Lent I

The way to wisdom is therefore not like that of a man rising from the water into the air, in which, in the moment of rising above the surface of the water, he suddenly breathes freely, but, like that of a man proceeding from darkness into light, on whom more light gradually shines as he advances. So long, therefore, as this is not fully accomplished, we speak of the man as of one going from the dark recesses of a vast cavern towards its entrance, who is more and more influenced by the proximity of the light as he comes nearer to the entrance of the cavern; so that whatever light he has proceeds from the light to which he is advancing, and whatever darkness still remains in him proceeds from the darkness out of which he is emerging.

Augustine, Letter 167 (chapter 3/section 13) to Jerome.

Philosophy and the Virtue of Temperance

One of the ways to read Plato's Gorgias is as an argument that the practice of philosophy requires the virtue of temperance (sophrosyne, self-control), and vice versa. This contrasts with rhetoric and sophistry, which have no such connection. In fact, the rhetors in the Gorgias end up explicitly affirming a number of things that are inconsistent with the virtue of temperance. The reason for this has to do with the distinction between what seems good and what is really good.

Gorgias claims that rhetoric is valuable because it is concerned with speeches that persuade, without educating, on matters of right and wrong in the city; as Socrates notes, this means that rhetoric deals with what seems good rather than what is really good. This is affirmed when Polus argues that orators are powerful because they do what they like (i.e., what seems good to them). Socrates, however, denies that what people like (i.e., what seems good to them) is what they want (i.e., real good), although, of course, since he likes provoking Polus, he states it in the most paradoxical way he can find. For instance, Socrates claims that people who do wrong and are never punished for it are to be pitied, while being wrongly punished is always a happier life than doing anything wrong; Polus will be boggled at this kind of view, in which someone could suffer terribly and have a happier life than someone who gets everything they like. Callicles in turn argues that success, the good life, the life worth having, consists of desiring as much as possible and having the phronesis (intelligence) and andreia (manliness or courage) to achieve your desires, and denies that restraining your ambitions when you could achieve them is anything but either weakness or stupidity. Socrates will argue that all of these claims are incoherent.

But more than this, all of this argument, while about self-control, is also about philosophy. This is actually made clear in multiple ways. Early on, in the discussion with Gorgias, Socrates says that he hopes Gorgias is a man like himself: someone who would prefer to be refuted than to win an argument. The claim here is entirely analogous to Socrates' later claims about punishment, because both refutation and punishment are kinds of correction. Winning an argument is a matter of appearing good; but being right is a matter of real good. Not being punished is a matter of appearing good; being just is a matter of real good. In order to be the philosophical kind of person, rather than the kind of person we later learn (despite Gorgias' facile claims otherwise) the rhetors are, you must be willing to make a distinction between merely apparent good and real good. The oratorical conception of success is concerned with winning the argument, getting away with it; the philosophical, with improving the argument, improving oneself.

It's more than just a matter of aims, though. Socrates' argument against Callicles that the good life needs self-control doubles as an argument that the good life needs philosophy. (It is one of the standard marks of Plato's philosophical brilliance that he can make an argument about one subject also at the same an argument about another subject.) Socrates argues that the good and the pleasant (i.e., what seems good because it satisfies desire) can't collapse into each other. Callicles' view that we should desire as much as possible and satisfy those desires in neverending progress requires exactly this kind of collapse. But if we hold this view, we start getting very weird results: we should itch as much as possible, letting our desire to scratch grow as large as possible, in order to maximize the pleasure of scratching; soldiers should let fear, i.e., our desire to run away, grow as big as possible and then have the manliness/courage to satisfy that desire. Callicles tries to get out of this by saying there are better and worse pleasures, but this just breaks his argument against self-control: if some pleasures are better than others, we should sometimes control ourselves so that we get the better pleasures rather than the worse pleasures. Good needs to be discovered and accommodated; it cannot be imposed by force of will.

If real good and apparent good can't be collapsed into each other, though, then we have to reflect seriously about what real good is -- which is philosophy. Thus if the good life requires self-control, as Socrates argues, the good life requires philosophy.

