The Mencius, Book IV

Book IV.A (Li Lou I)

Unlike most of the books of the Mengzi, this book is not named after Mencius's first interlocutor, but after the first person he mentions. Much of the book seems to take place in, or discuss matters relevant to the state of Qi, but thematically benevolence or humanity to self and others, especially in government, comes up often. The beginning of IV.A, in fact, has a number of sections that together make up a fairly thorough discussion of the subject.

IV.A.I gives Master Meng's account of why he insists so much on the importance of the Former Kings. In a given art, to reach new heights, the genius or sage has to strain himself to the utmost. However, one of the things that happens in the progress of an art is that the one wise in it also comes to invent ways to do it more easily. Thus it once took the very best draftsmen to draw excellent squares and circles; but one of the things those great draftsmen learned how to do was to use carpenter's squares and compasses. Once tuning took an extraordinary ear; but with this extraordinary feat came also, eventually, the pitch-pipe. And so too the sages of a former day strained themselves to the utmost to govern well, and through this they learned the basic principles of benevolent government. To try to govern without building on their discovery is like insisting on drawing perfect circles without any help. A state depends on its governors having principles, so that they can be understood, their courtiers know how to act, the measures that make trade possible can be regarded with complete trust as uncorrupted and incorruptible, the nobles are not degenerate, and the commoners are not in constant danger of punishment. The sages of yesterday are the templates, the compasses and squares, for good governance (IV.A.2). And this is seen by the fact that genuine success, seen through the long lens of history, is so closely connected with the question: empires on the rise become famous for making people's lives better, while those in decline become famous for cruelty and suffering; humane lords tend to prosper and cruel ones we see to be sowing the seeds of their own destruction; and so on down to the commoner who is more likely to live a long and enjoyable life if he is humane than if he is cruel (IV.A.3). Through humanity to self and others rulers become loved and their realms orderly (IV.A.4, IV.A.5, IV.A.6). When people do not follow the Way, the entire order of things becomes unstable and upside down, with those who are unable to rule well ruling those who would be able to rule well, but one who takes the Former Kings as model can become truly great in a very short time (IV.A.7; cp. IV.A. 13). Nor is this surprising: cruel men are the men least inclined to listen to reason, thus contributing to their destruction (IV.A.8), and a state depends on the love of its people, which requires being humane to them (IV.A.9).

What is more, it is the more natural path, that one that requires doing less violence to oneself and others, the one that makes things work with the least effort. It is something of which we are all capable:

Benevolence is man's peaceful abode and rightness his proper path. It is indeed lamentable for anyone not to live in his peaceful abode and not to follow his proper path (IV.A.10).

What is required to start achieving it is to love one's parents and defer to one's elders (IV.A.11). (IV.A.12 is often regarded as an interpolation, because it has a number of stylistic differences from most of the rest of the book, but it does fit in fairly well with the thought that the book has developed so far.) All of this is a matter of actually doing, not merely saying the words (IV.A.21, IV.A.22, IV.A.23).

IV.A.27 gives us the key elements of the virtuous life, along with the actions by which we begin to express them:

ren	benevolence (humanity to self and others)	serving one's parents
yi	rightness (correctness, dutifulness)	deference to one's elder brothers
chih	wisdom (understanding)	understanding & committing to benevelence & rightness
li	rites (appropriate norms of behavior)	orderly adornment of benevolence & rightness
yue	music	delight in benevolence & rightness

It seems reasonable to see a progression here: benevolence and rightness make possible wisdom, which, because it is an understanding and commitment to them, inevitably leads to rites that show forth their excellence; and when this is done, they begin to take forms that are delightful. When that happens, the moral life has begun to flourish.

Book IV.B (Li Lou II)

IV.B is more of a mixed collection than IV.A, with some extended passages and many brief aphorisms, as well as a section (IV.B.33) in which Mencius doesn't appear at all. A number of the sections have to do with the Former Kings, so we can perhaps consider this part of the book as extending and commenting on the main arguments of IV.A.

Since a number of sage kings show up, it is perhaps worthwhile to say something about them.

Shun (IV.B.1, IV.B.19, IV.B.28, IV.B.32): According to tradition, he died somewhere around 2184 BC. He was a minister under Emperor Yao, and was so effective at administering everything that Yao named him his heir. His rein is continually associated with ritual order. He was careful and thorough with sacrifices, regularized weights and measures, divided the realm into administrative units, and enforced ceremonial norms.

Wen Wang (IV.B.1, IV.B.20): He died about 1056 BC, and was one of the greatest epic heroes of Chinese legend. He was considered the founder of the Zhou dynasty, although he himself did not live to see the victory of the Zhou dynasty over the Shang dynasty. He rose to power by the sheer force of respect: his officials admired him, other nobles admired him, allied powers admired him, and so when he needed resources to accomplish his goals, he easily found them. By tradition he is the originator of the principles that later became embodied in the I Ching.

Yu (IV.B.20, IV.B.26, IV.B.29): By tradition, he died around 2100 BC. He is said to have been the founder of the Xia dynasty and his most famous and legendary feat is controlling the flood. His father, Gun, had been charged by Emperor Yao with finding a solution to the many floods that plagued the land, but despite a great deal of ingenuity was unable to find one. Yu followed in his father's footsteps, studying the ways of water and the system of rivers, and discovered the key: the reason all the ingenious solutions had failed was that they were acting against the nature of water. The way to handle the flooding was to work with the water. In other words: the problem is solved not primarily by making dams, which could only be supplemental, but by making irrigation canals. Instead of holding the flood back, direct it to the fields where it could be useful. This was a hard task, requiring much digging and dredging, and Yu was said to have lived with the common workers while he did it. This tale could hardly have been a better allegory for Mencius's idea of the moral life if it had been specifically invented for the purpose, so it is unsurprising that Mencius puts a fair amount of emphasis on it.

Tang (IV.B.20): Tang died around 1646 BC and was the founder of the Shang dynasty. He overthrow Jie, the corrupt ruler of the Xia dynasty, by taking advantage of the fact that Jie mistreated those under his command; he offered the people and nobles better treatment, and also had a sense of when someone had useful talent. When he reigned, the kingdom expanded and became more powerful even while taxes were lowered and the army became less dependent on conscription.

Wu Wang (IV.B.20): He was the second son of King Wen and the actual first king of the Zhou dynasty. His elder brother, the Duke of Zhou, was part of the secret of his success, and also managed to hold onto the kingdom after King Wu's death, despite extensive rebellions and attempts by the Shang to regain the hegemony.

Qi (IV.B.29): He was the son of Yu and the second king of the Xia dynasty. He was actually not his father's heir, but he was so widely admired by the nobles for his work in his behalf that the heir had to step aside for him.

Yao (IV.B.32): He is, with Shun his successor and Yu the Great, one of the great legendary kings of ancient China. He organized the kingdom, worked on the development of an accurate calendar through astronomical observation, and he and Shun are often credited with inventing the earliest version of the game of Go, weiqi, in an attempt to give his wanton playboy son a more wholesome and beneficial pastime.

Despite the emphasis on the ancient kings, one of the recurring themes of this book is that the way of the Former Kings is in fact available to us all; one of the striking examples of this is in IV.B.29, in which he puts Confucius' student Yan Hui in the same class as Yu and Qi, which is extraordinarily high praise.

One of the interesting short comments in this part of the Book is IV.B.22, in which he says that influence only lasts to the fifth generation. Mencius himself is, according to tradition, the fourth from Confucius: his teacher is said to have been Zisi (Confucius's grandson), who was taught by Boyu (Confucius's son), who was, of course, taught by Confucius. The comment can perhaps be seen as expressing Mencius's sense that even the teachings of great teachers need regular renewal or they fade, and that the Confucian way that he upholds is in danger of approaching its end already. The comment also shows a savvy historical awareness of philosophical influence, which proceeds by chains of indirect teaching, each step increasing the risk of confusion, loss of thought, or loss of emphasis.

to be continued

Rosmini for August IV

Had the religious state no other advantage than that of enabling us to fight our spiritual battles, not as individual soldiers, but in a compact body, this consideration alone should have much weight with one who seeks the greater glory of God: for a greater association implies a greater power, whether for good or for evil.
Letters 5649 [SC]

Not Hired Cabs

Schopenhauer strikingly noted that the causal law was not a hired cab. You can't accept it and take it only as far as you want; once you've accepted it, you are committed to it all the way down the line. The same is true of rejecting a claim as accepting it; if you reject a claim by rejecting premise A, you have, as it were, committed yourself to never appealing to premise A, and have to accept whatever consequences there might be to it. This is one reason why it is simply an error for a philosopher to focus only on single arguments at a time. (It's fine to focus on a single argument at a time; it's an error only to do this.) Your rejection of a causal principle in natural theology may cause extraordinary complications in philosophy of science; your rejection of a premise in aesthetics might throw into confusion entire realms of political philosophy; your acceptance of an argument in ethics might commit you to rejecting any number of political views.

