Timothy Burke has an interesting discussion of Cooper vs. Rowling. I find it interesting that so many of the commenters liked The Green Witch best of the The Dark Is Rising series; it's my least favorite. My favorite is The Dark Is Rising, followed by Silver on the Tree. I'm also a little surprised at Burke's suggestion that the reader would tend to identify with the Drews; I always identified with Will. Burke is right, I think, that Rowling's fiction is character fiction, whereas Cooper is not. The main characters in Cooper's series are not Will or Bran or anything like that, but the Light and the Dark. What's fascinating about it is not this or that character but the world (as one of the commenters puts it, her 'milieux'), which is much more tightly thought out than anything Rowling or Pullman give. If we want to put it sloganishly, Rowling's is a better story; Pullman's is a better poetry; and Cooper's is a better fantasy. I don't think character fiction is automatically better than other fiction, so I don't think the character-centered nature of Rowling's work is a good basis for declaring Rowling superior to Cooper. I would actually give the reverse advice Burke does; fantasy writers should focus on puzzle fiction, not character fiction, because it is extremely difficult to write good character fiction. If you do write character fiction, it should usually grow out of the story, not be something you set out to write.
To some extent, though, it's futile to rank these types of works. Fantasy is a remarkably broad genre, and none of the greats are really doing anything like any of the others. Take the great examples of fantasy for children and young adults:
Macdonald's Curdie books
Lewis's Narnia
Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci books
Cooper's The Dark is Rising
And then the two most recent candidates:
Rowling's Harry Potter
Pullman's His Dark Materials
Not one of these things is quite like the others; they can only blur from someone who has the literary equivalent of a tin ear. They have bits and pieces in common, aand can be compared in very broad terms, but that's about all. And this is as it should be. They all have their influences, but none is derivative. Cooper's world has a cold and intricate beauty to it, like the patterns of snowflakes on the window or the snow-topped peaks of a mountain range, that is leagues away from the messy, and sometimes sloppy, fun of the worlds of Rowling and Pullman.
But the thing I always liked best about Cooper was the rhyme in the TDIR, which is inimitable:
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.
The upcoming The Dark Is Rising movie looks very iffy, though.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The Materials of Architecture
Building material is not the proper material of architecture. The material of architecture, rather, is the building material already organized into elements, each one of which is a response to some prime construction problem. Such are, among others, the wall, the angle formed by the juncture of two walls, the openings made in the wall in the form of doors and windows, the roof or the vault, in short, those parts of an edifice required to define and isolate a closed portion of space.
Etienne Gilson, Forms and Substances in the Arts. Salvator Attanasio, tr. Charles Scribner's Sons (New York: 1966) p. 55.
In other words: The materials to which architects give form are not things like bricks, wood, etc. Rather, the materials of architecture are design solutions; these design solutions, considered abstractly, are organized into the plans for buildings, and, considered concretely, are organized into the buildings themselves.
Indeed, since I regard architecture as a form of engineering, I think this is true, if we consider design solutions for a broader range of things than just buildings, of engineering in general. I think the primary difference between an architect and what we usually call an engineer is one of expectation, not a difference fundamental to the field. Roughly, when we are considering buildings, what we call architects are engineering generalists, and usually the expectation is that they will have a broader training that includes topics in art and finance as well as applied science, whereas what we call engineers are architectural specialists, usually focused on practical scientific issues involved in putting together particular design solutions. But this is not a fundamental difference. The reason we should treat engineering as broader than 'architecture', of course, is that there are engineers who don't work with buildings at all. (This, incidentally, is a relatively recent terminological innovation. 'Architecture' literally means that art which organizes all other arts, and would once have been much closer to meaning what our term 'engineering' means than it does now. 'Engineering' on the other hand, suggests a focus on practical mechanical problems. But such is the shifting of language.) The key point, in any case, is that architecture and engineering are both architectonic -- they rule or govern the application of other arts. And that is another way of saying that the materials of architecture and engineering are design solutions or responses to construction problems.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Flirting and Sex
Ken Taylor suggests a Gricean account of flirting:
This is just obviously wrong in a number of ways. As I've noted before, people often flirt where neither sex nor romance are in serious view, when there is no intimation whatsoever of the possibility of sex or romance. Taylor is persuaded by this account, I think, because he focuses so greatly on flirting as a sexual act; his entire discussion focuses on sexual arousal, and only throws in even romance at the last minute. But does flirting really have much to do with sexual arousal? Flirting is not seduction; you can flirt unseductively (e.g., just in the spirit of fun), and you can seduce without a single moment of flirtation. There is nothing sexually charged about flirting itself, although one might use flirting as a part of a larger, sexually charged interaction. If I step on the elevator with a lovely young lady and tell her that her outfit brings out the color of her eyes, I might well be a bit taken aback if she were to become sexually aroused by that, or if she took this as my presenting myself as available to her for undefined purposes of sex and romance. And we know that this is a possible scenario because you can pick out ten women almost at random and nine of the ten will be able to give you a personal account of how they were taken aback by men doing something along these lines to them in response to what was only a slight flirtation. To intimate the possibility of sex, you don't flirt, you use innuendo; because there are many cases in which they go closely together, some people admittedly have difficulty distinguishing the two. This is sometimes to the great discomfort of those who don't have such a difficulty.
