Iphigenia's Wedding
Birds brightly sing,
song pours out,
flowers litter the path,
joy leaps up,
diamonds bloom in silver;
maidens sing soft hymns
of white heifers led home
to rest in royal fold,
of chastity and gladness
and everlasting love.
The procession leads to a bower,
to a genial bed of stone,
to a knife of bronze
that glitters in the fire.
Tor
Somewhere on the green-topped Tor
where Michael prays and Arthur swore,
I lost my way in swirling mist
and lost my heart in spite of this,
the ringing of the bells.
Down in valleys like the sea,
somewhere deep inside of me,
I broke the sword that caught the light;
its shattered shards were gleaming bright
and rang like little bells.
Old Glastonbury's stone complains
that in its ruin naught remains
of Dunstan's chapel, save the trace
that even time cannot erase,
the ringing of the bells.
The raven feathers gathered here
cannot speak a word so clear,
cannot move the silent crowd
as when in times of dark and cloud
the bells are rung, the ringing bells.
Somewhere on the green-crowned height
we lost the chapel in the fight
to wander lost in depths below;
but still our children come to know
the ringing of the bells.
Aphrodite
Mighty on earth, mighty in heaven,
many in name, I Aphrodite
sway every soul in light of the sun
from Euxine shore to distant main,
honor those who revere my might,
bring to the ground the arrogant heart.
Am I a goddess remote from her people?
You feel me inside you, my power prevails.
Am I a goddess dark and unyielding?
Those whom I punish all praise my power.
Holy on earth, holy in heaven,
many in form, elusive and luring,
I Aphrodite ride on the waves,
rise from the foam in splendor appearing,
rise like a goddess from death and decay.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Sublime Theorists
We shall suppose, that a creature, possessed of reason, but unacquainted with human nature, deliberates with himself what RULES of justice or property would best promote public interest, and establish peace and security among mankind: His most obvious thought would be, to assign the largest possessions to the most extensive virtue, and give every one the power of doing good, proportioned to his inclination. In a perfect theocracy, where a being, infinitely intelligent, governs by particular volitions, this rule would certainly have place, and might serve to the wisest purposes: But were mankind to execute such a law; so great is the uncertainty of merit, both from its natural obscurity, and from the self-conceit of each individual, that no determinate rule of conduct would ever result from it; and the total dissolution of society must be the immediate consequence. Fanatics may suppose, that dominion is founded on grace, and that saints alone inherit the earth; but the civil magistrate very justly puts these sublime theorists on the same footing with common robbers, and teaches them by the severest discipline, that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.
Hume gives as historical examples of this type of religious fanatic some of the more extreme Puritans during the English civil wars; he also gives the Levellers as possibly an example of a similar group of political fanatics.
This passage always strikes me as a good example of Hume's dry wit.
[Quotation from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III, Part II.]
Hume gives as historical examples of this type of religious fanatic some of the more extreme Puritans during the English civil wars; he also gives the Levellers as possibly an example of a similar group of political fanatics.
This passage always strikes me as a good example of Hume's dry wit.
[Quotation from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III, Part II.]
Notes and Links
* Mark Chu-Carroll gives a useful summary of the difference between Turing equivalent and Turing complete. This has led to interesting futher posts about computational complexity:
Basic Computational Complexity
Basic Complexity Classes: P and NP
Probabilistic Complexity
* Charles Blattberg's Political Philosophies and Political Ideologies (PDF) offers an interesting argument for patriotism as a political philosophy. Certain aspects of the argument are developed in Patriotic, Not Deliberative, Democracy (PDF). (By 'deliberative democracy', of course, Blattberg has in mind something very specific and Rawlsian; one thread of Blattberg's argument is that a patriotic democracy, in his sense, allows for more of what we would ordinarily call deliberation -- i.e., mutual dialogue and conversation -- than what is usually called 'deliberative democracy'.)