If this is the case, though, it applies to reasoning as much as it does to anything else in life. Winning an argument is merely seeming to be good. Rhetoric may be able to give you that appearance. But the good of reasoning does not boil down to the appearance of winning the argument, however nice that might be; the good of reasoning is having a good argument that gets you something true, and what counts as that good must be discovered. Philosophical reasoning is temperate reasoning, in which you control and restrain yourself in order to find real good in reasoning rather than merely apparent good. Someone who falls back on mere rhetoric is someone who has committed himself to 'might-makes-right' in rational matters. There is a kind of very general moral realism about reasoning implicit in philosophy itself; if you reject the idea that good in reasoning is independent of our preferences, then in Socratic terms you are no philosopher at all: you are a sophist.

Note that the moderation here is not one of tone. Plato's Socrates argues respectfully with those who argue respectfully, but vehemently and polemically against those who argue vehemently and polemically. But Plato's Socrates is also quite clearly put forward as someone who insists that there is a real good of reasoning, and that it is discovered and not imposed by force of will. Because of that, we have to restrain ourselves, not running after merely apparent good but seeking that real good. That is philosophy.

Maronite Year XXIII

Maron, or Maroun, was a Syrian monk in the fourth century who eventually retired to Cyrrhus to become a hermit. He was an open-air hermit; he lived outside, even in the wind, rain, or hail, and tended a pagan temple he had converted into a church. As word began to spread, more people joined him. Theodoret of Cyr, who was bishop of Antioch at the time, gives us a few snapshots of this blossoming ascetic movement. The Maronite ascetic movement became a central pillar of the Christian community in the mountains of Syria and Lebanon, and that community, of course, would eventually become the Maronite Church.

The memorial of St. Maron has been celebrated on February 9 since the seventeenth century (prior to that it was on January 5). He is on the universal calendar, and so his memorial is celebrated on February 9 in the Latin Church, as well. The day is a Holy Day of Obligation for Maronites.

Feast of Saint Maron
2 Timothy 3:10-17; John 12:23-30

How arrayed is Maron with blessings!
Christ said, "Follow," and he followed,
giving up all for the pearl of price.
Prayer, penitence, and virtue,
humility and true devotion,
simplicity that endures all,
led him to carry the hermit's cross,
to praise God on the mountaintops.
To his plain solitude many came,
seeking devotion to the Lord,
so that he increased heaven's numbers;
they became strangers to all else,
continuing in what they received,
furnished to every good work.

How arrayed is Maron with blessings!
He was anointed a father,
gathering a nation from nations.
He was a plow of the garden,
preparing hearts for the seed of truth.
O Father Maron, pray for us,
that we may remember you in joy,
that we may have beatitude,
a poverty of spirit in faith.
Who serves the Son is honored well.
We glorify the one Father,
who calls the faithful to solitude,
and the only Son, the one way,
and the Spirit who crowns victory.

Berkeley's Direct References to Plato's Theaetetus

These are the explicit, direct references to Plato's Theaetetus that are found in his Siris. They make an interesting selection. Besides the Theaetetus, Berkeley explicitly refers to Timaeus, Phaedrus, Epinomis, Republic, the Platonic Epistles, Phaedo, and Alcibiades Major.

253. We know a thing when we can understand it: and we understand it, when we can interpret or tell what it signifies. Strictly the sense knows nothing. We perceive indeed sounds by hearing, and characters by sight: but we are not therefore said to understand them. After the same manner, the phaenomena of nature are alike visible to all: but all have not alike learned the connexion of natural things, or understand what they signify, or know how to vaticinate by them. There is no question, saith Socrates in Theaeteto, concerning that which is agreeable to each person; but concerning what will in time to come be agreeable, of which all men are not equally judges, He who foreknoweth what will be in every kind, is the wisest. According to Socrates, you and the cook may judge of a dish on the table equally well; but while the dish is making, the cook can better foretell what will ensue from this or that manner of composing it. Nor is this manner of reasoning confined only to morals or politics; but extends also natural science.

304. There is according to Plato properly no knowledge, but only opinion concerning things sensible and perishable, not because they are naturally abstruse and involved in darkness, but because their nature and existence is uncertain, ever fleeting and changing; or rather, because they do not in strict truth exist at all, being always generating or in fieri, that is, in a perpetual flux, without any thing stable or permanent in them to constitute an object of real science. The Pythagoreans and Platonics distinguish between το γιγνομενον and το ον, that which is ever generated and that which exists. Sensible things and corporeal forms are perpetually producing and perishing, appearing and disappearing, never resting in one state, but always in motion and change; and therefore in effect, not one being but a succession of beings: while το ον is understood to be somewhat of an abstract or spiritual nature, and the proper object of intellectual knowledge. Therefore as there can be no knowledge of things flowing and instable, the opinion of Protagoras and Theaetetus, that sense was science, is absurd. And indeed nothing is more evident than that the apparent sizes and shapes, for instance, of things are in a constant flux, ever differing as they are view'd at different distances, or with glasses more or less accurate. As for those absolute magnitudes and figures, which certain Cartesians and other moderns suppose to be in things, that must seem a vain supposition, to whoever considers, it is supported by no argument of reason, and no experiment of sense.