So how does this work? There seem to be two basic routes, that work rather differently:

(1) Logical Implication: I've been in three discussions in the past year, with nonphilosophers, in which I argued that their claim A logically implied claim B, and their only response to this was that they didn't say B, only A. If one claims that A implies B, one should certainly be willing to back this up with argument; but it's quite clear that you can't avoid logical implications simply by not stating them. But, of course, there is also the fact that our knowledge of the implications of our claims does not have closure: we don't ever know all the logical implications of what we say, and may be logically committed to something that we would consider absolutely unacceptable.

(2) Parallel: There's a somewhat trickier route, arising because of the relations between different classes of arguments. We might describe it as one argument raising the question of another argument's viability. If one accepts a particular other-minds argument for the human body, this raises the question of whether one should accept some analogue for the whole world. If you accept a particular position on what makes literature worthwhile, this might raise the question of whether you should incorporate an analogous analogous position into your account of what makes music worthwhile. Unlike logical implication, it provides no guarantee; you can take one without the other. But because the two cases resemble each other in important points, you would, as we say, need to have a principled reason for not treating them similarly. This is, indeed, precisely the principle that seems operative here: We should treat similar things similarly unless there is a difference relevant to the treatment itself.

This would seem to be exhaustive -- if A leads to B, it seems to do so by either requiring it or by suggesting it -- but I have no definite proof of that; possibly there are more complicated ways positions and arguments can be linked.

Rosmini for August III

To act with a spirit of intelligence simply means to follow the dictates of right reason, without allowing ourselves to be moved or disturbed by any passion whatever. Now the highest and most universal of all reasons for acting is that of doing always and in all things the will of God.
Letters 6648 [SC]

Classifying Design Arguments

Design arguments for the existence of God are other minds arguments, i.e., arguments that other minds than one's own exist; this was explicitly recognized as early as Thomas Reid, who pretty clearly got the insight from Berkeley's arguments for God and for other minds, which are integrated with each other. The Argument from Analogy that serves as a starting point for almost every discussion of the problem of other minds (for instance, here and here) is a general form of the design argument discussed in Hume's Dialogues. Every kind of design argument also has a corresponding analogue for existence of minds other than God, so there is an analogy among different species in the genus. It's probably the case that there are other minds arguments with no analogue among design arguments, because design arguments are (among other things) a species of other minds arguments that involve some intermediary, and it's in principle possible that there are other minds arguments that don't -- but in general when we talk about other minds we are talking about human beings, and it is fairly clear that we know human minds through the intermediary of human bodies. We could even perhaps posit a spectrum of other minds arguments in light of the differences in intermediaries, ranging from a separate intermediary through greater degrees of integration of intermediary and mind to pure cases in which other minds are taken to be known directly and without intermediary:

(1) other minds via separated instrument
Separated instruments include anything separate from a mind that they nonetheless indicate, which makes for a very large field: computer, car, script, recorded vocal language, a corpse.

(2) other minds via conjoined instrument
The most obvious kinds of conjoined instrument are prostheses, but for our purposes we should also probably include a great many kinds of tools and instruments in active, ongoing use. A pen is a separated instrument from its designer, but a conjoined instrument for the one writing with it. According to Thomas Aquinas, angels can assume bodies but do not live them; if you met such a body and were trying to determine whether there was a mind to go with it, the body would be a conjoined instrument. Aquinas's Fifth Way would also fall here.

(3) other minds via organic instrument
The idea here is that we are dealing with something not identical to the mind but more closely integrated with it than a conjoined instrument; the mind inhabits, so to speak, the instrument. A pen in the hand is a conjoined instrument, but the hand is an organic one.

(4) other minds sans instrument
I've never run across a specific argument for an other mind that is both specifically designed to be of this kind and grown in the wild, but it's certainly possible to imagine what it might involve -- three obvious possibilities would be telepathy, innate ideas (possibly), and divine inspiration. On Aquinas's account of angelic knowledge, for instance, angels would know each other by divine inspiration and also by angelic speech (i.e., direct interaction of mind to mind). On Malebranche's account we know of God directly from God. (I say 'possibly' for innate ideas because I think it arguable that these are actually best understood as separated instruments -- e.g., Descartes's argument from the idea of God, which he does not, unlike Malebranche, regard as God Himself, analogizes ideas to machines.)

Given all of this, we can very well classify design arguments (any kind of design argument) in the same way:

(1) designer via separated instrument
What we most often call design arguments fall into this category. I see a watch, I infer there was a designer: the watch is a separated-instrument intermediary between me and the other mind that is the designer. When we are talking natural theology, these arguments are the ones that have a 'deistic' feel, although they need not actually require deism.

(2) designer via conjoined instrument
These are trickier to find; one often finds on closer analysis that candidates are really separated-instrument arguments. In natural theology, at least some arguments from miracles, from religious experiences, and from providential events would be examples. To borrow from and adapt Kant slightly, these are 'theistic' in character: they give us an designer who is not merely a cause of the intermediary but is acting or interacting through it. But, again, we need not be considering theism in particular. There are old vitalist arguments that are basically conjoined-instrument design arguments.

(3) designer via organic instrument
In natural theology these are 'pantheistic' in character, although, again, they need not actually require pantheism, or indeed any consideration of more than a small part of the world. Avatar-theophanies -- i.e., theophanies in which the god is the manifestation, such as one often finds in polytheism-- would be cases of organic instruments.

One can, of course, have arguments that are disjunctive by this classification; for instance, a design argument that does not depend on determining what kind of instrument is involved. And because intermediaries can be fairly different, none of this tells us much about the quality of any particular argument.

An interesting question, to which I have no clear answer, is how this way of thinking would impact on atheistic arguments from evil, which are 'nondesign' arguments. There tends to be a counterpart design argument for every argument from evil and a counterpart argument from evil for every design argument. So you could use this to classify arguments from evil. But it might well be a purely extrinsic classification.

Rosmini for August II

The Scriptures are one continual lesson of humility; they teach it in all sorts of ways, by means of the statements made, by the style, by the very words.
Letters 821 [SC]

Music on My Mind

Regina Spektor, "How"

Rosmini for August I

[My time this August is highly disjointed, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do a quotation series to regularize things a bit. There was some interest in some of the excerpts from Bl. Antonio Rosmini a while back, and as it happens I came across A Spiritual Calendar, which was a thought-of-the-day book pulled together by Aloysius Lanzoni and translated from Italian into English and slightly modified by George Elson. It was published in 1911. So I'll post the bit from Rosmini for each day of August. I have slightly changed the formatting of the references.]

Shall I accuse the present generation of not reading the Scriptures? I would rather accuse them of not doing so devoutly. They read them coldly as they would read an ordinary book, and as if to judge rather than to be judged by them. Read them constantly, and in so doing, follow that advice given in that golden book, the Imitation of Christ. (Book I. chap. v.) You can have no better rule.
Christian Education Book I. chap. 2. No. 4. [SC]

The relevant passage from The Imitation of Christ can be found here.

Different Respects

Joel Feinberg in an influential article ["Some Conjectures about the Concept of Respect," Journal of Social Philosophy 4 (1973) pp. 1-3] suggested that we can divide forms of respect into three different kinds:

(1) Respekt: This is the sense of 'respect' in which one respects a rattlesnake. Its object is the dangerous, and it is the opposite of negligent or contemptuous disregard.

(2) Observantia: This is deference to others; its object is someone who has a claim on us. Feinberg suggests (not entirely plausibly, in my view) that this is a sort of generalization of (1).

(3) Reverentia: This is awe and its object is the sublime or sacred; it is the sort of thing, for instance, that Kant means when he says that we should have Achtung, respect, for the moral law.

A key difference, it seems to me, between respekt and observantia is that observantia is intrinsically concerned with communication. You cannot actually defer to others except insofar as there is some kind of communication between you and them. This is one reason to think it doubtful that social deference can genuinely be a direct of wary regard -- observantia or deference already presupposes recognized social relations and communications, whereas respekt does not.

An interesting question is whether reverentia is also distinguished from respekt in this way. Sublimity, it seems, need not belong to something with which you can be in a social interaction; one thinks, for instance, of the sublimity of a thunderstorm or of the 'starry sky above'. (This is, it should be noted, something that has been denied; Thomas Reid, for instance, holds that sublimity does, in fact, involve, at least indirectly, a mind other than one's own.) But it is also the case that in at least some of these cases, like the thunderstorm, one could argue that this is a case of the sublime calling forth respekt, not reverentia. Indeed, if you look at many early influential accounts of the sublime, the reaction to it is almost entirely in terms of dread and fear, like you would expect for respekt. Thus respekt and reverentia both seem to be something one can have for the sublime, which distinguishes them from observantia: the sublime is not something to which one merely defers. This makes it tempting to suggest, for symmetry, that reverentia and observantia share, against respekt, this communication aspect. To be sure, the standard examples from Kant, the starry heavens and the moral law, don't immediately suggest this to us, but this is complicated by the fact that in Kant's account our ability to recognize these as sublime is at least linked with our capacity to think of these things in personal terms (i.e., in terms of designer and Lawgiver, respectively), even if the link is not straightforward; and historically they both have, in fact, been thought of in such terms. And it's certainly undeniably that awe can involve this communication.

Two Poem Drafts

Wayfare

Reason traces every cause,
through laws,
and then the cause of laws,
to God, and -- ah!
Such sublimity!
By reason's endless thread we touch --
though barely touch --
and find our God,
shining like a radiant star,
at least infinitely far.

