from Augustine’s Confessions: God is not bound by time. The person
of faith, however, is enslaved by time.
Mr Barbera has been a tutor at St John’s
College for more than 30 years. He teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate
program although he is more familiar with
the former. He says that it is easier to teach
undergraduates because the majority of the
students come from similar backgrounds and
have similar knowledge whereas the graduate students come from many different
backgrounds and different life experiences. However, the undergraduate program is
more technically demanding. He completed
his PhD in ancient music theory and used
to play the piano although he says that he
stopped playing the piano because he realised that he was doing it for procrastination
rather than enjoyment.
In comparison to other colleges and universities, St John’s College does not require tutors to undertake research and publish schol-
arly books or journal articles. However, the
purpose of a sabbatical is not so much compensatory but preparatory, i.e., to come back
refreshed for another teaching year.
St. John’s tutors are expected to teach all
subjects, regardless of their formal academic backgrounds. This includes classic works
in philosophy, literature, political science,
psychology, history, religion, economics,
mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology,
astronomy, music and language. Unlike
the graduate program, undergraduates take
a class called “laboratory” where they discuss scientific texts in biology, chemistry,
physics, astronomy, and genetics, and then
recreate iconic experiments in the Junior
laboratory. The laboratory is about modern
classical physics, e.g., Galileo, Newton etc.
Mr Barbera says that there has always been a
question mark about whether the laboratory
should be part of a traditional liberal arts education but it has been a St John’s tradition
ever since the Great Books Program was adopted in 1937.
In addition to teaching Mathematics and
Natural Science this semester in the graduate
program, Mr Barbera is also teaching a preceptorial on Augustine and the City of God
in the undergraduate program.
61
�Becoming a Reader
Toast to the Tutors (Fall 2024)
Charmaine D’Souza
To begin, I need to say a couple of things
aloud.
this—standing in front of people—not so
much.
I did not consider myself a reader, especially
not of the Great Books, before arriving at
St. John’s. While some of the undergrads are
known to call the GIs “half-Johnnies” based
on how much of the Program we read, I
consider myself more like 10% Johnny.
In my panic, but knowing I have an incredible family, I sent them a one-word message: HELP!
That said, I think this judgment by these
undergrads is a bit cruel. So, I would like to
leave this place giving my peers a new title:
GI Johnnies.
It is a true and fitting title for most here and
aspirational for someone like me.
A second note: I haven’t conferred with my
graduating peers while preparing for this
speech, but I hope my words are a reflection
of yours as well.
Now, with that said...
Most people in my circles back home try to
resolve their midlife crisis by purchasing a
luxury motorcycle or a weekend at a 7-star
resort. I feel fortunate that the lockdown,
though under unfortunate circumstances,
gave me the chance to pause, take stock,
and realize that those sources of instant
gratification and/or bandages would not
give me my answers. I needed to step away
from the noise and contemplate what it
truly means to live a well-lived life.
When Mr. Boyle asked me to raise a toast to
our tutors a couple of days ago, I was deeply
grateful for the opportunity to express my
appreciation. Thank you, Mr. Boyle!
And then, in the dark stillness of my bedroom, just before going to sleep that night,
I panicked. I love one-to-one conversations
and those around the seminar table, but
62
The next morning, my dad responded with
a quote:
“I must be willing to let go of what I am in
order to become what I will be.”
Attributions to this source are unclear.
Einstein or Lao Tzu—whoever said it—had
a point. My dad knows me well. He had a
point, too.
As I reflected on this quote, I recollected
that transformation often requires sacrifice. I
had forgotten that for a long time.
To become who I am today, I had to let go
of the comfort of who I was.
To become who I am meant to be, I must
let go of the comfort of who I am now.
Letting go hasn’t meant abandoning my
identity; instead, it’s been about unearthing
and letting go of outdated beliefs that no
longer serve me—allowing them to wash
away. Holding too tightly to principles—
like Creon—or to ideas of my current self,
including my habits, fears, and even my
successes, had become invisible traps.
Today, I see I am better for the letting go.
What felt like a sacrifice isn’t truly lost;
instead, it has become the foundation of my
becoming—the beginning of knowledge—
of an education.
This journey has required trust. This journey required faith in myself, confidence in
my adaptability, and reliance on our community of learners and teachers. To all my
peers in the classroom and at the GI, from
Kashya Boretsky, a classmate in my first
semester to her spouse, Stephen Borsum, a
classmate in my last one, thank you!
�As for the teachers, they have appeared in
the form of each book and every tutor here
at St. John’s.
Mr. Jeffrey Smith’s contagious enthusiasm at our Politics & Society tutorial table
ignited my passion for Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Please remember that was my
first tutorial. Aristotle. The Ethics. What a
start to a master’s program for a non-reader!
Through our sessions, I realized that society begins with the self, then family, followed by neighbors, the city, and beyond.
I learned I had no business trying to change
the world if I couldn’t get the first three—
self, family, and neighbor—right.
Euclid with Mr. Crockett taught me that
the difference between things being equal
and congruent isn’t just foundational in
mathematics but also in life. Discerning
when something needs to align perfectly
with my expectations, goals, and desires,
and when equal is good enough, is invaluable in the pursuit of a well-lived life.
And then, there is Mr. Braithwaite.
In the wise words of Kung Fu Panda, “When
the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
We began this semester with me embodying the role of the stubborn, ignorant comrade in Hipparchus. May I say, I played that
role exceptionally well. But that’s not why
I came to St. John’s. My hope is that I have
let go enough to now resemble the comrade
in Minos—still flawed, still learning, but a
work in progress.
A quick side note: Over Thanksgiving a
couple of weeks ago, I visited Seneca Rocks
in West Virginia. At one of the local stores
there, I came across a souvenir mallet with
the words etched on the handle: “Hillbilly
Attitude Adjuster.”
Mr. Braithwaite, thank you for being my
very own “attitude adjuster.” Much needed
and deeply appreciated.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will
appear. When the student is truly ready, the
teacher will disappear.”
I must admit—I am not truly ready. I feel as
though my education has only just begun.
But life moves forward. That’s the world
we live in. Undergraduate studies is four
years and Masters two. We quantify it with
grades and a certificate and call it education.
I can’t. I choose not to. I must see my time
at St. John’s as a primer—a foundation
for a lifetime of learning. Today’s seminar table can turn into tomorrow’s laptop
screen. Not congruent, perhaps, but metaphorically equal.
Whether we came here to reflect on life,
learn from the Greats, or earn a degree, St.
John’s has been our catalyst. While the soul
of this college is the Program and the great
lives and wisdom we read through it, the
beating heart is undoubtedly our tutors.
To our tutors, the primers of our education. Cheers!
63
�Like Alyosha
Toast to the Tutors (Summer 2024)
Emily Price
I have spent some time, in the last few weeks,
thinking about what it means to say goodbye and how to do it well--the closing of a
chapter. At the start of a journey, we need
the courage to begin. When we meet obstacles, we muster courage to face them. But
saying goodbye takes courage as well.
on without me. If I clench my fist around
this gift, I will lose what I have, it will slip
through my fingers. It is a thing to be held
with an open palm.
St. John’s has been a haven for me—for many
of us. A golden hour—sunlight illuminating
the world, showing us its glory for a few sacred moments. On this campus, pretense is
disposed with. Careful reading is expected.
Sincerity is rewarded. We are learners, listeners. St. John’s is a world we hoped might
exist, somewhere. But which of us dared to
hope we’d find it? Or that we’d be invited
inside?
In such a place you could linger forever. I
wish I could. But, like Alyosha, most of us
cannot stay within these walls. We’re sent
back into the world. Monday morning
comes, and our lives and our work stretch
out before us. To say goodbye takes courage.
It is you, dear tutors, who have taught me
this. For a seminar is just such a beautiful,
delicate thing, and you are masters at holding it gently. How easy it would be to have
an agenda, to demand a particular outcome.
To give the equation or spoil the ending.
But you know that each of us must see for
herself, and so you content yourselves with
a subtle task--balancing the ecosystem of the
classroom. You nudge rather than mandate.
You redirect by modeling inquiry. With
self-restraint you allow a conversation to
fumble its way toward insight. And because
of your work—your forbearance and humility—you preserve a space where students like
me may come to meet the great minds of the
past for ourselves.
My St. John’s education is gift. I cannot demand it continue beyond its bounds. I cannot grudge the rest of you for continuing
Thank you for offering me this gift. I will
treasure it and try to hold it with an open
palm.
64
Whoever teaches us how to orient to things
as beautiful and delicate as a goodbye?
�What’s a Eureka Moment you had in class?
selected responses from students
Reading Aristotle’s Ethics, I was appreciating
the balance and symmetry he was describing
between virtues and vices, but was worried
that often referring to “how a virtuous man
would do it” was either tautological, or at
least left the reader at sea. But at some point
I considered that this wasn’t (only) a philosophical treatise to be understood or judged
on its logical coherence, but as Aristotle said,
something to aid us in actually becoming
more virtuous. When I considered his model
as a guide to iterative consideration of my
actions and desires, I realized that I have always had the experience of having a chance
of being a ‘good man.’ And now I had a way
to consider and refine, over time, what the
content of a ‘virtuous person’ was. I also realized that it’s being dependent on, and also
something greater than the sum of individual
virtues, meshed with a sense I’ve always had,
but had never put into words.
In Lobschevski’s 18th theorem: He rotates an
angle that, once moved, maintains its original inclination. This ability to move while
staying equal was predicted in a previous essay of mine, so when I got to Theorem 18 I
was doing backflips.
Alexander Bram, MALA, Both Campuses
I took a Preceptorial over TS Eliot’s poetry.
It wasn’t a particular moment, but rather a
collection of moments when I would pause
in the middle of class and wonder at the fact
that we had already talked about a poem
for more than an hour and there was still so
much more to say.
Day 1 attending class I remember thinking,
“….so they actually want to know what I
think?”. Day 2 was, “….am I actually thinking about this right?” and Day 3 thinking,
“….it doesn’t matter what I think as long
as I’m thinking about it!”. Doing geometry
without numbers was a major aha! moment
as well.
Joseph Griego, MALA, Santa Fe
My entire career here has been a series of aha!
moments, such that the totality is more in
view now and specific moments recede. To
no longer worry that I don’t know, to feel a
joy in seizing with others on a delicate moment to find something new, to hear those
possibilities and to help birth them, that is
thing I live for.
Amelia Wolfe, MALA, Annapolis
By giving very short and (at longest) relatively short reading assignments, the GI program encourages rereading. I sometimes
read passages three times before class. It took
many readings - but eventually, sitting there
and reading yet again, I finally understood
what Lobachevksi must have meant by asserting that the sum of the angles of a triangle MAY be less than π.
Peter Daub, MALA, Annapolis
Stacey Rains, MALA, Both Campuses
I can describe one of my first experiences of
this. It was a comment Ms. Schwartz made
during a discussion of the Iliad that had to do
with the rejection of one’s own humiliation
or shame and how that is the genesis of so
much conflict, confusion, and even war.
Karen Kohut, MALA, Low Residency,
Santa Fe
Ned Walpin, EC, Santa Fe
65
�Thanks to Our Contributors
Stafford Wood
Santa Fe
‘25
Amelia Taylor Wolfe
Annapolis
‘26
Travis Kyker
Annapolis
‘25
Jesse Wood
Santa Fe
‘26
Charles Edward Chapin
Santa Fe
‘26
Michael Vigil
Santa Fe
‘25
Tova Gannana
Santa Fe
‘26
George Kalandadze
Annapolis
‘26
Rachel Brown
Santa Fe
‘26
Aaron Knight
Santa Fe
‘26
James Paul Rogers
Santa Fe
‘26
Deana Moss
Sante Fe
‘25
Gus Kraus
Santa Fe
‘25
Stephen Borsum
Annapolis
‘25
Cynthia Crane
Annapolis
‘25
Shirely Quo
Annapolis
‘25
Paul Harland-White
Annapolis
‘24
Emily Price
Annapolis
‘24
Charmaine D'Souza
Annapolis
‘24
Haley Prickett
Sante Fe
Laszlo J. Boesze
Annapolis
�67
�
Dublin Core
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Colloquy
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A student-run journal for the Graduate Institute community of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. The issues feature essays, art, poetry, interviews, and more.
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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pdf
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65 pages
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Colloquy, Fall 2024
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Volume 15 of Colloquy, published in Fall 2024. The theme of the issue is On Being.
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Bucca (Editor)
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2025-02
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
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English
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals
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English
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Colloquy_Fall2024_v10
Graduate Institute
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1d9b732d1c2e97f1aaee38d5f2a2894b.mp3
3fb35c2059ee2e26cc83e95a0b82943b
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St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Santa Fe, NM
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M4A
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00:56:47
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Gertrude Stein and the End(s) of Literature
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor David Carl on January 24, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “Tender Buttons is a kind of love story which leads us to ask, “What do we love when we love to read?” Is it a certain meaning or truth that reading can help us achieve, or is it the experience itself—the act rather than the end of reading? And if the latter, how important are meaning and truth to this activity of reading? Tender Buttons is a work of radical literary experimentation, which in its relationship to signification, representation, truth, and meaning is unlike anything we encounter on the St. John’s program (or perhaps, closer to the works we encounter in the music tutorial than to the books we read together in Seminar). This work provides us with an occasion, and a virtually unique perspective from which to investigate our relationship to reading, truth, meaning, beauty, and pleasure. At the very gateway of our introduction to philosophic reflection (Plato’s Republic), Socrates refers to “the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” What is this quarrel? Is it a tension between truth and beauty, which poet Keats insisted were one and the same? Must a book’s relationship to truth be mediated primarily through the category of meaning, or is it an experience beyond meaning (perhaps more closely related to a certain kind of (aesthetic) pleasure?) How do we understand the difference between reading as a means to an end (such as truth and understanding) and reading as an end in itself (a certain kind of experience we desire for its own sake, as Aristotle says of happiness)? Using Tender Buttons as an opportunity to reflect on these questions, we will consider the importance (if not the meaning) of a literary work that stands at the beginning of an era of avant-garde aesthetic practices that led to fiction without plot, music without notes (John Cage’s 4’33”), and paintings that consist entirely of black canvases (Ad Reinhardt).
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Carl, David (David G.), 1967-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2025-01-24
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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mp3
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Stein, Gertrude, 1874-1946. Tender buttons
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English
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SF_CarlD_Gertrude_Stein_and_the_Ends_of_Literature_2025-01-24
Friday night lecture
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PDF Text
Text
Foundational Urgency and Institutional Inertia*
Greg Recco
In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre writes: “man has to struggle not only against
nature, and against the social environment which has produced him, and against other men, but
also against his own action as it becomes other” (CDR 124). In what follows, I will discuss the
reality indicated in this last clause, this tendency of human action to work against itself by
establishing structures that block access to the ends it aimed at, what Sartre calls “counterfinality.” Many familiar features of contemporary life exhibit this paradoxical character on a
grand scale, perhaps most of all the institutions of government and of the market. These are
historic accomplishments and have often seemed to be the only means to attain peace and
prosperity. But they have also developed into impediments to human flourishing and freedom.
Sartre’s famously recalcitrant text will serve as a guide. It is distinguished by its
simultaneous focus on the precise logical shape of social forms and on concrete description of
lived social realities “from the inside.” His accounts are unsentimental and unsparing, and it’s
difficult to think of anyone who works harder to expose the inherent difficulties of realizing the
goals he promotes. In particular, I want to trace out his distinctive account of group action, from
the background of inert social formations against which it asserts itself, through its sustaining
and diversifying itself into the quasi-vital form of the so-called “organization,” and finally,
devolving into its rigid and inert form, which he calls the “institution.” Before these three main
parts of the lecture, and by way of introduction, I will discuss some related matters in Plato’s
Republic. I do this in part because I presume this audience is generally familiar with that book,
*
Lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis on January 10, 2025.
1
�and also because nearly every major theme of Sartre’s work is one that any serious student of the
Republic ought to recognize as relevant and important.
Part 1: Images of the City
Let’s begin with three accounts of the basic character of the city from the Republic. In
Book 1, Thrasymachus portrays cities as defined by exploitation: the rulers make laws that they
say are just but that serve them at the expense of the ruled. Later, in Book 5, Socrates presents
the city as a single sensitive organism, affected by a pain or harm felt in any part, and concerned
as a whole to address it. Later still, in Book 8, Socrates portrays cites as protean, changing shape
when a group within the city takes power and remolds the regime around its particular ruling
principle. Each of these three images of the city (ruse, organism, shapeshifter) highlights
something significant.
As for the first, Thrasymachus presents his account as something obvious. “Don’t you
know,” he asks Socrates incredulously, “that some cities are ruled tyranically, some
democratically, and some aristocratically … and that the ruling element is the stronger?” (338de). Since all types of city alike proclaim the laws to be just, if the ruling or stronger element sets
down laws that give it an advantage, what is proclaimed to be just is simply whatever is
advantageous to them. Stripped of Thrasymachus’ boasting and his abusive language, it’s
plausible and even accurately describes many Greek cities riven by internal conflict or stasis.
Thucydides’ accounts bear witness to how brutal this factional antagonism became during the
war. We’ll return to the question of revolution in relation to Socrates’ account in Book 8 and later
in the lecture. But first, it’s worth noting some of Thrasymachus’ unstated presuppositions. The
main one, on which Socrates’ response turns, is of course the unexamined nature of the central
term “advantage.” This lies somewhat outside our purview, though we’ll return to it later in a
different context. Of more immediate interest is the fact that the range of possible constitutions—
2
�tyranny, democracy, aristocracy—is taken for granted, as is the unity of the ruling element in
each, and these twin presuppositions are related: in effect, Thrasymachus takes the types of
ruling groups and regimes for granted because he assumes they are mutually defining. It’s not
clear that much stands behind his analysis besides the fused ideas of class interest, exploitation,
and naïveté: the stronger class exploits the weaker and persuades the naïve among them that their
being exploited is justice.
In Book 5, Socrates presents a different picture. After asserting that whatever unifies the
city and binds it together as one is its highest good, he makes an analogy. He says: “when one of
us wounds a finger, presumably the entire community—that community tying the body together
with the soul in a single arrangement under the ruling part within it—is aware of the fact, and all
of it is in pain as a whole along with the afflicted part; and it is in this sense we say that this
human being has a pain in his finger” (462c). To be a feeling organism is to identify as a whole
with any feeling part—to behave, that is, as a community. Socrates suggests that promoting a
similar fellow-feeling among citizens could thus realize the city’s good by binding it together as
one.
With respect to this second picture of the city, one might well ask just why this mutual
sensitivity is necessary. Nothing like it was required in the so-called “healthy city” founded in
speech in Book 2. There, mutual benefit and mutual need were evident to all. Harm or pain was
not something that needed to be felt, since need was perceived directly: all the arts practiced in
the city addressed obvious need by obvious means. What changed since that time, presumably, is
that the city’s very success allowed it to grow. This meant an increase in both the population and
the number of sorts of jobs: both of these tend to undermine the possibility of mutual awareness.
The larger and more differentiated city needs threads of self-awareness to knit together its self-
3
�alienating parts. And those threads don’t grow up naturally in the city, as they do in animals; they
must be artificially produced and artfully deployed somehow. This sort of city must make for
itself its own “nervous system.”
A third picture of the city with respect to the question of its form is offered in Book 8,
and it is the most complex by far. I will list only a few of its key features. Having completed the
description of the identity and education of the ruling class in the city, Socrates investigates the
other forms of constitution as promised back in Book 4. This reopens the question of the variety
of constitutions that Thrasymachus introduced earlier as an obvious empirical fact. Socrates’
account, by contrast, is pseudo-historical or mythopoetic: the variety of forms is presented as a
sequence, which Socrates calls on the Muses to narrate, in the manner of a poet. It is modeled
after the Ages of Man from Hesiod’s Works and Days and accordingly differs from
Thrasymachus’ account by distinguishing five instead of three regimes, adding oligarchy and the
so-called “timocracy” to what Thrasymachus put under the single name “aristocracy,” as well as
adding a fourth symbolic metal and an age of heroes. This further differentiation is ultimately
due to the identification of a “formal cause” in each case: oligarchy, for example, is not
essentially the rule of some or few, but a society organized around the single principle of wealth,
like ours today. Socrates’ account is also dialectical or tragic, in that each regime is vulnerable to,
or even ultimately responsible for, its own destruction. This is true throughout the series, but is
made most explicit in the cases of oligarchy and democracy, both of which are said to suffer
from an insatiate desire for their defining principle, which is also the cause of that destruction.
Socrates’ account of the collapse of the oligarchic regime may be the clearest. For one,
the so-called rulers have no interest in ruling, and no aptitude or appetite for it, either, and so he
refers to them not as rulers, but simply as “money-makers.” Furthermore, the city is no longer
4
�one, but divided into rich and poor, inasmuch as it allows citizens to fall into complete poverty
and lack of necessary resource. This is no accident, as the oligarchs actively pursue the project of
getting even richer through impoverishing any they can. Socrates presents this characteristic
activity of oligarchy as something with a side effect: it tends to produce a class of dangerous
potential revolutionaries, people with nothing to lose and everything to gain from a change of
regime. And he describes the oligarchs themselves as unconscious of this danger: they
individually extract wealth from others “with their heads bent down, not seeming to see those
men” (555e).
Through their own action, then, they unwittingly became their own worst enemies,
creating the conditions for their destruction. In part, it’s because their desire and its object were
both pursued as something limitless: like a pure quantity. But the account also highlights the way
that individual acts can have systemic repercussions. Finally, it’s worth considering another
thread in the story: in a self-congratulatory mood, the oligarchs would probably describe their
signal virtue as moderation. In much the same manner as he rudely asks Cephalus about his
wealth when the latter prides himself on his character, Socrates doesn’t make much of this talk of
moderation, and accurately describes what oligarchy really holds up as the good. Whatever it
may say about itself, the real meaning of this form of government is limitless wealth for a few
and its associated and widespread poverty for the rest.
This picture of the city that emerges from Book 8 is considerably more elaborate than
Thrasymachus’ account of exploitation. It doesn’t simple-mindedly deny that obvious reality, as
he supposes, but it gives it a different context and a different fate. For one thing, the dominant
party in the oligarchy (along with its self-serving self-understanding) is in a way produced by the
regime; the honor-lovers of the timocracy sought to please themselves and hoarded money
5
�privately, it’s true, but the change into a regime explicitly defined by a minimum property
qualification is a fundamental transformation in the very meaning of being a ruler; if there were
any real honor-lovers among them, one imagines they would have felt this as the degradation it
was. For another thing, and directly contrary to Thrasymachus’ definition, it is the oligarchs’
pursuit of their supposed “advantage” that undoes them. Anything like the organism’s perception
of harm characteristic of the second picture of the city seems to be lacking; the oligarchs seem to
enrich themselves almost mechanically, numb to the harm they are doing to their regime and to
themselves.
Part 2: Fractious Unity as Action’s Shadow
Turning now to Sartre, let’s study further the phenomena of action’s self-sabotage. Let me
first identify some of his particular terminology: what we will be studying in general he calls
“matter as inverted praxis,” the social forms we’ll next study he calls “collectives,” and these are
characterized by a structure he calls “seriality.” Concerning “matter as inverted praxis,” he has a
couple of striking historical examples ready to hand. The first is the example of agricultural
deforestation leading to flooding, which he takes from René Grousset’s history of China, the
second, the devaluation of Spanish currency due to the importation of precious metals in the 16 th
century, for which he relies on Fernand Braudel. In both cases, Sartre highlights how deliberate
action directed at meeting human need “inscribes” itself, as it were, into the matter it works on.
That worked matter can then turn against us, presenting us not with the reflection of our own
activity as we understood it, but with the face of an enemy.
As for the first example, each individual peasant in an effort to make use of the land he
worked for planting crops cleared trees from it, but the aggregate effect of these individual
6
�actions over centuries was to create a landscape especially vulnerable to destructive flooding.
Sartre indicates the dramatic character of this inversion of praxis as follows:
If some enemy of mankind had wanted to persecute the peasants of the Great Plain, he
would have ordered mercenary troops to deforest the mountains systematically. The
positive system of agriculture was transformed into an infernal machine. But the enemy
[fueling the machine] was the peasant himself. Yet, taken in the moment of its living
development, his action does not include this rebound, either intentionally or in reality. In
this particular place, and for this particular man cultivating his land, all that existed was
an organic connection between the negative (removal of the obstacle) and the positive
(enlargement of the arable sector)…. [H]uman labour, [then], is enriched with new
meanings precisely to the extent that it eludes the labourer through its materiality. (162,
164)
It’s worth noting in passing that the correction of this individually produced material selfsabotage necessarily becomes a common project. With characteristic brevity, Sartre says this
correction entails “large-scale public works, population shifts, the implacable authority of the
leaders, etc.” (165). The brief “etcetera” stands in for the manifold social ramifications of this
reorganization, and particularly their ambiguity. The material rebound of a mass of individual
actions prompted a collective response, but thereby it also occasioned new tasks, new
configurations of cooperation, new centers of organization and power, and these had their own
materiality, their own fixity, imposed their own exigencies, and so on.
The second example of matter as inverted praxis concerns the effects of Spain’s success
at extracting gold and silver from the Americas. In the last decades of the 16 th century in
particular, the discovery and exploitation of silver mines in Peru vastly accelerated this ongoing
project, which included perfecting the techniques of extraction, refinement, transport, and
minting into currency. The result of this acceleration was an unsuspected disruption and
weakening of the Spanish economy, and indeed the economy of the Mediterranean in general. In
7
�broad terms, this kind of monetary phenomenon is now widely understood, but imagine living it
without that knowledge, bewildered, and as if cursed. The same opposition between individual
action and aggregate result that we saw in the case of deforestation is present here, too. Sartre
writes:
Here, and for this particular merchant, whatever the circumstances and however prices
may fluctuate, it is still true that he will be richer this evening if he gets an extra thousand
ducats. But in the process as a whole it is not the case that collectivities are enriched by
accumulation…. While for him every new quantity increases his wealth, in the national
community it devalues the unit. (171, 173)
In general, then, our involvement and commerce with matter, our praxis, tends to reveal a
hidden connectedness to our action, one that is in principle unsuspected and can even run directly
counter to our aims, with repercussions for social structures. Sartre sums up the principle as
follows:
Thus materialised praxis (the minted coin, etc.) has the effect of uniting men precisely to
the extent that it separates them by imposing on everyone a meaningful reality infinitely
richer and more contradictory than they anticipated individually. Materialised practices,
poured into the exteriority of things, impose a common destiny on men who know
nothing of one another, and, at the same time, by their very being, they reflect and
reinforce the separation of individuals. (179)
This uniting has been the main theme in these examples of matter as inverted praxis,
inasmuch as they reveal a common threat calling for a common response, but the aspect of
separation has so far been mostly implicit. Let me turn now to Sartre’s direct engagement with
this latter theme in his discussion of collectives constituted by seriality. He elaborates it by
means of a graded sequence of examples. We’ll consider only the first and simplest: the
gathering of commuters lining up at a bus stop, and the audience of a radio broadcast.