Carrie Jenkins continues the discussion in good analytic tradition by using absurd science fiction scenarios. She also characterizes the link between flirting and sex too strongly. Flirting is not about raising sex or romance to salience, although it can be a part (an incomplete part, it must be said) of doing so, for the straightforward reason that we like eligible partners for sex and/or romance to flirt with us. Jenkins, I think, unintentionally gets closer to the truth when she expresses it once as 'doing certain things I know will make him think about how cute I am'. This is surely a more plausible characterization, precisely because flirting does have something to do with what we call cuteness, both with recognizing the cuteness of another and with showing how cute you are yourself. None of this, of course, requires intimating the possibility of sex, or raising it to salience, although it does raise the question of how closely flirting is tied to cuteness and what cuteness is supposed to be given that it is in itself eligibility for neither sex nor romance.
I think you flirt only when: (a) you behave in ways intended to intimate the possibility of sex or romance and (b) you intend to make that intention manifest to the other.
This is just obviously wrong in a number of ways. As I've noted before, people often flirt where neither sex nor romance are in serious view, when there is no intimation whatsoever of the possibility of sex or romance. Taylor is persuaded by this account, I think, because he focuses so greatly on flirting as a sexual act; his entire discussion focuses on sexual arousal, and only throws in even romance at the last minute. But does flirting really have much to do with sexual arousal? Flirting is not seduction; you can flirt unseductively (e.g., just in the spirit of fun), and you can seduce without a single moment of flirtation. There is nothing sexually charged about flirting itself, although one might use flirting as a part of a larger, sexually charged interaction. If I step on the elevator with a lovely young lady and tell her that her outfit brings out the color of her eyes, I might well be a bit taken aback if she were to become sexually aroused by that, or if she took this as my presenting myself as available to her for undefined purposes of sex and romance. And we know that this is a possible scenario because you can pick out ten women almost at random and nine of the ten will be able to give you a personal account of how they were taken aback by men doing something along these lines to them in response to what was only a slight flirtation. To intimate the possibility of sex, you don't flirt, you use innuendo; because there are many cases in which they go closely together, some people admittedly have difficulty distinguishing the two. This is sometimes to the great discomfort of those who don't have such a difficulty.
Carrie Jenkins continues the discussion in good analytic tradition by using absurd science fiction scenarios. She also characterizes the link between flirting and sex too strongly. Flirting is not about raising sex or romance to salience, although it can be a part (an incomplete part, it must be said) of doing so, for the straightforward reason that we like eligible partners for sex and/or romance to flirt with us. Jenkins, I think, unintentionally gets closer to the truth when she expresses it once as 'doing certain things I know will make him think about how cute I am'. This is surely a more plausible characterization, precisely because flirting does have something to do with what we call cuteness, both with recognizing the cuteness of another and with showing how cute you are yourself. None of this, of course, requires intimating the possibility of sex, or raising it to salience, although it does raise the question of how closely flirting is tied to cuteness and what cuteness is supposed to be given that it is in itself eligibility for neither sex nor romance.
Hume and Rousseau
Kieran Setiya reviews Rousseau's Dog, in which David Elmonds and John Eidinow argue that Hume was less than exemplary in the Rousseau affair. Setiya gives a rousing defense of Hume. I found it interesting to read because I think there's good reason to regard Elmonds and Eidinow as partly right on this point, although their argument is faulty at a number of points. The good David was not a saint; calling him such simply shows an absurdly low standard for sainthood; and his role in the Rousseau affair is checkered.
The basic story is this. Rousseau, afraid of being imprisoned because of the religious controversy caused by his works, fled Paris in 1762, but found that he had nowhere to go; he ended up in a secluded place in Switzerland for a while. At some point, he developed the hope that Hume might help him receive asylum in England. This Hume did, and Rousseau was in England in January of 1766. Hume arranged a place for him to stay and began to take steps to get him a secret pension from the King. Hume regarded Rousseau with something like hero-worship; while regarding him as excessive, he repeatedly held him up as the exemplar of a genius. And as Hume put it to a friend, it would be a victory over the French to protect and encourage a genius they had persecuted; although later when writing his account of the dispute he put more emphasis on pity mixed with indignation at the thought of such an eminent man of genius reduced to indigence.