* R.U.R., by Karel Capek; the play that gave us one epoch-changing word: Robot. It's also an interesting read for Asimov fans, because you get to see just how much of Asimov's Robots series is influenced by this play, despite the very different things Capek and Asimov are doing with the idea. The play is also interesting in light of recent discussions over P. D. James's Children of Men.
* Through Aliens in this World I came across this great essay by Alan Garner on the language of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
* A fascinating discussion of Sir John Fielding at "Westminster Wisdom".
* CopyrightWatch has a list of authors whose works entered the public domain on January 1 of this year. You certainly will recognize some of the names. Of course, a distinction actually has to be made between several different types of countries, since public domain is not the same in every country. As the post notes, some countries are on a life + 50 years system, while others are on a life + 70 years system, so when a work becomes public domain in one system, it won't in the other for another twenty years. So whether any of these authors have become public domain in your own country will depend on the specifics of your country's copyright laws. Unfortunately the U.S. is on a life+70 system (as is most of Europe), with a few quirks. This handy chart gives a summary of what is and what is not in the public domain for the U.S. For information on other countries, this website is a good place to start your research.
* This is an old YouTube offering, but still one of the best: a speed-metal version of Pachelbel's Canon on electric guitar.
* Today is the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers, the most Greek of the Latin Fathers. From his classic work On the Trinity:
UPDATE:
* Wow, the Gummy Bears attack the Hornburg in a viciously sugary battle.
* Thanks to Kieran Healy, you can read Anscombe's Analysis article, A Note on Mr. Bennett. All two sentences of it.
Basic Computational Complexity
Basic Complexity Classes: P and NP
Probabilistic Complexity
* Charles Blattberg's Political Philosophies and Political Ideologies (PDF) offers an interesting argument for patriotism as a political philosophy. Certain aspects of the argument are developed in Patriotic, Not Deliberative, Democracy (PDF). (By 'deliberative democracy', of course, Blattberg has in mind something very specific and Rawlsian; one thread of Blattberg's argument is that a patriotic democracy, in his sense, allows for more of what we would ordinarily call deliberation -- i.e., mutual dialogue and conversation -- than what is usually called 'deliberative democracy'.)
* R.U.R., by Karel Capek; the play that gave us one epoch-changing word: Robot. It's also an interesting read for Asimov fans, because you get to see just how much of Asimov's Robots series is influenced by this play, despite the very different things Capek and Asimov are doing with the idea. The play is also interesting in light of recent discussions over P. D. James's Children of Men.
* Through Aliens in this World I came across this great essay by Alan Garner on the language of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
* A fascinating discussion of Sir John Fielding at "Westminster Wisdom".
* CopyrightWatch has a list of authors whose works entered the public domain on January 1 of this year. You certainly will recognize some of the names. Of course, a distinction actually has to be made between several different types of countries, since public domain is not the same in every country. As the post notes, some countries are on a life + 50 years system, while others are on a life + 70 years system, so when a work becomes public domain in one system, it won't in the other for another twenty years. So whether any of these authors have become public domain in your own country will depend on the specifics of your country's copyright laws. Unfortunately the U.S. is on a life+70 system (as is most of Europe), with a few quirks. This handy chart gives a summary of what is and what is not in the public domain for the U.S. For information on other countries, this website is a good place to start your research.
* This is an old YouTube offering, but still one of the best: a speed-metal version of Pachelbel's Canon on electric guitar.
* Today is the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers, the most Greek of the Latin Fathers. From his classic work On the Trinity:
While my mind was dwelling on these and on many like thoughts, I chanced upon the books which, according to the tradition of the Hebrew faith, were written by Moses and the prophets, and found in these words spoken by God the Creator testifying of Himself 'I Am that I Am, and again, He that is has sent me unto you.' I confess that I was amazed to find in them an indication concerning God so exact that it expressed in the terms best adapted to human understanding an unattainable insight into the mystery of the Divine nature. For no property of God which the mind can grasp is more characteristic of Him than existence, since existence, in the absolute sense, cannot be predicated of that which shall come to an end, or of that which has had a beginning, and He who now joins continuity of being with the possession of perfect felicity could not in the past, nor can in the future, be non-existent; for whatsoever is Divine can neither be originated nor destroyed. Wherefore, since God's eternity is inseparable from Himself, it was worthy of Him to reveal this one thing, that He is, as the assurance of His absolute eternity.