8
�At a Parisian bus stop, commuters gather. Though they have come together in the same
place, they mostly ignore one another. Their purpose is the same for each, but not shared. Their
isolation from one another might almost seem to be a natural product of the city itself, which
concentrates people in a mass, but at the same time tends to diversify and alienate their pursuits
and ways of life. The city’s unity is present to all of them as something abstract, indifferent to
these differences. People at the bus stop may deliberately adopt this indifference, buying a
newspaper to read so as not to have to interact with others. In this sense, their “isolation is a
project” (258). They are all waiting for the same bus, and are thus united by this single material
object, but the bus addresses them, as it were, as interchangeable, and thus addresses each one as
inessential. Also, there is a limited number of seats available and a real likelihood that there will
be no room for some to board the next bus. In Paris in the 1950’s, the system was to take a
numbered ticket upon arrival at the stop and to board the bus in the order of arrival. This
particular system happens to elucidate the social form in question neatly: the commuters
gathered at the stop in this way are constituted as a series.
In a first take on this notion of series, Sartre refers obliquely to Peano’s axiomatic
definition of number by means of a successor function rather than through a general definition. If
we allow the exception of zero as a starting point, it can be said that every whole number is the
successor of another. The statement is universal in form, but it doesn’t exactly assert a common
feature of each, except its difference. Each number, then, is defined, not by itself, but through all
the others. In the human realm, whatever the mode of ordering, the meaning of being constituted
as a member of a series is the same: each is defined not by a common feature, but by being the
other of all the others. At the bus stop, this means exclusion: my taking a seat can always mean
depriving another of a seat, and every other who is earlier in the series can be the last one
9
�allowed to board, and thereby deprive me. The rule that decides our respective fates—the
number on the ticket—is both perfectly clear and perfectly arbitrary, and thus, in following it, we
all accept and share the same otherness. In the earlier examples, too, we can see this structure of
serial alterity at work. Every deforester is a flood-producer, every spender a devaluer, each is the
other of all the others, working against them and himself in his very work, “with his head bent
down,” as it were.
Consider, next, the experience of listening to a radio broadcast. Superficially, my
behavior resembles the role I take up in turns in normal conversation with others: while they are
speaking, I am listening. But there’s a crucial difference: in listening to a broadcast, I am utterly
passive, even if I am moved to “talk back” or even shout. My speech has no influence over
what’s being said, and not just accidentally. A voice on the radio, as such, is something over
which I can have no influence. Perhaps I can write a letter to the broadcaster or the government
complaining about the content. But this has no effect in the moment, and even with sufficient
time, it can only have an effect if many, many others also do the same (and if their voices count).
I can, of course, turn the radio off or change the station. But this, too, fails to alter what is
essentially at issue. Sartre writes:
This purely individual activity changes absolutely nothing in the real work of this voice.
It will continue to echo through millions of rooms and to be heard by millions of
listeners; I will merely have rushed into the ineffective, abstract isolation of private life,
objectively changing nothing. I will not have negated the voice; I will have negated
myself as an individual member of the gathering. (272)
What’s really at issue, then, what really makes the bad broadcast unbearable for me as a
listener, is this shadowy gathering of other listeners, distant from me, unreachable. I may fear the
voice will convince them, and in this, I feel my utter powerlessness. To have the effect I imagine
10
�opposing to that of the powerful voice, I’d have to persuade each of the other listeners one by
one, in their millions. And I, as another listener, am the same for them. If they are listening to the
broadcast that says things I favor, they, too, listen impotently, imagining me, unreachable, in the
thrall of the alien voice. Sartre writes: “when … one listens to the voice in impotent anger, one
no longer listens to it for oneself … , but from the point of view of Others” (273). Finally, unlike
the gathering at the bus stop, this one involves in principle an indefinite number of others.
Nothing in the voice itself tells me how many are listening or which are convinced; it merely
adumbrates a diffuse mass of mutual alterities, a plurality of isolations.
Just as in the case of the bus stop, the radio, as a materialized praxis affected by seriality,
unites people at the same time that it reflects and reinforces their separation. Each is constituted
as the other for all the others and, within the system, within the vast reality that is broadcast
media, that is all they can be to one another (indeed, even if they’re on the same “side”). In the
cases of deforestation leading to flooding, and imports of precious metals leading to devaluation,
the counter-finality is clear: both achieved something opposed to what they aimed at and in each
case it was clear what was to be resisted, even if the how of it wasn’t. The two cases of
collectives, the bus stop and the radio, are more ambiguous. Even in their relative simplicity,
they testify to the manifold, ramified, subterranean bonds of our connectedness. That, at least, is
not to be undone. But must the mode of our connection be separation and powerlessness? How
can these be overcome?
Part 3: The Group, or Immaterial Matter
Sartre starts his examination of the group with an example that is conceptually simple, if
historically very specific, the storming of the Bastille. It’s the first of a kind of three-part
narrativization of the development of the concept of a group, but it isn’t meant to have a
11
�universal or foundational status. Nonetheless, because of its relative simplicity, which I will
amplify by further simplification, it’s a clear example of how a group can come into being
despite, and as a reaction against, dispersed seriality. This group is formed through a kind of
fusion.
In July of 1789, the people of Paris were already being treated as a hostile entity; the city
was surrounded by an army, and though the king insisted its presence was for the purpose of
protection against roaming bandits, the situation inevitably led to Parisians themselves being
fired on and killed. This led residents to loot arsenals for arms with which to defend themselves.
Though retrospectively, this would take on the color of a revolutionary act, Sartre insists it
should not at first be understood as an organized common action: “It was a collective action:
everyone was forced to arm himself by others’ attempts to find arms, and everyone tried to get
there before the Others” (355, my emphasis). They were not unified, but a few key features of
their situation soon occasioned their spontaneously acting as one and thereby becoming one.
For one thing, the encirclement of the city by troops on the king’s orders and the posting
of notices of this action throughout the city served to designate them as a unit. Next, the electoral
assembly sought to form militias within each district of the city, ostensibly for the purpose of
avoiding “disturbances,” but actually for disarming people who had previously been arming
themselves out of their individual fears; this, too, “helped the gathering to perceive its reality as
an organised being” (356). Finally, the apparent misinformation by an official which resulted in
an angry crowd opening boxes they were assured would contain arms only to find nothing but
rags enraged them; it seemed to imply that they were being treated as a unit, only one worthy of
being deceived. A practical result of all this was an atmosphere of real unrest in which Parisians
would regularly go out into the streets and constitute gatherings, “anywhere, anyhow” (369),
12
�though without any clearly defined purpose. The most frequent result of such directionless
gatherings was a march, followed by panic and flight as they were dispersed and pursued. It is in
imaginatively describing the experience of someone caught up such a situation that Sartre finds
the ground of the crucial transformation.
If I reside in the Quartier Saint-Antoine and my lived experience of residing there is the
alienated urban attitude embodied in slogans such as “every man for himself,” and if also I hear
rumors that the militias or the soldiers are planning to enter my district and “flush it out,” putting
all its residents in danger, I live between two perspectives. The former is the isolated perspective
of chacun pour soi, and the latter is a sort of unification of the neighborhood as a single object
for what Sartre repeatedly refers to as a “third-party” perspective, mediating between the
neighborhood and the government, both of which I’d speak of in the third person. But if I happen
to be in the street when some shots are fired, and find myself running for my life, and others are
running, too, I find myself serially engaged in the very action that I simultaneously perceive
from the latter perspective as the organized action of my neighbors. It is from the practical fusion
of these two perspectives—one within the situation and one without, one immanent and one
transcendent—that the so-called “fused group” comes into being. I may at first have been trying
to do what the others do out of a kind of panicked imitation, in order not to get left behind and be
exposed to the pursuers as a single individual, but I end up doing something we can all construe
as a common action. On this account, proximity, mutual visibility, mortal urgency, and sufficient
numbers conspired to make it possible for a group to spontaneously constitute itself as one, in
practice, and to discover a new common aim for its fresh unity: to get to the Bastille, disarm it as
a center from which the soldiers might attack the district, and use it as a source of weapons,
perhaps even as a stronghold.
13
�Again, those who were caught up in this developing and consequential action were
helped to adopt this new perspective by both the inescapability of danger and the prospect of
success as the crowds grew more numerous. Previously, in seriality, quantity itself was
something as if “bewitched”—more gold flowing in made mine worth less, and more people
seizing weapons could mean none left for me. Now, in the group, self-endowed with a common
aim, the meaning of quantity is transformed into something positive. Here, when anyone—from
their unifying third-party perspective—sees others joining the ranks, they are also seen by the
others in the same way. Each adds to the other’s strength, again, giving hope of success.
Furthermore, and crucially, anyone with the “totalizing” perspective of the third party,
that is, the perspective that sees the group as a whole with a common aim, is in a position to
direct the group. This is in a way a view from without, but it’s not a view “from above” in the
sense of constituting an external authority. Indeed, every member of the fused group possesses
that perspective and is in a position to direct it, and the group depends on this kind of distributed
perception and direction. If I see that we are running into a trap, I may shout “Stop!” as I am
stopping, and the group stops. This has the grammatical form of an order, but it’s not quite right
to say it compels obedience. Sartre writes: “Who would be obeying? And whom? It is simply the
common praxis becoming regulatory of itself in some third party” (380). In the serial
interchangeability of this role, it seems scarcely different from what Aristotle describes in his
Politics as “ruling and being ruled in turn.”
This felicitous and spontaneous group is not the last word in common action: the urgency
with which it came into being is prone to subside, especially if the group is successful at driving
back or dissolving the threats that prompted its unification. While the group was originally
constituted as a means to survival, if it itself is to survive, it must preserve its efficacy beyond the
14
�moment of obvious threat. This it can only do by transforming itself fundamentally, into what
Sartre calls a “statutory group,” by means of an essential act. Each member swears a solemn
oath, affirming that he will continue to act on behalf of the group, and submitting himself to its
jurisdiction if he should not, thereby binding not only himself, but all the others to perpetual
solidarity. The group thus survives by making itself a potential wielder of the violence with
which it was originally threatened, artificially repeating, as it were, the life-and-death urgency of
the moment of its foundation and extending it into the future. This, too, is something like a
matter of necessity, in that the group is always liable to lapse into one or another mode of failure
and nothing guarantees that it won’t: on the one hand, any member might defect, at any time; on
the other, anyone who takes up at a given time the role of directing the group may abuse that
authority and use the group for his own ends. The oath or pledge faces both these dangers by
placing all on the same level of authority and responsibility to one another. By means of the
pledge, the group makes itself its own tool and tries to give itself the status of enduring
substance. By the very means it uses—that is, the threat of deadly violence for traitors—the
group becomes a potential instrument of terror, even when that possibility is concealed by great
affection, or, in the republican slogan, “fraternité.” While the resurgence of that implicit threat of
fraternal terror in a long-established group would be a sign of decay into authoritarianism, for the
group that has just formed itself in response to a deadly threat and for which any betrayal could
easily revive that threat, it is understandable in its necessity. What can the surviving group
become?
Part 4: Two Futures: Organization and Institution
Just as in Book 8 of the Republic, the analysis of types of group here follows a logic that
is not historical, but is presented nonetheless as a sequence of transformations: the fused group is
15
�simplest and for that reason, it’s easy to understand the statutory group formed by means of the
pledge as a kind of transformation of it. In this final section, we’ll fit two other forms into this
story, organization and institution, and present them as two futures made possible by the pledge.
Having survived the moment of urgency and won for itself the leisure of relative stability,
the group has made itself capable of a further transformation, into an “organization.” The word
itself has a telling ambiguity, naming both an activity of structuring, and the thing itself that is
structured. With reference to the first, active meaning, the group whose members have pledged to
stay in it is no longer defined by the single urgent and common goal of immediate survival; it can
diversify its activity, turn to different tasks, and assign them to different members. This division
of labor is in a way given by the overall relation of the group to things, and that’s as much as to
say that its internal complexity is equivalent to the complexity of its dealings with the world. But
this is necessarily a developing and ever-incomplete relation, for reasons we’ve already seen.
And it acquires a new, reflexive character as the second, passive sense of the word
“organization” comes into play: the organization, as a particular way of distributing tasks, as
something structured, is thereby something inertial, something like a materialized praxis. Like
worked matter that can turn against us, the organization’s own structure is something it will
forever have to grapple with, insofar as that is something it has made itself responsible for. Let’s
first consider the active, verbal sense of organization, and then point out aspects of its passive
structure that leave it vulnerable to transforming into an institution.
First, the pledge gave everyone in the group juridical power over the others, but that
power was negative and abstract: “Don’t do anything that would go against the group,” it says;
this is negative in that it’s a prohibition and abstract in that it doesn’t specify the “anything
against the group” any further. The organization, by contrast, gives a regulatory power that is
16
�positive and concrete, through the idea of each member’s having or performing a function: “Do
this that the group requires,” it says, positively demanding a particular action. One belongs to the
group in so far as one carries out a certain task. This is not so different from Socrates’ casual
discussion of the minimal, “healthy” city of Book 2, which mostly involves listing a variety of
jobs.
Second, in the organization constituted in this atmosphere of mutual regulation of
differentiated tasks, rights and duties are not separate. What counts as “my due” is due to me for
the sake of our common objective; it’s something I demand both from the group and for the
group. I have a right, as it were, to be made capable of carrying out my duty. A specialized job
may require specialized training or support. Whatever the group demands, it must demand in a
way that does not make my accomplishing it impossible. In Republic Book 1, Socrates
distinguishes between arts that serve and what he calls the “wage-earner’s art,” by which the
practitioner of one of the other arts procures something for himself, a fee or wage. The doctor
who both treats patients and receives a fee, he says, practices two arts. To say that, in the
organization, rights and duties are not separate is to say that no such distinction is present here.
Socrates’ reasons for introducing the wage-earner’s art are complex, but I’d argue they mostly
have to do with responding to Thrasymachus’s claim that all cities are exploitative and that what
the city says is just is, for the ruled, only ever “the good of another.” The organization, by
contrast, is not essentially—or better, it is essentially not—a situation of exploitation. The fact
that it could ever exist is a fact of great historical significance. In the organization, all are equally
rulers and ruled: there is no gap, say, between one who organizes and one who is organized; no
one accepts their functional role as fundamentally different from that of an organizer. We both
have our jobs.
17
�Third, and finally, the organization depends essentially on individual practice, in a
specific sense. As a simple example, take a particular position on a team in a well-defined sport;
the individual midfielder, say, makes moves that in one sense have their meaning elsewhere, that
is, in the way they are taken up by the other players on the team to realize the team’s common
objective. But in another sense, they represent something like a guess that can only be made by
someone who sees the field, her teammates, the opposing team, etc., from her individual
position. Her move, accordingly, should not be a rote performance of a completely determinate
function, but an individual transformation of the field of possibilities; that is what is really
demanded from her, and that means something like a transcendence of function. The team needs
not just a midfielder, a goalkeeper, etc., but good ones, not the minimum, but excellence. All this
by way of saying that organizationally differentiated function can only specify in a general way
what one’s job is. It is a hypothetical necessity, never a categorical one, and the choice of means
is surrounded with a kind of halo of indeterminacy. To use Sartre’s terms, the work of the
organized group is a “totalization” and not a “totality”: it’s a perpetually renewed project of
becoming-whole, not a completed project of being-whole. The goal of the organized group is an
essentially open project. When all goes well, it harmoniously combines the logical moments of
universality (through the common objective), particularity (through the differentiated functions),
and singularity (through the role of individual praxis).
The simple example of a team sport is useful for bringing out this need for individual
practice and the free transformation of roles that can occur from moment to moment, in other
words, “organization” as a self-structuring action of the group on itself. But the result of this
activity carried further is something materialized, something inertial, something potentially
counter-final. In a more complex and established organization, there are bound to be
18
�disagreements between sub-groups about what to do, and about who or what department is
necessary, or adequately staffed, or overfunded, and so forth. While the issues are fundamentally
“objective structures of the practical problem that has to be solved,” they can also become
subjective tokens of internal division. The group must produce its own ways of dealing with all
this, its own organs of mediation, supervision, inspection, something like the “nervous system”
imagined in Republic Book 5.
Sartre asks us to imagine a high-level bureaucrat appointed to an ad hoc position created
to deal with a crisis of city traffic. Many distinct goals are at play and the crisis involves how
they conflict with one another in the world: there’s a need for parking, but there’s also a need for
streets to be open for driving. The specific knowledge required to succeed here is relatively more
logistical and combinatorial than others, and any effective solutions will likely involve
consequences for many others, indeed, for everyone in the city (grouped or not). In itself, a
mediating or even supervisory role like this is no contradiction to the notion of organization; jobs
can be differentiated laterally or vertically. But the meaning of those differentiations, initially
neutral, tends as though of itself towards two modes of failure: a concentration of unaccountable
power, or a disavowal of the moment of individuality. Ultimately, both are rejections of freedom
in favor of what we’re calling “institution.”
To the extent that our “traffic czar” is appointed as an expert, he can become identified
with and wedded to his own solution. His individuality is plainly essential for the role, but that is
still the very thing that makes this sort of betrayal a real possibility. Through the pledge,
paradoxically, what eludes the member is being-in-the-group, in the full sense of being; one who
was just a “mode of a substance,” in Spinoza’s sense, would not need to swear an oath not to
have a separate reality, but a free person must. When that merely implicit tension comes to the
19
�fore, it can happen that freedom—the very thing the group sheltered, nurtured, and developed—
becomes afraid of itself. Free individuality can come to be seen as an obstacle, and the group can
imagine itself as originally pure and in need of purification. In the vehemence of punishment
towards one who has betrayed the group, Sartre claims, we can see a psychological projection of
this imagined purity: “In a traitor, everyone finds … his own permanent possibility of betraying
and being betrayed, and believes he is destroying it forever” (589). In our example, a person in a
high-level role can end up giving a shape to the group’s “solution” that belongs to him more than
to the group, and may even set ineffective practices and structures in stone. Alternatively, the role
could be sacrificial, set up in order to fail in such a way as to deflect blame from others who are
wedded to structures that would have to change and from which they benefit. An occupant of this
latter position who looks to the future of his career may do all he can to disavow responsibility,
to dissociate his individuality from it, perhaps by appealing to putatively objective metrics,
rubrics, and standards of evaluation that exonerate him, assuring the public or his superiors that
no one could solve the problem as it exists.
Both these failure modes are possible anywhere, but the second can also be prompted by
having to be a mediator of a different sort, not in an administrative, but in a “public-facing” role.
For itself, the organization may be an ongoing project of totalization; for those outside it, it is a
totality. For example, the “users” of a service, such as the postal service, see and often treat the
individuals who do the job as inessential instruments, if not simply as obstacles to their freedom.
Membership in the group is thus experienced in a different way. If you’re a clerk, someone may
say to you “do your job!” but not mean it in the same regulatory way as a sworn group member,
a colleague, who is equally subject to such an order from you. Being treated by a customer in this
way as a sort of “drone” can have an effect: as a mediator between the group and those outside it,
20
�you can become motivated to seek protection behind the public’s perception of your
inessentiality. Stated like this, it might sound like a matter of individual psychology or selfconfidence. Maybe. But the experience of self-alienation described here can result from doing
one’s job as it is defined. The postal service, after all, is meant to handle everyone’s mail, and in
trying to unify disparate domains fraught with their own conflicting material demands, in being
faced with a collectivized public, an organized group can respond to this pressure by freezing,
asserting its current material configuration as essential. The motto of an employee at this nexus,
their saving word, is: “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s our policy.”
The organization’s self-protective response to threats, again, is to freeze its own selfdeveloped organs, functions, and powers—to transform them into “institutions.” To save itself,
the community tries to recover lost unity through sclerosis. It becomes a “degraded” group,
composed of ambiguously situated persons whose safety is meant to come from the rigid
definition of their role, or from their role being shielded from external criticism, or at least from
criticism from the sides or below. When a position or a practice becomes uncriticizable by any
third party without completely disrupting the whole, the group has frozen into an institutional
form. The mutuality of regulatory third parties in the statutory group and in the organization has
been lost. In this, the meaning of the pledge is completely altered: it is now mere submission to
an untranscendable other, violence without reciprocity. Sartre writes: “The moment of common
degradation in which the institution emerges is precisely that in which everyone aims to expel
freedom from himself in order to realize the endangered unity of the declining group as a thing”
(606). And a few pages later: “The institutional system presents itself, by a permanent
mystification, in its inorganic-being,” in its thinghood, “as the real unity of the declining group”
(608). At many levels, in small and large ways, but especially and most consequentially at the
21
�most authoritative and most mystified levels of the state and civil society, this kind of degraded
system is what human praxis has made of itself today. We seem to exist for it, rather than it for
us. It’s the real thing, and we are only its servants, unless we’re among the ever-diminishing
number of those to whose benefit it has been carefully bent. If this were the only arrangement
that is possible, then Thrasymachus might be right about cities, or the account in Book 8, saying
that it will all end in tyranny, might be prophetic. But I think we can understand this selfprotective myth of thinghood, this disavowal of freedom, this willed isolation and return to
seriality, not as fate or a curse, but as freedom’s own product: our “own action,” as Sartre puts it,
“as it becomes other.” If we can understand it in that way, if we can struggle against it, it can
never have for us anything like the meaning of destiny. A better world is possible.
22
�
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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pdf
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22 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
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Foundational Urgency and Institutional Inertia
Description
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 10, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Greg Recco as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />Mr. Recco offers this description: This lecture will examine the difficulty of sustaining collective action. In working together, we respond to exigent circumstances, but the social structures we thereby create have exigencies of their own. To the student of history, it can even seem inevitable that temporary triumph yield to eventual failure. Central chapters of Jean-Paul Sartre's <em>Critique of Dialectical Reason</em> will help illuminate essential reasons for the tendency of effective groups to turn into ineffective institutions, and some remarks on Plato's <em>Republic</em> (particularly Books 1 and 8) will frame the inquiry.
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Recco, Gregory
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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2025-01-10
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St. John's College has permission to make this item available online.
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text
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pdf
Subject
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Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980. Critique de la raison dialectique.
Plato. Republic
Political science--Philosophy
Language
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English
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LEC_Recco_Greg_2025-01-10
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5959cb5959464bd07159a68a98cb4b9e.pdf
d6a58d8448e0df43472ebff4ae4f79dc
PDF Text
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Eva Brann Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Please contact the library staff for more information about the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College holds the rights to this material.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
78 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
I Came Across the Ocean
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-01-10
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Autobiographies
Kristallnacht, 1938
Jews--Germany--History--1933-1945
Jewish refugees
Berlin (Germany)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
Autobiography written by Eva Brann for a school assignment in 1944, when she was 14 years old.
The account covers her early childhood in pre-World War II Berlin, life as a Jewish child after Kristallnacht, escaping on a train through war-torn Europe, traveling to America on a refugee ship, and her hopes for the future.
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I Sailed Across the Ocean_1944
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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wav
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01:35:16
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https://youtu.be/CdEe-YRO8T4?si=loVmlE29_IM0Peyo
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<a href="https://youtu.be/CdEe-YRO8T4?si=loVmlE29_IM0Peyo">Thucydides on Peace, Peacemaking and Peacemakers</a>
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Video recording of a November 20, 2024 lecture and Q&A session by Karl Walling of the U.S. Naval War College.
The conversation with Dr. Walling centers on the problem of peacemaking in the Peloponnesian War, and Thucydides’ preference to often call what some name peace, a mere truce.
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Walling, Karl-Friedrich, 1957-
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-11-20
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Peace-building
Greece--History--Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.
Peace
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LEC_Walling_Karl_2024-11-20_ac
Alumni
Friday night lecture
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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mov
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00:50:55
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https://youtu.be/AN1u-Lu1JVQ?si=djRxQwgjCfSj_KXX
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<a href="https://youtu.be/AN1u-Lu1JVQ?si=djRxQwgjCfSj_KXX">Aristophanes' <em>Clouds</em> and the Power of Logos</a>
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on November 15, 2024, by Stephanie Nelson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.<br /><br />Dr. Nelson (SJC Annapolis, 1983) is Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University and a Visiting Tutor at St. John’s. Her most recent book is titled, <em>Time and Identity in Ulysses and the Odyssey</em> (2023), and explores how each work benefits from being read alongside the other.<br /><br />Professor Nelson offers this introduction to her lecture: It is not too much of a stretch to say that Aristophanes’ <em>Clouds</em> is primarily about two topics: logos and the gods – and about Socrates’ relation to them both. Aristophanes, in his most serious playful manner, challenges us to think about who gets to be a god, and even, this lecture will suggest, proposes the Logoi as the real gods of human experience. The play thus asks us to consider both the nature of gods and the nature of logos, and in so doing juxtaposes the way that Socrates views the relation of logos and reality to the way the comic poet sees the same question.
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Nelson, Stephanie A. (Stephanie Anne), 1958-
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-11-15
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Aristophanes. Clouds
Logos (Philosophy)
Gods, Greek
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English
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LEC_Nelson_Stephanie_2024-11-15_ac
Alumni
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8baa0060f818c33d1bc332b1cc02fbff.pdf
b6db715ecdf7824532eadb3a05d114f7
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Text
Footnotes to Aristotle
St. John’s College, Annapolis
Friday Night Lecture
September 13, 2024
by Graham Harman
This lecture will begin with exposition and end with what might sound like wild speculation. Alfred
North Whitehead famously remarked that “[t]he safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” 1 Although my title tonight
is a rephrasing of Whitehead’s remark, I don’t mean it to imply that he was wrong. The two greatest
philosophers in the Western tradition are Plato and Aristotle, or maybe Aristotle and Plato. I tend to
be suspicious of anyone who ranks them too quickly, so let’s leave that an open question, or maybe
consider it as fodder for discussion after the lecture. Since I’ve already quoted Whitehead on behalf
of Plato, let’s consider a powerful piece of testimony on the side of Aristotle. This comes from
Julían Marías, a Spanish philosopher from the school of José Ortega y Gasset, in his history of
philosophy: the first one I ever read. As Marías puts it there: “Whenever philosophy has established
real contact with Aristotle, it has immediately become more precise and serious.” 2
One problem faced by any case for the importance of Aristotle is his reputation as a dull and
dry purveyor of sterile classifications. Bertrand Russell, for instance, tells us that the Nicomachean
Ethics “appeals to the respectable middle-aged,” that it is useful in “repress[ing] the ardours and
enthusiasms of the young,” and that “to a man with any depth of feeling it is likely to be repulsive.” 3
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 39.
Julián Marías, History of Philosophy, p. 372.
3
Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 147; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
1
2
�In response to Russell, I would say that while it is true that the surviving works of Aristotle lack the
pathos and literary flourish of the Platonic dialogues, it is questionable whether Aristotle is either
respectable or middle-aged in his outlook. In fact, in Aristotle I see a rather strange thinker who has
been overly domesticated over the centuries. Throughout this lecture, I’ll be defending the virtues of
strangeness in human thought. But the first clue that Aristotle is more offbeat and edgy than is
usually believed can be seen in his often bizarre, endearingly morbid sense of humor. In his De
Anima (or On the Soul) there is the odd remark that touch is the most important sense, because it is
the only one that destroys us if we do it too hard. 4 In the Rhetoric, we find the chilling examples he
gives of good luck: first, “such as if all of a man’s brothers are ugly but he is good-looking,” or this
one: “if someone who regularly made a journey were the only one not to, while others did for the
first time– and were killed.” 5 And finally, there is one of my favorite passages in the entire history of
philosophy, from the Metaphysics, Book Gamma, Chapter 2: “For if it does not belong to the
philosopher, then who will be the investigator of whether Socrates and Socrates seated are the
same?” 6 On the whole, I find it easy to believe W.D. Ross when he reports that Aristotle had a
“mocking disposition which showed itself in his [facial] expression.” 7
As Johnnies tend to know, Aristotle wrote a lot of great works. But since my real passion
these days (and as far back as my Annapolis days from 1987 through 1990) is systematic philosophy,
my concern tonight will be with the Physics and the Metaphysics. 8 We know the usual way of
distinguishing these works from each other. The Physics refers to physis, or nature, thereby continuing
the great tradition of speculative theories of nature launched by the pre-Socratics. The title
Metaphysics, however, was presumably coined by Aristotle’s later editor Andronicus of Rhodes, and
Aristotle, De Anima, p. 76.
Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1362a.
6
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p, 48.
7
W.D. Ross, Aristotle, p. 7.
8
Aristotle, Physics; Aristotle, Metaphysics.
4
5
2
�simply referred to ta meta ta physika, or what comes after the physics. 9 Since the prefix meta- can also
refer to matters beyond physics, and thus beyomnd nature altogether. Let’s assume that the details
of this story are accurate; I have no direct archival evidence to challenge it, not do I have any wish to
do so. My purpose, instead, is to give a different interpretation of the difference between the Physics
and the Metaphysics.
Here is that interpretation. The Physics is about the continuous, and the Metaphysics is about
the discontinuous, also known as the discrete. The continuum, or συνεχές, refers to an unbroken
stretch of anything: so unbroken, in fact, that it consists of no definite number of pieces. The
examples of continua given in the Physics include time, space, and physical motion. Any continuum is
divisible into as many parts as we please. We can say with equal accuracy that this lecture tonight is
made up of three parts, or seventy-nine, or twelve million. We can put as many numbers as we want
on the number line between zero and 100. The discrete, by contrast, is that which is independent,
autonomous, and which cannot be arbitrarily sliced up however we wish. The best example in the
Metaphysics, of course, is primary substance, or πρώτη οὐσία. But Aristotle gives another example of
discreteness, one that may be surprising: qualitative change. If a stone is worn away in a river, this
does not happen gradually and continuously: in some moments a chunk breaks off the stone, while
in other moments nothing happens at all.
But I would go even further than this. This quarrel between the continuous and the discrete
is not only central to Aristotle’s philosophy, but is one of the central intellectual distinctions in our
entire intellectual history. Before diving into Aristotle, allow me to give some examples. For more
than a century, the foundations of physics have been troubled by the incompatibility of its two
central pillars: quantum theory (for electromagnetism as well as the strong and weak nuclear forces)
9
Peter van Inwagen, Meghan Sullivan, & Sara Bernstein, “Metaphysics.”
3
�and general relativity (for gravity). In 2012 I sat on a panel with the Austrian physicist Anton
Zeilinger, who would later win the Nobel Prize for teleporting photons across the Danube. At
dinner afterward, I took the liberty of asking him about the most promising avenue for unification
of quantum theory and general relativity. He responded as follows: “I haven’t the foggiest idea. But
since some of the world’s most intelligent people (if I may immodestly say so) have worked on this
problem without success for more than a century, it will probably be something completely from out
of left field.” What exactly is that problem?
It is often explained as it was in a 2022 article in The Guardian: “Physicists agree that the
theory of quantum mechanics applies to very tiny particles, and Einstein’s theory of general relativity
applies to larger objects.” 10 A similar explanation is given by prominent American scientist Michio
Kaku in one of his helpful physics bestsellers, The God Equation. 11 As rules of thumb go, this one is
not so bad: it is true that quantum effects (such as the indeterminacy of position and momentum)
are most easily observed at the level of tiny entities such as particles. Meanwhile, general relativity is
most useful at the scale of astronomical events involving gigantic masses and vast stretches of time,
where the effects of gravity on space-time become most obvious And yet, this rule of thumb isn’t
entirely accurate. The probabilistic effects of quantum mechanics are observable even at the
relatively large scale of atoms and molecules, and could even be detected at the level of mid-sized
everyday objects (dogs, shoes, airplanes) if the wavelengths of such objects weren’t too short for
quantum effects to be easily measured. Conversely, general relativity applies to the bending of spacetime by all masses, not just extremely large ones. Your own body distorts nearby space with its mass,
though the effect is too tiny to be noticeable.
10
11
Stephen Buranyi, “Do We Need a New Theory of Evolution?”
Michio Kaku, The God Equation, p. 141. Kindle edition.
4
�Shifting the focus away from small and large objects, the tension between quantum theory
and general relativity is better understood in terms of the opposition between the discrete and the
continuous. Quantum theory treats the world as made up of tiny chunks, as with photons of light,
while general relativity treats it as a continuous bending of space and time, as with starlight bending
when it passes near the sun’s gravitational pull, confirmed by Arthur Stanle Eddington in his
measurements during the 1919 solar eclipse. The central problem is that of the interaction between
the continuous and the discrete; this is the reason for the deadlock faced by physics for more than a
century. While quantum theory tells us we’re living in a world full of sudden jumps and tiniest units,
general relativity envisions the cosmos as a continuous bending. How can discrete particles move
through a spatio-temporal continuum?
We might also speak of evolutionary biology, and the conflict between the continuous and
the discrete in that field. In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould introduced their concept of
“punctuated equilibrium” in opposition to what they called the “phyletic gradualism” of Darwin’s
tradition. 12 According to Eldredge and Gould, species change does not happen through the slow
work of natural selection, but occurs rather suddenly in geological time. The great American
biologist Lynn Margulis (and you really should all read her if you haven’t already) added her own
theory of sudden change to the mix, through the idea that evolution occurs through symbiosis
between previously separate life forms. 13 We could also add Thomas Kuhn’s theory of science as
consisting of punctuated “paradigm shifts” rather than gradual and cumulative triumphs of
rationality. 14 And if architecture is more your style (and I had to learn it on the fly when hired by
SCI-Arc eight years ago) we can also speak of the dispute between the jarringly discontuous
architecture of the 1988 Deconstructivism show a the MoMA in New York, and the 1993
Niles Eldredge & Stephen Jay Gould. “Punctuated Equilibria.”
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet.
14
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
12
13
5
�appearance of a countercurrent in favor of smoothness and continuity in architecture: inspired by
the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and especially visible in the style of Zaha Hadid. 15 In fact, scratch
the surface of any intellectual conflict, and you are likely to find some version of the dispute
between the continuous and the discrete. To understand why this topic matters, there is no better
place to turn than Aristotle’s own works.
Aristotle on the Continuous
Aristotle develops his idea of continuity through a critical assessment of Anaximander’s apeiron,
which refers to the cosmos as a single indeterminate whole, a boundless expanse without qualities or
parts. Aristotle rejects this by noting that nothing is ever just one: does the apeiron not even have a
size or shape? If it does, then its size and its shape are something in addition to its unity. Consider the
following simple case, using a number other than one. If I say there are five apples and five bananas
sitting on the kitchen counter, the number five is the same in both cases, though of course the
apples and bananas differ greatly from each other in qualitative terms. Apples are round and red,
bananas are oblong and yellow, just to start. The quantity also tells us nothing about the condition of
the fruit: whether it’s underripe, ready to eat, or already blackened or oversoft. If we turn our
attention to a single banana, it’s fine to say that the banana is one thing, but only if we recognize that
this same banana also has hundreds, perhaps thousands of qualities (yellowness, oblongness,
curvature, etc). This means that while the banana is one thing, it is also many when viewed from the
standpoint of its qualities. As trivial as this may sound, it eventually becomes an important point for
Leibniz in Monadology §8, and Leibniz will become important for us tonight as well. 16
15
16
Philip Johnson & Wark Wigley. Deconstructivist Architecture; Gilles Deleuze, The Fold.
G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, p. 214.
6
�In the days before subatomic particles were discovered, it was thought that atoms were
indivisible: pure units without parts. But in 1897 J.J. Thomson discovered the first subatomic
particle: the electron, known for its tiny mass and negative electric charge. In 1911 Ernest
Rutherford discovered that atoms are not uniform, but have a tiny nucleus made up of protons,
which are much larger than electrons and have a positive charge. In 1932 James Chadwick
discovered the neutron, which is essentially just a proton with a neutral rather than positive charge.
Then in 1964 it was theorized independently by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig that even
protons and neutrons are made up of smaller particles, called “quarks,” whose existence was
experimentally proven in 1968. Hence we no longer say that atoms are the smallest unit of nature,
but can say instead that physical matter is made of quarks and electrons.
This bit of recent scientific history would not have bothered Aristotle at all, since of course
he didn’t believe in the existence of uncuttable atoms anyway: as we know, the word atom literally
means that which cannot be cut. And we know that Aristotle thought matter to be continuous,
meaning that it can be cut into smaller and smaller pieces as far as we wish, without ever reaching
some ultimate, uncuttable unit. If he were alive today, he would presumably think that both quarks
and electrons could still be divided into smaller units ad nauseam.
At any rate, Aristotle did not embrace the idea that the apeiron could be one in the sense of
being purely simple and without parts; as we have seen, nothing exists that does not have multiple
qualities. Yet he did accept the idea of the continuum, referring to a continuous stretch of anything
that can be divided infinitely downward as far as we please. In his own words: “the continuous is
divisible without limit.” 17 This is obvious enough in the case of the number line, which contains as
many numbers as we want it to have: there is no obstacle to our putting hundreds or even millions
of numbers on the line between the neighboring integers 1 and 2. But this seems to mean that every
17
Aristotle, Physics, p. 4.
7
�continuum is always multiple, not one, which seems contradictory. This multiplicity of the
continuum had already caused problems in the eyes of Zeno of Elea, since it entailed that there are
infinitely many points between any two given points, leading him to reject the existence of motion.
For Aristotle, by contrast, the reality of motion had to be protected at all costs, since his entire
philosophy is in some sense designed to explain motion.
Be that as it may, he doesn’t discount the idea of an unlimited apeiron as simply false. He
does think this concept is sometimes useful, because if we decide that the unlimited doesn’t exist, he
says, then “many impossibilities result,” just like when “we posit that it does exist.” 18 In particular, if
we deny the existence of the unlimited, Aristotle thinks that three impossible consequences follow.
First, there will be “a start and an end of time.” Second, magnitudes, or quantities will not always
“be divisible into magnitudes” in their own right. And third, “number will not be unlimited.” 19 Since
all of these points are interesting, let’s take them one at a time.
The first impossibility is that without the unlimited, there will be “a start and an end of
time.” Aristotle’s shock at this notion is always difficult for us moderns to grasp. Both our
monotheistic religions and our state-of-the-art Big Bang astrophysics tell us that the universe was
created at some point in time, and will come to an end at some later point in time. But of course that
is not Aristotle’s conception of the world. As he sees it, there has always been time and always will
be time. It is worth recalling that he does not think the same about space. In his view, space only
extends as far as the outermost sphere of the heavens: namely, the rotating spheres where premodern physics said that all the stars were located, moving around the earth in unison at a distance
further from us than the planets. 20
Aristotle, Physics, p. 45.
Aristotle, Physics, p. 49.
20
On the modern replacement of this theory see Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite
Universe.
18
19
8
�The second impossibility concerns magnitudes, or quantities. Take any number: four, for
example. We can slice four into a pair of twos or into four separate ones. But we don’t have to stop
there. We can cut up the ones into ever-tinier fractions, meaning that our original number four can
be carved up into as many smaller units as we wish. Given this ability to keep dividing things into
ever-tinier components without end, something like the unlimited must exist. Without it we would
eventually arrive at the ultimate smallest units of mathematics, which do not exist. Aristotle’s view is
that this is true not only of number, but also of time, space, and matter. All of these are examples of
continua, meaning that they can be split into pieces as small as we wish without ever arriving at a
smallest part.
From this endless division of numbers into smaller parts, we advance to the third
impossibility, which concerns the increase of numbers through addition. I was just a small child
when my mother taught me how to count to 100; I remember becoming discouraged and starting to
cry somewhere in the low seventies, thinking that we would never reach the goal. While for many
children 100 symbolizes an immense quantity of anything, it’s obviously a paltry sum compared with
numbers used even for everyday purposes, such as financial transactions, and that’s to say nothing of
higher mathematics. Indeed, just a few years after my traumatic march to 100, I took childish delight
in imagining ever larger numbers, simply adding zeroes and other digits to an initial numeral, or
engaging in mental exploits of repeated doubling or tripling. Such cases show that the limitless must
exist, since otherwise we would eventually arrive at a highest number and not be able to go beyond
it. Note that this cannot be refuted simply by saying “infinity.” For one thing, infinity is technically
not a number. For another, the mathematician Georg Cantor proved in the nineteenth century that
there are infinitely many different infinities, all of different sizes. 21
21
Georg Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers.
9
�At first glance, Aristotle’s points about division and addition might seem to be the same. We
can divide any number into as many pieces as we like, or add to any number as much we like; both
procedures have no limit other than personal patience. But Aristotle notes a crucial difference
between them. 22 In the case of division the total amount is already contained in the starting point,
while in the case of unlimited increase it is not. To give an example, when we take the number four
and begin cutting it indefinitely into tinier pieces, we never get beyond the four that we already had
at the start; we are merely subdividing an already known quantity, no matter how minutely we
explore its interior. Yet when we play the reverse game of increasing the number four as far as our
imagination will take us, we immediately get beyond four and even reach numbers absurdly greater
than our initial one. The unlimited cannot be some greatest encompassing cosmic whole, since for
every quantity, no matter how large, there is always a larger one. In other words, there is no infinite
container that holds everything, but every finite amount of matter, number, space, and time contains
an infinite amount of increasingly tiny units inside itself. This is one of my favorite counterintuitive
points in the Physics.
Yet by conceding the existence of limitless divisibility, Aristotle seems to have fallen directly
into Zeno’s trap. It is impossible to reach the dorway, since between us and the door there exists an
infinite number of halfway points; it is impossible for Achilles to pass the turtle in a footrace, since
whenever Achilles runs to where the turtle was, the turtle will have run some incresaingly
infinitesimal distance past that point. Zeno’s underlying point is that if space is infinitely divisible
then motion will be impossible, since we cannot possibly move through an infinite number of
points. The problem is that Aristotle also holds that space is infinitely divisble, which seems to
commit him to the impossibility of motion as well. Of course, we know that Aristotle has a strategy
for escaping this predicament, and it is one of the keys not only to his Physics, but to his philosophy
22
Aristotle, Physics, pp. 52-53.
10
�as a whole. This involves his distinction between the actual and the potential, one that is familiar to us
today from everyday language and experience.
The classic example is the celebrated acorn: it is an actual acorn but a potential oak tree,
meaning that its acorn-qualities right now are not the full story of its reality. Although an acorn is
not currently an oak tree, and a kitten is also not currently an oak tree, the status of “not being an
oak tree” is obviously different in the two cases. We can think of the acorn as a repository of forces
not currently expressed, but that might someday shape it into a lofty, sturdy oak; a kitten,
presumably, will never grow into an oak tree without horrific genetic manipulations that lie beyond
the scope of present-day science. The same holds for a human infant who is capable of very little at
present, but might someday lead a large bank or artificial intelligence laboratory, or perhaps a street
protest against these same institutions. Likewise, there is the infamous San Andreas fault, not far
from where I live. Although quiet at this moment in 2024, the fault is likely to be the site of a major
earthquake at some point in the next fifty years, presumably causing widespread destruction.
Ultimately, what Aristotle is after with his discussion of the actual and the potential is an
account of motion, which he famously defines as the activation of what is potential insofar as it is
potential. 23 When an acorn grows into an oak tree, this involves the activation of what used to
potential in the acorn, whereas the kitten had the potential to be an oak. As another example,
consider a piece of bronze sitting on a worker’s table in Athens. We can say that it is actually bronze
and actually located in Athens rather than somewhere else. Hence there is no way to actualize its
bronzeness and its presence in Athens, since both of these are already accomplished facts, not future
possibilities. If we want the bronze to change in some way, we need to draw on its potentiality rather
than its actuality. In this spirit, we can say that the bronze is potentially a sword and potentially
located in Miletus, and if we have the proper metal-working skill and means of transportation, we
23
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 189.
11
�can actualize these potentials. For Aristotle, the activation of potentials is what motion means.
However, we need to keep in mind that for Aristotle “motion” refers to any sort of change, whether
it be an acorn growing into an oak or a person becoming old and tired. It is not like modern physics,
where “motion” refers exclusively to the movement of objects in space. This difference between
potential and actual has a good case to be called the center of Aristotle’s philosophy. At one point
he even describes being not as unified, but as “twofold.” As he puts it: “Everything changes from
what is potentiality to what is actively.” 24
On that note we return to Zeno’s paradoxes, which Aristotle addresses by way of his
actual/potential distinction. Zeno is correct, Aristotle says, that it would be impossible to reach the
doorway if we actually had to pass through an infinite number of points in between. Our movement
to the door would not be continuous and eventually successful, but would “come to a standstill,”
since we could never even reach the next point on our way to the door, let alone the door itself. 25
There is no “next” point, after all, since between where we are and even a close nearby point there
are infinitely many other points in between. The reason motion really does occur is that the path
from our current position to the doorway is not actually made of an infinite number of points, but
only potentially so. 26 (VIII.8) In other words, splitting any length of space into separate points is
something we do as a kind of mental exercise; it does not really govern our motion in space. This
means that Zeno’s examples fail.
The so-called paradox of the arrow is another of Zeno’s most famous, and Aristotle
challenges this one as well. Imagine that an archer fires an arrow directly at a target. Obviously, the
fired arrow always appears to be moving. But if we closely consider any particular moment of its
flight, the arrow must be in some definition position, which means that it is motionless in that point.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 199.
Aristotle, Physics, p. 164.
26
Aristotle, Physics, p. 164; emph. added.
24
25
12
�But if it is always motionless at any given moment, how can it also be moving? Predictably enough,
this leads Zeno to claim that the arrow does not actually move, and that (once again) all motion is
just an illusion generated by our senses. Aristotle rightly notes that this argument relies on a
questionable assumption. Namely, the arrow paradox “results from assuming that time is composed
of nows.” 27 In other words, Zeno reasons that in any distinct temporal instant, the arrow must
occupy some definite spatial position. But Aristotle does not think that time is made of distinct
instants, any more than he thinks a line is made of indivisible points. Euclid’s geometry would later
define a point as “that which has no part,” and beyond this, we already know that no matter how
closely we place two points together, we can always add an unlimited number of additional points
between them. 28 This is why Aristotle contends that the same principle applies to time and space,
not just magnitude. 29 In the case of the arrow paradox, there is no definite number of moments
between the time the arrow is fired and the time it strikes the target. No two nows can be
contiguous for the same reason that no two points on the number line can be: we can always add
another now between any two nows that seem to be consecutive.
Aristotle makes some additional remarks about time in much the same spirit. Since he views
time as a continuum, there can be no definite “now” in which something begins to happen. The
moment of falling in love or turning toward the dark side can never be pinpointed exactly, for the
simple reason that nothing in time can ever be located in a single instant. He also makes the crucial
point that our sense of time is rooted in our observation of change. As he notes, “when we
ourselves do not change in our thought or do not notice that we change, then it does not seem to us
that time has passed.” 30 (IV.11) This is important because many philosophers seem to think of time
Aristotle, Physics, p. 120.
Euclid, The Thirteen Books of the Elements, p. 153.
29
Aristotle, Physics, p. 102.
30
Aristotle, Physics, p. 76.
27
28
13
�as something like a wind tunnel: as if it were a disembodied force that caused things to change, when
it is really just our way of measuring change.
To repeat, if there were truly an infinite number of halfway points between me and the door,
Zeno would be correct: not only could I never reach the doorway, I could never move at all. For
there would be an infinite number of halfway points between my current position and even a close
nearby point. Aristotle’s response was that only in a derivative way can we conceive of space as
made up of distinct parts: the continuum is actually one, but potentially many. From an Aristotelian
standpoint, Zeno’s paradoxes pose no threat to the existence of motion. By introducing his concept
of potentiality, Aristotle has no need to say that the continuum actually has an infinite number of
parts to it. It is enough to say that we can potentially divide the continuum into as many pieces as we
please: in our minds, that is. But the world in which motion takes place is continuous, unfolding
over undivided stretches of space. If I want to walk to the door, I simply walk to the door. There is
no actual infinity of points I must cross in order to do so. The shift from Zeno’s to Aristotle’s
understanding teaches us that motion is real. This means that Aristotle’s extensive physics of motion
(which includes all forms of change, not just physical movement) is able to get off the ground. As
we know, it would become an extremely useful tool not only in the ancient world, but also in early
Islamic civilization and then in Medieval Europe, before being rejected decisively by seventeenthcentury physics.
Aristotle on the Discrete
Looking back on the pre-Socratics, we can see that their apeiron counts as a continuum, even though
the pre-Socratics never explicitly defined it that way. Like the number line, it is boundless, in the
sense that it extends without limit in every direction, and also consists of no definite number of
parts. How, then, can we move from the boundless apeiron to the multitude of individual beings we
14
�see all around us? At least two pre-Socratic thinkers offered origin stories in which the apeiron was
broken up into countless pieces. 31 According to Pythagoras, the apeiron inhaled the void, leading to
something like tiny bubbles or vacua separating parts of the apeiron from each other, yielding what
we know today as individual things. Anaxagoras gives us a different version, in which nous or mind
caused the apeiron to rorate so rapidly that it vibrated excessively and finally broke into tiny pieces:
the homoiomeraeiai. In those pre-Socratics who believed in the apeiron were adopting a basically
continuous model of reality, while those who believed instead in ultimate physical elements (whether
water, air, number, atoms, or four separate elements) were advocates of a discrete conception of the
world. Aristotle is the first person we know of who divided them into these two groups: a decision
probably motivated by his own joint fascination with the continuous (the Physics) and the discrete
(the Metaphysics).
Speaking of the Metaphysics, potentiality and actuality also continue to play an important role
in this work, though a different one. Aristotle is quick to inform us that the question here is no
longer about objects being unable to move through an actual number of intermediate points. The
important issue in the Metaphysics is qualitative change. Namely, if an object were nothing more than
its current, actual state, it would never be able to change at all; potentiality is therefore needed as the
engine of all transformation. Of course, this is not an imaginary concern aimed at a straw man
opponent: Aristotle was engaged in dispute at the time with a rival philosophical school, the
Megarians, who held that a thing is no more than its sum total of current activities. The Megarians
were named after their small home city of Megara, which still exists to the west of Athens today. The
leader of the school was one Euclides, a former student of Socrates. Aristotle summarizes their
doctrine in the Metaphysics as follows: “someone who is not building is not capable of building, but
31
See Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Ancient Philosophy.
15
�someone who is building is capable if and when he is building, and similarly in the other cases.” 32 In
simpler terms, no one is a house builder unless they are building a house at this very moment. But
Aristotle is unconvinced. He complains that according to the Megarian teaching, when someone
stops building, “he will not possess the craft,” meaning that they will no longer be builders once they
stop, or even while they take a lunch break. But this is absurd, because “if he starts again
immediately, how will he have learned again how to make use of this craft?” 33 In other words, there
is a big difference between a master house builder who currently happens to be asleep, and those of
us who are awake and may even have tools in our hands, but have no idea what to do in order to
build a house.
Far from being an outmoded way of thinking, the Megarian approach is tacitly adopted even
by some recent authors. A good example is my late lamented friend, the French philosopher Bruno
Latour. The method he helped develop for the social sciences is called Actor-Network Theory; it
maintains, like the Megarians, that everything is equivalent to its sum total of actions here and now. 34
As Latour puts it, objects (which he calls “actors”) can only be defined by their actions. There is no
other way to define an action than by asking what other actors it modifies, transforms, perturbs, or
creates. 35 A thing is the effects it has on other things, and nothing more. In this way, Latour and his
colleagues devised a technique for analyzing any situation by focusing on what things do, rather than
getting lost in speculation about what their hidden properties might be. And as a method for the
social sciences, it has yielded many fruits.
One of these fruits is that Latour is able to attack theories that try to explain reality with such
fuzzy abstractions as “Science,” “Society,” or “Capitalism.” Instead of these terms, the Actor-
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 145.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 145.
34
Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. For an admiring but critical commentary see Graham Harman,
Prince of Networks.
35
Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope, p. 122.
32
33
16
�Network theorist tries to look more concretely at what every human and non-human actor is doing
in a given situation. For instance, the French historian Fernand Braudel (much admired by Latour)
writes a history of capitalism that does not take this economic system for granted, but actually looks
at the European development of local markets into regional markets, regional markets into national
ones, and finally national markets into international monopolies. 36 When one thing transforms into
another, Latour insists that we explain each step, and not just say that the later ones existed in
advance in the earlier ones. We cannot say that a cake is “already there in the recipe,” since from raw
ingredients to the final cake there are a number of steps that must be properly executed, and these
must be specified. We could certainly call the ingredients “a potential cake,” but for Latour this idea
of potentiality risks intellectual laziness. He would agree with the Megarians that we should focus
solely on actual things and what is needed to turn them into different things. And in the case of the
house-builder discussed by the Megarians, Latour would surely agree that a house-builder is simply
whoever is building a house at this very moment. 37
Aristotle counters such ideas by insisting that if everything were completely actual, then
nothing could ever change. At the moment of writing these words I was typing on an Apple
MacBook Air computer while sitting at our dining table in Long Beach, California. Yet this is no
longer the case. I am now on a journey into my distant undergraduate past in Annapolis. Forty-eight
hours from now I may be at the supermarket in Long Beach instead. Aristotle would say that all this
is possible only because I have the potential to change my current situation; without such potential, I
would have been forever frozen in the act of sitting at home and typing.
In similar fashion, a happy person is potentially sad, and a dusty little pearl-fishing village
called Dubai was potentially a wealthy world metropolis, which is exactly what it became. These
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 3 vols.
For another interesting defense of the Megarians see Nicolai Hartmann, “The Megarian and the Aristotelian
Concept of Potentiality.”
36
37
17
�scenarios are not properly accounted for by either he Megarians or Latour. We surely all remember
the difference between potential energy and kinetic energyfromn high school physics: whenever
something occurs in the world, it is because one or more entities were previously in a position to
make it happen before it actually did. A vase was stationed precariously on a windowsill ten floors
above the sidewalk and thus it was able to fall in a strong wind; an athletic young girl had abundant
energy stored in her muscles and for this reason was able to climb the tree in front of the school.
I’d like to lay special stress on Aristotle’s passion for movement and change since, in recent
decades, his theory of enduring individual substances has unfairly earned him the reputation of a
boring philosopher of stasis. He warns us against a tendency that is still widespread today: the
frequent proclamation that “everything is in flux,” all is changing constantly, nothing remains the
same. Aristotle responds that this statement isn’t quite true, since nature contains rest as well as
movement. Just as importantly, change in nature is not usually gradual or continuous: if a stone is
worn away by a river, this happens in jumps rather than continuously. That is to say, a stone being
worn away in a river does not lose the same number of particles in every second; instead, sometimes
nothing changes, but all of a sudden a significant piece of the stone is broken away. Likewise, when
we read Edward Gibbon’s great multi-volume work on the decline and fall of Rome, we do not find
an equal amount of Roman decline on every page; there are specific moments in Gibbon’s history
where decay is unusually rapid or severe, and others in which it is even reversed for awhile. 38 The
renewed embrace of radical flux and flow in recent philosophy has unjustly diminished Aristotle’s
reputation as an innovator. But he is nothing if not a philosopher of movement.
Substance
38
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 vols.
