Homer, The Odyssey

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so amny roundabout ways
To wander, driven off course, after sacking Troy's hallowed keep;
Many the people whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned,
Many the toils he suffered at sea, anguish in his heart
As he struggled to safeguard his life and the homecoming of his companions.
But he did not save his companions even so, though he longed to,
For their heedlessness destroyed them, theirs and nobody else's--
Fools that they were, like children, who devoured the sun-god Hyperion's
Cattle, and so he took from them the day of their homecoming.
Goddess, start where you will; daughter of Zeus, share the tale with us too. (p. 73)

Summary: The obvious story of The Odyssey is that of Odysseus, but this is merely the dominant of three interwoven stories.

The first, and most encompassing, is a tale of Athena. We begin the poem with Athena authorized by Zeus to begin the process of allowing Odysseus to return home. We end the poem with Athena, again authorized by Zeus, bringing to an end the bloodshed that threatens to flood over everything after Odysseus's return. Odysseus is her favorite, but he is opposed by Poseidon, and thus we have the story of Athena threading the needle as she works to bring Odysseus successfully home while not directly opposing her uncle Poseidon. (It is somewhat tempting to see her as being especially careful because some of her actions in The Iliad got her into trouble with the major gods, including Zeus himself.) She plays an active role, constantly showing up in disguises to advise heroes at opportune times, putting thoughts into mortal hearts, pouring divine splendor on people when they need to impress, bringing Odysseus ever closer to home. She also, as he returns, intensifies his difficulties, hardening the hearts of the Suitors trying to take his wife and his home and repeatedly provoking them to more extreme action. This is certainly in order to make his homecoming more splendid and definitive, but may also be a sort of sop to her uncle, making sure that Odysseus endures trouble not merely as he comes home but precisely so that he can come home despite being under Poseidon's wrath. She is a goddess, so she has no character arc; rather, she forms the story successfully to her satisfaction.

The second tale is that of Telemakhos. Twenty-ish years ago his father had gone off to war, so long ago that he does not really remember his father. When his father did not return ten(-ish) years ago with the other heroes of the Trojan War, his nightmare began, as men from all over descended on his homestead, nominally to woo the lovely Penelope, his mother, and they have stayed as guests, devouring the substance of his father's household. Telemakhos, of course, was too young to do anything about it, and now that he has recently become of age where he might do something, he finds that his options have diminished almost to nothing. The Suitors outnumber any forces he can command, and he is inexperienced, having no inkling of how he might extricate himself and his mother from their intrusion. We learn that he is quite clever, being a true son of his shrewd father and prudent mother, but he lacks his father's self-confidence and boldness, because he has never had an opportunity to develop them. The first five books of the poem follow Telemakhos as Athena guides him through this maze. He mounts an expedition, with her help (although unbeknownst to him, because she is disguised as Mestor), to discover news of his father. They visit Pylos and Sparta, where the mission is successful, in that Telemakhos does learn something about what happened to his father, and then return home in Book Fifteen, avoiding, with Athena's guidance, a fleet sent by the Suitors to kill Telemakhos on the way. This part of the story teases what has happened with Odysseus, and gives Telemakhos the preparation he needs for when his father actually arrives. However, there is arguably a third function that it fulfills, namely, that it buys Penelope and Telemakhos more time. Part of the host of Suitors is away from Ithaca in the attempt to assassinate Telemakhos; those at home therefore have incentive to await the results of that mission; Telemakhos gets away from the Suitors for a while, which lets him get a clearer view of the situation; and what is gained is exactly what is needed to allow Odysseus the time to arrive. In Book Sixteen, his story begins intersecting with his father's, and we find Telemakhos well prepared to assist his father in restoring the rightful order of things.