UPDATE:
* Wow, the Gummy Bears attack the Hornburg in a viciously sugary battle.
* Thanks to Kieran Healy, you can read Anscombe's Analysis article, A Note on Mr. Bennett. All two sentences of it.
Friday, January 12, 2007
World-Historical
Scott McLemee recently had an interesting discussion of Hegel in his Inside Higher Ed column; he followed it up with a post at Cliopatria asking:
I'm not a Hegel expert by any measure at all, but this set me thinking about Hegel's discussion of world-historical persons in Hegel's philosophy of heroes. What Hegel would say, I don't know, but I think a Hegelian could very well answer Yes (Maybe) to the first question, but would answer No to the second question.
It's tricky navigating Hegel's philosophy of history because we are always in danger of reading into it things that are not there, or that may only be ambiguously suggested. So I'm not going to claim to have an exact description of the world-historical role in Hegel's account. And, again, everything I say here should be taken with a grain of salt. But I am going to suggest a way of looking at it that at least gets us in the vicinity of what Hegel means when he is talking about world-historical persons.
We might, if we had simply thought about it before looking at the actual course of history, have thought that the world would be a pretty balanced place -- very stable, in equilibrium. But that's not the way history actually works. There is an imbalance to it, an asymmetry, a faultline running through all history. This faultline, which makes perfect equilibrium impossible, drives progress; it is what gives history direction. World-historical persons are people who happen to fall on this faultline; they unbalance the world. If human beings were able to achieve complete complacency, progress would grind to a halt and the stagnation of equilibrium would set in. We would be stuck at a given level. What world-historical persons do is throw us off balance. They break complacencies; they take the boundaries that we think are secure and step outside of them, and get away with it. This forces us to expand our horizons to take into account this ability to step outside the box.
Progress in Hegel's understanding of history is always progress in consciousness; this is what led Marx to make one of the most effective and scathing criticisms of Hegel's philosophy of history, that it treats all history as the history of philosophy -- what's called history of religion is the history of our philosophical awareness of religion; what's called history of government is the history of our philosophical awareness of government; what's called history of culture is the history of our philosophical awareness of culture. It's very idea-oriented, and a lot of the strangeness of Hegel's view of history goes away when you understand this. Within its limits, in fact, it begins making a strange sort of sense; it's not particularly teleological, and the whole appeal to providence is very ambivalently introduced -- it's pretty much introduced as a concession to Hegel's audience, making it easier to grasp his point. So it's not particularly providentialist, either. Rather, it is very much about the blasting away of human assumptions about reality. There's a faultline in history; our assumptions break upon it; we are forced to rethink the world; and our new thought necessarily both includes the prior stages and goes beyond them. That, allowing for a certain amount of approximation and stylization, is Hegel's account of history.
So I think the Hegelian could answer Yes to McLemee's first question, if he sees Bush as forcing a break-down in our common wisdom, our assumptions about the way the world works. If Bush does that on a massive scale, he is a world-historical figure; this status is not a moral status (it does not indicate approval or disapproval -- two people in the twentieth century who clearly qualify for world-historical status are Gandhi and Hitler, because they forced, in very different ways, massive changes in the way we understand the world), and it is not a status of rationality or excellence. It is a label that indicates an ability to crumple our worldview by force of will, and the sort of success relevant to being a world-historical figure is not success in the ordinary sense, but success in this destabilization. The Idea of Reason continually intrudes into the world (we are necessarily forced to rethink our understanding of the world on ever-larger scales); but to do so it has to use cunning, and clothe itself in things inferior to it (the forced rethinking generally occurs not from people aiming at such a shift but from people along the faultline of history pursuing their own passions and interests); this means that the entrance of Reason into the world (the greater self-understanding of the human race) is necessarily accompanied by Unreason (people suffer and things go wrong on a massive scale). [This, incidentally, is the Hegelian version of the problem of evil. It is also the beginning of the Hegelian response: because this is all a matter of necessity (in some sense of the term) there is really nothing to do in the face of the massive suffering of humanity but stand in shocked astonishment at the overwhelming and ruthless sweep of progress in human self-understanding. (There is more to it, of course, and I am stating it in a deliberately crudely way; but this is where the Hegelian begins to develop the response.)]