18
�Alongside his insights about motion, what Aristotle has to say about primary substance, prote ousia,
discrete individual entities, is of equal interest. Of the two groups of pre-Socratic thinkers, those
who focused on ultimate physical elements (water, air, atoms) were downward reductionists who
dissolved everything into its smallest pieces. While it can be very useful to know what something is
made of, this can also lead us to overlook important features of the original substance. For instance,
we know that water both puts out fires and quenches thirst, though neither of these capacities are
found in its smaller ingredients, hydrogen and oxygen. I call this form of reduction “undermining,”
since it dissolves individual things in favor of their smaller components or perhaps their causal
backstories. 39 Later in ancient Greek philosophy we find the Sophists, frequently attacked by
Socrates and Plato. One of them, Protagoras, is famous for saying that “man is the measure of all
things.” This amounts to the upward reduction that I all “overmining,” since it shifts attention from
the inherent constitution of things to the question of how these things affect the human mind, or
possibly how they affect everything else, as in Latour’s Actor-Network Theory. The right way to
avoid these two extreme methods is to focus on things that are neither the smallest nor the largest
components of the cosmos, and this is exactly what Aristotle does. For this reason he is often
mocked as being obsessed with “mid-sized everyday objects,” though we can easily turn this formula
against his critics by saying that they are obsessed either with “tiny-sized physical objects” or “largesized cosmic wholes.” Medium-sized things also have an important place in philosophy.
Like most trailblazers, Aristotle is sometimes inconsistent about his central topic. In the
Metaphysics he not only asks the question “What is substance?” at least five times, but gives slightly
different answers in each case. At times he insists that nothing is more a substance than anything
else: the sun is more powerful and durable than a dragonfly, but the dragonfly is just as much a
dragonfly as the sun is the sun, and hence they are equally substances. At other times he speaks of
39
See Graham Harman, “Undermining, Overmining, and Duomining.”
19
�substance in the comparative terms of one thing being “more” or “less” substance than another. For
instance: “substance seems to belong most evidently to bodies. That is why we say that animals and
plants and their parts are substances, and also natural bodies, such as fire, water, earth, and each
thing of this sort.” 40 Later he stresses that whatever is natural is somehow more substance than a
table or anything else put together by human artifice. For Aristotle, substance means many things. It
is a unity over and above the sum of its parts; it is a somewhat inscrutable thing which can never be
adequately defined in words, since things are concrete while definitions use universals; it has the
capacity to have opposite qualities at different times; and it has abundant reserves of currently
unexpressed potential. But perhaps most importantly, the concept of substance is needed in order to
ensure that the discreteness of reality is taken just as seriously as its equally real continuous
character.
According to Aristotle, “everyone” in his time agrees that earth, water, fire, plants, and the
sky are substances. So too are “bodies in general and the things composed of them, both animals
and divine beings, and the parts of these. Each of these is said to be a substance because it is not said of
an underlying subject but rather the other things are said of it.” 41 (Delta 8) The grammatical differene between
nouns and adjectives make this easy to understand. We say “the car is green,” not “the green is car”;
this shows that we recognize the car as the underlying substance and its color an accidental quality
that can be modified if we wish. While some have criticized Aristotle for assuming that the structure
of language is an accurate guide to reality, he is certainly correct that the car appears to us as a more
robust thing than its green color. Normally, we do not see enduring colors taking on the form of
different objects, though it is quite common for objects to change color.
40
41
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 105.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 79; emph. added.
20
�Furthermore, just as we saw in the case of the apeiron, an object cannot simply be one, since it
will always have multiple qualities; yet a substance must also be one so as to unify its many qualities.
As Aristotle puts it: “of all things that have several parts and where the totality of them is not like a
heap, but the whole is something beyond the parts, there is some cause of it.” 42 By way of example,
he notes that a “syllable is not its phonetic elements, BA is not the same as B and A, nor is flesh fire
and earth. For when they –for example, the flesh and the syllable– are dissolved they no longer exist,
whereas the phonetic elements do exist, and so do the fire and the earth.” 43 Though we no longer
share the widespread ancient Greek view that fire and earth are indestructible physical elements, we
can still take his point that the whole is something more than its sum total of parts.
Despite its unity, a substance must always be composite as well: not only in the qualities it
possesses, but also in the parts of which it is formed. In this way Aristotle brushes against the later
notion of emergence. 44 Although a substance has parts, it is not reducible to them, since otherwise it
would be a mere collection rather than a unified substance. If someone tried to name a new
substance composed jointly from France, red pepper, and the music of Mozart, we would quickly
conclude that these three random objects do not form a unified substance with emergent properties
of its own. It is rather different if we list water, tomato paste, kidney beans, and spice: in this case we
are inclined to say they are unified in the substance “chili.” Although Aristotle surely would not
recognize chili as a substance, I am inclined to do so, given that chili has a certain je ne sais quoi not
found in its ingredients when taken in isolation. And conversely, the ingredients should also be
treated as substances, since of them has an independent reality that is not entirely transformed the
chili as a whole.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 141.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 132.
44
See Manuel DeLanda, “Emergence, Causality, and Realism”; Niki Young, “Object, Reduction, and
Emergence.”
42
43
21
�But we have just touched on an interesing problem. For is it really the case that the various
ingredients of a whole both retain their independence and simultaneously belongs to the larger
substance of which they are ingredients? For example, if a berry bush is a substance, then is each of
the individual berries also a substance? In one passage Aristotle does say that the parts of animals
and plants are substances just like animals and plants themselves. 45 But a more characteristically
Aristotelian answer comes when he says “it is only when the whole has been dissolved” that the
parts can exist as substances in their own right. 46 In terms of our example, this means that individual
berries are not substances unless they are picked. Until that occurs, they are only “potentially”
substances, since they remain subordinated to the unity of the plant as a whole, which is considered
the only substance on the scene until berry-picking occurs. Quite aside from berries, it is easy to see
why Aristotle might think that a liver or kidney could be treated as part of a unified human
substance, and might think as well that these organs only become independent in cases where overall
bodily function breaks down. Organ transplants were unknown in his time, but familiar to us today:
a healthy organ is removed from a deceased donor and shipped elsewhere to be transplanted into a
needy recipient. During its period of transit from one body to another, the organ could easily be
viewed as an independent substance. Since Aristotle would make the same point for the parts of
plants, we can see his willingness to think that the status of “substance” is always temporary and
contingent.
As mentioned, Aristotle has a tendency to favor nature as the ultimate authority on what
counts as a substance and what does not. Berries may exist as substances once they are picked, but a
raspberry pie could never count for Aristotle as a substance, given his general suspicion of artificially
produced things. In our own time, we are less likely to share his prejudice in favor of nature. Today’s
45
46
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 105.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 82.
22
�world is brimming with artificially produced objects that nonetheless behave like substances:
chemical molecules synthesized in laboratories as in the case of medical drugs, important
“transuranian” elements such as plutonium that are rarely found in nature, not to mention airplanes,
cars, drones, robots, and medical prostheses, along with the European Union and the International
Olympic Committee. The fact that complex machines do not occur naturally in forests does not
automatically entail that coffee grinders are less deserving of the name “substance” than
strawberries. This is especially clear once we recall the centuries of careful breeding and fattening
needed to produce the highly edible, but perhaps more tasteless bright red strawberries we purchase
in supermarkets today.
In our own time, when natural science is usually viewed as the gold standard of knowledge, it
might seem antiquated that Aristotle praises philosophy as the superior discipline. The reason he
gives (despite his own scientific accomplishments) is that only philosophy is concerned with
substance. I take his point to be as follows. Given that substance is what endures despite all changes
in it qualities, and given as well that we cannot define any substance in words, there is something
elusive about it that makes it difficult to measure adequately or paraphrase in exact prose language.
That makes substance a good match for philosophia, which is always the love of a wisdom that can
never fully be had rather than a direct form of wisdom itself. By contrast, the natural sciences will
always favor that which is more tangible and directly discernible; substance itself is neither of these
things, but is somehow deeper than all its visible or testable features. The adoration of precise
quantitative measurement in the sciences is one of the reasons modern thought dismisses
Aristotelian substance as outmoded, or as not very useful. But how might this dismissal be reversed
if we increase our awareness that knowledge is not the only form of human cognition? There are
really only two kinds of knowledge, in the end. If someone asks us what something is, we can either
tell them what it is made of (which amounts to undermining), tell them what it does (which amounts
23
�to overmining), or tell them both at once (which I call “duomining,” a term borrowed from the
credit card industry, where it has the appropriately sinister meaning of data-mining and text-mining
someone simultaneously). Some social networks can predict with 90 percent accuracy where you will
be tomorrow, and some credit card companies have algorithms that use changes in spending
patterns to predict divorce several years in advance. All of this is knowledge. But a full picture of
human cognition requires knowledge to be supplemented with philosophia, aesthetic sensibility,
practical know-how, political instincts, personal empathy, and what psychoanalysis calls the “truth”
of symptoms, along with other intuitions and skills. The fact that some things exist only in shadow
does not make them less real than the things that sit in direct sunlight.
None of this means that we need to agree with Aristotle’s own hierarchy, which places
philosophy on top of science. I for one do not agree, just as I would not agree that a globe of the
earth is “better” than a street map of Los Angeles; obviously, which of the two is better depends on
what you are trying to do. But present-day society is so enamored of the exactitude, the concrete
achievements, and even the monetizable industrial results of natural science that philosophy has
reached something close to the historical low point of its prestige. This can be seen from the fact
that so many present-day philosophers try to be recognized as “scientific” in their thinking, while
few scientists aspire to be called philosophers anymore, unlike in previous centuries.
Although it is often assumed inc ontemporary philosophy that Aristotle’s theory of
substance is dated, it does have many powerful features. Some present-day philosophies wish to
treat substances (or discrete objects more generally) as nothing more than arbitrary chunks torn out
of a primal whole by the human mind alone, as if the world really were just a continuum. 47 Yet this
position contradicts itself by assuming in advance that the mind is independent enough from the
whole to be able to perform the work of creating individual things from whole cloth: in other words,
47
See Thomas Nail, Being in Motion; Thomas Nail, “Is Nature Continuous or Discrete?”
24
�there are no specific objects unless a human mind is there to produce them. These contemporary
theories are actually traceable to Anaxagoras, and his view that a powerful mind causes the whole to
rotate, vibrate, and shatter. But who uphold such views need to explain how, in a supposedly unified
cosmos, the mind was different enough from this unity to be able to produce the discrete in the first
place.
The Problem of Interface
To summarize, Aristotle views time, space, motion, and number as continuous, but substance and
qualitative change as discontinuous. This leaves us with the question of how these two domains
could ever interact, since otherwise they would represent two separate and parallel worlds with two
different sets of rules. In a world of perfect continuity, individual substances would exist only as
delusions of the senses, which is precisely what Parmenides and Zeno thought. And in a world of
perfect discreteness, nothing could interact with anything else: everything would remain isolated in
its unique individuality, which is precisely why Leibniz said monads (his name for substances) have
no windows, and why he called upon divine intervention as the only possible solution for how his
monads could communicate. 48
If two things are continuous, this means that they blend into one; if two things are separate,
this means they do not touch at all. What interests us, and certainly interests Aristotle as well, is the
intermediate case where two object touch without blending together. Aristotle’s term for this middle
case is “contact,” a concept he never sufficiently develops. The problem is knowing exactly where
contact occurs. Of course, common sense sees no problem here: I am a substance, my friend is a
substance, and it is easy for us to make contact simply by shaking hands. But difficulties soon arise.
For one thing, I am not the same as my hand and my friend is not the same as his hand, since in
48
G.W. Leibniz, Theodicy.
25
�both cases the hand is merely part of each of us. Thus we could say no more than that shaking
hands is merely a contact of hands, not of people, and then we would need to know how a part of
me (like my hand) can have any effect on me as a unified being.
Beyond that, we cannot even say that the two hands touch while shaking. After all, the hands
do not meet in some sort of obscene total surface contact, but only at a limited number of points
along the outer layer of skin, so that now we need to know how those limited points on the skin are
able to affect the hand as a whole, and so on. The contact between two things is more problematic
than the physical assumptions of everyday life would lead us to believe. Descartes faced an
analogous problem when trying to determine where his two finite substances (mind and body) could
possibly meet. His theory was that the soul is contained in the pineal gland of the brain, whose
function was then mysterious, though today we know it to produce melatonin. 49 Although
Descartes’s solution was wrong, he was perfectly right to ask how two totally different kinds of
things could ever meet. What, in the end, is contact? This is what the problem of interface means.
It is interesting to note that a similar problem arises in a philosopher not often associated
with Aristotle: I speak of Henri Bergson in France. Much like Aristotle, he too faces the problem of
how the discrete and the continuous could somehow interact. For Bergson, the first term of the
duality is inner experience, also known as endured time, or durée, which is qualitative and continuous:
in short, the swirling realm of his wife’s cousin, Marcel Proust. 50 The second and opposite term is
the realm of what Bergson calls space, characterized as quantifiable and made up of discrete points
and discrete entities. For Bergson, the interface between these two opposites takes place along a
one-way street. For it is the flowing inner self of durée that must somehow learn to make contact
with the discrete and quantifiable outside world. In fact, Bergson gives us three separate terms for
49
50
See René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul.
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will; Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, 6 vols.
26
�this interface: simultaneity, the second self, and endosmosis. But if there is any case in which the
world adapts to us by becoming more smooth and flowing than usual, Bergson does not discuss it,
at least not in his debut book Time and Free Will.
Speculative Conclusion
But now I would like to work towards a conclusion, admittedly a speculative one. One of the
valuable points we can take from the Physics and the Metaphysics is that the continuous and the
discrete both exist; neither can be reduced to the other. This is why the problem of their point of
contact or interface is so important. Two continua cannot make contact, since if they are different
from each other in the first place, then they must make contact at some definite, discrete point of
intersection. Maybe the easiest way to see this is to return to the correspondence between Clarke
and Leibniz, which at least in my time was still on the St. John’s seminar list. 51 Famously, in this
correspondence Clarke defends Newton’s conception of time and space as absolute and empty
containers. Leibniz responds with good arguments, saying (among other things) that it would make
no sense to ask “what if the universe had been created ten minutes earlier?” or “what if the universe
were fifty feet further to the west?” Time and space are not absolute and independent, but must be
interpreted in terms of the entities that fill them. It may have been a losing proposition in the days
of Newtonian hegemony, but following Einstein’s general relativity, and the bending, twisting, and
folding of space by mass, Leibniz looks much better now. His point, at any rate, is that continua
intersect only by way of the discrete elements that fill them. The unified space-time of Einstein and
Minkowski is not a counter-example, since if this unified space-time exists then it is just one
continuum, and attempts to link it with another would still require discrete entities in both
simultaneously.
51
Samuel Clarke & G.W. Leibniz, Correspondence.
27
�Conversely, I would say that two discrete entities cannot touch directly, but can only meet in
a continuous medium. Although it is usually harder to convince people of this second point, I will
explain here why it strikes me as inevitable. First, it is worth remembering that a number of thinkers
across the centuries have recognized that there is a certain danger in speaking of individual things,
since a pure individual would have to be completely cut off from everything else. For two things to
be in relation entails that they are not only individuals. In the 1940s the French physicist Louis de
Broglie, already a Nobel Prize recipient for demonstrating the wave nature of electrons, noted “how
interesting the notion of interaction is, from the philosophical point of view, since it implies a
certain limitation on the concept of physical individuality.” 52 Here he is dipping his toes into deep
philosophical waters.
Unlike de Broglie, there are others who refused to limit the concept of individuality in any
way, and it drove them to a delightfully extreme idea: we know it under the name of
“occasionalism.” Although this term immediately makes most people think of seventeenth century
French Cartesianism, occasionalism actually began in medieval Iraq, through a formerly liberal
theologian named Abu Hasan al-Ash‘ari. His idea was that God is not just the only creator, but the
only causal agent at all. Fire does not burn cotton; God burns cotton. Along with this challenge to
direct causation between worldly beings, al-Ash‘ari also upheld another occasionalist doctrine
concerning time. Namely, time is made of discontinuous instants, with the world vanishing and
being recreated in every such moment. Most people are more familiar with the European variants of
this doctrine in Malebranche, but also in Spinoza, Leibniz, and Berkeley, and again in the twentieth
century with Whitehead. Occasionalism is usually rejected, even mocked today, for its apparently
extrvagant theological solution to the problem of causation. But I would point out that David Hume
and Immanuel Kant are still very much respected mainstream philosophers in our own time, and
52
de Broglie, Continu et discontinu en physique moderne, p. 115. The translation from French is my own.
28
�they simply adopt an occasionalism by other means. Instead of God, the monopoly on causation is
given to the human mind instead. But the real solution should not be taxonomical; we should be
able to account for causation as being indirect but still local.
Yet perhaps you still do not see a problem to be solved. After all, there seems to be no
difficulty in shaking someone’s hand, pushing a car when the engine stalls, trains coupling together
in a railyard, breakfast cereal touching the sides of its box, touching the roof of your mouth with
your tongue, or witnessing inanimate masses that slam together in the asteroid belt. Where’s the
supposed problem? Let’s begin by recalling that modern philosophy has been rich in so-called
“representationalist” theories of truth, referring to the view that when we open our eyes and look at
the world we do not see things, but representations of things. John Locke is one of the most
prominent representationalist philosophers, and Richard Rorty one of the best-known antirepresentationalists. 53 The case for representationalism has numerous detractors, though it is rather
simple: note that while fire is able to burn forests and cook food, fire as an image in my mind cannot
do either of these things. Accordingly, we can think of our relation to the world as an act of
translation, one in which we render the forms of the world in terms that are relevant to humans. But
dogs also see the world in a doggish way, parrots in a way of their own, and so forth. The result is
that no living creature makes direct contact with the world, but only an indirect contact that is
distinct to their species, and perhaps even to each animal individually. All that we encounter directly
is a representation of reality. The German philosopher Markus Gabriel dismisses this as “interface
skepticism.” 54 But many philosophers still defend a representationalist theory, myself included: in my
case for the simple reason that a perfect perception or perfect mathematical of fire is not itself a fire.
Nor can we say that the difference is simply that real fire exists in something calls “matter,” while
John Locke, An Essy Concerning Human Understanding, 2 vols.; Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature.
54
Markus Gabriel, Fields of Sense, p. 14.
53
29
�my idea of fire is a “form” extracted from matter. No one has ever seen or encountered such a thing
as “matter,” except in the relative sense that clay is a kind of matter for making bricks, though
compared with its smaller constituents is form rather than matter. As I see it, the main historical
motivation for theories of matter was to create a neutral medium of support in which forms can
exist and then be extracted by the mind without alteration. I would propose instead that reality is
nothing but forms wrapped in forms, sealed in forms, frozen in forms, and that these forms are
always subject to translation when moving from one place to another.
In any case, if representationalism is true, then it cannot be limited to creatures with minds.
Why not? Because inanimate objects are every bit as finite as humans, even if they are not
“conscious” in the way that animals are. The term “finitude” is used by Martin Heidegger in his
interpretation of Kant, as a way of defending the view that humans cannot touch reality directly. 55
Let’s consider for a minute why finitude is so important. The ecological philosopher Jakob Johan
von Uexküll made a powerful argument that even though all living creatures in a given region share
the same surroundings (Umgebung), they do not share the same environment (Umwelt). 56 This differs
for each creature, depending on its capacities. His most famous example is the tick, that infamous
parasite that falls from trees and sucks the blood of its host; one of them nearly killed my father last
year.
According to Uexküll, the tick’s entire environment consists of just three factors: first, it
senses butyric acid, found in the sweat of mammals, and this causes it to loosen its grip on the tree
and fall onto the mammal; second, it uses its sense of heat to find a place on the mammal’s body
where blood is close to the surface; third, it uses its sense of touch to bite though the skin and suck
the blood of its host. Such limited horizons for this creature! But while humans have a much richer
55
56
Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.
Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.
30
�existence than this, we are still confined (as in Kant’s philosophy) to perceiving three dimensions of
space, a linear and irreversible time, and events that have causes rather than appearing at random.
Although many people can be persuaded to accept the theory of finitude in the cases of
humans and animals, they tend to recoil in horror if asked to view inanimate things in the same way.
Am I claiming that stones and dust have minds? But that’s not the point. The point is that nothing
like a “mind” is needed to interact with the world in a finite, limited way. If the tick’s existence
seems sadly limited, try to imagine the even sadder state of a flame when encountering a cotton ball.
The flame is presumably not “conscious,” yet it still interacts with a very limited range of the cotton
ball’s features: namely, the ones that are relevant to the its flammability. In other words, the flame is
still finite rather than infinite in its interactions with the world, just like living creatures. It follows
that no thing makes direct contact with another thing, but only with a restricted sample of its
properties. From this we see that one discrete entity cannot make full direct contact with another; an
interface of some sort must be involved. The same is true of the discrete points placed in a
continuum, such as the numbers on a number line. We can never specify two numbers that directly
touch on the number line, because an infinity of numbers can always be placed between any two
given numbers. Since no two discrete entities can ever touch, they must somehow become continuous in
order to touch.
And here is where the unusual speculations begin. I would say that there are two different
ways in which entities become continuous with each other: let’s call them “exterior” and “interior.”
The exterior way is the one we usually think of. Two things in the world meet and somehow affect
each other, or maybe just one affects the other. I once wrote an article about the grim scenario of a
midair collison between two airplanes. 57 The way I interpreted this event was not in the usual way, as
a physical impact between two independent pieces of material, but as the temporary unification of
57
Graham Harman, “Time, Space, Essence, and Eidos.”
31
�the two aircraft into a single substance. This new substance then had grave downward causation on
its parts before they quickly separated, in new and severely damaged form.
Such downward causation (often called “retroactive causation”) has been explored by such
philosophers as Manuel DeLanda and Roy Bhaskar. DeLanda speaks of the “mechanisms through
which a whole provides its component parts with constraints and resources, placing limitations on what
they can do while enabling novel performances.” 58 Bhaskar, for his part, declares that wholes are
“capable of acting back on the materials out of which they are formed.” 59 This gives us another
reason not to undermine things by dissolving them into their tiniest pieces, since the whole will
always haunt the elements of which it was made. We need only consider that Steve Jobs was one of
the two original founders who built Apple from the ground up, only to see himself fired by the
corporation in 1985. Or think of the way that a bomb (the whole) destroys its components (the
parts). Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the constraints with which organisms try to rule their
component cells, with cancer marking an unfortunate failure of this process. 60
The point of these discussions of downward causation has been to shift our focus to what
happens on the inside of objects I mentioned earlier that Leibniz would become important for us
tonight, and that moment has come. For who has ever given a more serious theory than Leibniz, not
just of how substances seem from the outside, but of what goes on in their interior where all their
perceptions occur. But I am arguing for something a bit different. Let’s say that I perceive a flower.
According to the representationalist theory of truth, it is fair to say that we perceive not a flower, but
a flower-image. The flower may also encounter some oversimplified version of me, but let’s leave
that topic for another occasion. Following the claim about two objects becoming one through
causation (however briefly), both the flower and I the observer are parts of a larger object. In cases
DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society, pp. 34-35. See also Graham Harman, “DeLanda’s Ontology.”
Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, p. 114. Cited in DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society, p. 34.
60
Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, p. 695.
58
59
32
�of hallucination or severe misperception there would be no real flower to which its image
correspinds, but this also does not concern us at the moment. In any case, I the observer and the
flower-image are both positioned inside the larger object made of us both, as if in the hollow of a
tree or the interior of a building. We can call this interior a “sphere” in tribute to the contemporary
German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who built an entire worldview from the notion of isolated yet
interlocking spheres, beginning from the initial mother-child dyad and growing outward from
there. 61 Of course, I do not just encounter the image of a flower in this sphere, but the images of
many things simultaneously: flower, mountain, dog, sunset; this may or may not be a special feature
of living beings, but this topic too must be left for another time. Initially at least, I am just perceiving
these images without anything further happening. We might call this interaction it a modus vivendi, in
the sense of finding a way to get along with something or someone, pending final resolution of
whatever tensions might be present.
Along with Sloterdijk’s term “sphere,” we can also borrow the related term “atmosphere”
from another German philosopher, the recently deceased Gernot Böhme. (Leibniz, Sloterdijk,
Böhme: it’s interesting that so many German names are linked with the interior of entities.) In any
case, atmosphere refers to the general ambience of a situation, as opposed to whatever individual
things might happen to occupy it. 62 Amidst our modus vivendi with numerous images at any given
moment, there is also the more general ambience in which all theae images are bathed. A knife
means something very different in such atmospheres as a supermarket deli, a cutlery store, a stage
play, or a beach. Our immediate contact is not with the knife-image, but with the atmospheric
Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres, 3 vols. His theorization of the mother-child relationship makes it as crucial for
philosophy as Melanie Klein (1882-1960) did for psychoanalysis. See Melanie Klein, The Psychoanalysis of
Children.
62
Gernot Böhme, The Aesthetics of Atmospheres.
61
33
�continuum that allows me to touch that image in differing ways. 63 Here we find the figure-ground
structure of Gestalt pyschology. These opposite terms distinguish between whatever in the visual
field grabs our attention and commands our interest (figure), and the more amorphous remainder
that does not capture our attention (ground). Stated more simply, it is the experience of architectural
interiors, with their dual character as atmosphere and legible surface. What makes this figure-ground
structure so important is that I am a discrete entity and the flower-image is a discrete entity, meaning
(according to the argument of this lecture) that we should not be able to make contact at all. But all
images appear in a more general atmosphere, and this is characterized by its continuity, which serves
as the medium for me to perceive the flower.
But, as mentioned, our modus vivendi with various images is not just an endpoint, but also a
potential beginning. Since we are surrounded by images rather than the things themselves, we seem
to be trapped in a world of phantoms; worse yet, these phantoms might even seem to be nothing
more than “bundles of qualities” (in Hume’s sense) rather than unified images. 64 In other words, we
are usually confined to a literalist world. I take Hume to be the arch-literalist, since literalism is the
attitude of taking a thing to be identical with whatever sum total of qualities it possesses. Strictly
speaking, if an object changes its qualities even a little bit from one moment to the next, it has
become a different object altogether, since the bundle is no longer the same. This was rejected in
advance by Aristotle, with his meditation on substance and accident; Socrates and Socrates sitting
down are indeed the same substance. But it is seldom recognized that it was also rejected by
phenomenology in the twentieth century. Edmund Husserl does not agree at all that an object is a
bundle of qualities: quite the contrary, since a thing can show us numerous adumbrations, qualities,
See also the related notion of “levels” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 114 and
Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative, p. 5.
64
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
63
34
�or profiles while still remaining one and the same object. 65 Stated differently, both Aristotle and
Husserl allow for a dualism of object and quality that Hume could not even consider permitting.
But an even better way to de-literalize the world is seen in the case of metaphor, which I
take to be of the greatest importance for philosophy. When one thing is metaphorically compared
with another, there will of course be some basis in shared qualities, since otherwise we will not
compare them. But there’s more to it than that, since the closer the similarity between two things,
the less likely there is to be a metaphorical relation between them. For example, during the Cold War
NATO used the term “Whiskey Class” to refer to more than 200 Soviet medium multi-purpose
submarines. But the stark similarities between all these Soviet watercraft (the use of diesel-electric
power, the carrying of four cruise missiles) gives us nothing more than a literal comparison; we are
focused on shared bundles of qualities, and solemnly judge that all of the submarines fall under the
Whiskey Class rubric. Conversely, if we compare two random objects with few or no shared
qualities, we will be too confused to have a metaphorical experience: for example, “a jellyfish is like
ten miles of asphalt highway.” Try as we might, it is not very likely that we will be able to mentally
perform this strange hybrid being.