And, of course, there is the tale of Odysseus. Mendelsohn notes that the poem starts out without telling us his name (we only get it in passing after twenty lines), and that this is not an accident, because Odysseus is repeatedly associated with namelessness and disguises. The most famous case is his interaction with Cyclops, to whom he says his name is Outis, No-one. But throughout the tale we find a constant blurring between Odysseus and Outis. Whenever he meets someone, Odysseus presents himself as someone else; plays on words involving ou tis and similar phrases keep recurring; his identity is often in question, his whereabouts often uncertain, his very existence repeatedly called into question. This is because Odysseus is wandering in the Anti-Home. All of the troubles he faces are in one aspect or another the opposite of what it is to be home: the inertness of the Lotos-eaters, the savagery of the Cyclopeans, the strange seductions of tempting goddesses, all of the forms of uncivilized madness. Lost in such things, can a man have a name? Can have that for which the name is a metonymy, a self? What is worse, this Anti-Home has laid siege to his own household, and he cannot stop being Outis, the Stranger, until he is in a position to restore Home. Then, and only then, can Odysseus fully be Odysseus. As he says when he finally stands forth to take his home back:

'Here at home I am, truly myself!' (p. 399)

Favorite Passage:

And so, when she saw the corpses and the endless rivers of blood,
She launched into the victory cry, so great was the deed she beheld,
But Odysseus kept her back and restrained her, though she was eager,
And addressed her then with words that flew toward her like arrows:
  "Rejoice in your heart, old woman, but hold back--don't sound the cry.
It is an unholy thing to gloat over men who have been slain.
What vanquished these men was a god-sent fate and their own wicked deeds,
For they never showed respect to anyone on earth
Who happened to cross their path, whether wicked or good at heart.
And so, through their heedlessness, they have come to a shameful end...." (p. 419)

Recommendation: It's The Odyssey, and the translation is quite good, so obviously, Highly Recommended.

*****

Homer, The Odyssey , Daniel Mendelsohn, tr., The University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 2025).

Child of Night and Silence

 Sonnet 13
by Anna Seward 

 Thou child of Night and Silence, balmy Sleep,
Shed thy soft poppies on my aching brow!
And charm to rest the thoughts of whence, or how
Vanish'd that priz'd Affection, wont to keep
Each grief of mine from rankling into woe.
Then stern Misfortune from her bended bow
Loos'd the dire strings;-and Care, and anxious Dread
From my cheer'd heart, on sullen pinion fled.
But now, the spell dissolv'd, th' enchantress gone,
Ceaseless those cruel fiends infest my day,
And sunny hours but light them to their prey.
Then welcome midnight shades, when thy wish'd boon
May in oblivious dews my eye-lids steep,
Thou child of Night and Silence, balmy Sleep!

Dashed Off IV

 drawing the solution from the problem like the sculpture from the block
the problem as the lock that structurally requires a certain sort of key
structural impediments to solution-finding (wrong kind of key) vs combinatorial impediments (size of the field of possible shapes of the right kind of key)

In matters of skill, exercise the skill in such a way as is consistent with a just society.

Every inquiry is a cooperation between practical reason and theoretical reason.

the literary sketch and the metonymies of human life -- seeing the person through his traces

metonymic depth and metaphoric depth in a story

All four gospels refer to Isaiah 40:3 LXX: Mk 1:2-3, Mt 3:3, Lk 3:4-6, Jn 1:23

We are usually most influenced by things we see identifiably but dimly.

guised being
(1) projection/imposition
(2) indirection
(3) translation
(4) perspectivalization
-- (4) is perhaps a version of (2)

guising with text, guising with model

Reasoning is always from understanding to understanding.

syllogistic functions
(1) non-illation (e.g., expository)
(2) subjectively illative (e.g., explicative)
(3) objectively illative (e.g., scientific)

principles of the way-of-tea
(1) wa (harmony)
(2) kei (respect)
(3) sei (purity)
(4) jaku (tranquillity)

truth as thing, truth as object, truth as value

The more personal something is, the more it seems to involve something of simplicity, immutability, eternity, and infinity; the personal suggests transcendence of measure and limitation, just as part of what it is.

'Be' may be a sign of identity, of predication, and of existence, and this is not mere historical account; and any account that does not make sense of how it can be all three is defective metaphysics.

'fact' as always about objects (perhaps a fact is a relationship of objects, itself taken as an object and recognized as corresponding to the relations of the things objectified -- or perhaps more simpy, true relation of objects, itself made or taken as objects)

justice as the virtue of social order

"In distributive justice, something is given to a person insofar as what belongs to the whole is due to the part...." Aquinas
"To govern is to bring the thing governed in a suitable way to its proper end."