But for the same reason, I think the sort of role McLemee posits in the second question is just not Hegelian enough. What possible shift in philosophical awareness could be brought about merely by collapse of U.S. power in the region, even if it does so? It's just not the kind of historical explanation the Hegelian finds interesting. The only collapse the Hegelian is interested in is the collapse of the sort of complacency that would impede progress in our understanding of ourselves if it were not removed.
Might GWB be playing a world-historical role even if his stated plans turn out to be as disasterous as they've been so far? Could his actual significance in the grand scheme of things be as catalyst for the complete destruction of U.S. power in the region?
I'm not a Hegel expert by any measure at all, but this set me thinking about Hegel's discussion of world-historical persons in Hegel's philosophy of heroes. What Hegel would say, I don't know, but I think a Hegelian could very well answer Yes (Maybe) to the first question, but would answer No to the second question.
It's tricky navigating Hegel's philosophy of history because we are always in danger of reading into it things that are not there, or that may only be ambiguously suggested. So I'm not going to claim to have an exact description of the world-historical role in Hegel's account. And, again, everything I say here should be taken with a grain of salt. But I am going to suggest a way of looking at it that at least gets us in the vicinity of what Hegel means when he is talking about world-historical persons.
We might, if we had simply thought about it before looking at the actual course of history, have thought that the world would be a pretty balanced place -- very stable, in equilibrium. But that's not the way history actually works. There is an imbalance to it, an asymmetry, a faultline running through all history. This faultline, which makes perfect equilibrium impossible, drives progress; it is what gives history direction. World-historical persons are people who happen to fall on this faultline; they unbalance the world. If human beings were able to achieve complete complacency, progress would grind to a halt and the stagnation of equilibrium would set in. We would be stuck at a given level. What world-historical persons do is throw us off balance. They break complacencies; they take the boundaries that we think are secure and step outside of them, and get away with it. This forces us to expand our horizons to take into account this ability to step outside the box.
Progress in Hegel's understanding of history is always progress in consciousness; this is what led Marx to make one of the most effective and scathing criticisms of Hegel's philosophy of history, that it treats all history as the history of philosophy -- what's called history of religion is the history of our philosophical awareness of religion; what's called history of government is the history of our philosophical awareness of government; what's called history of culture is the history of our philosophical awareness of culture. It's very idea-oriented, and a lot of the strangeness of Hegel's view of history goes away when you understand this. Within its limits, in fact, it begins making a strange sort of sense; it's not particularly teleological, and the whole appeal to providence is very ambivalently introduced -- it's pretty much introduced as a concession to Hegel's audience, making it easier to grasp his point. So it's not particularly providentialist, either. Rather, it is very much about the blasting away of human assumptions about reality. There's a faultline in history; our assumptions break upon it; we are forced to rethink the world; and our new thought necessarily both includes the prior stages and goes beyond them. That, allowing for a certain amount of approximation and stylization, is Hegel's account of history.