Things started happily enough. Rousseau was profuse with gratitude to Hume, and Hume waxed eloquent in letters about how sociable, warmhearted, amiable, and virtuous his new companion was. He did worry about Rousseau's impatience and 'extreme sensibility of temper', but it called forth mostly compassion; Rousseau, Hume noted, felt pain more deeply than pleasure, and was often unhappy due to a melancholic temper. Rousseau, however, seems to have begun to believe early on that Hume was often lying to him. Part of this was that Rousseau was slightly paranoid in the first place; but he also came across little examples of what seemed to him to be Hume's deceptions. For instance, Hume once made him believe that a carriage ride, which cost more than Rousseau could afford, had been obtained at a discount when in fact someone had paid for part of it. When Rousseau charged Hume with having been in on the scheme and Hume denied it, Rousseau became sullen for a long while. Suddenly, however, he embraced Hume, crying, and asking him to forgive him for being so ill-humored when Hume had done so much for him. Hume, surprised by the sudden change of mood, took it at the time as a sign of Rousseau's 'extreme sensibility and good heart.' According to Rousseau's later account of the event, Rousseau was not sullen; he found Hume staring at him in a way that spooked him. That Hume did stare at him in this way is extremely plausible; a dull stare is a characteristic noted by others who knew Hume. To Rousseau, however, the expression seemed mocking, and he could not reconcile the good man David was supposed to be with this mockery. In the end, however, out of remorse, he embraced Hume in the way described, and hoped it was enough to reconcile. On another occasion, Rousseau refused to receive mail, since he did not have the money to pay postage; Hume protested that if he did so, the mail would become entirely in the control of the clerks at the Post Office; Rousseau responded that he did not care. Hume then paid for the postage. This led Rousseau later to accuse Hume of reading his mail.
The major occasion for the rift, however, was the publication in the St. James Chronicle, and slightly later the London Chronicle, of a letter satirizing Rousseau as someone who had a persecution complex. The satire was anonymous; the author was Horace Walpole. Rousseau, however, was convinced that Hume had had a hand in it. He began to wonder if there might not be an ulterior motive in keeping the pension secret, so he wrote a letter declining the pension unless it were made public, and writing no more to Hume for a while. Hume was mystified by this behavior, but went about getting the secrecy condition removed; he assumed that Rousseau was not writing him because Rousseau was ashamed at having treated Hume poorly in this matter. He suffered a severe shock in this complacency, however, since Rousseau accused Hume of trying to dishonor him, saying to Hume that he had fooled the public but could not fool himself. Hume indignantly replied:
For the Scottish philosopher, Rousseau's action seemed a collapse into madness of someone who had already been on the border of it a very long time. Hume, who always had admitted that his ruling passion was his love of his literary reputation, began to be seriously afraid, from the fact that knowledge of the rift began to spread, and from remarks Rousseau had made, that the Swiss philosopher would publish something that would harm that name which he had spent his life trying to earn. To forestall any chance that Rousseau would damage his reputation, then, Hume preemptively published all their correspondence and his own account of the dispute. This poisoning of the wells was very calculated: if Rousseau published before Hume, Hume would have to convince people who had already read Rousseau's account -- which no doubt would be very well-written; worse, it might be published after Hume's death (in which case Hume could not respond); and even worse, it might be published after Rousseau's death (in which case Hume would be seen as attacking a dead man). Several of Hume's friends in France (Voltaire was an exception) had urged him to publish his own account; but his friends in Scotland and England had overwhelmingly urged him not to do so, insisting that Rousseau's charges needed no answer. Hume appeared to accept his British friends' advice in this matter; but then he later claimed that his French friends 'extorted' the publication from him, claiming that Rousseau had sent letters to all the courts of Europe. The British were taken aback by the move; Walpole's reaction was typical: "Good God! my dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian?"
Hume was certainly generous in his aid to Rousseau, and Rousseau's excessive 'sensibility of temper', his manic-depressive behavior, is hard to sympathize with. Nonetheless, le bon David was not perfectly good in the proceedings. Hume in general tended to handle criticism very poorly; it shows in his correspondence with his friends, since he tends to make remarks about the character of people criticizing his arguments. He had always very wisely refrained from responding to criticism at great length or in print, however. In this case, however, he was pushed by fear and vanity into doing exactly what he had wisely avoided doing all this time. Rousseau he regarded as so dangerous that the mere hint that Rousseau might blacken his reputation by publishing against him leads him to blacken Rousseau's preemptively. And let us not have any illusions: the Concise and Genuine Account is not an account free of bias, but is a deliberate attempt to destroy any credibility Rousseau might have in the matter. Before the incident, Rousseau is a misunderstood genius, a little excessive and unhappy in society, but good-hearted and friendly, deserving of compassion for his impatience and melodrama; afterward he is suddenly the most blackhearted of rascals, a wicked liar whose compositions, while eloquent, are praised above their merit. This is, whether it is usually recognized or not, as wild and startling a swing as Rousseau's. And certain curiosities about Hume's account have been noticed. For instance, Hume's account of the satirical letter that played such a major role in the rift uses terms very similar to those used by the St. James Chronicle when it published it. It can be read two ways; either Hume imprudently plagiarized St. James Chronicle, or he had more of a hand in it than he lets on and has inadvertently let a clue to that effect slip. Much that is found in the account admits of such double reading; it raises as many questions as it answers to those who do not accept Hume's assumption of Hume's complete innocence going into it.