Faith traces every trace,
depicting grace,
an icon of the cause of grace,
our God, and -- ah!
Such intimacy!
By faith, as by an inner light,
a candle small --
but burning bright --
our hearts expand
and find our God,
shining more than solar star,
and only infinitely far.

Mockingbird

I would I were a mockingbird,
with all the notes the world has heard,
a language rich, too rich for word,
and only ever sung;

the day would pass in music sweet,
cicadas droning out the beat,
a pleasure perfect and complete,
but only ever sung.

Facts to Be Accounted For

A sense of music or a taste for travel are facts to be accounted for: it is perfectly true that many persons appear to exist in comfort without them; but it is another question as to how far the world without them could exist at all.

Robert Hugh Benson, Papers of a Pariah, p. 54.

Thursday Vice: Pusillanimity

Magnanimity, or great-souledness, plays an important role in Aristotle's list of virtues; he discusses it in Nicomachean Ethics IV. It is a virtue concerned with honor and dishonor. Since a virtue is partly to be understood by determining how it is a mean between extremes, he also briefly discusses the opposing vices. On the excessive side is vanity, the person who honors himself too much; and on the deficient side is pusillanimity, small-souledness. The pusillanimous man

being worthy of good things, robs himself of what he deserves, and [has] something bad about him from the fact that he does not think himself worthy of good things, and seems also not to know himself; else he would have desired the things he was worthy of, since these were good.

Aristotle sees magnanimity as a sort of justice to oneself, so the pusillanimous is likewise a sort of failing to do justice to oneself. When Cicero discusses magnanimity in De Officiis, he shifts the account so that magnanimity is associated primarily with fortitude rather than justice. The magnanimous man is not so much honoring himself as he is making himself honorable. He does this, first, by a contempt for outward incidentals, in which he keeps his mind on the right and rises above the passions; and second, by seeking out difficult challenges that contribute to the public good. The mark of the small-minded or pusillanimous man, on the other hand, is the kind of passion that leads one to evade this kind of greatness-seeking -- the most obviously problematic of these being a love of wealth, but fear, lust for fame, sensuality, and the like may be motivators of the small-souled, as well.

Aquinas's account of magnanimity blends Aristotle and Cicero, so it is unsurprising that his account of the vice of pusillanimity (ST 2-2.133) shows the effect of this. Like Aristotle, Aquinas takes magnanimity to concern honor for one's own virtue, but, like Cicero, he takes this to be associated with fortitude, because our regard for our own virtue is more concerned with what we will do than it is with what we have done. We have a natural inclination to accomplish things suitable to our capabilities; this inclination is part of who we are as rational beings in the first place, which means that failing to fulfill it is to do something morally wrong. Magnanimity is the virtue concerned with this kind of accomplishment; the two vices are presumption, in which we strive to do more than our capability can reasonably be considered to allow, and pusillanimity, in which we refuse to achieve what is appropriate to our basic capabilities. He gives as an example the parable of the talents, in which the fearful servant buries the talent he has received instead of daring to trade it so that it will multiply.

Pusillanimity, therefore, is the habitual disposition of burying one's talents, in which we fail to strive for a greatness commensurate with our gifts, whether those be gifts of nature, or gifts of education, or gifts of fortune. It is not a kind of humility, although it might superficially look like it; it is often even motivated by pride, because one way in which we can be proud is by clinging to our own opinions simply because they are ours, and not letting ourselves be corrected. This can happen regardless of what our opinions are, and so we can, out of pride, refuse to be corrected in our false opinion of our own incompetence. It is a truly remarkable feature of human capacity for obstinate self-importance that we can value ourselves too little by valuing our own opinions too much. Pusillanimity can also arise in other ways, however; for instance, we can shrink from greatness due to laziness in considering our capabilities, or because we have in some way become disheartened by other passions.

In the post-medieval era, Spinoza is notable for considering, at least to some extent, the moral problems of pusillanimity, in scattered discussions throughout the Ethics; a good example is in Part IV, Proposition XXIX, in which he characterizes it as thinking too little of one's self due to pain. It is a sort of humility -- which he regards not as a virtue but as a passion to be overcome -- taken to extremes. But he also regards it as rare; in fact, he thinks that the people who usually come across as so self-denigrating are in reality dissimulating, and that this elaborate self-denigration is often a cover for a pettily envious and ambitious mind.

Its Time Is the For-Ever

The Communion of Saints
by George Boole

When the light of day declineth,
And the fields in shadow lie,
And the dewy Hesper shineth
Fairest in the western sky,
Visions in the twilight rise,
Night unseals the spirit's eyes.

Then the dead, in thought arriving,
From the far-off regions bright,
Seem to aid our earnest striving
For the holy and the right;
Even they who sailed before
O'er this ocean to that shore.

Yes, the dead of all the nations
Who, in patient hope and sure,
Laboured in their generations
For the Lovely and the Pure;
Heavenly sympathizing yield
To their followers in the field.

Seeker after Truth's deep fountain,
Delver in the soul's deep mine,
Toiler up the rugged mountain
To the upper Light Divine,
Think, beyond the stars there be
Who have toiled and wrought like thee.

Good is even as its Giver,
As the Universal light,
And its time is the For-Ever,
And its space the Infinite;
As a linkèd chain of gold
All the world it shall enfold.

Also found in Mary Everest Boole's Symbolical Methods of Study. A very Siris-relevant poem, too, since Siris is named after the "linkèd chain of gold".

'The Bandwagon of My Own Uncertainty'

The poet Taylor Mali questions the habitual question-tone in his poem, "Totally like whatever, you know?":

The Mencius, Book III

Book III.A (Teng Wen Gong I)

The focus of Book III is on affairs along the border between Qi and Chu, particularly the realm of Teng, and understanding something about this little kingdom is valuable for understanding the philosophical arguments of this section of the Mengzi. The ruler of Teng who is of importance is Duke Wen; we met him in Book I (I.B.13-15), where he already gives some of the background.

Teng was immediately to the east and north of Song, which is why it's easy for Duke Wen (before he has ascended to become Duke Wen) to get advice from Master Meng residing in Song. It was also just south of Lu, of which it was often a vassal, and (if I am not mistaken amidst all the many border changes in this period) the also-tiny state of Zou, which was also often a vassal state of Lu and was where Mencius himself was born. It was located where the current city of Tengzhou, once its capital, is located; in fact, the entire ancient kingdom would easily fit within the jurisdiction of the modern city. Duke Wen inherited what is perhaps the single most unfortunate situation in the period: a tiny kingdom with a tiny population surrounded on almost all sides by more powerful neighbors, and, in particular, right at the border of political and military influence between two especially aggressive opposing kingdoms, Qi and Chu. In Book I.B, Duke Wen asks Mencius whether he should throw his lot in with Qi or Chu, and Mencius concedes the near-impossibility of finding an adequate answer to that particular question. Teng, then, provides some of the hardest questions of the day for political philosophy and statesmanship. Another significant fact about Teng is that it was the birthplace of the philosopher Mozi; it is thus unsurprising that we find a bit of interaction between Mencius and Mohist philosophers here.

III.A opens with a succession of episodes with regard to Duke Wen: his meeting with Mencius prior to ascending the throne, his consultation with Mencius on his father's funeral arrangement and the success he achieved in following Mencius's advice, and then a discussion of how a king should handle the economics of his kingdom. To be constant, the people need means of support, so working to make sure that they have it is a major and immediate priority. One of the policies that Master Meng discusses is the ching-field system. This is sometimes translated as 'well-field', because ching means 'well', but the system has nothing to do with wells. The reason it is called the ching-field system is due not to the meaning of the word ching, but to the fact that the Chinese character for it is two strokes crossed by two strokes -- in other words, it looks very similar to our hash, #. The ching-field system, therefore, divides an area into nine fields. The center field will belong to the state, the eight outer fields to various families; the center field will be cared for by the eight families together. This system provides a continual stream of revenue for the state, but much more importantly, it encourages cooperation among the people. In order to fulfill their responsibilities and keep their fields, people need to know their neighbors and find ways to work with them: "If those who own land within each ching befriend one another both at home and abroad, help each other to keep watch, and succour each other in illness, they will live in love and harmony" (III.A.3).

This part ends with Mencius's interaction with Mohists and Mohist-inspired philosophical movements in the region. Xu Xing preaches a philosophy of simplicity; according to tradition, he was the student of a student of Mozi, so he seems to be taking Master Moh's emphasis on simplicity to an extreme. The Mengzi says that he proclaimed the teachings of Shen Nong, the legendary creator of agriculture, so it's rural simplicity in particular that he advocates. A couple of Confucians, Chen Xiang and his brother Xin, convert to his teachings, and the former criticizes the economic policies of Duke Wen, and thus implicitly criticizes Mencius himself, whom we have just encountered giving Duke Wen economic advice. According to Xu Xing, the prince should farm along with the people and support himself by that means instead of filling up granaries by collecting from the people. You will note that this is not consistent with the ching-field system. Mencius points out that Xu Xing does not make everything himself; he must trade for most of it. And ruling an Empire is not an exception to this need for division of labor. He gives the example of the ancient hero-kings of China, who were involved in incessant projects for the good of their people. In addition, he sharply criticizes Chen Xiang himself for deviating from his Confucian teacher in order to follow "the southern barbarian with the twittering tongue, who condemns the way of the Former Kings" (III.A.4). Chen Xiang protests that the way of Xu Xing will restore honesty to the economic system by making everything equal, but Master Meng insists that it is this very fact that shows the intrinsic tendency of the policy to cultivate dishonest practices:

That things are unequal is part of their nature. Some are worth twice or five times, ten or a hundred times, even a thousand and ten thousand times, more than others. If you reduce them to the same level, it will only bring confusion to the Empire. If a roughly finished shoe sells at the same price as a finely finished one, who would make the latter? If we follow the way of Hsü Tzu, we will be showing one another teh way to being dishonest. How can one govern a state in this way?