It is pointless to talk about distributive justice until one has established something to be distributed.

Our concept of 'event' presupposes our concept of 'cause'.

Christ's humanity as perpetual memorial

the choralization (integration into heavenly choir and liturgy) of humanity

Satisfaction differs from retributive punishment in that the proper amends is not imposed externally.

Often one of the most important things you can do toward reform is to stop pretending that it is easy.

the giver, the gift, the spirit of the gift

Unlike secular citienship, which is developmental & often piecemal, heaveny citizenship comes altogether and at once.

Grace opposes guilt as a formal rather than an efficient cause (by internal exclusion/resistance rather than removal).

Even Christ had to prepare for His burdens.

A recurring problem of the modern age is the fictionalization of love, the repeated attempt to replace love with fantasies of it.

Where God does not require reparation, no human can have the right to demand it.

To love others well requires loving one's love of them.

the intelligible splendor of Christ

Kant regularly attributes to the intelligible features that belong to the superintelligible; but this helps him to explore the traces of the intelligible in the empirical itself.

ST 3.22.2ad3 is not in the manuscripts; it was added in the late sixteenth century by editors and perhaps presupposes a Suarezian view of Christ's holiness. (See Legge, Christology 140, referring to Rohof.)

Christ's human holiness is the same holiness that he shares with us. (Note that Peter in Acts 10:38 describes Christ's anointing in terms used elsewhere of His followers.)

Wisdom is the state of the intellect appropriate to the fullness of genuine love.

Habitual grace is instrumentality for divine purposes.

"The Holy Spirit, as we are taught by Scripture, is the cause of every perfection of the human mind." Aquinas, SCG 4.18

The minister works as minister, the soldier as a soldier, the servant as a servant, by a habitus.

"The Son, as the Word, gives us his teaching, but the Holy Spirit makes us capable of receiving that teaching." Aquinas In Ioan. 14.6

disposition to an act vs disposition within an act

Part of prudential action is to apply natura law, and part to situate ourselves within a broader natural lawfulness.

We knwo things in themselves, just not things in themselves apart from what we can know about them.

Truth is not the sole property of the speculative intellect; the practical intellect involves truth for action.

speculative intellect : truth of being :: practical intellect : truth of goodness

Learning is said in many ways.

"The wrath of God against sin is as changeless as His Love, of which indeed it is but one side or aspect." Hastings Rashdall
"To believe in the Son makes it so much easier to believe in the Father."
"Humanity is capable of, and (if any teleological assumption is justified) seems made for a good so much higher than any that is actually attainable in this life."

Imitations of realistic fiction drift farther and farther from reality the longer the chain of imitation extends.

Leclerq's division of charisms
(1) pertaining to instruction of the faithful: apostle, prophets, doctor, evangelist, exhortation, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, discernment of spirits, glossolalia, interpretation of tongues
(2) pertaining to corporal aid: alms, hospitality, assistance, faith, charisms of healing, operations of miracles
(3) pertaining to government: pastor, presiding, deacon, charism of government

the artifact as a medium of cognition
-- note that to understand something, we might try our hand at making it, or, if that is not possible, a model of it, or, if that is not possible, a discourse about it
-- the artifact as such as medium vs the artifact as sign as medium

"Beauty has an infinite amplitude, like being." Maritain

For as far back as we can trace any evidence of poetry, poetry has suggested the supernatural or divine.

The imitations of fine art affect the spectators because they are assimilations to the things; we are drawn to things *through* the works of art.

In the fine arts, we are the supreme imitators, even the angels cannot best us, for it is our own field, oru connatural domain.

All genuine appreciation of art is a form of learning; who is not taught by the work of art cannot appreciate the work itself.

Sacraments are often doubly composed: word and thing, which makes the material sign, which is composed with the signification.

Artifacts have a double genus, one in the order of nature and one in the order of will or art.