It is also interesting that defenses of Hume tend to be based on two assumptions, neither of which allow for objective view of the evidence. (1) That Hume was all amiability and sociability. There is no question that Hume was indeed amiable and sociable, good-natured and generous. That he also was able to pull a Rousseau on a smaller scale is clear from his letters to Strahan. There was more than one person at the time who noted that Hume and Rousseau were similar in vanity. (2) That Rousseau was mad. No one will say Rousseau was what we could call emotionally stable, given his obvious mood swings, and he certainly had difficulty telling imagined attempts to mock him from the many real attempts to mock him, but the accusations of madness are based on reading a great deal into the emotional excess of Rousseau's unguarded letter of accusation.
Seen in a charitable light, one can well believe that Hume was misunderstood by Rousseau; that he intended nothing but good to his philosophical hero; that he was shocked by finding out just how flawed Rousseau really was. But it also shows him to be a man so dominated by a love of reputation that all the pity he felt toward Rousseau could be extinguished if his reputation were threatened, even though that pity had been for exactly the same personality traits that now threatened it. It shows him willing to blacken another's reputation at the mere hinted threat of his own being blackened. It's a very human flaw. The jury is still out on how honest le bon David really was in his concise and genuine account; in the documents we have Rousseau, overwrought, takes no trouble to present himself in a good light, but Hume very clearly does, and a serious, careful, and unbiased evaluation is required before one can say how much Hume's account really accords with the evidence, how much of it is based on an accurate interpretation of Rousseau's actions, and how much of it stands when the merely self-justificatory is removed. But a first approximation shows the picture of a man, not a saint, faced with another man of very different personality and background, not a lunatic.
The basic story is this. Rousseau, afraid of being imprisoned because of the religious controversy caused by his works, fled Paris in 1762, but found that he had nowhere to go; he ended up in a secluded place in Switzerland for a while. At some point, he developed the hope that Hume might help him receive asylum in England. This Hume did, and Rousseau was in England in January of 1766. Hume arranged a place for him to stay and began to take steps to get him a secret pension from the King. Hume regarded Rousseau with something like hero-worship; while regarding him as excessive, he repeatedly held him up as the exemplar of a genius. And as Hume put it to a friend, it would be a victory over the French to protect and encourage a genius they had persecuted; although later when writing his account of the dispute he put more emphasis on pity mixed with indignation at the thought of such an eminent man of genius reduced to indigence.
Things started happily enough. Rousseau was profuse with gratitude to Hume, and Hume waxed eloquent in letters about how sociable, warmhearted, amiable, and virtuous his new companion was. He did worry about Rousseau's impatience and 'extreme sensibility of temper', but it called forth mostly compassion; Rousseau, Hume noted, felt pain more deeply than pleasure, and was often unhappy due to a melancholic temper. Rousseau, however, seems to have begun to believe early on that Hume was often lying to him. Part of this was that Rousseau was slightly paranoid in the first place; but he also came across little examples of what seemed to him to be Hume's deceptions. For instance, Hume once made him believe that a carriage ride, which cost more than Rousseau could afford, had been obtained at a discount when in fact someone had paid for part of it. When Rousseau charged Hume with having been in on the scheme and Hume denied it, Rousseau became sullen for a long while. Suddenly, however, he embraced Hume, crying, and asking him to forgive him for being so ill-humored when Hume had done so much for him. Hume, surprised by the sudden change of mood, took it at the time as a sign of Rousseau's 'extreme sensibility and good heart.' According to Rousseau's later account of the event, Rousseau was not sullen; he found Hume staring at him in a way that spooked him. That Hume did stare at him in this way is extremely plausible; a dull stare is a characteristic noted by others who knew Hume. To Rousseau, however, the expression seemed mocking, and he could not reconcile the good man David was supposed to be with this mockery. In the end, however, out of remorse, he embraced Hume in the way described, and hoped it was enough to reconcile. On another occasion, Rousseau refused to receive mail, since he did not have the money to pay postage; Hume protested that if he did so, the mail would become entirely in the control of the clerks at the Post Office; Rousseau responded that he did not care. Hume then paid for the postage. This led Rousseau later to accuse Hume of reading his mail.