In III.A.5, Mencius crosses arguments with the Mohist Yi Zhi over funeral practices for one's parents. The Mohists are big on simplicity and frugality, but Yi Zhi himself departed from this in giving his parents a lavish funeral. The rest of the passage is relatively obscure, and the exact interpretation somewhat disputed. Yi Zhi responds by appealing to the Confucian principle that the ancient kings did well because they cared for people as if they were caring for a newborn baby, and argues that it suggests not the Confucian doctrine of gradations of love but the Mohist doctrine of universal love. This is an argument of some potential bite, since, as we saw in Book II, Mencius's own argument for the rootedness of virtue in human nature was that we all will have compassion for a baby in danger.

It's unclear how it responds to the point about the funeral, but here is a rough possibility (partly suggested by Kwong-loi Shun's "Mencius' Criticism of Mohism: An Analysis of "Meng Tzu" 3A: 5", Philosophy East and West, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 203-214, although I am simplifying the idea somewhat and glossing over nuances): Yi Zhi is arguing that lavish funerals are in fact (contrary to what one would expect from Mozi himself) consistent with the Mohist principle of universal love, which itself is the root of the Mohist critique of lavish funerals. In particular, the problem Mohists have with lavish funerals when they criticize them is not merely that they are lavish but that they are so in a way harmful to the good of society, because they violate the Mohist principle of universal love. If one approaches the funerals the right way, as a stepping-stone to acting with universal love, there is no real inconsistency. The Confucians, on this view, are actually guilty of the inconsistency, because they recognize that we would all protect a baby, and that the hero-kings were righteous because they protected the people as one would protect a baby, and they take the hero-kings to be exemplars for behavior, but they wish to combine all of these things with a principle of gradations in love, when they really show the importance of equality in love. Mencius replies in turn that while we would all protect a baby, this does not mean that we love all children equally. The one impulse of compassion will apply to all babies, but it will naturally apply even more to family members and so forth. There is no need for the balancing act of guiding our natural expression of affection for our parents according to Mohist universal principles that do not derive from this affection, as suggested by Yi Zhi; the whole of one's treatment of people flows from one properly cultivated source. Why have a lavish funeral for one's parents in particular? Because our compassion does have special regard for our parents, as can be seen if we reflect on what happens if sons see their parents' corpses rotting in the sun.

Book III.B (Teng Wen Gong II)

At the beginning of III.B, Mencius reiterates against several suggestions by various figures, probably his students, that the proper motive for action, including Mencius's own teaching, is not profit; one must act according to principle, and not be deflected from it by purported benefits. He also corrects the mistake (III.B.4) of thinking that the moral person can never benefit for his work, because benefits should be apportioned to the actual achieving of good, not according to whether people were aiming to be benefited. We continue with advice for the situations in between Qi and Chu, particularly for the kingdom of Song.

III.B.9, however, is particularly interesting. Gong Du notes that other schools regard Master Meng as particularly disputatious, and asks why. Mencius replies by giving an account of his entire approach. He does not argue because he wants to do so, but because he is forced to do so by the situation. He does not live in a time of sage-kings and heroes, but in a period of degeneration, in which all sorts of aberrant and dangerous philosophical movements are springing up:

The teachings current in the Empire are those of either the school of Yang or the school of Mo. Yang advocates everyone for himself which amounts to a denial of one's prince; Mo advocates love without discrimination, which amounts to a denial of one's father. To ignore one's father on the one hand, and one's prince on the other, is to be no different from the beasts.

We know very little about Yang, beyond a story, common to several sources, that he said he would refuse the throne of the Empire if it required harming even a hair on his head, and so cannot measure how accurate Mencius's assessment is. But it seems clear enough from what Mencius does say that, from his perspective, Yang and Mo are in one sense opposites -- Yang holds that one must focus on one's self and Mo holds that one must regard everyone equally -- but they both share the notion that our moral life is to be governed by some kind of benefit or profit. Against this Mencius is advocating the teaching of Confucius, which can form a middle way because it does not build on the notion of profit or benefit, but on the more fundamental principles of human nature. This teaching is not a mere abstract or academic pursuit; it shows the way to be moral and human, and a society in which this is not cultivated is a society in which men will turn on each other like beasts, a state, in other words, of some form of civil war. This is the reason for Master Meng's emphasis on argument:

The Duke of Chou wanted to punish those who ignored father and prince. I, too, wish to follow in the footsteps of the three sages in rectifying the hearts of men, laying heresies to rest, opposing extreme action, and banishing excessive views. I am not fond of disputation. I have no alternative. Whoever can, with words, combat Yang and Mo is a true disciple of the sages.

The last section, III.B.10, is perhaps an illustration of this, because he criticizes rather sharply a man he otherwise respects, because of the extremeness of his views and actions.

to be continued

Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought

To the Number Three
by George Boole

When the great Maker, on Creation bent,
Thee from thy brethren chose, and framed by thee
The world to sense revealed, yet left it free
To those whose intellectual gaze intent
Behind the veil phenomenal is sent
Space diverse, systems manifold to see
Revealed by thought alone; was it that we
In whose mysterious spirits thus are blent
Finite of sense and Infinite of thought,
Should feel how vast, how little is our store;
As yon excelling arch with orbs deep-fraught
To the light wave that dies along the shore;
That from our weakness and our strength may rise
One worship unto Him the Only Wise.

This poem by Boole was published in Mary Everest Boole's Symbolical Methods of Study (1884), which also has several others. This is an interesting and difficult poem to interpret; Boole was a Unitarian (he is said to have considered converting to Judaism at one point), and it is possible that there is an implicit criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity here -- notice that we are "finite of sense and infinite of thought", and thus capable of rising above the world of sense, but the number three is specifically said to be the frame on the basis of which the "world to sense revealed" is framed. But it's also the case that Boole was not particularly dogmatic, so it's not clear that this is part of the intention. In any case, the poem is explicitly about higher-dimensional mathematics: three dimensions frame the world of sense, but the human mind is capable of thinking of more. Very similar themes and ideas are found later, long after Boole's death, in Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland (1884) and in the work of Charles Hinton (who married Boole's daughter).

The Virtues of Taste

Tina Baceski in a relatively recent article in Hume Studies has a nice summary of the Humean account of aesthetic judgment:

To summarize: An art critic possesses delicate sentiment, a quick and accurate perception of beauty. Delicacy comes through being practiced in the sense of having repeatedly experienced a certain kind of art as well as having repeatedly experienced the particular artwork judged. Experience facilitates the comparison of different works so that the critic acquires knowledge of the potential kind and range of qualities of those works. Moreover, a critic is free of prejudice that interferes with his adopting the right point of view. Finally, a critic has good sense: he employs his reason to overcome his prejudices, to make fine-grained distinctions among aesthetic properties, and to discern "complicated relations." This helps to ensure that his perception is discriminating and that his responses to art are appropriate. Together, these characteristics--the virtues of taste--distinguish accomplished art critics from persons of ordinary aesthetic sensibilities.

[Tina Baceski, "Hume on Art Critics, Wise Men, and the Virtues of Taste", Hume Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2013) p. 245.]

I've summarized Hume's account of good taste in these terms before:

(1) a broad base of relevant experience, so you can make informed comparisons;
(2) relevant skills of discernment, i.e., the acquired ability to identify important moves, novel twists, and the like;
(3) good sense, understood as the self-critical fairmindedness that allows us to be objective and unbiased.

None 'Neath Sky so Rich as I

My Riches
by Emily Tolman

Mine is the gold of sunset,
The glory of the dawn,
The splendid star that shines afar,
The dew-bejewelled lawn.

Mine are the pearls and opals
That fall from wayside spring,
The silvery notes from thrushes' throats
Through woodland aisles that ring.

Mine is the rare embroidery
Of lichen on the wall,
The airy grace of fair fern-lace,
Meet for a prince's hall.

Softer than Persian carpet
The moss beneath my feet,
In dewy dells, where floral bells
Toll out their perfume sweet.

Banks cannot hold my treasure;
It needs no lock nor key;
None 'neath the sky so rich as I,
Who hold the world in fee.

Music on My Mind

Johanna Kurkela, "Kuolevainen". 'Kuolevainen' means 'mortal'; you can find lyrics and translation here.