Yet how different things are with metaphor, omne of my favorite being Homer’s “wine-dark
sea.” This cannot be paraphrased as if Homer were saying: “Have you ever noticed that the
Mediterranean is the same color as wine?” That paraphrase would perhaps be false, and in any case
would be rather boring. Instead, the trivial fact of their similar color is used as a pretext to identify
the sea and the wine more generally. We will think of the sea as having a number of other wineproperties: intoxication, danger, and oblivion come to mind, though no metaphor can ever be
exhausted by a prose list of similarities between objects. Note as well that unlike literal statements,
metaphors are irreversible. We can also say “sea-dark wine,” and this too is a metaphor, but not the
65
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2 vols.
35
�same one. In the first case we have a sea with wine-qualities, and in this second case we are speaking
of a wine with sea-qualities. In other words, in “wine-dark sea,” the sea is playing the object role, and
the wine is playing the qualities role.
To strip the qualities away from one object and force them onto another necessarily creates a
certain tension. We have a more or less vivid sense of what the qualities of wine are, but no real
sense of what a wine-like sea would be, since it is being produced in this metaphor for the very first
time. This requires an intense personal effort that is usually foreign to literal statements; this effort
draws us into the act of creating a new object in our minds. And since the wine-like sea is so elusive,
we step in and perform it ourselves, as if we were a wine trying to shoulder the burden of sea-like
qualities. We are like method actors pretending to be a rock, a tree, or a mafia don, with the added
complication that we are not just pretending to be the sea, but also a sea with wine-qualities.
The mental effort required to compress the various unspecified wine-qualities into the empty
form of a masean helps explain the more powerful emotions that result from metaphorical
experience than from literal statement: in the metaphor, our entire being is wrapped up in trying to
create the wine-dark sea. In the terms of speech act theory, it is a performative experience rather
than a constative one: a statement that is not a mere description of fact, but one that implicates me
in its consequences. I am no longer the jaded perceiver who places the image of a sea side-by-side
with the image of wine. Instead, I have been causally impacted by my performance of the wine-like
sea. The literalism of my modus vivendi with images has been replaced with with a new version of me,
even if temporarily so. This is the role played by the object/quality polarity that literalism denies.
The philosophy of recent centuries has often asked us to conceive of human beings as
transcending the world around us, rising above it so as to make critical assessments of the world
rather than naively dealing with it. I would say instead that transcendence is the wrong metaphor for
what we do. A better one is to say that we are like moles tunneling through the interiors of objects,
36
�and leaving one only so as to enter another. We are more defined by what we take seriously in our
modus vivendi than by what we rise above. It may seem like we are now a long way from Aristotle, but
it was his great heir Leibniz who drove us more than halfway to where we are now. I now look
forward to discussing these matters with you. Thank you.
37
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�
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Footnotes to Aristotle
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 13, 2024, by Graham Harman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Professor Harman is an alum of the Annapolis campus of St. John's. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the Liberal Arts Co-Ordinator at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, with teaching stops around the world focused on philosophical thinking, architecture, and art. He has repeatedly been included on ArtReview’s Power 100 list of the most influential figures in the contemporary art world.
Dr. Harman gives the following description of his lecture: "The title of this lecture is a riff on Alfred North Whitehead's famous remark that Western philosophy can be considered as a series of footnotes to Plato. The lecture will interpret the difference between Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics as a difference between the continuous and the discrete, and will seek to develop further Aristotle's notion of "contact" as how two things meet (thereby bridging the gap between the continuous and the discrete)."
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Harman, Graham, 1968-
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
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Aristotle. Physics.
Aristotle. Metaphysics.
Philosophy
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LEC_Harman_Graham_2024-09-13
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<a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7977">Video</a>
Alumni
Friday night lecture
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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<a href="https://youtu.be/ZDL2_UzYup4?si=6FuJucfv1oAxOri3">Pursuing the Tiniest Bits of Matter: The Legacy of Democritus from Quarks to Cancer</a>
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on October 18, 2024, by Cynthia Keppel as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />
<div>
<div>Dr.<span> </span><span class="markizagi5dmw">Keppel</span>, a St. John's Annapolis alum, leads the Physics Division at Jefferson Labs, where she and her colleagues study the structure and dynamics of the fundamental building blocks of matter. She is both a nuclear physicist and a cancer researcher, with numerous patents and scientific publications across both fields. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dr.<span> </span><span class="markizagi5dmw">Keppel</span><span> </span>offers the following description of her lecture: "Humans for ages have pondered the question 'what is everything made of?' I will discuss why physicists have for centuries been interested in this question and pursue understanding of the tiniest particles known to humankind, and how an understanding of these particles continues to advance a breadth of human knowledge and endeavor."</div>
</div>
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Keppel, C. (Cynthia), 1962-
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-10-18
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Atomism
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Democritus, approximately 460 B.C.-approximately 370 B.C.
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English
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LEC_Keppel_Cynthia_2024-10-18_ac
Alumni
Friday night lecture
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7e49dffe8bcaf732df79ede319512000.mp4
2f34209fda31748f510d7178672d2c1b
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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00:59:49
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The Philosophical Challenge of Early Art
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on November 8, 2024, by Allen Speight as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />
<div>Professor<span> </span><span class="markoxbyg8qa4">Speight</span><span> </span>(SJC Annapolis, 1984) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Admissions at Boston University, with a teaching focus on the philosophy of art and culture. Alongside his interest in early art, he has written extensively on Hegel and German Ideology, and is a previous Fullbright Professor of Leuphana Universität Lüneburg in Germany. His most recent book was as co-editor and contributor on<span> </span><i>Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Philosophy<span> </span></i>(2020).</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Professor<span> </span><span class="markoxbyg8qa4">Speight</span><span> </span>offers this introduction to his lecture: "Since the modern discovery of Paleolithic cave art in 1879, scholars have pondered its origin and significance. The remarkable paintings and etchings that line the walls of caves at Altamira, Lascaux and Chauvet and hundreds of other sites around the world prompt both wonder and reflection: what can images produced tens of thousands of years ago tell us about the nature of human making and our responses to it? This lecture will explore a range of philosophical questions posed by early art, including the nature of mimesis, the roles of sight and touch, and the relation between symbol and figurative art."</div>
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Speight, Allen
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-11-08
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moving image
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mp4
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Art, Prehistoric
Rock paintings
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English
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LEC_Speight_Allen_2024-11-08_ac
Alumni
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/441ed53c308a67d455ac90da286577d3.pdf
675a1025b70141d87c4dc16b8388ad85
PDF Text
Text
The Erotic Theme in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War
Paul Ludwig
Lecture presented at St. John's College, Annapolis
December 5, 2003
Thucydides' account of the war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians is
unromantic. There are a couple of places in the history where matters having to do with
love-or at least sex-pop up. For reasons he leaves us to figure out, Thucydides thinks it
very important that-near the peak of their civilization's development-the Greeks started to
exercise naked, while the barbarians never did. \Vhen we imagine how strange it would be to
go jogging with no visible means of support, or to wrestle, doing takedowns and throws and
half-nelsons in the buff, we can agree with Thucydides that such behavior is at least
distinctive. In addition to this brief encounter with Greek nudity, the history describes in
detail one person-to-person love affair: the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the
legendary founders of the democracy at Athens, a daring couple that slew the tyrant.
Thucydides debunks this founding myth. A very widespread interpretation would have it that
the way Thucydides debunks Harmodius and Aristogeiton is by exposing their erotic
relationship; that is, he reveals that their tyrannicide was motivated not by a public desire for
liberty but by a private, personal, perhaps even tawdry, love affair. I'm going to argue against
this interpretation, but it seems to be too many readers' first take. The short refutation is that
the Athenians already knew that Harmodius and Aristogeiton were lovers. (So the alleged
expose was not news to anyone.) The Athenians seem not to have denigrated but celebrated
the fact that their love broke out of the private realm and spilled over into public affairs.
Apparently, love wasn't supposed to be merely private at all-and this idea might fit together
with their public nudity. The very greatest exponent of the most highly sophisticated version
of a public love affair is Pericles himself in the Funeral Oration: Pericles exhorts each citizen
to carry on an erotic affair with the city of Athens. And starting with Pericles, I will try to
1
�show tonight that the theme of eros is a thread running throughout much of the history. And
that if you pull at this thread tenaciously enough, eros opens up Thucydides' work like only a
few other themes can, and the history yields up some of its riches.
Pericles in the Funeral Oration is making the case that the citizen-soldiers who risked
(and lost) their lives for Athens made the right choice. It is for the living to be dedicated to
the same spirit, albeit they may pray for a safer outcome for themselves. Eros is going to be
his key to making this case. (In the following passage I have broken a couple of the lines like
poetry to show a rhetorical parallelism; there is no line break in the original).
Do not in word alone inspect the profit-which anyone could expound at length to
you who know it yourselves no worse than he, telling how many good things depend upon
defense against enemies,
but rather, actively contemplate [theomenoi] the power of the city, day after day, and
become lovers [erastai] of it [the power or: "of her," Athens], and when she seems great to you,
take it to heart that daring men, men who knew what was needful, and who, in their actions, were
sensible of dishonor, acquired these things; and if they ever failed in an attempt, they deemed it
unworthy to deprive the city of their excellence, but gave themselves away as their finest favor to
her. (2.43.1)
Inspecting profit or benefits-what your country can do for you-remains on the level of
calculation; profit could never inspire a citizen to lay down his life. A disinterested
contemplation of the power of the city and her grandeur evoke an emotion very different from
the ordinary human desire for gain. Contemplation evokes eros and tum the citizens into
lovers, erastai-the same word Plato will use in the Symposium and other dialogues to mean
men who fall in love with boys and trail around after their beloveds hoping to get a smile or a
wave, some token or sign that the beloveds acknowledge their existence. What Pericles
means by "lovers" is not merely citizens who feel love or eros toward an unusual object-a
city. Rather, he's asking them, on the basis of this unusual eros that they will feel, to play, in
relation to the city, the social role that lovers play toward a beloved. They are to serve her
chivalrously, sacrifice for her, perhaps die on her behalf (the way Greek lovers fighting side
2
�by side sometimes died for one another), and, in this game of courtship, compete for her
favors, and rival one another to show her which of her lovers is the most worthy.
Neither of the two motivations mentioned, profit or eros, which are on such vastly
different levels, asks the citizen to make an unself-interested or altruistic sacrifice, as for
example an appeal to duty might have done. Instead, the last word in the passage, favoreranos or contribution, is a service done in hopes of a return. Few cavaliers rescue the damsel
in distress out of sheer philanthropy: they want their virtue noticed, they want to be rewarded
handsomely, perhaps even to be loved back: they want at least a kiss on the cheek. So what
do Pericles' citizen-soldiers get in return? Pericles almost implies that, at the highest level of
this sort of love, the pleasure of contemplating Athens might suffice. Love is enough. But his
explicit statement of what citizen-soldiers get in return is honors bestowed on them by the
city. The dead, he says, "won praise which never grows old" (2.43.2).
That the lover of Athens gets something out of it, namely honor, is important because
this unusual form of patriotism that Pericles envisions, this civic passion of eros, has to
compete against, and win out over, the other desire he mentioned, the desire for profit or gain,
as well as other common, low, or merely selfish desires. An important word in Greek for low,
selfish attachments generally is oikeion or oikeia: "one's own." The word is related to the
words for house and home, and often means private matters as contrasted with public affairs.
[Our leaders] have a care for their own private matters [oikeia] at the same time as political
affairs, while the rest, people with permanent jobs, have no small understanding of politics.
And the man who refuses to participate in politics? We alone [among the Greeks] do not
consider him to be minding his own business but rather to be simply useless. (2.40.2)
Pericles assumes a distinction between the few and the many, a distinction that Athenian
democracy may have transcended. The normal assumption is that wealthy statesmen, who do
not have to work for a living (they don't have "permanent jobs"), neglect their own (ta
oikeia), that is, their homes and families, in favor of the public good. Ordinary folk, on the
3
�other hand, are assumed to be too self-centered and intent on private gain to care much about,
or sacrifice much for, the common weal. Pericles characterizes Athenian democracy as
breaking down this distinction, since all have a share in ruling. The many, who are not
independently wealthy and for whom private gain is therefore a major concern, are expected
to break out of their selfishness and participate politically. The key to doing that is not grimly
to undertake to fulfill their patriotic duty, but rather to open themselves to the experience of a
kind of patriotism that is a falling-in-love, and which is intended to be a joy.
Achieving this higher love does not mean suppressing the lower desires. That is how
the Spartans regard duty to country. At Sparta, someone is always watching you. Male
Spartans rarely retreat behind closed doors to see their own families because they sleep in a
kind of men's club. The amount of private property they are supposed to own is fixed. With
Spartans being in many respects deprived of the private, the city is all that they have left.
Athens reverses all this. Pericles' chief claim is that laws suppressing the private are
unnecessary for Athenians, who, unlike the Spartans, can be trusted with a wide freedom in
their private lives (2.37.2-3) and yet will still, when the time comes, freely and willingly risk
their own for the common good (2.39.4). Athens therefore achieves the same (or better) civic
sacrifices as Sparta does, but at less cost to her citizens' humanity (2.39.1). Pericles says that
Athenians can be trusted with acquisitiveness not only in their desire for beautiful things and
in their pursuit of wisdom, but even in pursuing wealth itself (2.40.1). Athenians know how
to keep wealth in its place: money has no political significance because voting rights are not
restricted to wealthy property-owners (2.3 7.1 ). The poor in Athens are not prevented from
working their way out of poverty; indeed, they are positively shamed into doing so (2.40.1).
Where Spartans are taught how to endure pain, the Athenians substitute the freedom to act in
accordance with pleasure (2.37.2). Only the self-sacrifice of people who have something to
give up, who have "a clear knowledge of the pleasures" that they risk losing, is truly
admirable (2.40.3). For a Spartan to embrace pain merely because he has never been allowed
to experience anything better is not real courage.
4
�Why can the Athenians be trusted with pleasures and with acquisitiveness? Because
they are acquisitive of a higher pleasure:
The love of honor [to philotimon] alone never grows old, and the better enjoyment ... is not
material gain as some say, but receiving honor (to timasthai, 2.44.4).
In the cases of the ones who died, specifically the enjoyment of riches and the hope of
enriching themselves later in life did not stand in the way ofrisking their lives now (2.42.4).
This was not because wealth is not a good, but because honor is a greater good. Moderating
the lower desires does not mean suppressing them but rather allowing a higher desire to
override the lower ones.
Can this Athenian freedom to follow one's heart truly permit the higher love-object,
the city, to lure Athenians away from the attachment to their own? According to Pericles, the
answer is Yes: freedom has been quite effective at enabling ordinary Athenians to see that
"their own" is not the highest good. Here it might help to introduce another term, the opposite
of oikeion-the allotrion, meaning the alien, not one's own, but the other's. Pericles shows
how Athenians are better fighters than other Greeks are with (I think) less exaggeration than
might first appear. Pericles assumes that the general run of humanity all fight harder in
defense of their own home soil than they fight on foreign soil, when they come as invaders in
someone else's land. The peculiar virtue of Athenians, according to Pericles, is that
... invading the [land] of our neighbors we fight without difficulty on alien ground [en tei
allotriai] against men who are defending themselves in the midst of their own fperi ton
oikeion] and for the most part we conquer. (2.39.2)
In their fighting, at least, the Athenians have overcome the distinction between home and
abroad, between "one's own" and "the other's." Nor is this distinction erased only in their
fighting. Look what Pericles says about the foreign goods and foreign commodities that come
into the Athenian marketplace, the hub of a vast naval empire:
5
�On account of the stature of our city, all things come into her from every land; whence it
happens that for us, reaping the goods produced here is no more familiar [oikeiotera, "no
more our own"] an enjoyment than reaping those of other people. (2.38.3)
Athenians love foreign goods, and perhaps even foreign fashions, at least as much as they love
their own. This brings up a distinction between two senses of the oikeion, one's own. Earlier,
we saw how private individuals were supposed to allow the love of the community to override
their attachment to their own. We now seem to be talking about Athenians allowing what is
good but foreign to override (or at least to take a place in their hearts equal to) their love for
Athenian goods. As the individual is one among many in the community, so the community is
one among many in the world. In the first sense of oikeion, a higher entity (Athens) overrides
individual "ownness." In this second sense of oikeion, a yet higher entity (the whole world)
overrides Athenian "ownness"-overrides Athenianness. Perhaps Athenianness will
henceforth mean universality. Iif so, that would fit together with Greek public nudity againwearing no clothes, shedding all that is not natural, letting go of all that is merely customary,
local, or parochial.
For Athens to become universal, to embrace the whole world, could occur in at least
two different ways. First, Athens could try to take over the world. It is true that the patriotism
Pericles envisions goes hand in hand with imperialism. To be worthy of winning the kind of
love the citizens are supposed to feel for her, Athens is practically compelled to go forth and
struggle with other cities to prove that she is the fairest of them all. One of the clearest
statements of this imperialism is
we have forced every sea and land to become the highway of our daring, and everywhere we
have set up eternal [aidia] monuments to both good and evil. (2.41.4)
The etemality of the monuments means that after Athens is gone, people will still be talking
about Athenians, just as we are still talking about them tonight. Thus the honor that Athens
6
�wins for her citizens goes beyond locally-conferred honor; it has an international aspect and
expands to encompass honors from all over the world.
For the whole world is the tomb of illustrious men, and not only does the epitaph on
gravestones signal it in their own land [en tei oikeiai]; but also, in lands not belonging to
them, there dwells an unwritten marker in every mind if not in fact. (2.43.2-3)
But this imperial way of becoming universal would seem to be at odds with becoming truly
universal. Imperialism might mean imposing one set oflocal or parochial customs on the
whole world. A belligerent imperialism would make the rest of the world like Athens. An
alternative way of becoming universal would make Athens like the rest of the world. This
second way was just barely suggested by Pericles' boast that reaping Athenian goods was an
experience no more "their own" than reaping other people's goods. It was a hint that
Athenians might be desirous of bringing the rest of the world to Athens rather than bringing
Athenianness to the rest of the world. In any case, it now appears that letting a higher desire
override a lower desire involves a principle that could set in motion a process the end of
which would be difficult to predict. It is one thing if our love for our community overrides the
love of our "own." It is quite another thing if some love for a yet higher entity overrides our
love for our community, for that would seem to entail a loss or weakening of our patriotism.
But inspiring a more intelligent patriotism that would unlock the true sources of patriotic
service was the main point of the Funeral Oration; awakening patriotic service was the whole
point of making patriotism erotic, the whole point of placing love of country on this sliding
scale of loves-of higher loves that override lower loves-in the first place. So if a love
higher than patriotism is now overriding patriotism, we may have to raise questions about
what Pericles thinks he is doing in the Funeral Oration.
The thread we have been following about eros and the oikeion, one's own, silently
connects the book 2 Funeral Oration with a book 1 speech delivered by the Corinthians at the
Peloponnesian congress. At this congress, the Corinthians try to convince Sparta to declare
7
�war on Athens. The Corinthians give voice to one of the questions we have been pursuing:
just how effective the freedom to follow one's heart has been at overcoming the distinction
between "one's own" and "the other's," between home and abroad, in the Athenian mind.
Very effective, the Corinthians say, and strange and dangerous too. The Corinthians
characterize the Athenians in the following way:
In their city's behalf, they treat their bodies as if completely alienated from them [allotriotata].
And on deeds in her behalf they use their intellect, though it is their ownmost [oikeiotate].
(1.70.6)
The Corinthians are astonished by the Athenians' reversal of all ordinary assumptions. Body
is the Corinthians' definition of an individual's "own." The body is the only possession that
cannot be given away or alienated without also destroying the individual himself. Yet
Athenians behave as if bodies were held in common. The Corinthians are also astonished by
the fact that Athenians regard their minds as their "ownmost." Mind can be made to conform
with the common: minds can all register the same idea at the same time; hence the success of
the mind control exercised at Sparta. Athenians, by contrast, are allowed the freedom to
exercise their own minds to the fullest extent, and yet somehow their minds still tum back to
the public good ("They use their intellect on deeds in her behalf, even though it is their
ownmost"). In both body and mind, the Athenians treat their own as if it were everyone
else's. But this reversal of expectations about one's own and the other's link up with the
imperial foreign policy we were discussing before. Just as, domestically or vis-a-vis fellow
citizens, the Athenians treat their own as if it were everyone else's, so in their imperial
policies do they have the disconcerting habit of considering other people's property their own
before they have even taken it:
When they fail to prosecute their schemes, they feel deprived of what is their own [oikeia].
But when they do invade and acquire something, they regard it a small deed compared with
things to come. . . . For them alone, hoping and having are the same ....
(1.70.7, emphasis added)
8
�The match-up between Sparta and Athens, say the Corinthians, is one between stick-at-homes
and people who essentially live abroad (apodemetai, 1.70.4). Apparently, the Spartans see
only their own. The Athenians have lost the exclusivity of that attachment to what was
originally their own; they now see the whole earth as their own.
This erotic patriotism that we learn about in the Funeral Oration, this courtship style of
citizenship, undergoes an implicit critique in the remainder of the history. I stress implicit
because the fault is nowhere attributed to Pericles. Thucydides' explicit judgment of Pericles
is very high praise, and it might be said that Pericles' management of affairs was better, more
prudent, than his own Funeral Oration. But as we'll see, there is a point-by-point
conformality in later events (especially the events surrounding the Sicilian expedition) that all
look back to the Funeral Oration as the place in the history where erotic citizenship first
becomes aware of itself or first becomes a consciously-chosen project.
Between the book 2 Funeral Oration and the book 6 Sicilian expedition, there
intervene at least two major places where the erotic thread becomes discernible, and while we
do not have adequate time to spend on them, it would be remiss not to look briefly at one of
the great speeches in the history, by the otherwise unknown orator Diodotus in the debate over
the fate of the Mytilenians, who had rebelled against the Empire. Diodotus' opponent is
Cleon, one of the leading politicians after Pericles' death, one of those politicians of whom
Thucydides says, in his eulogy of Pericles, that they were more on a level with one another,
and therefore had to cater to the pleasures of the people in order to stay in power. In this
debate, Cleon is in favor of massacring the entire adult male population of the rebel city
Mytilene and selling the women and children into slavery. Diodotus is arguing against this
genocide. Forget about justice, Diodotus says in effect, all is fair in love: the Mytilenians
rebelled because they were acting under the influence of an erotic passion for liberty. Capital
punishment in such a case is ineffectual, he says, because greater forces are at work in human
nature than any rational deterrent. "It is absolutely impossible-and the mark of great
9
�simplemindedness to think-that there is any hindering, whether by strength of laws or other
fear, human nature rushing eagerly to commit an act." Men are driven to take risks because
they are mastered by something ineradicable (or "incurable"). And what masters them is
hope and eros everywhere, the latter leading, the former following on-[eros] conceiving the
plot, [hope] guaranteeing the resources for a good fortune--do the greatest harm and, though
invisible themselves, are stronger than visible terrors. And fortune in addition to these
contributes no less to the excitement: unlooked-for, she is there, leading men on to gamble
with inferior means, and this is no less the case with cities, in proportion as they concern the
greatest things: freedom and empire .... (3.45.5-6)
If we are to believe Diodotus, eros is more widespread in political affairs than we imagined.
Athens with her erotic citizenship would only be making use of---or arousing-erotic passions
that could be awakened in any city to a greater or lesser degree. Just as individuals under the
influence of eros will gamble their livelihood and sometimes their lives, entire cities are now
said to experience a communal erotic passion, and cities will gamble everything, risking even
the political annihilation Cleon has in store for them, when faced with the greatest
temptations. The great prospect of winning their freedom tempts the Mytilenians to gamble.
The other great temptation is said to be the prospect of ruling over other cities as an imperial
power. It is difficult not to apply Diodotus' concept of eros to the temptation which the
Athenians themselves will later undergo: the temptation to increase their empire by
undertaking the Sicilian expedition.
In the seventeenth year of a war in which they were having trouble holding on to the
empire they already possessed, the Athenians begin to debate whether to sail against Syracuse
in Sicily in order to win a whole new empire. This was precisely the kind of new acquisition
that Pericles had warned them against: his strategy was, don't do anything foolish, Athens will
easily outlast Sparta in this war. But we will have to consider whether Pericles' warning was
10
�not unrealistic in view of the erotic passion that Pericles had made use of-or perhaps
aroused-in the Athenians. It could be argued that eros was a cat let out of the bag,
something which must take its course whether Pericles was around or not, while the success
of Pericles' conservative strategy and his warning were dependent on Pericles' being around.
But Pericles died of the plague just two and a half years into the war.
The debate over the Sicilian expedition pits the conservative Nicias against the
flamboyant, young, beautiful and imperialistic relative of Pericles: Alcibiades. Nicias warns
the older Athenians that their young men, meaning young men like Alcibiades, are infected by
eros, or rather by dyserotes: dysfunctional or "sick" loves for (as he says) far-away things
(6.13.1). To his way oflooking at it, the young Athenians no longer love their own; they love
places and things that are far away. But when Alcibiades and the pro-expedition side seem to
be getting the better of the debate, Nicias reverses course and pretends to support the mission.
He hopes to dissuade the assembly by staggering them with the immense cost needed to equip
his vision of a vast, unsinkable armada (6.24.1-2; cf. 6.21-3). Contrary to his intention,
however, contemplating that vision of their own military might awakens the desire to use it
(cf. 6.31.1 ). This is the moment when it happens:
Eros fell upon all alike to sail forth. [It fell] upon the elders, [who thought] that either they
would subdue whatever they sailed against or that a great force would in no way be
overthrown. [It fell] upon the young men through a longing for far-away sights and spectacles
[ops is kai theoria], being of good hope, as they were, of corning back safe. And the great
multitude and the soldier intended to earn money, in the short run, and besides that to acquire
power whence wages might accrue to them eternally [aidion]. (6.24.3)
This passage brings together, into a coherent whole, many of the things said earlier about eros
by Nicias, Diodotus, and Pericles. First, just as Nicias said shortly before, the young men do
indeed fall in love with far-away things, not with their own country. Second, Thucydides
notices an optical or contemplative aspect: opsis and theoria. This contemplative eros, their
desire to look at Sicily, corresponds to Pericles' exhortation to gaze at (theomenoi) or
11
�contemplate their own city. Third, the "good hope" or hopefulness following close on after
eros, answers to Diodotus' description: eros leading, hope following on. The Corinthians, too,
although they did not know they were talking about eros, remarked this hopeful character of
the Athenians: hoping and having are the same to them. Fourth (and a great deal turns on this
interpretation), the eternal wages seem to answer ironically Pericles' Funeral Oration: what
was supposed to be a desire for eternal (aidia) monuments becomes a desire for eternal
(aidion) gain. The gain or profit that eros was supposed to override now becomes one of the
main motives in the erotic Athenian policy toward Sicily. Whether or not these echoes are
deliberate, this passage seems to contain the outcome of Pericles' project. The liberation of
acquisitiveness did not permit all Athenians to raise their sights; it did not enable them to seek
to acquire higher things. The mass of people never liberated themselves from the desire for
material gain. Now, there are three classes mentioned in the passage: the old, the young, and
the multitude. I'm going to skip the old men: they are concerned primarily with security;
interpreting their eros is complicated and depends on a close reading of the speeches in the
debate. Perhaps we will have time for the old men in the question period. I'm going to treat
the young and the multitude one at a time. First, the multitude.