The Characteristic of Truth

 The characteristic of truth is to be intimately related with a supreme unity out of which it evolves into plurality. Each unit of this plurality also gives rise to a further plurality of more limited truths, which in turn produce an abundant crop of truths that germinate further rich crops. So the seed of immortal truths, which continues to extend ever more widely, is classifed into species and genera and develops into various branches of knowledge, art forms and intellectual disciplines. The characteristic of truth, as I have already mentioned, is to flow into other truths, in which it is renewed and continually increases in number, without losing its primal unity and simplicity. It is so incorporeal and divine that, as I said, it finds no satisfactory likeness or representation anywhere amongst material, sensible beings. 

[Antonio Rosmini, Introduction to Philosophy, Volume I: About the Author's Studies, Rosmini House (Durham 2004) p. 20.]

Habitude XXIII

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that it is unfitting to distinguish three speculative intellectual virtues, to wit, wisdom, knowledge, and intellection. For species ought not to be divided into genera, but wisdom is a sort of knowledge, as is said in Ethic. VI. Therefore wisdom ought not to be divided from knowledge in the numbering of intellectual virtues.

Further, in the division of powers, habitudes, and acts, which is considered according to objects, one considers principally the distinction that is according to the formal notion of the objects, as is obvious from what was said above. Therefore different habitudes ought not to be distinguished according to the material object, but according to the formal notion of that object. But the source of demonstration is the notion for knowing conclusions. Therefore intellection of the sources ought not to be put in another habitude, or another virtue, from knowledge of the conclusions.

Further, intellectual virtue is said of that which is in the rational itself through essence. But reason, even speculative, as it reasons by deducing demonstratively, so also it reasons by deducing dialectically. Therefore knowledge, which is caused by demonstrative deduction, is put forward as a speculative intellectual virtue -- and so also opinion.

But contrariwise is that the Philosopher, Ethic. VI, puts forward only these three speculative intellectual virtues, to wit, wisdom, knowledge, and intellection.

I reply that it must be said that, as was already said, speculative intellectual virtue is that through which speculative intellect is completed so as to consider the true, for this is its good work. Now the true can be considered in two ways: in one way, as recognized through itself [per se notum]; in another way, as recognized through another. 

(1) Now what is recognized through itself has itself as a source, and is perceived immediately by the intellect. And thus the habitude completing the intellect to this kind of consideration of the true, is called intellection, which is the habitude of the sources.

(2) But the true that is recognized through another is not perceived immediately by the intellect, but through inquiry of reason, and has itself in the notion of an endpoint. This is able to be in two ways: in one way, as being the ultimate in some genus; in another way, as being the ultimate with respect to the whole of human cognition. And because those things that are recognized afterward with respect to us, are beforehand and more recognized according to their nature, as is said in Phys. I, therefore that which is ultimate with respect to the whole of human cognition is that which is primarily and maximally cognizable according to nature. And concerning this kind is wisdom, which considers the highest causes, as is said in Metaphys. I. Thus fittingly it judges and sets in order all things, because complete and universal judgment cannot be had without resolution to first causes. 

(3) But as to that which is ultimate in this or that genus of cognizables, knowledge completes the intellect. And therefore according to the different genera of knowables, there are diverse habitudes of knowledge, whereas wisdom is only one.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that wisdom is a sort of knowledge inasmuch as it has that which is common to all forms of knowledge, namely, that it demonstrates conclusions from sources. But because it has something proper to it above other forms of knowledge, to with, that it judges all things, and not only as to conclusions but also as to first sources, therefore it has the notion of a more complete virtue than knowledge.

To the second it must be said that when the notion of an object under one act is referred to power or habitude, then powers or habitudes are not distinguished according to the notion of the object and the material object, just as to the same visual power pertains seeing color and light, which is the notion for seeing color and seen together with it. But the sources of demonstration are able to be considered on their own, without considering conclusions. They are also able to be considered along with conclusions, insofar as the sources are drawn out [deducuntur] into conclusions. Therefore to consider the sources in this second way pertains to knowledge, which also considers conclusions, but to consider the sources in themselves pertains to intellection. Thus, if one rightly considers, these three virtues are not distinguished from each other equally but in a sort of ordering, as happens in all powers for which one part is more complete than another, as the rational soul is more complete than the sensory, and the sensory than the vegetative. For in this way, knowledge depends on intellection as more sourceward. And both depend on wisdom as most sourceward, which contains under itself both intellection and knowledge, as judging the conclusions of forms of knowledge and their sources.