Cedar of Lebanon

Today is the Feast of St. Sharbel Makhlouf (1828-1898); he is commemorated by Maronites on the third Sunday of July (his properly Maronite commemoration) and on the 23rd (his commemoration according to Rome's general calendar), and which of the two is emphasized more seems to vary according to the Maronite parish. As it happens, I was at a Maronite liturgy both last Saturday evening for the Vigil and today at two different Maronite churches, so I caught both commemorations.

St. Sharbel, or Charbel, was the son of a mule-driver who used to sneak away to pray at the monastery of St. Maron in Annaya, Lebanon. He eventually became a Lebanese Maronite monk there, but after some time there he decided to go further and become a hermit (this requires special permission, which he received). He was a hermit for twenty-three years, and gained a widespread reputation for hospitality and holiness.

Annaya

Cedars grow tall on Liban hills,
life rooted deeper than human will;
flame is bright over muddy grave
of a hermit-saint who hid his face;
the heart is kissed by burning light
as cedar soars to sun and sky,
is charged with day without a night,
and burns but is not burned.

Thursday Virtue: Moderatio Exteriorum Motuum

There is no good English translation for the Latin word modestia. Indeed, it is difficult to explain what it is in the first place. It suggests moderation, but not all kinds of moderation are modestia; perhaps the best way to think of it is as moderation in how one presents oneself externally.

In his influential work, De Officiis, Ambrose of Milan argues that modestia is one of the most important duties/responsibilities (officiis) of youth; he takes it to be the restraint of oneself in word and action, giving as examples chastity, humility, sobriety, silence, and the like. One of the kinds of modestia he notes is that concerned with gesture and gait of body:

Modesty must further be guarded in our very movements and gestures and gait. For the condition of the mind is often seen in the attitude of the body. For this reason the hidden man of our heart (our inner self) is considered to be either frivolous, boastful, or boisterous, or, on the other hand, steady, firm, pure, and dependable. Thus the movement of the body is a sort of voice of the soul.

Since there is an intimate relation between our bodies and our souls, there is a relationship between our outward movement and our character, with the former serving as a sign of the latter. Ambrose is rather brutal in his assessment; he gives specific examples of people he has known who showed their arrogance or faithlessness in how they walked and moved their hands. One of the Ambrose's concerns is our tendency to posture and preen, to treat our body as if it were a way to manipulate other people. Another is that our lack of priorities often shows up in how we move -- our hastiness, our self-importance, our lack of respect for ourselves and our position. Our movements should be simple and plain, appropriate to our situation and our station, communicating the spiritual beauty of our characters through the natural ease and dignity of our use of our bodies. Conceit and deceit, arrogance and artifice, are especially to be avoided.

Aquinas follows Ambrose in accepting that there must be such a virtue (2-2.168.1), again, because denying that morality includes this sort of thing in its scope is to falsify the relationship between soul and body. Morality is concerned with the direction of action by reason; and our physical movements are directions capable of being directed by reason. Thus there is a virtue of moving rationally. It is a subjective part (particular kind) of modestia, which is a potential part (close cousin) of temperance -- the difference being that temperance, the more important virtue, is concerned with internal matters.

There are two things we need to keep in mind in order to achieve this modestia of movement: we need to make our movements appropriate to the people with whom we deal (including ourselves), and we need to make our movements appropriate to the situation in which we find ourselves. Thus Aquinas identifies two elements to this moderation of external movements: ornatus, which concerns the former, and bona ordinatio, which concerns the latter. (He gets the terms from Andronicus of Rhodes.)

This all might sound a bit odd as a matter of ethics, and again, we have no actual word in English to describe the virtue in question. However, a little thought shows that there must be something to it. One of our most basic notions of 'good behavior' consists entirely in the kind of moderation of physical movement covered by good behavior. We see this especially in how we train children, but we occasionally express the same sort of approval and disapproval in how we regard adults, and our annoyance and social penalizing of jostlers, those who invade people's personal space or take up more room than they need to, those who rush around, those who flail wildly, those who cannot keep their hands to themselves. And it is unsurprising, really: how we move is one of our forms of communication, and we get exasperated at people who move in such ways that they act as if they were the only person who mattered, or as if they were trying to dominate others or the situation. Like Ambrose, most people recognize that you can move in ways that force others to adapt and that communicate exactly the wrong things; and, like Ambrose, most people get exasperated at the kinds of outward movements suggestive of arrogance or pretense. Nobody, whether Ambrose or Aquinas or anyone else, considers the virtue in question to be among the most important virtues; but that there is something about moral life involved can hardly be put into question.

Bringing Starry Wisdom Down

The Fellowship of the Dead
by George Boole

Fellowship of spirits bright,
Crowned with laurel, clad with light,
From what labours are ye sped,
By what common impulse led,
With what deep remembrance bound,
'Mid the mighty concourse round,
That ye thus together stand,
An inseparable band?

Mortal! well hast thou divined
What the chains that strongest bind;
For the free unfettered soul
Bows to no enforced control;
Sympathy of feelings shared,
Deeds achieved, and perils dared,
These to spirits are—beyond
Time and place—the noblest bond.

All who felt the sacred flame
Rising at oppression's name,
All who toiled for equal laws.
All who loved the righteous cause,
All whose world-embracing span
Bound them to each brother man
Are upon the spirit-coast
An indissoluble host.

All who with a pure intent
Were on Nature's knowledge bent.
Watched the comet's wheeling flight,
Traced the subtle web of light,
And the wide dominion saw
Of the universal law.
In this land of souls agree
With a deep-felt sympathy.

All that to the love of truth
Gave the fervour of their youth.
Then for others spread the store
Of their rich and studious lore,
Bringing starry wisdom down
To the peasant and the clown.
Are with us in spirit-land,
An inseparable band.

Whether they were known to fame,
Whether silence wrapt their name,
Whether dwellers in the strife
Or the still and cloistered life;
If with pure and humble thought
For the good alone they wrought.
When the earthly life is done,
In the heavenly they are one.

And their souls together twine
In a fellowship divine,
And they see the ages roll
Onward to their destined goal,
Dark with shadows of the past,
Till the morning come at last.
And an Eden bloom again
For the weary sons of men.

This George Boole is the George Boole, best known for his work on differential equations and on algebraic logic. Boole, who was a mostly self-taught polymath, was an avid reader of poetry and occasionally wrote it for relaxation. This particular poem was published well after George Boole's death, in Mary Everest Boole's The Message of Psychic Science to the World (which was privately printed in a small run in 1883 but published for general readership in 1908).

The Mencius, Book II

Book II.A (Gong Sun Chou I)

Much of Book II seems focused on Mencius in the state of Qi, where he spent several of his years. Most of the discussion that is given some explicit link to society is linked to Qi in some way, and II.B will end with Mencius leaving Qi.

Book II.A opens with a common theme throughout the work, Master Meng opposing common conceptions of success. Gong Sun Chou proposes two famous statesmen from the history of Qi: (1) Guan Zhong, a reforming Prime Minister who, by restructuring the revenues of the state and introducing new kinds of taxation, massively strengthened the state, making it possible for his king, Duke Huan, to rise to become hegemon of the feudal states loosely allied to the Zhou. (2) Yan Ying, also known as Ping Zhong or Yanzi, sometimes considered the most brilliant politician of the Spring and Autumn period; he is mentioned favorably by Confucius in the Analects for his humility despite the success of his plans and his position as advisor to three successive kings of Qi

Mencius replies by telling a story of Zeng Xi, the disciple of Confucius, who was asked specifically about these two. Zeng Xi repeats Master Kong's approval of Yanzi, but is offended at being compared with Guan Zhong because he accomplished so little despite having so much to work with. Gong Sun Chou is surprised at this assessment, noting that Guan Zhong made his prince a leader among leaders; but Master Meng replies that one could go much further: to make the King of Qi the King is "as easy as turning over one's hand" (p. 74). Gong Sun Chou points to the famous Chinese hero, King Wen of Zhou; even he did not manage to accomplish this. But Mencius is entirely admiring of King Wen. The difference is that while becoming the King is easy, not everyone starts in the same place. King Wen started at a time when aristocratic traditions were strong; there were many competent statesmen elsewhere in those days; and he had almost nothing to start with. The task may be easy but that does not mean that it does not take time, and King Wen, who famously lived to the age of a hundred, did not have the time given all of the difficulties he faced rising to power. But the modern day is not like this; Qi already has the territory, it already has the population, and all it requires is humane government to become the foremost power in China -- the people, who have suffered greatly, are practically crying out for it and, as Mencius says, it is easy to feed the starving and give drink to the parched.