Not the higher love of a beautiful Athens, but what Athens can do for them, motivates
the majority of Athenians. Not only can they not leave profit and their own behind for a
higher love of Athens, but profit is their number one concern. Each intends to use Athens'
military might to ensure his own source of income in perpetuity. Private gain, as opposed to
the common good, is leading Athens on a fatal path. We recall that the ordinary distinction
between the honor-loving few and the gain-loving many was a distinction that Athenian
democracy was supposed to have transcended. Pericles had implied that honor was the higher
pleasure not only for the elites but for every Athenian. Probably the wealthy elites of Athens
did indeed desire honors more than profit. Since the elites were wealthy already, they could
afford to seek honors rather than profits. Thucydides' judgment on how the war was lost
singles out these two culprits, profits and honor, and he seems to divide again the classes that
12
�Pericles had united. Thucydides writes that the Athenians conducted their policies in
accordance with "private honor-loving and private gain" (2.65.7). There was of course a
notable example of a wealthy man who was motivated by both of these desires, and that was
Alcibiades, who needed both money and reputation, the money to support the reputation
(6.15.2-3). But conducting war for private monetary gain is the special contribution of the
masses to Athens' fall.
But a single group of Athenians, the elite young men of the officer class (officers
because the passage distinguishes them as a separate social and economic group from the
great multitude and the soldier) did indeed achieve a contemplative eros worthy of, if not
identical to, what Pericles had envisioned. Thucydides does not describe the eros of the elite
young men, at this crucial moment of the Sicilian expedition, as a desire for honor or selfglorification, despite that most notable exception among them: the honor-loving Alcibiades.
Instead, he records the peculiarly open, militarily useless motive of sight-seeing. They desired
to see "far-off sights and spectacles." The word that Thucydides chooses to describe the
young men's passion to see, theoria, properly means a "spectator event," including theatrical
performances, religious processions, and games such as the Olympics. Observing these events
in an official capacity at state expense was one of the perquisites of being Greek, of ruling an
empire, and of being upper-class. If a citizen was on a theoria, he was on a junket, getting
paid to travel to foreign lands and see places and sights that he had always wanted to see, in
addition to being wined and dined by the locals. The odd thing about the young Athenians'
being overcome by this desire now, on the eve of the Sicilian expedition, is that theoria is a
mission undertaken in time of peace. In the deadly struggle that awaits the young men, there
will be no leisure to look. Their detachment from reality is a dangerous delusion about how
amenable the world is to their own desires, a delusion at once characteristic of an erotic
fantasy, and worse than useless in practical politics. The beguiled young men, for their own
safety, ought to have been feeling sterner emotions as they sailed off to Sicily, from which few
out of many ever returned. Anger at an injustice or fear for the safety of their own homeland
13
�would have served them better. Even acquisitiveness, which the many felt, would have stood
them in better stead for the rigors to come. A near total lack of selfishness characterizes this
eros, in which beautiful sights take precedence over acquisition and replace even the desire to
win glory. Pericles had recognized the generosity inherent in contemplation, and he had
hoped to harness it to civic ends, but in the event the contemplative eros proves difficult to
harness.
Now one might get the impression from this that Thucydides disagreed with Pericles
about eros, either on practical or theoretical grounds. For example, Thucydides may have
thought that a concept of citizenship in which eros was unleashed was wrong on moral or
even religious grounds. It has, in fact, often been pointed out that Thucydides ends his Melian
narrative where his Sicilian narrative begins, even though chronology would not have made
such a close connection necessary. The Melian dialogue and its narrative show Athenian
imperialism at its very worst, ruthlessly crushing the small island nation of Melos, and
committing against its population the genocide that Diodotus' speech had narrowly averted
from the Mytilenians more than a decade earlier. Perhaps Thucydides made the Sicilian
narrative follow closely upon the Melian narrative in order to show that eros, like pride, goeth
before a fall. Eros, like Ate (madness or ruin) was traditionally one of the attendant daemons
of divine justice, sent from heaven to mix up the minds of those whom the gods would
destroy. Although Thucydides has, up till now, merely reported the use of the word eros in
other people's political rhetoric, having waited till this critical juncture, he now uses eras in
his own name, to describe the moment in Athenian politics when their imperialism finally
overreached and laid itself open to a crippling blow. The hubris that it would not have been
difficult for his readership to discern in the speeches and deeds of the Athenians on the island
of Melos is followed close on by the infatuation of the Athenian public for a much larger
island and one not so defenseless. This "tragic" depiction of eros might have been all that
Thucydides intended, if the unfinished history had broken off after the loss of the Sicilian
expedition. The story would have been as simple as: "hubris punished." Instead, the history
14
�continues on for another book; the Athenians rebound from their loss and gamely battle on,
displaying many of the admirable (if also questionable) character traits they also showed
before and during the Sicilian expedition. So while Thucydides shows the potential
destructiveness of political eros, he nevertheless does not portray its consequences as being
precisely tragic.
But perhaps Thucydides is critical of erotic patriotism in some other way; perhaps
Thucydides disagreed with Pericles over what eros is and what its power is. This hypothesis
contains more than a grain of truth, in my estimation. For example, Thucydides' stress on the
private selfishness of the multitude and on the soft, impractical sight-seeing of the elite young
men would seem to mean that he thought erotic patriotism-citizenship-as-courtship-was
problematic or vitiated in ways that Pericles did not perceive. Nevertheless, the view of eras
that emerges from the Funeral Oration, and the view of eros that emerges from the history as a
whole, share remarkable similarities which overshadow their differences. The criticism
implicit in the current passage should not be understood to mean that Thucydides simply
dismissed erotic patriotism as an ill-conceived rhetorical flourish, appropriate for a Funeral
Oration but lacking practical consequences in real politics. On the contrary, Thucydides
carefully catalogues, with a kind of awe, how the Athenians engaged, to all appearances, in
just such courtship behavior as Pericles had intended. In their preparation for the Sicilian
expedition, in the period following the fatal debates, the Athenians engage in an extraordinary
allocation of resources, an almost thoughtless generosity or liberality of expenditure (6.31.15), and total commitment to the task, all of which have the distinct character of an erotic
courtship, or wooing, of Athens. What follows is a paraphrase.
The entire city went down to the Peiraeus on the day of departure. The immensity of
what they were about to undertake struck them more fully at the last minute, but they took
courage when they saw the sheer magnitude of their armed might. Foreigners, and the rest of
the crowd who were not going, came for the spectacle, which was at once worthy of
description and so incredible as to be beyond the mind's capacity to grasp it. The armada was
15
�the most expensive and splendid ever to come into existence up to that time (of those from a
single city and with Hellenic forces; 6.30.1-6.31.1). Costly figureheads and furnishings were
used in the ships. Each man outfitting a trireme exerted himself to the last degree to make his
ship excel the others in splendor and speed. Among the land forces, a zealous contestation,
one against the other broke out over arms and bodily apparel. Strife among themselves was
raised wherever any of them were posted; and it seemed, to the rest of the Hellenes, more in
the likeness of an exhibition of power and wealth than a preparation against enemies (6.31.34). Once the fleet had sailed out, the ships raced one another as far as Aegina (6.32.2).
This intense rivalry, to the extent of preening themselves on the beauty of their
equipment and their apparel, and fighting over such items, perhaps more than any other single
feature resembles the actions of rival lovers vying for the hand of a beloved. One thinks of the
behavior of peacocks and the altercations of bachelor males of many species during the
mating season. To all appearances, and like the suitors whom Pericles exhorted them to
become, the Athenians pay their court to the city Athens, wooing her in a contest in which
each strives to show himself worthiest, emulating his competitors in hopes of having the
honor of presenting her with a more splendid gift than anyone else could give. We are forced,
however, to put this remarkable description together with the earlier criticism contained in the
last passage quoted. Whatever the case with the wealthy outfitters of triremes, Athens did not
hold the first place in the hearts of the multitude and of those hoplites who engaged in
peacock altercations over their arms and apparel; their greatest desire was to earn money and
acquire a source of eternal pay. What has the appearance of being a rivalry to serve the
common good (perhaps it was an appearance which fooled even those caught up in it) turns
out, on closer inspection, to be a rivalry to serve a host of private goods, private goods which
happen to be temporarily congruent.
Now Thucydides does not stop here but goes on to explore both the good and bad
effects of citizenship-as-courtship to the bitter end of the Sicilian debacle. In brief, Alcibiades
is one of three commanders chosen for the expedition. But before the ships set sail, an affair
16
�of bad omen occurs. The herms, or small statues of Hermes that guard private homes and
sacred places, are mutilated all over the city in one night. This sacrilege also calls to mind
accusations that religious mysteries have been profaned in private homes, a kind of black
mass, probably only to ridicule and show contempt; but Alcibiades is implicated in the
profanation of the mysteries. So the expedition sets sail under a cloud, and before it can
accomplish much, Alcibiades is recalled to Athens to be put on trial for his role in the
sacrilege, which has now become, in the public imagination, a full-blown plot to overthrow
the democracy and bring back the tyranny that had once existed in Athens, only this time with
Alcibiades at the helm.
His re-call leads to a disaster because Alcibiades really is a talented general.
Thucydides says that Alcibiades' public management of the war was very good-this even
though Thucydides had also praised the conservative Periclean strategy of no new acquisitions
until after the war, and condemned Athens for doing exactly the opposite, for doing exactly
what Alcibiades is doing now, after Pericles' death. How do we fit these two statements
together? Apparently, there were several ways to win the war. Pericles' way was the safest
and surest. Alcibiades' strategy was risky but also quite possible or even likely. But it would
take nerves of steel. So, if you must be daring, be daring with a daring leader, don't be daring
with a timid leader. But the Athenians got spooked about Alcibiades and his monarchical
intentions and decided to put him on trial, removing him from the command of the war, which
then fell to the conservative Nicias, who ended up losing the entire expedition: men, materiel,
everything. And Thucydides explores this debacle of citizenship-as-courtship through the one
explicit, ordinary love affair (if any Greek love can be considered ordinary) in the book, the
story ofHarmodius and Aristogeiton.
Now as I said a very widespread interpretation of the Harmodius and Aristogeiton
account is that Thucydides debunks the founding myth by exposing their eros. In short,
17
�because we modems know that eros is merely private, we assume the Greeks knew that too,
hence to attribute the tyrant-slaying to eros instead ofto patriotism is enough said to debunk
it. But this totally misunderstands the political character of Greek love that we have been
seeing throughout the history. Everyone knew Harmodius and Aristogeiton were lovers-that
did not debunk the myth at all. In fact they were celebrated as lovers. Their myth operated to
show Athenians how love could provide a path to public deeds. You can read what I claim
was the ordinary interpretation of the myth ofHarmodius and Aristogeiton in Plato's
Symposium, in Pausanias' speech. In short, defending a boy's honor from a tyrant's lust is
dimly symbolic of defending Athens' honor from-well, from a tyrant's lust: both are the
work of passionate men who do not suffer an insult readily and who are willing to defend
themselves and their own.
So if Thucydides is not blowing the cover of Harmodius and Aristogeiton by exposing
their eros, what does he intend to accomplish by stressing their eros? For he does stress it,
relentlessly. In the following quotations, the English words "erotic" and "erotically" translate
the Greek words erotike and erotikos. To understand the first quotation, it is important to
remember that Hippias is the actual tyrant, Hipparchus is his brother, and their father
Peisistratus was the previous tyrant.
The daring deed of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was attempted on account of an erotic
incident. ... When Harmodius had become radiant through the bloom of his youth, a man of
the commoners, Aristogeiton, a citizen of middle rank, had him as his lover [erastes]. When
Hipparchus son of Peisistratus attempted [to seduce] Harmodius but failed to persuade him,
Harmodius complained of him to Aristogeiton. [Aristogeiton], smarting with pain erotically
and fearing Hipparchus' power, lest he should take away Harmodius by force, immediately
began plotting ... the dissolution of the tyranny. (6.54.1-3)
Thucydides relates that although Hipparchus subtly revenged himself against Harmodius for
not giving in to his importunities, finding an occasion to insult his sister publicly, nevertheless
the tyranny exercised by this family had generally been benign, with the rulers exercising
virtue and understanding. But now, at the last minute before Harmodius and Aristogeiton set
18
�in motion their plan to kill the tyrant Hippias and dissolve the tyranny, they mistakenly think
their conspiracy is betrayed and that the tyrant has been warned. If they cannot not kill the
tyrant himself, they want at least to revenge themselves against Hipparchus, the tyrant's
brother, who started the whole thing:
Immediately without circumspection they fell upon [Hipparchus], as especially happens in a
passion: the one's [passion] being erotic, the other's on account of being insulted. They
began striking him and they killed him. (6.57.3)
It was with this sort of character, through erotic pain, that the beginning of the conspiracy and
the irrational daring came to Harmodius and Aristogeiton out of their great alarm at the
moment. For the Athenians the tyranny was harsher after this. (6.59.1-2)
Not only did Harmodius and Aristogeiton not destroy the tyranny at Athens (it endured three
more years until the Spartans put it down), they were instrumental in changing a benign
tyranny into a harsh one. And of course the beloved, Harmodius, over whom the struggle was
conducted, was lost to his lover Aristogeiton anyway since Harmodius was killed on the spot.
(Aristogeiton escaped briefly only to be caught, tortured, and executed.)
Now why does Thucydides stress their eros? Why does he bring up the old story of
Harmodius and Aristogeiton at all in this new context of the Sicilian expedition? The witch
hunt against Alcibiades is conducted in accordance with an analogy in the Athenian mind
between Hipparchus (whom the Athenians mistakenly think was the tyrant back then) and
Alcibiades, who is currently suspected of aiming at the tyranny. Popular leaders or
demagogues (politicians who are Alcibiades' competition) speak in favor ofrecalling and
arresting Alcibiades. These popular leaders are, in the public mind, the new tyrannicides, the
latter-day analogues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who vanquish the new threat to Athenian
freedom. The Athenians think they are replaying the drama of Harmodius and Aristogeiton
during the Sicilian expedition. However, Thucydides turns this analogy on its head. The
demagogues actually hope that by driving out Alcibiades they will themselves be able to seize
preeminence in Athens (6.28.2, 6.29.3). Thucydides makes a point of saying that the
19
�harshness ofHippias' tyranny did not cause the tyrannicide. Rather, the botched attempt at
tyrannicide caused the tyranny to grow harsh from that point on. The Athenians have mixed
up cause and effect. Point for point, the alleged plot of Alcibiades against Athens does not
cause the demagogues to arrest and recall him. Rather, their arrest and recall of Alcibiades
causes him to plot against Athens after escaping the arresting officers (which is what he does).
The eros for Sicily and Aristogeiton's eros for Harmodius are analogues. In wanting Sicily so
much that they feel eros for it, the Athenians are likely to put the state at risk. Just as
Aristogeiton harmed Athens through his erotic daring, so the Athenians now are in the process
of harming Athens again. In feeling eros, both cities and individuals are vulnerable to fears
and pains which make them lash out (as well as embrace) without circumspection.
Now we are in a position to recognize how systematic Thucydides' critique of erotic
citizenship has been all along. What was to all appearances a productive competition between
and among rival suitors for the hand of Athens that we saw operating in the massive
preparations for the Sicilian expedition, just as quickly degenerates into a destructive
competition in the wake of the expedition's departure, namely in the actions that Alcibiades'
rival politicians take against him. The problem with the eros surrounding Harmodius was that
he already belonged to one suitor, while a rival suitor looked strong enough to take him away.
An analogous problem occurs with the politicians' eros for Athens. Just as Aristogeiton could
not bear the thought of his beloved wrested away by Hipparchus, so the demagogues (6.51.1)
cannot bear the thought of a triumphant Alcibiades returning with Sicily in hand, prepared to
offer Athens such a jewel for her crown that she might be tempted to give herself into his
hands perpetually. Citizenship-as-courtship only works so long as the courtship continues and
the beloved (the city)remains equally aloof from all suitors-equally aloof, in this case, from
all of the politicians. As soon as one suitor is poised actually to win the contest, the other
suitors are not likely to bow out gracefully. Even if the unrequited suitors could perceive that
a marriage or permanent alliance with the successful suitor was in the best interest of the
beloved, erotic desire is often so possessive that a disgruntled suitor would be willing to do
20
�harm to the beloved's interest rather than give her up. This is exactly what Alcibiades does
later in the history, during his exile after escaping trial. He attempts to bring Athens to her
knees in order to show her how much she needs him. He proves very successful at doing this.
Alcibiades gives his definition of patriotism while offering his services to the Spartans
(6.92.2-4). As he does elsewhere, Alcibiades puts his O'Ml characteristic twist on an idea that
seemed benign in its Periclean version:
I do not think I deserve to be thought bad by any of you ifl, who once seemed to be a patriot
fphilopolis ], now go against my own city by force, in company with her worst enemies ....
The true patriot fphilopolis] is not one who refuses to attack his city, though he lost her
unjustly; rather, he is the one who will attempt to take her back by any means, on account of
desiring [epithumein] her so. (6.92.4)
Alcibiades' patriotism is erotic and, at least by this point in the history, aggressive.
Let us try to take stock of the love theme in Thucydides. In exhorting the citizens to
conduct themselves as lovers, Pericles discerns perhaps the sole motive that could incline
perfectly free individuals, habituated (as he says) to their O'Ml private interest and toward
pursuing pleasures, to take the good of another as their O'Ml good. In the self-forgetting of
eros, people in love, then as now, were routinely seen to neglect themselves. (The most
striking example of courtship given in the Symposium is that lovers often would camp out for
the night on the beloved's doorstep (183a 6).) Eros makes people willingly enter into bonds
that would otherwise look like slavery. Eros is at once perfectly free and perfectly committed.
And, as we said, Thucydides seconds Pericles' claim that patriotism-and political behavior
more generally-can be erotic, by including Diodotus' speech and by depictii:?-g the citizensduring the preparations for the Sicilian expedition-wholeheartedly engaged in just such
courtship behavior-at the very least, that is what they think they are engaged in.
Ordinary, non-erotic patriotism, by contrast, is probably based preponderantly on a
love of one's own. No one ever told the Spartans, for example, to fall in love with Sparta-
21
�yet the Spartans remain fanatically committed to their own city. They love her because she is
their own. They do not love her romantically. Pericles, in basing patriotism on an erotic
response to the power of Athens and her grandeur, disdains a patriotism that is a parochial,
subjective sentiment or unthinking affection for the surroundings in which one grew up. Our
country is a lot like our parents, and we might as well face it, we do not select our parents and
love them with the free choice by which we select a beloved and love that person. We are
stuck with our parents. Pericles' Athenians are supposed to perceive that mere parochial
attachment, being stuck in a given patch of ground, is a low motive for patriotism when
opposed to the real merit and greatness of a city. If another city were better, they would face a
difficult choice between which to love, but fortunately Athens is the fairest of them all.
There is, as I started saying, another type of love that has traditionally been thought to
constitute patriotism, a love implicit in the very word patriotism and its root,patria: land of
our fathers (not to mention "land where our fathers died"). This love is not erotic at all; it is
the filial love and filial piety a child is supposed to feel toward its parent. Pericles eschews
this love, changing the type of love away from the love for a "motherland" or "fatherland"-in
favor of the more active, energetic passion of the lover. A lover or suitor seems to have
designs on the beloved; he wishes to win the game of courtship against all the other suitors,
and take possession of the beloved. But the political analogue, taking exclusive possession of
Athens, would be tantamount to tyranny or at least monarchy. How did Pericles know that an
Alcibiades would not come along to take him at his word? Again, we have seen how Pericles
attempted to transcend the love of one's own. Perhaps, as we earlier surmised, the highest
eros, for Pericles, would not be selfishly possessive but would content itself with
contemplating the beloved. Many written sources describing pederasty, that important personto-person type of Greek love, do indeed seem to speak of stopping short of bodily congress,
stopping short of bodily possession or incorporation, and of instead remaining content with
contemplation alone: gazing at the beloved. A contemplative love for a city might look
something like the Platonic eros near the top ofDiotima's ladder oflove in the Symposium-
22
�for example, she mentions contemplating the beauty in customs and laws (210c 2-3). These
would include political institutions (as Pericles also saw), and they would locate the eros of
the Funeral Oration on a high rung on the ladder of love.
But in support of the traditional kind of patriotism, we have to note that filial love also
worked well to the extent that it was antityrannical. A person who feels filial love toward his
city protects it against others and against himself. The child's feelings for its mother, like the
citizen's feelings for his motherland, are protective: citizens feeling filial patriotism would be
jealous of politicians who were essentially suitors, and they would resist tyranny analogously
to the way a child resists when its mother takes a new husband. The demagogues at Athens
resisted Alcibiades, and patriots feeling filial love would resist him too. But unlike the
demagogues, a citizen who felt filial love would not be desirous of becoming his mother's
new husband himself. One of the clearest examples of this is in Plutarch's Life of Caesar
(32.6): the night before Caesar crosses the Rubicon to attack Rome, he dreams of committing
incest with his mother. Rome was hispatria but also, Plutarch implies, his motherland, and
an entity toward whom to feel eros was a crime. So Pericles' switch of the types of love that
constitute patriotism was fraught with risks although we also saw its potential for high returns.
It is instructive to see just how unusual it was for a statesman to place patriotism on an erotic
basis. Even in the context of a society whose athletic nudity brought the material basis of eros
into the public view, a society which told itself that love should forge a path to public deeds,
as in the myth of Harmodius and Aristogeiton-even in this context, Pericles was attempting
to do something exquisitely rare.
Just how rare- and how close to Platonic love-Periclean Athens was reaching,
appears when we consider the mother of all paradoxes, the observation that when eros finally
descends upon the elite young men, they fall in love not with Athens, as Pericles intended, but
with a foreign land. Perhaps one should amend that slightly: they fall in love with their idea
of what experiencing the sights and spectacles of Greater Greece might be like. Perhaps the
most patriotic interpretation of imperialism generally, is that the citizens love their country so
23
�much that they wish to adorn her with a jewel in her crown. They may feel deeply that their
country deserves such a foremost position among nations. They dream of being the one who
confers the rightful honor on their country, winning the jewel for her. But the jewel may be
attractive in its own right. These Athenians, the elite young men, are attracted to the jewel.
This, at least, was predictable. The beautiful and the good are not always home grown.
Pericles' project to let a higher love override the attachment to one's own, works in their case,
but that higher love overrides not only their attachment to their own personal "own"; it also
overrides their attachment to Athens' own. Their eros overrides the oikeion in both senses. If,
in loving Athens, they are to follow their hearts, then they must also follow wherever their
hearts may lead. Why not follow one's heart to Sicily? The ordinary love ofpatria must open
up to include every place or land that merits appreciation. Again, in filial patriotism, the
citizen and his motherland are stuck with one another. But romantic love is fickle, and eros
likes to play the field.
Now, the elite young men have not forgotten themselves to the extent of forgetting that
they are Athenian. They remain hopeful of a safe return-to Athens. But they have forgotten
themselves to the extent that they are forgetting their duty: under the influence of eros, they
are forgetting themselves qua patriots, since patriots would first see to it that their city took no
harm.
Ultimately, erotic patriotism tries for too much. Athens errs in a direction opposite
from Sparta's error. Just as Sparta errs in attempting to stamp out the struggle of the human
mind to transcend parochial limits, so Pericles' transcendent patriotism implies a disembodied
mind that forgets the local and particular requirements of community. In an attempt to be
universal, Periclean Athens must give up her own, give up her self: she must give herself up.
Pericles' vision is humanly and philosophically superior to the Spartan way; the only matters
in question are his vision's security and safety, its achievability, the ability of citizens to find a
modus vivendi with these high expectations, and its sustainability or longevity. These factors
prove decisive politically, but they do not exhaust the philosophic questions toward which this
24
�political history of Athens points in same the way a shadow points toward its concrete object.
No one can consciously and seriously accept the proposition that the only reason he loves his
community is because it is his own. The human mind will strive to claim that its own is also
good. But likewise it would take a quite extraordinary person, a Socrates in fact, truly to love
whatever things he loves, only for their beauty or goodness, and not because they are his own.
Socrates neglected his own children, and hung around other people's children, because his
own children were not the most beautiful and intelligent children in the neighborhood-which
in a neat way shows the monstrosity of this perfectly rational eros. Greek pederasty (there's
that public nudity again) allegedly brought quite a number of adult males, at least within a
certain stratum of society, halfway round to a Socratic position: pursuing beautiful boys and
educating them, perhaps even while someone else pursued their sons and educated them.
Possibly such a perfect reciprocity as this is only an imaginary limiting case of tendencies and
aspirations within Greek pederasty: its ideal form. Notwithstanding such peculiarities (and
partly because of them), the tiny Greek cities, and Athens in particular, stake some of the
strongest claims to universality of any societies we know. Yet they fall short, leaving us to
ponder the further question of whether the eros that inspired them may have found its
fulfillment, and the universality toward which that eros pointed, may have been achieved, not
by those communities as wholes, but by some of the individuals within them.
25
�Pericles' Funeral Oration
I)
Do not in word alone inspect the profit-which anyone could expound at length to you
who know it yourselves no worse than he, telling how many good things depend upon defense
against enemies,
but rather, actively contemplate [theomenoi] the power of the city, day after day, and become
lovers [erastai] of it [the power or: "of her," Athens], and when she seems great to you, take it to
heart that daring men, men who knew what was needful, and who, in their actions, were sensible of
dishonor, acquired these things; and if they ever failed in an attempt, they deemed it unworthy to
deprive the city of their excellence, but gave themselves away as their finest favor to her. (2.43.1)
2)
[Our leaders] have a care for their own private matters [oikeia] at the same time as political
affairs, while the rest, people with permanent jobs, have no small understanding of politics .
And the man who refuses to participate in politics? We alone [among the Greeks] do not
consider him to be minding his own business but rather to be simply useless. (2.40.2)
3)
The love of honor [to philotimon] alone never grows old, and the better enjoyment ... is not
material gain as some say, but receiving honor (to timasthai, 2.44.4).
4)
Invading the [land] of our neighbors we fight without difficulty on alien ground [en tei
allotriai] against men who are defending themselves in the midst of their own [peri ton oikeon]
and for the most part we conquer. (2.39.2)
5)
On account of the stature of our city, all things come into her from every land; whence it
happens that for us, reaping the goods produced here is no more familiar [oikeiotera, "no more
our own"] an enjoyment than reaping those of other people. (2.38.3)
6)
We have forced every sea and land to become the highway of our daring, and everywhere we
have set up eternal [aidia] monuments to both good and evil. (2.41.4)
7)
For the whole world is the tomb of illustrious men, and not only does the epitaph on gravestones
signal it in their own land [en tei oikeiai]; but also, in land not belonging to them, there dwells an
unwritten marker in every mind if not in fact. (2.43.2-3)
The speech of the Corinthians at the Peloponnesian conference
8)
In their city's behalf, they treat their bodies as if completely alienated from them [allotriotata] .
And on deeds in her behalf they use their intellect, though it is their ownmost [oikeiotate].