The major occasion for the rift, however, was the publication in the St. James Chronicle, and slightly later the London Chronicle, of a letter satirizing Rousseau as someone who had a persecution complex. The satire was anonymous; the author was Horace Walpole. Rousseau, however, was convinced that Hume had had a hand in it. He began to wonder if there might not be an ulterior motive in keeping the pension secret, so he wrote a letter declining the pension unless it were made public, and writing no more to Hume for a while. Hume was mystified by this behavior, but went about getting the secrecy condition removed; he assumed that Rousseau was not writing him because Rousseau was ashamed at having treated Hume poorly in this matter. He suffered a severe shock in this complacency, however, since Rousseau accused Hume of trying to dishonor him, saying to Hume that he had fooled the public but could not fool himself. Hume indignantly replied:
You say that I myself know that I have been false to you; but I say it loudly, and will say it to the whole world, that I know the contrary, that I know my friendship towards you has been unbounded and uninterrupted, and that though instances of it have been very generally remarked both in France and England, the smallest part of it only has as yet come to the knowledge of the public. I demand that you will produce me the man who will assert the contrary; and above all, I demand that he will mention any one particular in which I have been wanting to you. You owe this to me; you owe it to yourself; you owe it to truth and honour and justice, and to everything that can be deemed sacred among men.
For the Scottish philosopher, Rousseau's action seemed a collapse into madness of someone who had already been on the border of it a very long time. Hume, who always had admitted that his ruling passion was his love of his literary reputation, began to be seriously afraid, from the fact that knowledge of the rift began to spread, and from remarks Rousseau had made, that the Swiss philosopher would publish something that would harm that name which he had spent his life trying to earn. To forestall any chance that Rousseau would damage his reputation, then, Hume preemptively published all their correspondence and his own account of the dispute. This poisoning of the wells was very calculated: if Rousseau published before Hume, Hume would have to convince people who had already read Rousseau's account -- which no doubt would be very well-written; worse, it might be published after Hume's death (in which case Hume could not respond); and even worse, it might be published after Rousseau's death (in which case Hume would be seen as attacking a dead man). Several of Hume's friends in France (Voltaire was an exception) had urged him to publish his own account; but his friends in Scotland and England had overwhelmingly urged him not to do so, insisting that Rousseau's charges needed no answer. Hume appeared to accept his British friends' advice in this matter; but then he later claimed that his French friends 'extorted' the publication from him, claiming that Rousseau had sent letters to all the courts of Europe. The British were taken aback by the move; Walpole's reaction was typical: "Good God! my dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian?"
Hume was certainly generous in his aid to Rousseau, and Rousseau's excessive 'sensibility of temper', his manic-depressive behavior, is hard to sympathize with. Nonetheless, le bon David was not perfectly good in the proceedings. Hume in general tended to handle criticism very poorly; it shows in his correspondence with his friends, since he tends to make remarks about the character of people criticizing his arguments. He had always very wisely refrained from responding to criticism at great length or in print, however. In this case, however, he was pushed by fear and vanity into doing exactly what he had wisely avoided doing all this time. Rousseau he regarded as so dangerous that the mere hint that Rousseau might blacken his reputation by publishing against him leads him to blacken Rousseau's preemptively. And let us not have any illusions: the Concise and Genuine Account is not an account free of bias, but is a deliberate attempt to destroy any credibility Rousseau might have in the matter. Before the incident, Rousseau is a misunderstood genius, a little excessive and unhappy in society, but good-hearted and friendly, deserving of compassion for his impatience and melodrama; afterward he is suddenly the most blackhearted of rascals, a wicked liar whose compositions, while eloquent, are praised above their merit. This is, whether it is usually recognized or not, as wild and startling a swing as Rousseau's. And certain curiosities about Hume's account have been noticed. For instance, Hume's account of the satirical letter that played such a major role in the rift uses terms very similar to those used by the St. James Chronicle when it published it. It can be read two ways; either Hume imprudently plagiarized St. James Chronicle, or he had more of a hand in it than he lets on and has inadvertently let a clue to that effect slip. Much that is found in the account admits of such double reading; it raises as many questions as it answers to those who do not accept Hume's assumption of Hume's complete innocence going into it.
It is also interesting that defenses of Hume tend to be based on two assumptions, neither of which allow for objective view of the evidence. (1) That Hume was all amiability and sociability. There is no question that Hume was indeed amiable and sociable, good-natured and generous. That he also was able to pull a Rousseau on a smaller scale is clear from his letters to Strahan. There was more than one person at the time who noted that Hume and Rousseau were similar in vanity. (2) That Rousseau was mad. No one will say Rousseau was what we could call emotionally stable, given his obvious mood swings, and he certainly had difficulty telling imagined attempts to mock him from the many real attempts to mock him, but the accusations of madness are based on reading a great deal into the emotional excess of Rousseau's unguarded letter of accusation.