To the third it must be said that, as was said above, the habitude of virtue has itself determinately to good, but not in any way to bad. But the good of the intellect is the true, and its bad is the false. Thus only those habitudes are called intellectual virtues to which the true is always ascribed, and never the false. But opinion and suspicion are able to be true and false. And therefore they are not intellectual virtues, as is said in Ethic. VI.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.2, my rough translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

This is one of those articles that is trickier to translate straightforwardly than it looks. (It's notable that the Dominican Fathers translation is fairly paraphrastic in parts.) Ratio gets a full workout here; it can mean 'reason, notion, nature, ground, formal aspect', and a colloquial translation would almost have to use the full gamut. The fact that principium (principle) literally means 'source' or 'beginning' plays an essential, load-bearing role in the argument. The idiomatic phrase, se habet, closely associated with habitudes, returns, and not in an incidental way; I've just translated it literally as 'has itself', but it always indicates disposition, relation, orientation. (Perhaps 'holds itself' would be a reasonably close English idiom for it: in habitude, a power holds itself toward an object, so that virtue, for instance, holds itself in its termination to good.) The fact that intellectus is the name of both the power and one of its virtues also seems to be doing some work. A small but interesting point is that to describe what we call 'deduction', the medievals generally used 'syllogismus' -- as is found here in the third objection -- but in the reply to the first objection, St. Thomas uses the root verb of 'deduction' as a metaphor to describe what is done in this kind of reasoning.

The argument here is interesting, and captures something that is perhaps often lost in discussing Aquinas on the intellectual virtues, namely, that we in some sense start in medias res. Understanding or intellection (intellectus) concerns principles known per se; with those starting points, we ascend to more fundamental first principles in wisdom (sapientia) and descend to derivative conclusions in knowledge (scientia), going both directions by reasoning. Thus sapientia is very much like scientia, in that they both do not deal with what we recognize immediately, but sapientia is higher even than intellectus, on which scientia depends. We do not start at the top, with what is most fundamental in itself, but with what is most fundamental to minds like ours. I think a common temptation is to think that wisdom is somehow beyond reasoning, a direct insight into things; such a temptation collapses sapientia into intellectus, whereas St. Thomas insists that what wisdom concerns itself with has to be reached and not just perceived. 

And He May Softly Hum the Tune and Wonder

 When I Have Passed Away
by Claude McKay 

 When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten
With not a tree or stone to mark the place; 

 Perchance a pensive youth, with passion burning,
For olden verse that smacks of love and wine,
The musty pages of old volumes turning,
May light upon a little song of mine,

 And he may softly hum the tune and wonder
Who wrote the verses in the long ago;
Or he may sit him down awhile to ponder
Upon the simple words that touch him so.

Links of Note

 * Gregory B. Sadler, Anger's Importance in the Aristotelian Tradition of Moral Theory

* Woarna, Must God Be Unique?, on an argument by Al-Taftazani, at "Lambda Continuum"

* Steffi Schadow, Acting for a Reason: What Kant's Concept of Maxims Can Tell Us about Value, Human Action, and Practical Identity (PDF)

* John Tuttle, Anne Frank and the Religiosity of Fairy Stories, at "Close Reading"

* Henrik Lagerlund, Medieval Theories of the Syllogism, at the SEP

* Stephen Read, Aristotle's Theory of the Assertoric Syllogism (PDF)

* Mass market paperback books are quickly going extinct.

* Tony Bozanich has an interesting post discussing improv comedy.

* David W. Wood, From "Fichticizing" to "Romanticizing": Fichte and Novalis on the Activities of Philosophy and Art (PDF)

* Bill Vallicella, Interior Locutions: Criteria of Genuineness in Teresa of Avila, at "Maverick Philosopher"

* Conor Casey, The Fundamental Law of the Vatican City State: Exploring Hidden Treasures in the Constitution of the World's Smallest State (PDF)