The conversation with Gong Sun Chou continues in II.A.2, in which Mencius contrasts two extremes, of focusing too much on the external act and of focusing too much on the internal impulse, and emphasizes the importance of cultivating both properly. Thus we get the story of the Man from Sung (a proverbial expression for a stupid person):

There was a man from Sung who pulled at his rice plants because he was worried about their failure to grow. Having done so, he went on his way home, not realizing what he had done. "I am worn out today," said he to his family. "I have been helping the rice plants to grow." His son rushed out to take a look and there the plants were, all shrivelled up. There are few in the world who can resist the urge to help their rice plants grow. There are some who leave the plants unattended, thinking that nothing they can do will be of any use. They are the people who do not even bother to weed. There are others who help the plants grow. They are the people who pull at them. (p. 78)

II.A.6 is one of the most famous passages in the book. Master Meng argues that the principles of morality are found in human nature itself, in what he calls the shoots or sprouts. We see that these are in human nature by considering the case of a child falling into a well, and recognizing that human beings in such a case would be moved to compassion, but not because of any prior regard for profit or reputation. Analogous argument can be given for the sense of shame, the sense of responsibility, and the sense of right. Each of these shoots, properly cultivated, grows into a virtue. Thus we have the following correspondence:

Shoot	Rough Meaning of Shoot	Corresponding Virtue (Common Translation)	Rough Meaning of Virtue
Sense of Compassion	ce-yin: ache for the pain of others	Benevolence	ren: humanity to self and others
Sense of Shame	xiu-wu: distaste for badness	Righteousness	yi: accordance with role and duty
Sense of Responsibility	ci-rang: deference to others	Propriety	li: maintaining appropriateness of behavior
Sense of Right	shi-fei: approving and disapproving	Wisdom	zhi: knowing how to act

The meanings given are all rough and approximated out of different common translations. The four virtues listed are four of the Five Constant Virtues based on Confucius's discussion of good character at Analects 17.6. The virtue that is missing here is xin, meaning something like fidelity, sincerity, integrity; the standard Neo-Confucian interpretation of this absence, if I understand it correctly, is that xin is just the virtue of having the other virtues with proper commitment.

The question often arises as to how the Confucian virtues relate to the Aristotelian virtues; a common view seems to be that Aristotle's phronesis or prudence is fairly close to the Confucian zhi or (occasionally) yi. I will not go into a full discussion of this here. But given Mencius's accounts both of the shoots and the cultivation, it seems to me that all of the Five Constant Virtues have a relation to character analogous to phronesis in action, and thus if one wanted to synthesize them, the route that would make the most sense is to see each of the five as expressing an aspect of phronesis.

The rest of this part focuses on the importance of humanity to self and others (II.A.7), the importance of being willing to learn (II.A.8), and the importance of moderation in how one relates to imperfect and sometimes awful human beings (II.A.9).

Book II.B (Gong Sun Chou II)

Many of the sections in the early part involve Mencius answering criticism of himself for his actions in the service of the state of Qi. In II.B.2, Mencius is getting in trouble for not showing the the king of Qi proper respect; he responds that he is the man in Qi who most respects the king, because he is the only one who insists on telling the king what he must do to be virtuous. When impatiently told that this is not the issue, but his failure to conform to proper rites, Mencius responds that since rank, age, and virtue all have their proper claim to be recognized with respect, the king should consult those with the latter, and not peremptorily summon them, as if age and virtue were somehow less important to the kingdom than rank.

Beginning with II.B.10, we get a series of sections discussing what happened when Mencius resigned his position and left Qi. A common theme is that Mencius will not remain for any price; he came to advise the king and was not heeded, so there is no point in his staying.

to be continued

The Apostolic Doctor

Today is the Feast of St. Lorenzo da Brindisi (1559-1619), Doctor of the Church. He's a hard one to find in English; translations have been done, but because he's not an especially widely known saint in the Anglophone world, they go out of print quickly or else end up being extremely expensive. He was born Cesare Giulio Russo, and was famous for his language skills: he knew Greek and Hebrew, and was conversationally fluent in Italian, Latin, German, Spanish, French, and a few others. Part of this was native talent, and part of it was that he used them all extensively, since he both traveled widely as a Franciscan preacher and was appointed to a number of diplomatic missions by Rome. His sermons on the Virgin Mary have always been especially highly praised. He was beatified by Pius VI, canonized by Leo XIII, and named Doctor of the Church by John XXIII.

Some links on Lawrence of Brindisi:

St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Apostolic Doctor

The 'Woman Clothed with the Sun' according to St. Lawrence of Brindisi

"Hail, Full of Grace": Sermons of St. Lawrence of Brindisi

Love, Hide Thy Face

Summer in England, 1914
by Alice Meynell

On London fell a clearer light;
Caressing pencils of the sun
Defined the distances, the white
Houses transfigured one by one,
The “long, unlovely street” impearled.
O what a sky has walked the world!

Most happy year! And out of town
The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;
The silken harvest climbed the down:
Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet,
Stroking the bread within the sheaves,
Looking ’twixt apples and their leaves.

And while this rose made round her cup,
The armies died convulsed. And when
This chaste young silver sun went up
Softly, a thousand shattered men,
One wet corruption, heaped the plain,
After a league-long throb of pain.

Flower following tender flower; and birds,
And berries; and benignant skies
Made thrive the serried flocks and herds.—
Yonder are men shot through the eyes.
Love, hide thy face
From man’s unpardonable race.

* * *

Who said “No man hath greater love than this,
To die to serve his friend”?
So these have loved us all unto the end.
Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed!
The soldier dying dies upon a kiss,
The very kiss of Christ.

Links of Note, with Some Notation

* This discussion of how Justice Kennedy's comments about Confucius's view of marriage in the Obergefell decision touched off a discussion of the subject in Chinese media was somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, it is marred by dishonesty; as anyone can see who actually reads Scalia's dissent, Scalia has no "inflammatory response to Kennedy’s use of Confucius" or a "rebuttal to Confucius", since Scalia does not at any point address Kennedy's use of Confucius. The fortune cookie comment is explicitly about the first sentence of Kennedy's opinion, in a footnote where its context could not be mistaken, which itself comments explicitly on extravagant language used in the opinion, not on the sources cited. This is an excellent example of how not to criticize a text: the author makes an association that has no actual evidence in the text, treats the association as the point of the text, and then criticizes the text for the association that does not actually exist in the text. And, again, there is no excuse whatsoever for this misbehavior; we aren't talking about a case in which the context could be confused, since the comment is cordoned off into a footnote, which explicitly quotes the sentence to which the comment is directed, to a remark on the language Kennedy uses in the opinion. Moreover, one looks in vain for other people who have read the decision making this same error. And to call something a "rebuttal to Confucius" or an "inflamatory response to [a] use of Confucius" or a "mocking dismissal" of Confucius, when the text does not even mention Confucius, nor indeed appear to have anything to do with Confucius except in the critic's own imaginative association of Confucius with fortune cookies, is nothing short of a mendacious characterization of the text.

* Speaking of which I had intended a while ago to point out Brian Beutler's comment on the decision, which is the only place that I've seen that correctly notes the fact that Kennedy's decision has very little connection to the actual work and argument of gay marriage advocates: it gets the result they were looking for, but on very idiosyncratic reasoning that they are now stuck with because it's the thing they now have to work with, despite the fact that it does the sort of thing that many gay marriage advocates have repeatedly argued against -- committing the gay community to a standard template of relationship derived from heterosexual marriage rather than gay and lesbian experience, for instance -- and downplays and muddles the arguments (particularly the equality argument) that have been the primary thrust of gay marriage advocacy.

* The most difficult English poem to read out loud. I can handle most of it without much problem, but "Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet" trips me almost every single time, as does "Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant". There's just an itch to harmonize those vowels.

* A review of a life of Vaclav Havel.

* Texas is the only state with an actual gold reserve. (Other states invest in gold certificates or the like, but Texas actually has the bullion.) It's locked away in a vault in Manhattan, so it's not surprising that some Texans want it closer to home rather than to trust to Yanks and banks. Gold depositories are expensive, though, and the Texas legislature is in a perpetual state of worrying about unnecessary costs, so I don't think it's likely to return to Texas soil anytime soon.

* Mapping Metaphor

* Craig Warmke, Modal Intensionalism

* An essay on the complexities of Lewis Carroll. But it only touches the surface; the man was many-sided in every way.

* Carlos Colorado on the beatification of Oscar Romero. I've long been in favor of Romero's canonization -- not, of course, that it matters whether one is in favor of it or not, since it's not a popularity contest. An archbishop who is shot literally before the altar while saying Mass is a martyr; all the usual objections to it turn out not to have much to them.

* Philosophers' Carnival #177.

* An interesting discussion of arthāpatti and upamāna in Indian epistemology.

* Bolos and Scott, Reformed Epistemology, at the IEP.

* Thomas Stark tries to understand Cardinal Kasper in terms of adapted Hegelianism. I've noted before that Kasper seems to be responsible for the too-common Hegelian misreading of the triplex via, so add that to the evidence.

* An interesting article on the tomb of Queen Esther in Persia.

* Robert George defends Peter Singer; very broadly speaking, of course.

* Thomas Aquinas's discussion of the parts of the Mass at Sent. IV d 8 exp. text, at "New Liturgical Movement".

* A lot of interesting women-in-philosophy articles, free until the end of the year.

Fortnightly Book, July 19

I continue with the second of the three volumes of Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night in the Heritage Press edition. This volume takes us from the 273rd night to the 738th night, so it not only gets us past the first year of nights, but past the second year as well. The three volumes of this edition have continuous page numbering throughout, so this volume starts on page 1337 and ends on page 2650. It's likely to be another three-week 'fortnight'.

This part of the Nights has a very large number of minor tales, but it is notable especially for the fact that it has the most famous series of tales in the entire collection: The Voyages of Sinbad (or Sindbad, as it is in Burton's edition). These tales were originally an independent cycle that were assimilated by the Nights; and they are easily the most recognizable stories in this massive crowd of stories.

Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Introduction

Opening Passage: The book has both an introduction and a prologue as well as an opening to the story proper, so I go with the first paragraph of the Introduction, bland as it is:

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. This enterprise has proceeded so rapidly--with so little outside commentary--that its dimensions and implications are hardly understood at all. (p. ix)

Summary: Catastrophe consists of the accumulation of errors. One of the things that works well for Jurassic Park as a story is that Crichton does a good job in showing the compounding effect of error, which in itself is something human beings find fascinating. In the course of doing so, he depicts one way in which such a compounding of errors can occur: arrogance, which leads to a refusal to take proper steps to prevent errors and correct them. And, negatively, of course, I suppose that gives us one of the important aspects of humility: it leads you to take your capacity for failure seriously enough to avoid failures that magnify other failures.

The basic story, of course is fairly straightforward: John Hammond is building a park on an island, using genetically reconstructed dinosaurs. There are plenty of indications throughout that something is not right: Dr. Wu mentions in passing that they have to help some dinosaurs out of their eggs; the dinosaurs all have a slight rotten-fish smell to them, despite the fact that the herbivores should not have that kind of smell; there are several "worker accidents"; there is evidence that some dinosaurs are turning up on the Costa Rican mainland. And those are just some of the things that are out in the open. It is the signs of wrongness that people aren't noticing that will turn out to be truly dangerous.

In a lighter, fast-paced novel like this, it is a bit difficult to determine what is just thrown in as a detail and what is supposed to link up to the larger themes. For instance, we learn some things about the family situation of Tim and Lex -- their parents are separated and getting divorced, and while there's not a lot of discussion, it does get quite specific. Is it just something used to help give a sense of the time passed as Grant and the kids try to get back to the compound? It could be. On the other hand, it is hard in context not to see it as another case of accumlation of errors. Likewise, the quasi-chapter headings are mostly descriptive, but it's difficult not to see an irony in the fact that all of the sections occurring in the control room are titled 'Control' and that they start coming thick and fast at the point where it is clear that things are out of control.

To go with this re-reading of the book, I re-watched the famous movie based on it. There are certain things that the book does better than the movie. I remember the movie when it first came out, and remember comparing it to the book at the time; one of the things that struck me then, and still strikes me, is that the book does a much better job at showing the ignorance that laces through everything in the park: there are signs of unknowns that have been disregarded on almost every page once we actually get to the park. On this time around, I saw that the book also does much better at conveying the fact that the problem with the park was not just an illusion of control, although that was part of it. Even the dinosaurs are not the real thing. A good example is in the case of the dilophosaur, which is depicted in both book and movie as spitting venom. This is in fact entirely fictional. The book signals this by the fact that it's explicitly stated to be an unexpected discovery and by stating that the biologists studying the animals had not even been able to figure out how they do it, since they don't seem to do it by any normal methods (from which it logically follows that the behavior could not have been predicted from prior paleontological knowledge, since there is nothing that could have signaled it in the fossil record). It is put in as an imaginative example of just how much prior knowledge could fall short of such an undertaking. The movie does not, leading an entire generation of moviegoers into thinking that dilophosaurs spit venom.

But despite the things that the book does better, I think this is a case where, overall, the movie is better than the book. There are things that are just different and I don't think are necessarily worse; the book, for instance, starts much more slowly and indirectly, and this fits well with its structure, while the movie does a very good job of getting us caught up quickly, which does better for a cinematic structure. But the movie tells a somewhat better story, because it makes it more about the human beings and what they do or fail to do.

It also has much better characters. Most of the characters in the movie are more likable than their book counterparts, but I will note one in particular. The John Hammond of the book and, for that matter, of Crichton's original draft of the movie, is extremely unlikable and arrogant, who seems incapable of human sympathy. That from David Koepp's final draft is much more human, and, of course, Richard Attenborough plays the role for everything it is worth. It was a masterstroke to make Hammond not obviously arrogant but instead an enthusiastic and charming grandfather who actually cares for his grandchildren and wants to bring something exciting and wonderful to the children of the entire world. We get a more powerful lesson on the nature of hubris, a richer character, better interactions with other characters, and a greater sense of how we, ourselves, could fall into the same trap. We don't want him to fail even when we see that he must. And the Hammond we get in the movie is someone who is much more involved in his park, much more aware of what is going on, and thus there is less room to fall into the error of thinking that we ourselves could have avoided the catastrophe. This one change alone makes almost everything better. And the death of Hammond in the book was always one of the least satisfactory things about the story; the death of his dream in the movie is massively more affecting.



The curve above (which are shown in their first twelve steps), which people have often found intriguing, is never named in the book; but it is a fitting one, since it is one of a family of fractals called 'dragon curves' -- this one is called the Harter-Heighway dragon. There's a good explanation of how it is drawn here.

Favorite Passage: This is not really a book in which any particular passage stood out as especially funny, or interesting, or exquisitely crafted. But I thought that this one was a fairly good depiction of a common response to rational argument:

"Malcolm's models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Malcolm Effect. The whole system could suddenly collapse. And that was what he said about Jurassic Park. That it had inherent instability."

"Inherent instability," Gennaro said. "And what did you do when you got his report?"

"We disagreed with it, and ignored it, of course," Arnold said.

"Was that wise?"

"It's self-evident," Arnold said. "We're dealing with living systems, after all. This is life, not computer models." (p. 246)

Recommendation: Recommended; it's definitely worth reading at least once.

----------

Quotations are from Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, Ballantine (New York: 1990).

Thursday Vice: Discord

Discord becomes particularly recognizable as a vice opposing the virtue of charity; and like most such vices, discord does not have a long or elaborate historical record of being discussed, although it does have a fairly clear account. The virtue of charity, Aquinas argues, has several faces: love, joy, peace, mercy. Each of these active expressions of charity is opposed by a vice -- love by hatred or odium, for instance, or joy by envy (when concerned with others) and sloth (when concerned with self). Peace, which is well ordered concord, is opposed by discord or dissensions. In particular, Aquinas says (2-2.37), "a man directly disaccords with his neighbor, when he knowingly and intentionally dissents from the Divine good and his neighbor's good, to which he ought to consent." Discord is concerned with the internal -- while it can be externally expressed, it is entirely possible for it never to be so, instead silently poisoning relations in ways others cannot see -- and as such it is distinct from strife and similar vices, which involve various kinds of external opposition.

Human beings easily come to disagreement, and this disagreement can cause a sort of incidental discord. This is not necessarily a moral wrong; indeed, it can sometimes be a good, when there is a concord that is ill ordered and harmful. But discord as a vice arises when one tends to break up the unity created by people coming together to seek divine good and the good of neighbor. What the vice of discord is doing is destroying the possibility of virtuous friendship -- friends do not necessarily share the same opinions, Aristotle noted, but they are united in pursuit of good. The highest friendships are those involving the highest good, those sought by virtues; since charity is by nature a kind of virtuous friendship, it is this kind of virtue-welded union of wills that discord destroys and prevents.

Discord is not a capital vice; that is, to say, it does not have any especially notable tendency to encourage the development of other vices. It is, however, a daughter vice, being the kind of vice that can naturally arise in the wake of a capital vice. We often find it as a vice resulting from other vice. The two vices that make good candidates for being discord's special capital vice are vainglory and envy; it clearly has links to them both. Following Gregory the Great, Aquinas judges that it is more properly associated with vainglory. Discord is an active disunion of wills, and this tends to happen when someone is privileging his own will over that of anyone else's; that is, discord is a way of going one's own way and refusing to go along with others, which is precisely the self-oriented disorder that one would associate with vainglory. The connection with envy lies in the fact that it, like envy, is a sort of revulsion from someone's good; but unlike envy, this revulsion is quite clearly due to an excessive regard for one's own good, which discord shares with vainglory.

Transfigured Stretched the Squalid Street

Transformation
by Rosamund Marriott Watson

Far from country lanes and leas,
O’er pavements foul with stain and spot,
I hastened, holding—half forgot—
In careless hands, a clustered knot
Of rosy, frail anemones.

The sun shone round them, gold and rose,
And sudden wonder dawned on me,
For that mean by-way seemed to be
More fair than isles of Arcady,
Or splendours of eternal snows.

Transfigured stretched the squalid street,
With all its tawdry shops arow:
I felt the cowslips round me blow,
The cold spring twilights clear and slow,
The dews of dawn about my feet.

O wonder-wealth without alloy,
Breath from the far-off fields divine!
The spring sun sheds his amber wine,
And makes the viewless glories mine,
The earth’s illimitable joy.

Sacramental Armaments

Today is the Feast of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Doctor of the Church. From his Breviloquium (Part VI, Chapter 3):

Since this army [of the Church] consists of elements that are subject to weakening, in order that the ranks be perfectly and permanently strengthened, it needs sacraments to fortify, relieve, and replenish its members: to fortify the combatants, relieve the wounded and replenish the dying. Now, a fortifying sacrament strengthens either those just entering the combat, and this is Baptism; or those in the midst of the fray, and this is Confirmation; or those who are leaving it, and this is Extreme Unction. A relieving sacrament alleviates either venial sin, and this is the Eucharist; or mortal sin, and this is Penance. Finally, a sacrament that replenishes does so either on the level of spiritual existence, and this is...Orders, which has the function of administering the sacraments; or on the level of natural existence, and this is Matrimony, which replenishes the multitude of humanity in their natural existence, the foundation of everything else....

