Many Mansions

Today is the feast of St. Teresa de Avila, Doctor of the Church. From her Interior Castle:

I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions. If we reflect, sisters, we shall see that the soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What, do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He has told us, He created us in His own image and likeness....

We will now think of the others who at last enter the precincts of the castle; they are still very worldly, yet have some desire to do right, and at times, though rarely, commend themselves to God’s care. They think about their souls every now and then; although very busy, they pray a few times a month, with minds generally filled with a thousand other matters, for where their treasure is, there is their heart also. Still, occasionally they cast aside these cares; it is a great boon for them to realize to some extent the state of their souls, and to see that they will never reach the gate by the road they are following.

At length they enter the first rooms in the basement of the castle, accompanied by numerous reptiles which disturb their peace, and prevent their seeing the beauty of the building; still, it is a great gain that these persons should have found their way in at all.

Medieval Women and Philosophy

Christina Van Dyke has an interesting post on philosophy and medieval women:

As I rolled up my sleeves and went to work, I discovered that although female contemplatives in the Middle Ages might not have thought of themselves as engaging in philosophy per se--and although what they wrote often tends not to fit neatly into our contemporary conceptions of even just philosophical theology--if you take a step back and think of philosophy as the love of wisdom, perennially addressing the issues that human beings have wondered about "Since the dawn of time," it turns out that medieval women have a wealth of things to say about classic philosophical debates involving, say, self-knowledge, love, human nature, ethics, God, and the meaning of life.

And this is very certainly true; they often are only touching on the philosophical topics incidentally, but in the strictest sense this is true of most of the people we think of as "medieval philosophers" -- they were theologians or doctors or lawyers doing philosophy in those contexts. As she quite rightly notes, Anselm's 'ontological argument' is part of a prayer.

She gives a number of suggestions for incorporating them into medieval philosophy courses. Another point to note is that it's often the case that women have done philosophical work on different subjects than the men were usually focusing on, particularly in cultures in which there were fairly sharp role differences between men and women, and so it's sometimes worthwhile to look at slightly different philosophical topics to see if women start showing up more -- education, for instance, or moral psychology.

And Heaven Broke Forth in Song

The Clerk
by Charles Williams

The clerk sat on a stool
And added up a column,
Looking a very fool,
Staid he was and solemn.
He said: 'Nineteen and one.
Mark nought and carry two.'
And that was all that he had done
And all that he could do.

The clerk sat on his stool
And another line began:
The heroes called him fool
But God had called him man.
He said: 'Two fives are ten
And carry one along.'
The devil shuddered in his den
And Heaven broke forth in song.

As I always say, the devil fears great deeds done humbly and small deeds done well.

Lying by Omission

Robin Davenport criticizes Sam Harris's position on lying:

However, this evasive tactic of withholding one’s actual feelings by instead inserting a less relevant, albeit true, statement, is a far cry from being honest. In fact, this ‘skillful truth-telling’ is nothing more than lying by another name. Harris is therefore being disingenuous when he suggests that we can avoid lying by articulating irrelevant truths. Honesty requires that we bare our souls, so to speak, and potentially voice difficult truths, not simply avoid them. Stating verifiable facts that have little to do with our real sentiments does not let us off the hook, especially when the irrelevances are designed to hide tough underlying relevant truths. So on closer inspection, we realize that, without calling it such, Harris is suggesting here that we replace a lie of commission with a lie of omission.

One occasionally comes across the phrase 'lying by omission' in legal contexts, in which it is well defined: it involves the failure to disclose information one is legally obliged to disclose. It is less clear how it would work in situations in which there is no legal obligation; there is good reason to think we would often have a moral obligation not to say certain things to certain people.

Even if one extends the concept to outside a legal context (and it does seem that sometimes one would be dishonest by not saying something), it seems somewhat misleading, since 'lie of omission' would not, as it seems, be a parallel concept to 'lie of commission'; you can have a 'lie of commission' simply by asserting something false so as to deceive, but you couldn't have a 'lie of omission' except where some obligation requires you to tell the truth. Quite obviously we are not required to tell every truth to everyone, so there must be some standard of when we would by doing wrong by the omission. This means that 'lie of omission' is not a lie in the same sense as a 'lie of commission', and will work differently. It's simply not true, that "Honesty requires that we bare our souls"; this is such a hyperbolic claim that it can hardly be taken seriously, and actually putting it into practice would seem a recipe for creating a person whose relations with other people are entirely focused on expressing himself.