(1.70.6)
9)
When they fail to prosecute their schemes, they feel deprived of what is their own [oikeia]. But
when they do invade and acquire something, they regard it a small deed compared with things to
come . . . . For them alone, hoping and having are the same . . . . ( l. 70. 7, emphasis added)
�Diodotus' speech during the Mytilenean debate
10)
Hope and eros everywhere, the latter leading, the former following on-[eros] conceiving the
plot, [hope] guaranteeing the resources for a good fortune-do the greatest harm and, though
invisible themselves, are stronger than visible terrors. And fortune in addition to these
contributes no Jess to the excitement: unlooked-for, she is there, leading men on to gamble with
inferior means, and this is no less the case with cities, in proportion as they concern the greatest
things: freedom and empire .... (3.45.5-6)
The Sicilian expedition
11)
Eros fell upon all alike to sail forth. [It fell] upon the elders, [who thought] that either they
would subdue whatever they sailed against or that a great force would in no way be overthrown.
[It fell] upon the young men through a longing for far-away sights and spectacles [opsis kai
theoria], being of good hope, as they were, of coming back safe. And the great multitude and the
soldier intended to earn money, in the short run, and besides that to acquire power whence wages
might accrue to them eternally [aidion]. (6.24.3)
Harmodius and Aristogeiton
12)
The daring deed of Harmodius and Aristogeiton was attempted on account of an erotic
incident. ... When Harmodius had become radiant through the bloom of his youth, a man of the
commoners, Aristogeiton, a citizen of middle rank, had him as his Jover [erastes]. When
Hipparchus son of Peisistratus attempted [to seduce] Harmodius but failed to persuade him,
Harmodius complained of him to Aristogeiton. [Aristogeiton], smarting with pain erotically and
fearing Hipparchus' power, lest he should take away Hannodius by force, immediately began
plotting . .. the dissolution of the tyranny. (6.54.1-3)
13)
Immediately without circumspection they fell upon [Hipparchus], as especially happens in a
passion: the one's [passion] being erotic, the other's on account of being insulted. They began
striking him and they killed him. (6.57.3)
It was with this sort of character, through erotic pain, that the beginning of the conspiracy and the
irrational daring came to Harmodius and Aristogeiton out of their great alarm at the moment. For
the Athenians the tyranny was harsher after this. (6.59.1-2)
Alcibiades at Sparta
14)
I do not think I deserve to be thought bad by any of you ifl, who once seemed to be a patriot
[philopolis], now go against my own city by force, in company with her worst enemies.. . . The
true patriot [philopolis] is not one who refuses to attack his city, though he lost her unjustly;
rather, he is the one who will attempt to take her back by any means, on account of desiring
[epithumein] her so. (6.92.4)
�
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The Erotic Theme in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War
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Typescript of a lecture delivered by Paul Ludwig on December 5, 2003, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Ludwig, Paul W. (Paul Walter), 1963-
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2003-12-05
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Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War
Eroticism in literature
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LEC_Ludwig_Paul_2003-12-05
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
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2a601a227a7ae0096ca3708834e70355
PDF Text
Text
History and Existentialism in the Raj Quartet"
Paul Ludwig
This lecture is going to be about History, a discipline we don't teach at St John's, and
Existentialism, a school of thought we don't recognize at St John's, all in a series of
novels, the Raj Quartet, that are not on the St John's list of Great Books. Students who
are already swamped with work and busy parents alike may be forgiven for thinking that
a major project ofreading about the last days of British rule in India is not in their
immediate future-let alone the Raj Quartet's four massive volumes averaging four
hundred pages each. Nevertheless, I hope to tempt you, as India has seduced many a
Western adventurer before you, into reading at least the first volume, entitled The Jewel
in the Crown, which stands on its own as a separate novel. I secretly know that if you
read the first one, you will get hooked. Students will then get in trouble with the Dean or
with the Director of the G.I. as they attempt to fit in, between tutorial and seminar, a little
side reading on the second volume, The Day of the Scorpion. How can I justify leading
you so far astray? Luckily, modern technology comes to our rescue: there is a movie
version. And this is one case in which watching the movie is not a sign of intellectual
shallowness. The title of the movie is identical to the title of the first volume, The Jewel
in the Crown, although it is important that you should know the movie covers the events
of all four novels, the whole Raj Quartet. You can find the videotapes in our College
library, as well as in many catalogue companies who sell BBC shows to us Americans.
The movie is so good, that it is hard to realize-while watching it-how much better the
books are. When it first aired as a television serial on weekday evenings, the streets of
°Friday Lecture delivered at St John's College, Annapolis, on November 5, 2004
(Parents' Weekend).
�London were deserted, so they say, as they had not been since the Blitz. Everyone was
indoors watching it on TV. For those wary of the production values of 1970's BBC
broadcasts (everything looked like Doctor Who) the production of The Jewel in the
Crown aired in 1984 and caught the wave, as it were, when British film-making was
coming into a kind of ascendancy in their absolute fidelity to historical period. So if you
are pressed for time, as you are, and if you want to take a short rest from reading, you're
in luck. If you get hooked, though, and find you have to start reading the books, don't
say I didn't warn you.
The movie version captures only a small portion of the drama of ideas, but it
captures amazingly well the drama proper (the story-Jine), the characterizations, the
mood, and what I can only call, the wonder. I will try to convey some of each of these,
and while I want to focus on the drama of ideas, therein lies a problem. If you really
wanted to learn about the history of the British in India, you could learn more accurate
information faster by going to a history book. And if you really wanted to learn
something about Existentialism, you could read a philosopher. In fact, some
philosophers on the Program, namely Kierkegaard and Heidegger, have been labeled
Existentialists by academics at other, more shallow institutions. So what I said at the
beginning was not strictly true. We do study "Existentialists" at St John's, we simply do
not want to prejudice our reading of them by calling them that. And even though
Existentialism is said to have influenced a lot of literature-Dostoevsky is supposed to be
another "Existentialist"-surely reading novels is a backwards kind of way to get into
Existentialism. Another, deeper problem, is that a very respectable opinion, probably
held by quite a number of you, goes something like this: "novels are works of art; they
don't intend to foist ideas on us. Trying to derive philosophical ideas from stories is like
milking a billygoat; you treat the story as something that it's not and hence inevitably fail
to appreciate it for what it is." One of my warmest memories of being a freshman tutor is
of sitting around after an archon meeting chatting informally with other younger tutors
2
�about the Odyssey, when someone made the mistake of wondering what a certain incident
in the Odyssey was really about. Our archon, a senior tutor and an excellent reader of
literature (but he shall remain nameless), interrupted the conversation, saying "Anyone
who thinks the Odyssey is about something, is a jackass!" It was a great way for a young
tutor to come to realize that there was more than one opinion about how to read at St
John's. "Poetry asserts nothing." That is the classical expression of the senior tutor's
sentiment. My own opinion is that poetry, literature, can make assertions, and that the
classical statement, "poetry asserts nothing," was partly intended to defend poetry, to
screen poetry from censorship, by pretending that poetry has less to say than it really
does. And indeed, the author always can hide behind his characters and say: "I wasn't
the one saying that-one of my characters said it." Sometimes the author might be
saying that in all truth. But other times, we don't have to believe him. I admit, though,
that this opinion of mine partly derives from weakness-I need a good story to keep my
attention from flagging. History does not do it for me unless it is written by a master at
narrative. And I am so lazy that I learn philosophy better from literature and only later go
to the philosophers themselves to compare notes and decide if I have learned anything
solid. So a novel has to be a good yarn before it can teach. It has to be good poetry first.
And if that is all you want in a novel, you, too, have come to the right place. The Raj
Quartet has all that you are looking for, and more. So before getting into history and
philosophy, let me start by showing that Paul Scott, the author of the Raj Quartet, can
write. For me, wonder is the primary experience of reading the Raj Quartet. So let us
start with some of the wonder.
Before looking at the first passage, I should say just briefly that I did not discover
this wonder on my own: I had people who showed it to me. The Raj Quartet has been on
a kind of informal St John's reading list among tutors for many years. And this is proof
that St John's tutors do not only read great books. One rather basic reason why tutors
read other books is that we could never find other great books if we never read anything
3
�but what someone has alleged to be great. In the opinion of the tutors who preceded me
and showed me the wonder of the Raj Quartet, the Raj Quartet is a great work of world
literature, as great as, hold onto your hats, War and Peace. Two of my predecessors were
our former college librarian, Kitty Kinzer, and a tutor, Beate Von Oppen-her niece
recommended the Jewel in the Crown to Beate as something to read during an airplane
journey: that is how chance can put you on to something important. Study of the Raj
Quartet became formal at Annapolis two years ago, with a faculty study group of thirteen
tutors, funded by a grant from Ambassador Adolph Schmidt. So what I said earlier about
the Raj Quartet not being on the Program is only true in a literal-minded way. Two of
the faculty members of that study group have since passed away, and they are the same
two who introduced these books to the College: Kitty Kinzer and Beate Von Oppen. I
would like to dedicate this lecture to them.
So first: the wonder. I will read three very brief passages from the first volume,
The Jewel in the Crown. They are printed in your handout, and I apologize in advance if
I butcher them. The main story is set in 1942, but the three passages are historical
flashbacks to several earlier Indias. The first passage is about native India, divided into
many small kingdoms: the Brits are already in the land, trading and defending their trade
with armies, but there are many kingdoms they have not taken over yet (some of which in
fact they would never take over). What I like about the first passage is the way the Indian
names for trees somehow still convey something to us, even though most Englishspeakers have heard of maybe one or two of these trees, at most. This is the first passage
on the handout 1:
1
Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet, Volume I, The Jewel in the Crown (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, [1966] 1998), pp. 67-8. The succeeding volumes, also
published by University of Chicago Press in 1998, with their original dates are as
follows: The Day ofthe Scorpion (1968), The Towers o/Silence (1971), andA Division of
4
�The [MacGregor] house stands in the middle of the garden, protected from the
outside world by close-formed battalions of trees: neem, pipul, gol mohur,
tamarind, casuarina and banyan; it goes back to the eighteenth century and was
built by a prince who conceived a passion for a singer of classical music. To
build a house and install a woman in it is an expensive way to beg her favours. It
was said that he came to visit her morning and evening, and that she sang to him .
. . and that he became enamoured finally only of her voice and was content to
listen while she instructed the pupils he permitted her to receive. Scheherezade
told stories to postpone the hour of her execution. The singer sang to guard her
honor. When the singer died the prince grieved. People said he died of a broken
heart. The house was deserted, closed. Like the state it decayed, fell into ruin.
The prince's son succeeded to the gaddi. He despised his father for his futile
attachment to the singer. He would let no one live there. He built another house
nearby, the Bibighar, where he kept his courtesans. He was a voluptuary. He
emptied the treasury. His people starved. An Englishman at his court was
poisoned and so the new prince was deposed, imprisoned, his state annexed [by
the British], and his people were glad of it until time lay over the memory of the
old bad but not the badness of the present. The decayed house of the singer was
rebuilt by a red-faced Scottish nabob called MacGregor who feared God and
favoured Muslims, and was afraid of temples. The story goes that he burned the
Bibighar to the ground because he said it had been an abomination.
the Spoils (1975). Henceforth the volumes will be referred to as Jewel, Scorpion,
Towers, and Division.
5
�At least one hundred years separate this India of the Maharajahs, the Indian princes-father, son, singer and courtesans--from the India where MacGregor, a merchant and a
"collector," is carving out a fortune and acting as the de facto ruler of Mayapore. The
only thing you need to know about the second passage is that even by MacGregor's time,
English womenfolk have not come to small interior states like Mayapore yet-white
women are found only in the big British-built coastal cities like Calcutta. The British tell
themselves that MacGregor destroyed the Bibighar-which literally means "house of
women"-because keeping a house full of courtesans was immoral. But a little later in
the novel we learn a different version of the story. Competing perspectives, we shall
find, are going to be typical of the Raj Quartet. Here is the second passage on the
handout2 :
But then this was the European version of the tale. . . . [MacGregor] burned
Bibighar, not, according to the Indian version, because it was an abomination in
his eye and the eye of the Lord ... but because he fell in love with an Indian girl
and lost her to a boy whose skin was the same colour as her own. There are two
versions of the Indian account of the burning of Bibighar. The first is that he
discovered that the girl and her lover met in the Bibighar, and that he then
destroyed it in a fit of jealous rage. The second is that he told the girl she would
have to leave the MacGregor House and live in the Bibighar. He took her there
and showed her the repairs he had made to it and the furnishings and clothes he
had bought for her comfort and enjoyment. When she asked him why she must
leave the MacGregor House, he said: Because I am going to Calcutta to bring
back an English wife. So that night she stole away with her true lover. When he
2
Jewel, pp. 140-1. Spoken by the character known as Sister Ludmila.
6
�found that she had gone, he ordered the Bibighar to be burned to the ground, and
then utterly obliterated.
Not only are there two versions of the story, British and Indian-there are two versions
of the Indian version! Like a good historian, the author, Paul Scott, tries to tell all sides
of the story. Like Herodotus, Paul Scott knows that truth is hard to get at, and what
people say about an event comes to be as important as the event itself. People's versions
take on lives of their own. Now, in reality, of course, Scott himself is making up all three
versions. He is showing us what doing a history would be like, rather than showing us a
real history. You may have noticed thatlhave broken my promise and started talking
about history already, when I was supposed to be only showing that Paul Scott is a good
writer. And Herodotus, whom I mentioned, is clearly a program author, so what I said at
the beginning about St John's not teaching history was not strictly true. That would the
third tintruth I have told tonight-so far. Not only do Johnnies read some historians, but
Johnnies are constantly learning to act as historians themselves-historians of intellectual
history-by interpreting the evidence of original sources: and in roughly chronological
order, to boot. But what Johnnies emphatically do not do is to try to place authors into
the context of what other historians have alleged about their times: the political, social
and economic history of their times that may--or may not-have influenced the author's
ideas. Our philosophy is: better to err on the side of allowing the authors to be too
original than to chop them down to size to fit a prejudgment about their alleged context.
One ofthe philosophies of history presented in the Raj Quartet will explicitly disagree
with the St John's philosophy. The Existentialist philosophy of history partakes of what
is known as historicism. Historicism in its most extreme form doubts whether any
originality is possible; it understand us all to be products of our social, political and
economic contexts. So, I apologize for dragging philosophy and history into it ahead of
time, but these get so intertwined with literary art in Scott's novels that it is hard to talk
7
�about his art without saying what the novels are about, getting into their ideas. The
narrator of The Jewel in the Crown initially appears to be an omniscient narrator: he
seems like Paul Scott himself. But in fact this narrator is gradually revealed to be a
historian (himself with a limited viewpoint) who has returned to India in 1963, long after
Independence was granted by the British. This unnamed historian has come back to learn
about what happened in those last days before Independence, specifically what happened
on a mysterious night in 1942, when an Englishwoman was raped during political unrest.
The narrator's use of competing perspectives, British vs. Indian, Indian vs.
Indian-a technique sometimes called Perspectivism-goes together with another
narrative technique, which I will call the Telescoping of time. In the brief passages we
are reading, four different time-periods are present. We have already talked about the
eighteenth century Indian princes and the nineteenth century merchant-imperialists, but I
left out a sentence in which the historian in 1963, visiting the MacGregor house as part of
his investigation, hears a young girl taking classical music lessons; she is singing the
same songs now, in 1963, that the classical singer sang to her prince inthe eighteenth
century. Eighteenth century, nineteenth century, 1963: these are all frame and
background for the story proper, which takes place in 1942. Like a telescope closing up,
time past and time future are always present-in the Raj Quartet-in time present. And
the fascinating thing, the wonder that sends a shiver up the spine, is that many of the
same sorts of occurrences are repeating themselves in all four time periods. Not just the
music: an illegitimate love affair is veering toward tragedy in three of the four periods.
Consider the third passage on the handout. Here we are back in the India of the
princes again, when the voluptuary son gets the last word over his father. Don't blame
me for taking these passages out of order: Scott himself deals with these occurrences out
of order. He wants us to go back and ponder the earlier ones armed with what we know
from the later ones. Recall that the singer's house fell into ruin, after her death, before
8
�MacGregor came along to rebuild it, but the Bibighar, the "house of women" or
prostitutes, flourished. This is the third passage on the handout3:
In those days, when Mayapore was a kingdom, on that side of the river there were
no other buildings, and so those two houses were marks on the landscape,
monuments to love, the love of the father for the singer and the love of the son for
the courtesans, the son who despised his father for an attachment which, so the
story goes, was never consummated. Day by day I think the son climbed the
tower of the palace or to the highest room in the Bibighar to survey that other
house, the singer's house, to glory in its decay, and said to himself, Such is the
fate of love never made manifest."
The tale of the last days of Britain's India empire is going to be the tale of a love
never made manifest, an erotic attraction to India that could only be consummated in a
kind of rape but could never dare to admit to itself that it might be love, for that would
have led to an open embrace or dalliance that would have put the English and the Indians
on an equal footing, undermining the ethical pretext of the "civilizing mission" that had
become the way the British justified their empire to themselves. Surprisingly, Paul Scott
or his narrator is not on the side of the father who did not consummate his love, but on
the side of the voluptuary son, who at least made his love-such as it was-manifest. So:
Scott can write prose with a touch of poetry. But can he spin a yarn? Let us look briefly
at the story-line.
1942. An English girl has come to live in the MacGregor House. Her name is
Daphne Manners. She has lost her family in the Blitz, and has been driving an
ambulance during the bombing of London. She comes to live in India with an Aunt,
3
Jewel, p. 139, another of Sister Ludmila's musings. Emphasis in original.
9
�Lady Manners, the only family she has left. The story of Daphne's revulsion with all
things Indian is too detailed to go into, but it is beautifully told. She initially stays with
her Aunt, the widow of a Governor, in the predominantly Muslim city of Rawalpindi.
Just when she thinks she might be growing to like India a little bit, she journeys to
predominantly Hindu Mayapore where her Aunt's Indian friend-also a titled LadyLady Chatterjee, widow of an Indian who was knighted for his service to the Raj, lives in
the MacGregor House, one of the only Indians on the British side of the river. Mayapore
is now split into the British town north of the river, and the Indian town south of the river.
Daphne's descent into ever-greater alienness, first into Islam and from there into Hindu
territory is accompanied by extreme revulsion, not only or primarily with the poverty and
living conditions but with the utterly alien cultures, what the locals consider good food,
and the ways of life and death.
The MacGregor House is one of the few places in Mayapore where Indians and
British mix socially and only then at carefully contrived drinks parties. Daphne brings
with her progressive liberal notions about the meaninglessness of racial distinctions as
well as an unprejudiced heart that attempts to find the human in the other. But she finds
her fellow Brits in India to be living in a land that time forgot; their attitudes toward race
and their resistance to eventual self-rule for India are essentially nineteenth century holdovers living on into the twentieth century. Daphne is determined to appreciate and
eventually love every aspect of India that she possibly can, and we gradually realize that
this girl who is too tall, clumsy, average-looking, near-sighted, and naive.has capacities
for cultural assimilation which give her what can only be called moral grandeur. If
Daphne were ever to fall in love, she would make her love manifest.
She falls in love with a young Indian named Hari Kumar. And here is the first
twist: Hari, too, has just come to India. He grew up in England, .son of an Indian father
who admired British ways, assimilated, made and lost a fortune, committed suicide, and
left his eighteen-year-old son stranded at his elite English boarding school with no
10
�money. Hari, too, has just come to live with his Aunt, and Hari is, if anything, more
revolted by India than Daphne was. This is because Hari is, if anything, the most English
character in the book. In everything but skin color: in attitudes, outlook, character, he is
utterly English and utterly at sea in India. He is so English that he is even upper-class
(thanks to his boarding school education); he shares the hauteur of the ruling British but
.in India he can never be one of them. Somewhere on the ship over to India, it happened.
Although Hari had scarcely noticed he was brownskinned before (he had white friends,
he was accepted in England), at some point near the Gulf of Suez, his fellow British
passengers began to exclude him and socialize only among themselves, with their fellow
whites. People who would never have felt that way at home, became, as India
approached, frightened or racially conscious for the first time, and joined ranks against
him, expecting that he too would now join his own kind. But Hari has no kind, unless it
is the British themselves, for Hari is as far from an Indian as it is possible to be. And this
is one of the historical and academic glints that decorate and inform the novels, because
Hari Kumar (in England he was called Harry Coomer) is one of the "brown-skinned
Englishmen" whom the historian and planner of empire Thomas Babington Macaulay
envisioned in a famous speech before the British parliament on how Indians should be
educated: to create "a class of persons Indian in colour and blood, but English in tastes, in
opinions, in morals, and in intellect ... who may be interpreters between us and the
millions we govem."4 Paul Scott merely takes Macaulay at his word and shows us such a
person. But what will happen to such a person if the British ever decide to leave India?
Not British enough for the British, not Indian enough for "the millions we govern," Hari
is destined to be forever a loose end in the incomplete project of empire.
4
Compare Jewel, p. 248, with Division, p. 301. See also John Keay, India: A History
(New York: Grove Press, 2002), p. 431.
11
�Did I start philosophizing again? Sorry. With these novels, it's hard not to.
When Hari finally scrapes up courage to cross the river into the British town, he feels like
he has come home: clean lines, uncluttered streets, ordered civic life. When he enters a
pharmacy, his heart leaps up to discover brand-name items that he is used to. (If you
have ever been lonely in a foreign country, you will know how much those commercial
items can mean to a traveler). But when he attempts to purchase a bar of soap, he
encounters only contempt and prejudice, particularly when the memsahibs (white ladies)
hear him speaking (aping, as they see it) upper-class-accented English. An Indian does
not belong in the British town, unless he is the servant of a white. Hari literally becomes
a man without a country, or without a community. Hari concludes (Jewel, p. 242):
his father had succeeded in making him nothing, nothing in the black town,
nothing in the [British] cantonment, nothing even in England because in England
he was now no more than a memory ... .
This language of nothingness will loom very large. For nothingness (as in Jean-Paul
Sartre's title Being and Nothingness) is just what an Existentialist thinks we ought to
think about ourselves. That we are nothing, on our own, nothing but a web of influences,
totally determined by our backgrounds: our genes, our race, our religion, our upbringing, ·
our height and sex even. There is no escaping those determinants, or at least: no way to
be certain we have free will. Every choice we make can be traced to those all-powerful
factors. So philosophy is going to be right up front in the story-line.
O.K., maybe I should drop even the pretense of "just telling the story." It can be
done, but I can't do it. As you have probably guessed by now, Hari and Daphne will
become illegitimate lovers. They meet at a racially mixed party at the MacGregor House.
They have trouble from the start-not because of the outward pressure from the different
12
�communities they belong to, the English and Indian communities, both of which consider
interracial love to be taboo. That is the least of their problems. Their problems are
internal: the communities they both come from-their backgrounds-have predisposed
them (it is so unconscious that it is like a genetic predisposition) to accept the taboo.
Theory alone, theory that racial distinctions are meaningless, is not enough. It is very
hard to put the theory into practice. Part of Hari's situation is that "a dark-skinned man
touching a white-skinned woman will always be conscious of the fact that he isdiminishing her."5 When Hari beings to fall in love with Daphne, he deliberately
attempts to put her off, warn her away from him, by behaving on one of their illicit dates
the way he imagines a middle-class Indian male would behave. Since the English won't
let Hari be English anymore, since he must be Indian, he will behave like the English
stereotype of an Indian male: outwardly polite, but underneath selfish and aggressive,
eating with his fingers, treating the servants like dirt, making the girl conform to his
wishes, playing Indian music which he hated (and expected her to hate) on the
gramophone. But he underestimates Daphne, who by this time has come to love many
aspects of India: she particularly likes Indian music, which she says is the only musiC in
the world that is conscious of breaking silence. Daphne does not mind lndianness if Hari
wants to be Indian; she is only worried why he is acting so strangely.
When a moment comes in their relationship when Hari should touch Daphne, she
recalls (Jewel, pp. 410-11):
He was afraid to. He was too conscious of the weight that would have made
touching a gesture of defiance of the rule ... , and he didn't have that kind of
courage, and so I was deprived of my own. The defiance had to come from him
first, to make it human, to make it right.
5
Scorpion, p. 217, spoken by the villain Merrick.
13
�For Daphne to provide the defiance of the taboo would further unsex Hari (Jewel, p.
411 ): a ruling memsahib taking a hapless Indian by the hand. Hari and Daphne are
stymied by their awareness that a brown man with a white woman must be "taking
advantage of her" in some way or another. A general thesis put forward by less liberalminded Brits is that "an Indian will always take advantage of an English person who is
friendly." And there is some truth to the thesis, since indeed the ruling caste of whites
always does hold the keys to all advancement for a ruled caste of browns. It follows that
Indians always want something. It also follows that any union between the two of them
must be exploitative.
One night-a dangerous night because there is civil unrest in Mayapore: Gandhi
and the Indian National Congress party leadership have been interned by the British
because the British, after all, have a war to fight with the Japanese, and Gandhi's noncooperation movement is not helping-on that night, the night of the civil unrest, Hari
and Daphne are sitting together in the deserted Bibighar garden. The ruined "house" of
women where love was at least made manifest is gone, only a garden remains, which has
become a kind of informal public park.
Daphne takes Hari's hand briefly to light her cigarette (Jewel, 416):
After a while he said, "What were you trying to prove? That you don't
mind our touching?"
I said, "I thought we'd got beyond that."
"No," he said, "we can never get beyond it."
The "gesture of defiance" that needed to come from Hari finally materializes when he
takes away her cigarette (which he considers a disgusting, Indian-made cigarette). He
grabs her wrist and throws the cigarette away. "That catching hold of my wrist was like
14
�the impatient gesture of a lover. For him it was like that too." Once the boundary is
crossed, their desire breaks through the dam.
Unbeknownst to the couple, a group of Indian men, rioters who have come in
from the country during the political unrest, are watching them in the darkness of the
garden. For these men, a taboo is broken when they see a black man touching a white
woman. They catch the couple unawares, forcibly restrain Hari, and rape Daphne. Hari
himself is now a prime suspect in the rape because no one will believe that an English
girl was in the garden alone with an Indian, consensually. What will happen to Hari?
Enter the philosopher, stage left. The British District Superintendent of Police,
Ronald Merrick, who hauls Hari in for questioning, and subjects him to brutal torture,
attempting to extract a confession, also proceeds to give a philosophic account-a
reasonable explanation-to Hari: an explanation of all the problems that Hari has been
experiencing and thinking about since he came back to India and especially since he met
Daphne. "Wait," you're saying, "a philosopher who tortures? I don't remember Socrates
ever doing that." But this is a very different kind of philosophy, a philosophy that
recognizes no distinction between contemplation and action. Merrick wants Hari to
confess to the crime, a crime he knows Hari did not commit. Or does Merrickknow it?
It turns out that, for Merrick, there may be no firm link between committing a crime, and
being guilty for it.
Contrary to the reader's expectation of ordinary police corruption or ordinary
racism, Merrick proceeds to reveal to Hari a full-blown philosophy of history and human
agency. You will notice that this lengthy philosophizing is integrated into the story-line.
I did not put it there. Oh, I admit that we readers do not actually learn everything that
was said in that jail cell until the second volume, The Day ofthe Scorpion, over a year
later when Hari is interviewed, still in prison. But that just gives you incentive to read
volume two, and not stop at volume one.