Seen in a charitable light, one can well believe that Hume was misunderstood by Rousseau; that he intended nothing but good to his philosophical hero; that he was shocked by finding out just how flawed Rousseau really was. But it also shows him to be a man so dominated by a love of reputation that all the pity he felt toward Rousseau could be extinguished if his reputation were threatened, even though that pity had been for exactly the same personality traits that now threatened it. It shows him willing to blacken another's reputation at the mere hinted threat of his own being blackened. It's a very human flaw. The jury is still out on how honest le bon David really was in his concise and genuine account; in the documents we have Rousseau, overwrought, takes no trouble to present himself in a good light, but Hume very clearly does, and a serious, careful, and unbiased evaluation is required before one can say how much Hume's account really accords with the evidence, how much of it is based on an accurate interpretation of Rousseau's actions, and how much of it stands when the merely self-justificatory is removed. But a first approximation shows the picture of a man, not a saint, faced with another man of very different personality and background, not a lunatic.
A Hymn by Anne Brontë
Believe Not Those Who Say
Believe not those who say
The upward path is smooth,
Lest thou should stumble in the way,
And faint before the truth.
It is the only road
Unto the realms of joy;
But he who seeks that blest abode
Must all his powers employ.
To labor and to love,
To pardon and endure,
To lift thy heart to God above,
And keep thy conscience pure.
Be this thy constant aim,
Thy hope, thy chief delight,
What matter who should whisper blame
Or who should scorn or slight.
What matters—if God approve,
And if within thy breast,
Thou feel the comfort of His love,
The earnest of His rest?
This poem, by Anne Brontë, the nineteenth-century novelist and sister of Charlotte, is usually sung to Walter's Festal Song when sung as a hymn, although I tend to like it better sung to Sydenham's King Edward.
Doctors of the Church, Past and Future
The Catholic Church has given 33 people so far the honorific title, 'Doctor of the Church'. The basic requirements are (1) sanctity of life; (2) excellence of teaching; and (3) a surviving body of writings, of permanent and inspiring value, that can be recommended to the faithful generally; there are, however, additional complications, since it is a liturgical title for the Universal Calendar, and has to comply with certain liturgical rules and principles. Those who have received the title so far are as follows, according to date of death (sometimes approximate), with the date they were officially given the title in parentheses after.
368 Hilary of Poitiers (1851)
373 Athanasius (1568)
373 Ephrem the Syrian (1920)
379 Basil of Caesarea (1568)
387 Cyril of Jerusalem (1883)
390 Gregory Nazianzen (1568)
397 Ambrose of Milan (1295)
407 John Chrysostom (1568)
420 Jerome (1295)
430 Augustine (1295)
444 Cyril of Alexandria (1883)
450 Peter Chrysologus (1729)
461 Leo the Great (1754)
604 Gregory the Great (1295)
636 Isidore of Seville (1722)
735 Bede (1899)
749 John Damascene (1883)
1072 Peter Damian (1828)
1109 Anselm (1720)
1153 Bernard of Clairvaux (1830)
1231 Anthony of Padua (1946)
1274 Thomas Aquinas (1568)
1274 Bonaventure (1588)
1280 Albert the Great (1931)
1379 Catherine of Siena (1970)
1582 Teresa of Avila (1970)
1591 John of the Cross (1926)
1597 Peter Canisius (1925)
1619 Lawrence of Brindisi (1959)
1621 Robert Bellarmine (1931)
1622 Francis de Sales (1877)
1787 Alphonsus Liguori (1871)
1897 Thérèse of Lisieux (1997)
Because of the split between East and West there are no Eastern Doctors after Damascene, making eight Easterners in total. There are three Carmelites (Teresa, John of the Cross, and Therese), two Jesuits (Canisius and Bellarmine), three Dominicans (Thomas, Albert, Catherine), three Franciscans (Anthony, Bonaventure, Lawrence), one Redemptorist (Liguori), and five Benedictines (Isidore [according to tradition], Bede, Anselm, Bernard, Pietro Damiani). There are three women, two of whom were nuns. There are nineteen bishops, of whom two were Popes, two Patriarchs of Alexandria, two Patriarchs of Constantinople, and one Patriarch of Jerusalem. There is one deacon (Ephraem).
It's an interesting game to speculate on who might possibly receive the honor in the future. Here are some possible candidates, in no particular order:
(1) Leander of Seville (d. 600). Pro: The brother of Isidore of Seville (whom he preceded as bishop of Seville) has generally been recognized as a superior writer to his brother, a man of great eloquence who did great work opposing Arianism and united Spain into orthodoxy. He is already allowed the honor in Spain, so it would simply be a matter of extending this universally. Con: Only two works of his have survived, neither well-known. One of them is a monastic rule and the other a homily on the conversion of the Goths.