So I think the Hegelian could answer Yes to McLemee's first question, if he sees Bush as forcing a break-down in our common wisdom, our assumptions about the way the world works. If Bush does that on a massive scale, he is a world-historical figure; this status is not a moral status (it does not indicate approval or disapproval -- two people in the twentieth century who clearly qualify for world-historical status are Gandhi and Hitler, because they forced, in very different ways, massive changes in the way we understand the world), and it is not a status of rationality or excellence. It is a label that indicates an ability to crumple our worldview by force of will, and the sort of success relevant to being a world-historical figure is not success in the ordinary sense, but success in this destabilization. The Idea of Reason continually intrudes into the world (we are necessarily forced to rethink our understanding of the world on ever-larger scales); but to do so it has to use cunning, and clothe itself in things inferior to it (the forced rethinking generally occurs not from people aiming at such a shift but from people along the faultline of history pursuing their own passions and interests); this means that the entrance of Reason into the world (the greater self-understanding of the human race) is necessarily accompanied by Unreason (people suffer and things go wrong on a massive scale). [This, incidentally, is the Hegelian version of the problem of evil. It is also the beginning of the Hegelian response: because this is all a matter of necessity (in some sense of the term) there is really nothing to do in the face of the massive suffering of humanity but stand in shocked astonishment at the overwhelming and ruthless sweep of progress in human self-understanding. (There is more to it, of course, and I am stating it in a deliberately crudely way; but this is where the Hegelian begins to develop the response.)]
But for the same reason, I think the sort of role McLemee posits in the second question is just not Hegelian enough. What possible shift in philosophical awareness could be brought about merely by collapse of U.S. power in the region, even if it does so? It's just not the kind of historical explanation the Hegelian finds interesting. The only collapse the Hegelian is interested in is the collapse of the sort of complacency that would impede progress in our understanding of ourselves if it were not removed.
The Truth Cannnot Be Made Clear in Any Other Way
The Second Council of Constantinople on Vigilius:
The 'example of antiquity' here is the interaction of the apostles in Acts 21, what has occasionally been called the 'Council of Jerusalem'.
I find this a fascinating passage, and worthy of meditation. I will be saying something more about it soon, you can be sure.
In order to persuade him, we reminded him of the great example left us by the apostles and of the traditions of the fathers. Even though the grace of the holy Spirit was abundant in each of the apostles, so that none of them required the advice of another in order to do his work, nevertheless they were loathe to come to a decision on the issue of the circumcision of gentiles until they had met together to test their various opinions against the witness of the holy scriptures.
In this way they unanimously reached the conclusion which they wrote to the gentiles: It has seemed good to the holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.
The holy fathers, who have gathered at intervals in the four holy councils, have followed the examples of antiquity. They dealt with heresies and current problems by debate in common, since it was established as certain that when the disputed question is set out by each side in communal discussions, the light of truth drives out the shadows of lying.
The truth cannot be made clear in any other way when there are debates about questions of faith, since everyone requires the assistance of his neighbour. As Solomon says in his proverbs: A brother who helps a brother shall be exalted like a strong city; he shall be as strong as a well-established kingdom. Again in Ecclesiastes he says: Two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their toil. And the Lord himself says: Amen I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
The 'example of antiquity' here is the interaction of the apostles in Acts 21, what has occasionally been called the 'Council of Jerusalem'.
I find this a fascinating passage, and worthy of meditation. I will be saying something more about it soon, you can be sure.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Wisdoms
Sharon Ryan has an article up at the SEP on wisdom; her conclusion is that we can define (or at least formulate a promising definition) of wisdom along these lines:
I like the attempt, but I don't think this is promising at all. What strikes me about the discussion leading up to this conclusion is that it leaves out completely what has perhaps been the dominant view of wisdom over the centuries, namely, that wisdom is a disposition to right judgment about the first and most important things. One of the advantages of this description over Ryan's is that it allows you to recognize both domain-general and domain-specific forms of wisdom (depending on which first and most important things are in view). The above definition could only apply to domain-general forms of wisdom, because of #2 and #3, which make it utterly implausible for any domain-specific form. Someone who is wise in a craft is not necessarily someone who knows how to live well, nor are they necessarily successful at living well. Contrast it with, say, Aquinas's account, in which wisdom is a virtue in which we consider rightly the highest causes (clearly a version, and a very influential one, of the dominant view I've mentioned). Aquinas explicitly allows for domain-general forms of wisdom (two kinds!), which in his view consider divine causes, and domain-specific forms of wisdom: "Accordingly he that knows the highest cause in any particular genus, and by its means is able to judge and set in order all the things that belong to that genus, is said to be wise in that genus, for instance in medicine or architecture" (ST 2-2.45.1c; he gives 1 Corinthians 3:10 as an example of this sort of usage).