15
�Hari later recounts how Merrick began to talk. Merrick's philosophy is a
philosophy of the so-called "situation." "He said history was a sum of situations whose
significance was never seen until long afterwards because people had been afraid to act
them out" (Scorpion, p. 297). "They preferred to think of the situations they found
themselves in as part of a general drift of events they had no control over ... ". The rajBritish rule in India-has felt itself swept along by just such a current or drift since well
before the onset of World War II: attitudes are changing and British power in India is
unraveling. History itself seem to be drifting in the direction of liberation, and raj
functionaries both of the civil and the military passively assume there is nothing they can
do to stem the tide. Tonight, a white and a brown, Merrick and Hari, find themselves in
position to reaffirm the raj's power. To prevent their moment together from sinking into
the general drift, Merrick believes both he and Hari must avoid the passivity of the
aforesaid rajwhites, those who "couldn't face up to their responsibility" for their
situations. Curiously, the passive majority are probably correct about the hopelessness of
taking control of the moment, in Merrick's view: "He didn't think he could go so far as to
say you could change the course of events by acting out situations you found yourself in
.. ". At most Merrick and Hari will have the satisfaction of knowing they did all they
could to stem the tide of the liberalizing drift: "you'd ... take what steps you could to
stop things drifting in the wrong direction, or an unreal direction."
Merrick insists Hari should take responsibility. "That's what you've got to admit
... your responsibility for that girl getting [raped]. If you were a hundred miles away
you'd still be responsible" (Scorpion, p. 298). Surely this is a very odd notion of
responsibility that Merrick has. But Merrick practices what he preaches: he, too, is
willing to take responsibility for a something he didn't commit. Merrick says he will take
responsibility for the liberal whites' misrule, even though Merrick himself has obviously
contributed nothing to the raj's drift toward liberalization and eventual liberation.
Precisely taking responsibility for situations that are not one's fault is what Merrick
16
�recommends. This notion of "responsibility" is unusual, and its usage goes back to a
philosopher other than the fictional Merrick but one equally controversial (drum roll,
please): the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
Merrick's philosophy conforms point by point with Being and Time, Division
Two, Chapter 2: "Dasein's Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-For-Being, and
Resoluteness" (there's a mouthful), especially section 60. Now I am going to do what
you "poetry-asserts-nothing" types feared. I have perfectly good words on the page of
the novel to interpret, but instead of letting them speak for themselves, I am going to drag
in a philosophical text. But my claim is that we are driven to it. It's not that the novel
cannot speak for itself. (It does speak for itself.) Rather, the novel is giving us a chance
to enrich our understanding of philosophy, too-we have the chance to go back to Paul
Scott's own sources and learn what he knew. And, in keeping with my own personal lazy
way oflearning philosophy, I feel driven to confront Merrick's "Existentialism" with that
of a known "Existentialist," just to see ifI'm learning anything solid. I should also add
that the Heidegger connection is not my own discovery. Another of my predecessors at
St John's, Eva Brann, has pointed out the Heideggerean roots of Merrick's philosophy in
the course of publishing numerous articles on the Raj Quartet. After one of our study
group meetings, Beate Von Oppen was telling me about how the Raj Quartet found its
way to St John's. "I was the first," she said, in her part German and mostly British
accent. "Then Eva eclipsed me." In the scholarly literature on the Raj Quartet, no one
has yet made the Heidegger connection, so St John's is ahead of the curve on that one.
One scholar did notice similarities with Jean-Paul Sartre, so I will have more to say about
Sartre later.
17
�But first, Heidegger. Heidegger defines the term "Situation"6 as "definite factical
possibilities" that are disclosed when a person becomes resolute. This is the fourth
passage on the handout. The only thing you need to know is that "Being-There" (Dasein
in German), is Heidegger's special word for human being: the kind of beings that are
"there" in a fuller, more fundamental way than animals or things are "there." And yes,
the Peter Sellers movie "Being There," which some of you have seen, is a reference to
Heidegger's theory. The novel by Jerzy Kosinski that the film was based on (the novel
was also called Being There) was a parody of Heideggerean existentialism. Here is the
fourth passage on the handout:
In the term "Situation" ("situation"-'to be in a situation') there is an overtone of
a signification that is spatial. ... [S]uch an overtone is also implied in the 'there'
ofDasein [Being-There]. Being-in-the-world has a spatiality of its own ....
Dasein 'makes room' in so far as it factically exists .... Just as the spatiality of
the "there" is grounded in disclosedness, the Situation has its foundations in
resoluteness. The Situation is the "there" which is disclosed in resoluteness-the
"there" as which the existent entity is there. It is not a framework present-at-hand
in which Dasein occurs, or into which it might even just bring itself. Far removed
from any present-at-hand mixture of circumstances and accidents which we
encounter, the Situation is only through resoluteness and in it.
6
Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper
and Row, [1927] 1962), p. 299 (pages cited refer to the marginal pagination, i.e. to the
original German text). The German for the capitalized English "Situation" is Situation,
for small-case "situation," Lage. Emphasis in original.
18
�The inauthentic grasp of a Situation is that a Situation is a "mixture of circumstances and
accidents" that we encounter. When Merrick says that most people prefer to think of
Situations as part of a general drift of events they have no control over, he refers to this
inauthentic grasp. Merrick's term "unreal," as in "drifting in ... an unreal direction"
corresponds to Heidegger's terms "inauthentic" and "ungenuine" (Heidegger, p. 297).
For Heidegger, our understanding of historical significance results from
resoluteness. What does he mean by resolute? We resolve on a course of action, we
make a decision, a resolution (like a New Year's resolution), and we stick to our decision,
come what may. The resolute individual has made an unalterable decision-oddly, for
Heidegger, a decision without grounds. Ordinarily, we let the facts determine what we
should resolve to do. We work within the framework of possibilities permitted us by
facts. Heidegger reverses this: rather than letting the facts determine what we should
resolve to do, "[r ]esoluteness does not first take cognizance of a Situation and put that
Situation before itself; it has put itself into that Situation already. As resolute, Dasein is
already taking action" (Heidegger, p. 300). Such taking action exposes for the first time
the "facts," or as Heidegger would say, the "facticity" with which a person must work.
"The resolution is precisely the disclosive projection and determination ofwhat is
factically possible at the time." (p. 298; emphasis in original) Analogously, Merrick
emphasizes "enactment" as the only way of knowing the facts about what the historical
situation is. Enacting this particular situation-Merrick means playing at master and
slave-is the way to understand its significance. Ordinarily, we might want to examine
the facts first: are brown people really the slaves of whites? Is Merrick really Hari's
master? But no (Merrick and Heidegger say) disclosing facts like those always
presupposes a stance, a decision you have made, a resolution. In modem parlance, this
Heideggerean idea has trickled down into our ordinary speech and way of looking at
things: we call it "commitment." How you view the facts depends on your prior
commitment. The Liberal commits himself to finding the races equal; when he examines
19
�the evidence, he finds it supports his commitment. The racist commits himself to finding
the races unequal; when he examines the evidence, he finds it supports his commitment.
In the Existentialist philosophy, the prior decision lights up the world, reveals the facts
for the first time. There are no pure or uncommitted facts. Ordinarily, Merrick says, the
significance of Situations is "never seen until long afterwards because people [have] been
afraid to act them out." And later: "It wasn't enough to say he was English and I was
Indian, that he was a ruler and I was one of the ruled. We had to find out what that
meant." (Scorpion, p. 298)
Now we are in a position to think more about Merrick's radical new concept of
guilt: that we should all admit guilt precisely for those things we're not responsible for.
For Merrick, accepting responsibility is the inner truth of taking action, or enactment.
Hari ought to take responsibility for the rape of Daphne, even though he didn't commit it,
because the rape of Daphne by some Indians somewhere is symbolic of the situation in
which all Independence-minded Indians and all liberal whites everywhere conspire to
create: the liberal whites by their egalitarian behavior are practically assuming that Hari
can have their womenfolk; and Hari, by acting in kind at their invitation, is practically
assuming it too. The real situation (in Merrick's view-and we have already seen the
evidence for his view) is that no black man can touch a white woman without feeling the
sense that he is violating her. Their sexual union must always be a rape, even if neither
party wills it to be such. The best Hari can do is face up to this situation.
The same sense of guilt or responsibility is also the inner meaning of resoluteness
for Heidegger. Resoluteness is defined as the "self-projection upon one's ownmost
Being-guilty . .. " (Heiqegger, p. 297; emphasis in original). Guilty of what, for what?
Merely guilty-primordially so, Heidegger says. " 'Being-guilty' also has the
signification of 'being responsible for' ["schuld sein an"]-that is, being the cause or
author of something. . . . These ordinary significations of "Being-guilty" ... can go
together and define a kind of behaviour which we call 'making oneselfresponsible' ..."
20
�(p. 282; emphasis in original). Conscience proclaims us guilty, and conscience is the
manifestation of care or of solicitous, concernful being in the world. Whenever we care
for or feel solicitous toward other people or things, we feel a call of conscience which
does not have a specific grounding in any act we may or may not have committed.
Heidegger's (and Merrick's) notion of guilt now becomes slightly more plausible.
Particularly when we suddenly realize that we have been carelessly accepting a situation
made by others, i.e. not exercising our human freedom, we feel guilty. Ifwe realize we
have been drifting with the current (remember, the liberal members of the raj were letting
themselves drift), we suddenly feel guilty; if we then use that guilt to become resolute, to
say, I'm not going to drift anymore, I'm going to be a free chooser, and make my own
way in the world, then we are close to becoming resolute the way Heidegger wants us to.
Close-but we're not quite there yet. For this is the truth aboutfacticity, i.e. the set of
facts (sex, height, biographical givens, social roles, customs ingrained in us by our
peculiar sect or nationality): none of these facts were acts of our own free will, we made
none of them but rather are stuck with them, and we are seemingly determinedbv them.
We are "thrown" into them, and our natural mode is to get lost in them, not to exercise
our determining freedom. But herein lies the rub: there is no evidence we can ever get
free of them. There are no facts, prior to making a commitment, that show us that we
have free will. On the contrary, the facts all add up to show us that we have no free will,
that the only choices we make are really predetermined for us by our genes or by the way
our moms brought us up or by the things our dads told us. Merely rebelling against our
mom or dad is no escape: then you're simply reacting against them and letting them
determine you in a way equal, but opposite, to the way they would have determined you
directly. The only way in which we can get outside of the facts that determine us is to
make them our own. Admit responsibility for them, admit guilt precisely for facts not of
our own making. That is the only way out. Step one: come to admit that you are totally
indebted-to your sect, your nation, your genes-feel these facts as debts, things lacking.
21
�Realize you are a nullity, a nothing. Step two: take responsibility for these facts (even
though they are not your fault), make them my own, make them your fault. Heidegger
calls this "Being-the-basis of a nullity" (p. 283). "Being-a-basis" means never to have
power over one's own Being from the ground up (p. 284). In understanding the call of
conscience, in taking responsibility, Dasein listens "to its ownmost possibility of
existence. It has chosen itself' (p. 287; emphasis in original).
A Heidegger scholar has ventured an example: existential guilt is indebtedness to
culture (among other factors), his example is: being brought up feminine.7 A woman may
feel she has no possibilities she can truly call her own: every role is preordained for her
by the culture. To have none of one's own possibilities is to be a nullity. However, she
can take over these public, pre-scripted roles in her own way, making them her own. She
achieves this by accepting responsibility for them, thereby becoming the basis for (i.e. the
author of) her own nullity. Embrace your nothingness. This is the only way out. This is
an exercise of freedom-the only freedom open to you or her or anyone. In much the
same way, Merrick wants Hari to accept responsibility for the facts that make him what
he is: black, dependent, inferior, coddled by a white elite, attracted to a white girl-a
rapist whether virtually or actually. This is the only freedom open to him. When Hari
"fails" to live up to this freedom, Merrick claims he has more contempt for him than ever.
Hari is merely pretending the world does not exist (Scorpion, p. 304).
Now before getting back to the story-line-we will get back to it soon: ifthe
"poetry-asserts-nothing" people in the audience can stay awake just a little longer-we
will visit one more philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, whose more popular, not to say
vulgarized, rendition of Heidegger's ideas helps make them easier to understand. There
7
Dreyfus, Hubert L., Being-In-The-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and
Time, Division I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990).
22
�is in fact no evidence that Paul Scott had read (or read about) the philosophy of
Heidegger. "But there it is," you will say, "that is just what we were worried about: you
have dragged in a philosopher to distort a literary text, a philosopher the author didn't
even read." Yes, but: there is evidence that Paul Scott read and grappled with Jean-Paul
Sartre. In fact, Scott devotes several pages to wrestling with what he explicitly calls
Sartrean "engagement" with the "historical situation" in an important non-fiction essay in
which Scott explains why he writes at all. 8 So even though Sartre is not mentioned by
name in the Raj Quartet-it would have been anachronistic since Being and Nothingness
first appeared in 1943, too late for the 1942 Indian milieu in which Merrick
gives voice to its major tenets, Scott himself was reading Sartre in the 1960's and ?O's
when he was writing the Raj Quartet, and he made the ideas a part of his art. In addition,
the same ideas were around even in 1942 albeit in a more thoroughgoing, and less
popular, form than Sartre's. Heidegger's Being and Time had been first published in
1927 and republished in 1935. It will probably remain forever a matter of debate what
influence, if any, Heideggerean existentialism wielded over the rise of Nazism and
fascism in Europe. But Paul Scott, Heideggerless or not, was smart enough to see that a
philosophy that was Left-wing in Sartre, could just as easily be Right-wing as it had been
in Heidegger, and so he made Merrick into a kind of British fascist. To claim even more
for him, Paul Scott's power of imagination was so great that he often extrapolates from
Sartre, happening upon formulations that seem to owe more to their original source in
Heidegger, in much the same way that the Greekless Shakespeare took liberties with
North's translation of Plutarch, making changes that coincided with the original meaning.
8
Scott, "Literature and the Social Conscience: The Novel," in Paul Scott's collected
lectures and essays: Shelley C. Reese, ed,, My Appointment with the Muse. Essays, 1961-
75 (London: Heinemann, 1986).
23
�Quickly Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness provides concrete
examples where Heidegger was studiously abstract. For both Heidegger and Sartre,
human being has no fixed essence but only an existence: a "standing out" (Latin: ex
stare), hence the term "existentialism." Humans "stand out" from the way things "are" in
favor of the way things might be. Heidegger calls it "projecting possibilities." Sartre
emphasizes the negative; he calls it "nihilation": annihilating the actual in favor of the
possible. Both Sartre and Heidegger seek a way out of the determinism inherent in the
assumption that man's nature is essentially fixed, and that he is part of a causal chain.
While Heidegger thinks the resolute individual can add nothing but a style or manner to
the role which history has prescripted for him or her (all you can do is "make it your
own"), Sartre by contrast holds that man has "absolute freedom," albeit sometimes within
very narrow bounds-precisely the bounds of the historical situation. 9 A master and a
slave have very different facticities. One seems to have unlimited scope of freedom,
while the other seems to have little scope at all. Sartre would not disagree. But within
these vastly differing scopes, the .freedom that both master and slave can exercise is
absolute. No one forces the slave to continue being a slave: he can resolve to make a
break for freedom, risking death, at any time he chooses. He may, of course, not succeed,
but the choice will have been his own in a way precisely equivalent to the way his
master's choices are his own. Even if escape turns out to be impossible, his freedom to
make the attempt was absolute. The "Situation" restricts the range of his choices, but it
does not so pre-determine the outcome of the choice or choices left to him as to
vouchsafe to him foreknowledge of this outcome. Here is the crucial part: the slave can
never know his escape attempt is doomed until he has made the attempt, i.e. committed
9
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), especially pp. 6-
35.
24
�himself. The one, absolute choice that we all have, that remains no matter how strict our
circumstances, is the choice whether to commit suicide or go on living: to be or not to
be), but that one choice is absolutely free. So for Heidegger, there is basically no such
thing as freedom, while for Sartre, freedom is absolute. One more example: consider a
man who wishes to climb a rock but says, "That rock is unclimbable." His statement
exposes him as the kind of being who attempts things, like climbing. That is, he projects
possibilities out ahead of himself("! might be able to climb the rock."). Otherwise put,
the man mentally "annihilates" the unclimbed rock-he imagines it as climbed. That is,
he negates the unclimbedness of the rock. Now, the true fact about the rock's
unclimbability can never be known until the man actually resolves or decides to attempt
to climb the rock. Resolutely trying, he may fail, but whether he succeeds or fails, he
will have exercised his human freedom. If he were to decline to climb the rock on the
grounds that he somehow "knows" in advance that the rock is unclimbable, he would be
in what Sartre calls "bad faith." Only in resoluteness can any such "fact" about the rock
be disclosed (Sartre, pp. 482, 488-9).
Now, I promised that Merrick's philosophy would have explanatory power: that it
woald give a reasonable (if existentialism can be called reasonable) accounting to Hari of
the problems Hari has been experiencing and thinking about since he came to India, or at
least since he fell in love with Daphne. And so it does. Merrick claims that if Hari will
only take responsibility for the rape, Hari's whole situation will be revealed to him, and
he will at last understand it. In this Merrick turns out to be correct. When asked in his
later prison interview whether he might indeed have tried to take advantage of Daphne
sexually, Hari confesses (Scorpion, p. 250):
'I may have done for all I know. My behaviour at that time left a lot to be
desired.'
25
�'I'd forgotten how to act in that kind of company. Or ifl'd not forgotten,
trying to act as I remembered I should act seemed-artificial.'
Hari was half-way to being an Indian, or half-way to being his stereotype of what an
Indian was. We recall that Daphne herself admitted that Hari had to get mad and grab her
wrist, get rough, throw her cigarette away by force, in order to find strength enough to
break the taboo against interracial touching. Hari's confession that he might indeed have
tried to take advantage of Daphne sexually is corroborated by what actually occurs in
their first and only sexual union, in the deserted Bibighar garden the night of the political
unrest. As Daphne herself recounts, Hari cannot initially act out or "enact" their union as
anything other than the very rape which the taboo says their union must be (Jewel, p. 417,
emphasis added):
There was nothing gentle about the way he took me. I felt myself lifted onto the
mosaic. He tore at my underclothes and pressed down on me with all his strength.
But this was not me and Hari. . .. [H]e made me cry out. And then it was us.
"But this was not me and Hari"-the sentence is important, because it shows that
Daphne does not wish to believe for a moment that Merrick's racial situation is in fact
all-determinant here. But our novelist is toying with just how close to being correct, if
not entirely correct, Merrick is. Daphne's assertion that this was not the real Hari sounds
like-or takes the form of-a characteristically pathetic rationalization by a white girl
who has fallen in love with an Indian only to find herself taken advantage of. Hari and
Daphne are in a communal vacuum: he because he is a black Englishman whom
Englishmen shun, she because she is crossing the color line. Paul Scott wishes to show
26
�just how difficult it is to create a sense of self beyond these racial selves that their
communities have constructed for them.
After the "real" rapists leave them, Daphne in her delirium thinks she is alone,
having "this idea that Hari had gone off with them because he had been one of [the
rapists]." The communal ideology is strong enough to make Daphne subconsciously
adhere to the scenario for which Merrick asks Hari to take responsibility. Like Daphne,
Hari accepts Merrick's version of the situation-for a few hours. Merrick pretends
during the interrogation (a policeman's trick) that Daphne went ahead and incriminated
Hari. Merrick offers to let Hari confess to a lesser charge and avoid punishment for rape,
for surely he can prove that Daphne agreed to meet him, that she wanted him? Merrick is
correct in his assessment of how Hari will feel at Daphne's betrayal. Hari later realizes to
his humiliation that he actually believed Merrick was telling the truth and that Daphne
had given evidence against him. But we the readers know that Merrick's lie corresponds
to a kind ofreality. Daphne did betray Hari in her mind, however briefly. Just as
Daphne had believed, briefly, that Hari was one of the rapists, so Hari, for a few hours,
believed that Daphne, as an English girl, would consider him, an Indian, one of the
rapists. And, we know as well, their sexual union was a rape, if only for an instant. It all
fits into a seamless "situation."
After more torture, Merrick offers Hari water and helps him drink it. Then
Merrick tells Hari if he were honest he would admit he was grateful for the water and
would thank Merrick for it. He gives Hari another drink. "'After a bit I heard myself say
[thank you]'" (Scorpion, pp. 300-1 ). Merrick says they both "know" where things stand
now. In other words, by enacting the situation of master and slave, Hari has learned
something about himself, just as Merrick said he would. Enactment is disclosive. During
the night, Hari wakes up and calls for help. '"The name I called was Merrick.'"
Only because Merrick is no longer in the cell with him, no longer there to "help"
the dependent Indian, does Hari have time to reason things out. Hari first decides to
27
�confess to the rape charge. That is the attractive course because he could add thereby
something of his own to his enemies' attempt to destroy him. Destroying himself would
be the only course left in which he could "exercise his own free will" (Scorpion, p. 302).
He is now at the level of Sartre's suicide: to be or not to be. Then Hari comes once again
to realize his own nothingness. "I thought, well anyway what's going to be destroyed?
Nothing. An illusion of a human being .... [A] nonentity ...". Hari now has the two
principal components of Sartre's existentialist philosophy: free will and nothingness.
When Hari finally revolts against Merrick's Situation, it could easily seem to the
reader that Scott has taken pains to show the victory of liberalism or humanism over the
existentialist philosophy of the situation. For example, Hari in his prison cell comes to
the realization that (Scorpion, p. 302; emphasis in original):
... no one had any rights in regard to me. I was the only one with rights. . . . I
wasn't to be categorized or defined by type, colour, race, capacity, intellect,
condition, beliefs, instincts, manner or behaviour.... So who had the right to
destroy me? Who had the right as well as the means? The answer was nobody. I
wasn't sure that they even had the means.
This reads as a classical liberal, modern vindication of the rights-bearing self. It would
be easy to assume from this that a rights-based liberalism here wins out over Merrick's
existentialism.
But it is only in and through an existentialist engagement with the situation that
Hari achieves this vindication of his own rights and individuality. He asserts: "[T]he
situation about Hari Kumar was that there was no one anywhere exactly like him. So
who had the right to destroy me?" Part of his reasoning is as follows: "I saw ...
something Merrick had overlooked. That the situation only existed on Merrick's terms if
we both took part in it. The situation would cease to exist if I detached myself from it"
28
�(Scorpion, p. 303). Hari has realized that the master-slave dialectic needs a slave: that is
why Merrick has been so motivated to reduce him to slavery, so that Merrick himself can
be elevated to mastery-what he regards as his proper position. Take away the slave and
you take away the master-slave situation. But when Hari says Merrick's situation ceases
to exist, he does not intend that no Situation of any sort exists any longer. On the
contrary: Hari refers to "the situation" many times throughout his prison interview,
endorsing the concept in his own right and without irony, sometimes infuriating his
interrogators with his mystifying assertions about what ''the situation" is and what it
entails. When they try to prevent him from talking about the situation, Hari says that it is
impossible for him to forget the situation (Scorpion, p. 283). He says (Scorpion, p. 292;
emphases added):
... you begin to see that I am the least important factor and that without
intending to you're asking questions about what I call the situation.
That's why you're annoyed and accuse me oflying, because the situation
threatens to be more than any conscience can cope with.
Hari's silence, his refusal to participate in Merrick's version of the situation, not only
incriminates him but also contributes to the prosecution of the five other prisoners
innocent of the rape in the Bibighar garden. When this is pointed out to him, Hari
replies: "Yes, I had to consider that. It was part of the situation." When Hari's testimony
is finished, he notes with irony that the clerk had been sent out of the room during the
part that incriminated Merrick. He suggests, "That's part of the situation too, isn't it?"
(Scorpion, p. 305)
Hari has been converted to existentialism by Merrick lock, stock, and barrel. He
merely disagrees with Merrick over what the situation is. Or rather, Hari' s resoluteness
subjectively discloses a situation different from the situation disclosed by Merrick' s
29
�resoluteness. Let us look closer at the situation as disclosed to Hari. He finds the tin mug
that Merrick gave him water out of. He puts a towel around his middle, covering his
naked, lacerated body. He walks up and down his jail cell, holding the tin mug. Like his
Hindu grandfather, who had become "sannyasi"--disavowing all responsibilities in his
old age to take up a beggar's cup and go out into the world to acquire merit-, Hari now
reminds himself of the "good Indian" his relatives·have been trying to make him become
since his return to India. The idea of sannyasa-the disavowal of all responsibilitiesconnects for Hari with the idea that Hari is not answerable to anyone but himself: since
he has no responsibilities, no one has any claims over him. "No one had any rights in
regard to me." He comes to a decision to be silent, confessing nothing. Hari vindicates
his existential freedom: "it seemed like a way of proving the existence of Hari Kumar ..
"(Scorpion, p. 303; emphasis added).
It is crucial to see here that Hari does not truly become an Indian. ("I don't know
whether that made me a good Indian," p. 303). He, an Englishman, does not appropriate
Indian values such as sannyasa in any direct or simple way. Rather, he takes from
sannyasa only what he needs and only what the historical situation permits him to take.
His appropriation oflndian cultural values is momentary, transient, and opportunistic,
and it takes place in and through a Liberal philosophy of rights that is not Hindu but
comes from John Stuart Mill and the tradition Hari learned in England. Nevertheless, the
existentialist would say that Hari' s appropriation of Indian cultural values is as authentic
or genuine as it could be: the situation disclosed to Hari what there was to appropriate,
and he appropriated it.
Well, I'm almost done. But here, at the end of the lecture, we have come to what
I consider to be the core of the Raj Quartet's philosophical concerns, and what Paul Scott
admits in his lectures and essays is his philosophical purpose in writing the kind of
"moral dialogue" that we have been reading here. (I should stress that the wording of the
following questions is my own wording, not Scott's wording, but I claim they are his
30
�questions.) Can someone from one culture genuinely come to understand and embrace
the people and place of another culture, or must members of one culture always
appropriate "the other" in a mode determined by the culture they come from? That is to
say, can Daphne really embrace Indianness and understand it? To what extent does a
culture constitute (and therefore determine) the self that belongs to it, and to what extent
is the self free for self-fashioning? Remember that one culture, one community is about
to abscond: time is running out on the raj. A legion of characters in the novels we have
not examined find themselves suddenly without roles when their society absconds. Scott
portrays characters struggling to find a core of moral agency or individuality in
themselves that has not been constructed for them by their history. That is, they seek a
self that is properly their own. They struggle to come to terms with the sheer extent of
moral determinism that comes of their involvement in a great historical process (the
retreat from empire and the Indian Independence movement). Only through historical
theory can they explain their conundrums to themselves and to the reader. The Raj
Quartet presents several such historical theories (I have concentrated on only one.) Paul
Scott elsewhere expresses distaste for the historicist philosophy of history known as
existentialism. He clearly was ambivalent about it, since existentialism contributed to the
moral depravity of Merrick. Yet it also contributed to the existential freedom of Hari.
Somehow despite his distaste for it, existentialism spoke deeply to Paul Scott when it
came to the philosophic wonder implicit in the questions he posed.
31
�
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History and Existentialism in the <em>Raj Quartet</em>
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Typescript of a lecture delivered by Paul Ludwig on November 5, 2004, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Ludwig, Paul W. (Paul Walter), 1963-
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2004-11-05
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Scott, Paul, 1920-1978. Raj quartet
Existentialism in literature
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LEC_Ludwig_Paul_2004-11-05
Friday night lecture
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b8804c1112e284fa3fc7f105c055d8aa.mp3
cb10610c5c9d716b94cc88ac1be031ce
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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History and Existentialism in the <em>Raj Quartet</em>
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered by Paul Ludwig on November 5, 2004, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Ludwig, Paul W. (Paul Walter), 1963-
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2004-11-05
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Scott, Paul, 1920-1978. Raj quartet
Existentialism in literature
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English
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LEC_Ludwig_Paul_2005-11-05_ac
Friday night lecture
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