Fortnightly Book, October 11

This next week will, like the past week, be a busy grading week, so the next fortnight needs to be a shorter book and/or re-read; and it is both: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland. Herland was serialized in 1915 in The Forerunner, a magazine that Gilman produced, wrote, and edited herself every month for seven years. The purpose of the magazine was to further the progress of women by stimulating them to act for themselves. The magazine is summed up in an advertisement from volume 1, number 1:

THE FORERUNNER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

What is The Forerunner? It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon; dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

What is it For? It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to make.

What is it about? It is about people, principles, and the questions of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

Is it a Woman's magazine? It will treat all three phases of our existence—male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important citizen.

Is it a Socialist Magazine? It is a magazine for humanity, and humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious humanity is to promote Socialization.

Why is it published? It is published to express ideas which need a special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

Herland is in genre a feminist utopia, a Lost World story, in fact, depicting a society composed entirely of women discovered by a small scientific expedition of which Lost World stories are so fond. As the expedition consists of three men, both sides find the discovery somewhat unexpected and challenging....

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Introduction

Opening Passage:

At five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded, as usual, by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the windowpanes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun. It was cold outside, and the campguard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long.

Summary: Shukhov -- the Ivan Denisovich of the title -- was a loyal soldier in the Russian army who was captured by the Germans in 1942. He and a few others managed to escape and get back to Russian lines, but their story about being POWs was not believed, and he was given ten years in labor camps.

The book, as the title says, follows him through one day, from morning to evening. It's a fairly good day for life in a prison camp: he stays out of serious trouble, he doesn't get sick, his squad got one of the better job assignments, by fast thinking he had had a little extra for breakfast and by helping out another prisoner he got something extra for supper, and so forth. Along the way we learn the truths that make up gulag life: A man who is warm does not understand a man who is cold, a zek's worst enemy is often another zek, survival requires looking after those who look after you. One of the most interesting things about the story is how it shows society developing under these artificially restricted and hostile conditions, and the capacity of the human mind to combine both animal cunning and social reason to adapt impressively even to otherwise degrading conditions.

In addition to reading the book, I also watched the 1970 British-Norwegian film of the same name. It stays extremely faithful to the book -- a commenter at IMDB noted that he had never seen a movie that managed to stay so close to the original work, and it is indeed quite close. The language is cleaned up a bit, some description becomes dialogue, and a few things are slimmed down, but the movie captures the book in an extraordinary way. It has one of the most absurdly incongruous trailers I have seen:



That's not really the moral one draws, good as the movie and book are! You can watch the movie online thanks to the Solzhenitsyn Center.

Favorite Passage:

He yawned once more. "Well, don't let it get you down, men," he said. "We'll live through it, even in this power station. Get going, mortar mixers. Don't wait for the whistle."

That's what a squad is. A guard can't get people to budge even in working hours, but a squad leader can tell his men to get on with the job even during the break, and they'll do it. Because he's the one who feeds them. And he'd never make them work for nothing. (p. 73)

Recommendation: This is a genuinely excellent short read -- Highly Recommended. I also recommend the movie, which captures it quite well.

------
Quotations from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Ralph Parker, tr., Signet (New York: 1998).

Not in the Shallows but the Deep

Cardinal Newman
by Christina Rossetti

“In the grave, whither thou goest.”

O weary Champion of the Cross, lie still:
Sleep thou at length the all-embracing sleep:
Long was thy sowing day, rest now and reap:
Thy fast was long, feast now thy spirit’s fill.
Yea, take thy fill of love, because thy will
Chose love not in the shallows but the deep:
Thy tides were springtides, set against the neap
Of calmer souls: thy flood rebuked their rill.
Now night has come to thee—please God, of rest:
So some time must it come to every man;
To first and last, where many last are first.
Now fixed and finished thine eternal plan,
Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst:
Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best.

Today, of course, was the memorial for Bl. John Henry Newman. From his sermon, "The Religion of the Pharisee, the Religion of Mankind":

The natural conscience of man, if cultivated from within, if enlightened by those external aids which in varying degrees are given him in every place and time, would teach him much of his duty to God and man, and would lead him on, by the guidance both of Providence and grace, into the fulness of religious knowledge; but, generally speaking, he is contented that it should tell him very little, and he makes no efforts to gain any juster views than he has at first, of his relations to the world around him and to his Creator. Thus he apprehends part, and part only, of the moral law; has scarcely any idea at all of sanctity; and, instead of tracing actions to their source, which is the motive, and judging them thereby, he measures them for the most part by their effects and their outward aspect. Such is the way with the multitude of men everywhere and at all times; they do not see the Image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes: if once they did this, they would begin to see how much He requires, and they would earnestly come to Him, both to be pardoned for what they do wrong, and for the power to do better. And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.