(2) Fulgentius of Astigi (d. 633). Pro: Isidore's other brother, the middle son in the family, also has the honors in Spain. Con: He is often confused with Fulgentius of Ruspe, and none of his works have actually survived, which seems to be an insuperable obstacle. Serious candidacy would require rediscovery of his writings.
(3) John of Avila (d. 1569). Pro: The Apostle of Andalusia, this student of Domingo de Soto was a profound influence on such luminaries as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Francis Borgia, and Luis of Granada. His works have been widely translated. Con: None, as far as I am aware; Juan de Avila is, I would dare say, the most likely current candidate for the title, or close to it.
(4) Edith Stein (d. 1942). Pro: She's extraordinarily influential, in part on her own merits and in part due to the work of John Paul II, who was heavily influenced by her. Her intelligence and piety were both exemplary. Con: We'll have to see how significant her influence is in a hundred years or so. Also, her death at Auschwitz is regarded for liturgical purposes as a martyrdom, and no martyr has ever received the title. (The reason is fairly simple; 'Doctor Ecclesiae' is a liturgical title. But for liturgical reasons the title of martyr or confessor always trumps the title of doctor, so granted the title to a martyr or confessor would be otiose -- they'd never have the Office of Doctors celebrated for them, because they would always be celebrated as martyrs and confessors.)
(5) Nerses Shnorhali (d. 1172). Pro: His brilliance is undeniable, and his writings have been a profound contribution to the theological heritage of Armenian Catholics. Armenian Catholics, in fact, petitioned John Paul II to declare him a Doctor of the Church. Con: As Catholicos of Armenia he may have worked (unsuccessfully) for reunion with Rome, but he was never strictly Catholic, and is only treated as a canonical saint in the Armenian Catholic calendar.
(6) John Henry Newman (d. 1890) Pro: His influence is clear, and his writings extensive. There is already interest in the idea. Con: He would need to be canonized first, and that can't be guaranteed.
(7) John Paul II (d. 2005) Pro: There's already a push for it. Con: Like Stein, we'll have to see how things stand a century or so from now; and like Newman, he needs to be canonized first (and it needs especially to be reiterated in a case like this that that can't be guaranteed until the final stage of the process).
(8) Jane Chantal (d. 1641) Pro: Jeanne Frances de Chantal was a correspondent of Francis de Sales; she had an extensive correspondence and wrote a number of salutary works on religious life. Con: None, as far as I am aware. I think she is also a highly likely candidate. [It's St. Jeanne's feast day today, by the way.]
(9) Catherine of Genoa (d. 1510) Pro: Her writings have certainly been influential. Con: They are 'private revelations', i.e., descriptions of mystical experiences, and this might not be enough to count at theological doctrine.
No doubt many others could be added.
368 Hilary of Poitiers (1851)
373 Athanasius (1568)
373 Ephrem the Syrian (1920)
379 Basil of Caesarea (1568)
387 Cyril of Jerusalem (1883)
390 Gregory Nazianzen (1568)
397 Ambrose of Milan (1295)
407 John Chrysostom (1568)
420 Jerome (1295)
430 Augustine (1295)
444 Cyril of Alexandria (1883)
450 Peter Chrysologus (1729)
461 Leo the Great (1754)
604 Gregory the Great (1295)
636 Isidore of Seville (1722)
735 Bede (1899)
749 John Damascene (1883)
1072 Peter Damian (1828)
1109 Anselm (1720)
1153 Bernard of Clairvaux (1830)
1231 Anthony of Padua (1946)
1274 Thomas Aquinas (1568)
1274 Bonaventure (1588)
1280 Albert the Great (1931)
1379 Catherine of Siena (1970)
1582 Teresa of Avila (1970)
1591 John of the Cross (1926)
1597 Peter Canisius (1925)
1619 Lawrence of Brindisi (1959)
1621 Robert Bellarmine (1931)
1622 Francis de Sales (1877)
1787 Alphonsus Liguori (1871)
1897 Thérèse of Lisieux (1997)
Because of the split between East and West there are no Eastern Doctors after Damascene, making eight Easterners in total. There are three Carmelites (Teresa, John of the Cross, and Therese), two Jesuits (Canisius and Bellarmine), three Dominicans (Thomas, Albert, Catherine), three Franciscans (Anthony, Bonaventure, Lawrence), one Redemptorist (Liguori), and five Benedictines (Isidore [according to tradition], Bede, Anselm, Bernard, Pietro Damiani). There are three women, two of whom were nuns. There are nineteen bishops, of whom two were Popes, two Patriarchs of Alexandria, two Patriarchs of Constantinople, and one Patriarch of Jerusalem. There is one deacon (Ephraem).