Another weakness in the article is that it ignores an entire field of contemporary philosophy that deals at great length with issues of wisdom, namely, Sage Philosophy. And, again, this touches on another major current in thought about wisdom through the ages, the relation of wisdom to what we call wisdom traditions -- proverbs, advice, and the like. After all, Socrates may be wise, but so are Okemba Simiyo Chaungo or Paul Mbuya Akoko in their own diverse ways; so are, sometimes and in their own small ways, the old men and women sitting on their front porches in some small town in Mississippi, thinking about what's important in life and passing it down to the younger generation. You don't need extensive factual and theoretical knowledge to be wise; you need the right kind of knowledge. You don't need to have very few unjustified beliefs to be wise; it's possible to be a mixture of wise and foolish, as long as you are so in different ways. Nor, perhaps, do you need to be successful at living well to be wise, even at living well; there is tragic wisdom: wisdom is sometimes found at the end of a long road of failure, after you have missed your chances for living well, and come to see what serious foolishness it all was. Wisdom comes in many forms.
S is wise iff:
1. S has extensive factual and theoretical knowledge.
2. S knows how to live well.
3. S is successful at living well.
4. S has very few unjustified beliefs.
I like the attempt, but I don't think this is promising at all. What strikes me about the discussion leading up to this conclusion is that it leaves out completely what has perhaps been the dominant view of wisdom over the centuries, namely, that wisdom is a disposition to right judgment about the first and most important things. One of the advantages of this description over Ryan's is that it allows you to recognize both domain-general and domain-specific forms of wisdom (depending on which first and most important things are in view). The above definition could only apply to domain-general forms of wisdom, because of #2 and #3, which make it utterly implausible for any domain-specific form. Someone who is wise in a craft is not necessarily someone who knows how to live well, nor are they necessarily successful at living well. Contrast it with, say, Aquinas's account, in which wisdom is a virtue in which we consider rightly the highest causes (clearly a version, and a very influential one, of the dominant view I've mentioned). Aquinas explicitly allows for domain-general forms of wisdom (two kinds!), which in his view consider divine causes, and domain-specific forms of wisdom: "Accordingly he that knows the highest cause in any particular genus, and by its means is able to judge and set in order all the things that belong to that genus, is said to be wise in that genus, for instance in medicine or architecture" (ST 2-2.45.1c; he gives 1 Corinthians 3:10 as an example of this sort of usage).
Another weakness in the article is that it ignores an entire field of contemporary philosophy that deals at great length with issues of wisdom, namely, Sage Philosophy. And, again, this touches on another major current in thought about wisdom through the ages, the relation of wisdom to what we call wisdom traditions -- proverbs, advice, and the like. After all, Socrates may be wise, but so are Okemba Simiyo Chaungo or Paul Mbuya Akoko in their own diverse ways; so are, sometimes and in their own small ways, the old men and women sitting on their front porches in some small town in Mississippi, thinking about what's important in life and passing it down to the younger generation. You don't need extensive factual and theoretical knowledge to be wise; you need the right kind of knowledge. You don't need to have very few unjustified beliefs to be wise; it's possible to be a mixture of wise and foolish, as long as you are so in different ways. Nor, perhaps, do you need to be successful at living well to be wise, even at living well; there is tragic wisdom: wisdom is sometimes found at the end of a long road of failure, after you have missed your chances for living well, and come to see what serious foolishness it all was. Wisdom comes in many forms.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The Bishop of Nyssa
I see on the Orthodox liturgical calendar that I occasionally consult that today is the Feast of St. Gregory of Nyssa. So I can't help but link to On Not Three Gods, one of the great masterpieces on Trinitarian theology.
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