And so Baptism is designed for those just entering the fight, Confirmation for those engaged in combat, the Eucharist for those refreshing their strength, Penance for those rising from their sickbeds, Extreme Unction for those who are departing, Orders for those who break in the new recruits, and Matrimony for those who provide these recruits. And so it is evident that the sacramental remedies and armaments are both sufficient and orderly.

[Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Monti, ed., The Franciscan Institute (Saint Bonaventure, NY: 2005), pp. 220-221.]

Bonaventure was the second Doctor of the Church (after Aquinas) to be explicitly designated as such by a Pope. (The first eight Doctors of the Church achieved and established the title by a much more piecemeal process of liturgical development; their title was extended to Aquinas and Bonaventure by papal authority.) I've noted before that Bonaventure's real name was Giovanni di Fidanza -- 'Bonaventura' is a nickname that means 'Good Fortune'. We don't know why he was nicknamed Lucky, but Bonaventure himself tells us that as an infant he was cured of an illness by St. Francis of Assisi, and late tradition suggests that he was given the nickname by St. Francis himself.

The Mede Is at His Gate!

Vision of Belshazzar
by George Gordon, Lord Byron

The King was on his throne,
The Satraps throng'd the hall:
A thousand bright lamps shone
O'er that high festival.
A thousand cups of gold,
In Judah deem'd divine --
Jehovah's vessels hold
The godless Heathen's wine!

In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand:
The fingers of a man; --
A solitary hand
Along the letters ran,
And traced them like a wand.

The monarch saw, and shook,
And bade no more rejoice;
All bloodless wax'd his look
And tremulous his voice.
'Let the men of lore appear,
The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear,
Which mar our royal mirth.'

Chaldea's seers are good,
But here they have no skill;
And the unknown letters stood
Untold and awful still.
And Babel's men of age
Are wise and deep in lore;
But now they were not sage,
They saw -- but knew no more.

A captive in the land,
A stranger and a youth,
He heard the king's command,
He saw that writing's truth.
The lamps around were bright,
The prophecy in view;
He read it on that night, --
The morrow proved it true.

'Belshazzar's grave is made,
His kingdom pass'd away,
He, in the balance weigh'd,
Is light and worthless clay;
The shroud his robe of state,
His canopy the stone:
The Mede is at his gate!
The Persian on his throne!'

The Mencius, Book I

After Master Kong himself, the most important reference-point for Confucianism is Master Meng, or Mencius, in the latinized form. According to tradition, he was the student of Confucius's grandson, Zisi (son of Boyu, who is mentioned in the Analects). Because a number of his students were feudal lords, he serves as a point at which the influence of Confucius becomes massively amplified. His sayings, which are mostly short discourses, are collected in the Mengzi, one of the four primary books of Confucian thought.

One of the oldest disputes about the Mencius is whether Mengzi himself actually wrote it; over the many centuries, both sides have been argued so extensively by the many Confucian scholars and commentators who have discussed the issue that there is little for modern scholars to add to the debate.

In the Chinese, each book of the Mengzi has a title, but it is purely a convenience for reference rather than anything informative: it comes from the first sentence of the book and is usually the name of the person with whom Mencius happens to be talking at the beginning of the book.

You can read the Mencius online at the Chinese Texts Project, in James Legge's translation. As for myself, I will be using D. C. Lau's translation from Penguin, just because it happens to be the copy I have on my shelves.

Book I.A (Liang Hui Wang I)

Book I is unusual in the context of the rest of the work in that it seems to be arranged in at least a roughly chronological order; as such it is a major source for the life of Mencius himself.

We begin with Mencius interacting with King Hui of Liang (or Wei). King Hui himself gives a historical rundown of his very troubled career at I.A.5; his first comment to Mencius in I.A.1, asking how Mencius can profit his state, should be read in that context. Lau in his introduction gives the key dates for events King Hui mentions:

341 BC -- Defeat by the Kingdom of Qi
This was followed by a period of twenty years in which he suffered repeated defeat by the Kingdom of Qin.
323 BC -- Defeat by the Kingdom of Chu.
319 BC -- Death of King Hui

Thus King Hui is at the end of a disastrous career, in the last few years of his life, and is attempting to get himself out of a terrible situation. Master Meng points firmly to what he sees as the problem: it is precisely this thinking in terms of profit rather than in terms of humanity (ren) and rightness (yi). If everyone thinks of profit alone, nobody is ever satisfied, and nobody actually works with anybody else for the good of parents or rulers. In I.A.2, King Hui is in the midst of his wealth and asks if it can be enjoyed by worthy people; Mencius replies that it is only worthy people who actually enjoy them, because delight is something shared with others. King Hui insists in I.A.3 that he has done well and has just had bad luck, but Mencius is not impressed: his misfortune is actually the effect of his own actions. Perhaps he has done better than other kings, but that's not a high standard. A true king regulates things so that his people have plenty to eat, and that everyone has a little something to contribute to that plenty, and that they are well educated so as to fulfill their responsibilities; if that were the case, he would not have problems:

When people die, you simply say, "It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the harvest." In what way is that different from killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, "It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the weapon."

When King Hui asks in I.A.5 how he can wipe away the shame of his many defeats, Mencius insists again on the importance of benevolence. This is not an abstract ideal. Other kings go around harassing their people, destroying their ability to survive, miseducating them. A king who actually makes sure his people can eat and do their work properly and who teaches people to uphold their responsibilities to their families, creates a wealthy and tightly-knit people who will be able to accomplish things that could not otherwise be accomplished.

After King Hui's death, he was succeeded by King Xiang, and Mencius seems to have been so thoroughly unimpressed by him (I.A.6) that he left for another state. The next conversation (I.A.7) is with King Xuan of Qi, who had just recently ascended the throne. The discussion is quite long because King Xuan seems to be extraordinarily reasonable and willing to discuss his own mistakes and failings. Mencius encourages him to recognize the fact that his ambition to make his state and reign great are not achieved by tumultuous wars against foreign enemies but by actually working to make the state of Qi the best place in China to live. If it is the best place for scholars, scholars will come. If it is the best place for farmers, farmers will come to farm. If it is the best place for people to care for their families, they will go to it in order to care for their families.

Book I.B (Liang Hui Wang II)

The work continues with the promising King Xuan. Mengzi hears that King Xuan deeply enjoys music, and takes this as a sign that good can be done in Qi. But when he talks to King Xuan about it, the king, embarrassed, is forced to admit that he doesn't actually like the kind of traditional music people like Mencius are always talking about -- he likes the new, popular tunes. But Mencius says that this doesn't make much difference: a king who enjoys music is a king who can understand that his delights must be shared with others, because music is a communal thing: the delight of it is not something that is kept to oneself. And that is the key to good kingship: when the king's furthering of himself is at the same time a furthering of the people.

The point is raised again in I.B.2, when King Xuan and Mencius discuss why the people think his private park is too big when other kings have had private parks that people did not think too big -- perhaps even thought too small to be worthy of their king. And Mencius insists that it is because all the rules concerning are rules to keep people out of it, and they are so harsh that the people could hardly avoid seeing it as anything other than an immense trap in the middle of their kingdom.

I.B.10 and I.B.11 are concerned with the war between Qi and Yan, in which Qi is victorious; we learn later in the book that Mencius had only intended to stay a very short time in Qi, but found himself stuck when the war broke out. The rest of the sections are, according to Lau, the likely itinerary of Mencius when he left after the hostilities: that is, he stopped briefly in the states of Zou and Teng on his way to Lu.

to be continued

A Fly Under the Lens

As for what you say in your esteemed letter concerning temptations against the Faith, pay no attention to them. They are not real temptations. Your faith is immovable and secure in the depths of your soul: it was infused in your Baptism and has been fortified by other Sacraments. This does not prevent these fears and a certain trepidation from arising on the surface of the soul, as also doubts that are not real but apparent: things that God allows as trials to the souls most dear to Him, so that they may be more active and vigilant in His love and may purify themselves by means of tribulation. I do not consider them in the least dangerous or to be made account of. On the contrary, the more you despise them and treat them as movements of the imagination and sensitive nature (as they really are), the more easily they disappear of their own accord or become weakened. If you take these things seriously, and give them an importance they do not possess, it is easy to become disturbed and fearful: and fear and sadness have the effect of a lens that enlarges a fly until it appears an elephant. Nay they do more, for a soul filled with vain fear sees what does not exist.

Bl. Antonio Rosmini, Letters, on Chiefly Religious Subjects, p. 639.

Fortnightly Book, July 12

Having driven through a third of the Arabian Nights, I am very much in need of something that can be handled easily with a light stroll: something lighter, quicker, and, of course, shorter. A re-read rather than a new read would not be amiss, either. So the next fortnightly book is Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, the book that touched off Crichton's juggernaut decade in the 1990s.

There's a chance that this might actually be a one-week 'fortnight', which, if so, would actually be helpful in terms of scheduling, as I enter the busier last half of summer; but given that I have several things to do this next week, I make no promises.