It's an interesting game to speculate on who might possibly receive the honor in the future. Here are some possible candidates, in no particular order:
(1) Leander of Seville (d. 600). Pro: The brother of Isidore of Seville (whom he preceded as bishop of Seville) has generally been recognized as a superior writer to his brother, a man of great eloquence who did great work opposing Arianism and united Spain into orthodoxy. He is already allowed the honor in Spain, so it would simply be a matter of extending this universally. Con: Only two works of his have survived, neither well-known. One of them is a monastic rule and the other a homily on the conversion of the Goths.
(2) Fulgentius of Astigi (d. 633). Pro: Isidore's other brother, the middle son in the family, also has the honors in Spain. Con: He is often confused with Fulgentius of Ruspe, and none of his works have actually survived, which seems to be an insuperable obstacle. Serious candidacy would require rediscovery of his writings.
(3) John of Avila (d. 1569). Pro: The Apostle of Andalusia, this student of Domingo de Soto was a profound influence on such luminaries as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Francis Borgia, and Luis of Granada. His works have been widely translated. Con: None, as far as I am aware; Juan de Avila is, I would dare say, the most likely current candidate for the title, or close to it.
(4) Edith Stein (d. 1942). Pro: She's extraordinarily influential, in part on her own merits and in part due to the work of John Paul II, who was heavily influenced by her. Her intelligence and piety were both exemplary. Con: We'll have to see how significant her influence is in a hundred years or so. Also, her death at Auschwitz is regarded for liturgical purposes as a martyrdom, and no martyr has ever received the title. (The reason is fairly simple; 'Doctor Ecclesiae' is a liturgical title. But for liturgical reasons the title of martyr or confessor always trumps the title of doctor, so granted the title to a martyr or confessor would be otiose -- they'd never have the Office of Doctors celebrated for them, because they would always be celebrated as martyrs and confessors.)
(5) Nerses Shnorhali (d. 1172). Pro: His brilliance is undeniable, and his writings have been a profound contribution to the theological heritage of Armenian Catholics. Armenian Catholics, in fact, petitioned John Paul II to declare him a Doctor of the Church. Con: As Catholicos of Armenia he may have worked (unsuccessfully) for reunion with Rome, but he was never strictly Catholic, and is only treated as a canonical saint in the Armenian Catholic calendar.
(6) John Henry Newman (d. 1890) Pro: His influence is clear, and his writings extensive. There is already interest in the idea. Con: He would need to be canonized first, and that can't be guaranteed.
(7) John Paul II (d. 2005) Pro: There's already a push for it. Con: Like Stein, we'll have to see how things stand a century or so from now; and like Newman, he needs to be canonized first (and it needs especially to be reiterated in a case like this that that can't be guaranteed until the final stage of the process).
(8) Jane Chantal (d. 1641) Pro: Jeanne Frances de Chantal was a correspondent of Francis de Sales; she had an extensive correspondence and wrote a number of salutary works on religious life. Con: None, as far as I am aware. I think she is also a highly likely candidate. [It's St. Jeanne's feast day today, by the way.]
(9) Catherine of Genoa (d. 1510) Pro: Her writings have certainly been influential. Con: They are 'private revelations', i.e., descriptions of mystical experiences, and this might not be enough to count at theological doctrine.
No doubt many others could be added.
Virtue in Rags
Horace, Odes 3.29.53-56 (John Dryden, tr.):
Allan Ramsay (1685-1758), "Give Me a Lass with a Lump of Land":
David Hume, Treatise 3.3.1.19:
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk I, ch. 6:
Charles Dickens, a speech in Boston (February 1842):
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Disowned, chapter LXII:
Axel Munthe, Diary of an Idle Doctor, IV.1 (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1893, p. 709):
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
Allan Ramsay (1685-1758), "Give Me a Lass with a Lump of Land":
There's meikle good love in bands and bags,
And siller and gowd's a sweet complexion;
But beauty, and wit, and virtue in rags,
Have tint the art of gaining affection.
David Hume, Treatise 3.3.1.19:
Virtue in rags is still virtue, and the love, which it procures, attends a man into a dungeon or desert, where the virtue can no longer be exerted in action, and is lost to all the world.
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Bk I, ch. 6:
For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Bob was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably "virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so seldom).
Charles Dickens, a speech in Boston (February 1842):
I have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and always shall have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the darkness, and winks and scowls at the light. I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to track her out, and follow her.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Disowned, chapter LXII:
"I looked around the world, and saw often Virtue in rags, and Vice in purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the happiness lies within, and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful folly with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the good ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or successful desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and that pretended moral is, of all, the falsest...."
Axel Munthe, Diary of an Idle Doctor, IV.1 (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1893, p. 709):
Hardship had furrowed her brow, but the mark of nobility was there still. Hats off for virtue in rags! it is nobler than the virtue of the Faubourg St Germain!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)