305. As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear or see or feel, so sense knoweth not: And although the mind may use both sense and phancy, as means whereby to arrive at knowledge yet sense or soul, so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing. For, as it is rightly observed in the Theaetetus of Plato, science consists not in the passive perceptions, but in the reasoning upon them, τω περι εκεινων συλλογισμω.

311. As to an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things, it doth not seem to have been admitted either by Plato or Aristotle. In the Theaetetus we are told, that if anyone saith a thing is or is made, he must withal say, for what, or in respect of what, it is or is made; for that any thing should exist in itself or absolutely, is absurd. Agreeably to which doctrine it is also farther affirmed by Plato, that it is impossible a thing should be sweet, and sweet to no body....

316. And as the Platonic philosophy supposed intellectual notions to be originally inexistent or innate in the soul, so likewise it supposed sensible qualities to exist (though not originally) in the soul, and there only. Socrates saith to Theaetetus, You must not think the white colour that you see is in any thing without your eyes, or in your eyes, or in any place at all....

348. Socrates, in the Theætetus of Plato, speaketh of two parties of philosophers, the ρεοντες and οι του ολου στασιωται, the flowing philosophers who held all things to be in a perpetual flux, always generating and never existing; and those others who maintained the universe to be fixed and immoveable. The difference seems to have been this, that Heraclitus, Protagoras, Empedocles, and in general those of the former sect, considered things sensible and natural; whereas Parmenides and his party considered το παν, not as the sensible but as the intelligible world, abstracted from all sensible things.

367. As for the perfect intuition of divine things, that he supposeth to be the lot of pure souls, beholding by a pure light, initiated, happy, free and unstained from those bodies, wherein we are now imprisoned like oysters. But in this mortal state, we must be satisfy'd to make the best of those glympses within our reach. It is Plato's remark in his Theaetetus, that while we sit still we are never the wiser, but going into the river and moving up and down, is the way to discover its depths and shallows. If we exercise and bestir ourselves, we may even here discover something.

Maronite Year XXII

Ash Wednesday is specifically a custom that arose in the Latin Church. While it's common both East and West to have a specially recognized day for starting Lent off on the right foot, the imposition of ashes is a Western idea. The only Eastern churches that regularly do it are the Maronites and the Syro-Malabar, and in both cases it is a latinization. It is a borrowing that fits the Maronite Church very well, though; historically, the Maronites began as an intensive ascetic movement, so in general ascetic practices meld very easily into Maronite life. Obviously, however, it makes no sense to have an Ash Wednesday in the Maronite calendar, because Lent begins on Cana Sunday. So the imposition of ashes is done on Monday. Through much of the world, however, Maronite churches also will recognize and distribute ashes on Ash Wednesday, as part of the Maronite tendency to recognize Latin holidays as well as their own. This is especially true in areas of the world like the United States, where a significant portion of regular parishioners are likely to be Latin rite themselves. However, the ashes distributed on Ash Wednesday have to be ashes that were already blessed on Ash Monday.

Historically the Maronites have tended to have no particular regulations for Great Lent, in part because the centrality of ascetic practices to its life has meant that fasting was a regular and common occurrence, anyway. In more recent times, however, as the Church has expanded, the requirement to fast and abstain on Ash Monday and Good Friday, and to abstain on Fridays of Lent, has been established; this is another imitation of Latin practice. The Maronite rule for abstinence is the same as in the Latin Church (no meat), while the rule for fasting is no food and no drink (except water) from midnight to noon, with food only in moderation afterward. All of this is only a minimum, however. The traditional Maronite practice is to fast and abstain (from both meat and dairy) every weekday of Lent except for the feasts of St. Maron, of the Forty Martyrs, and of St. Joseph.

Ash Monday
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:7; Matthew 6:16-21

By the work of fasting and prayer,
our fathers were given holiness;
they returned to You and were made wise.
By heroic labors they were raised;
fasting and prayer make the heart clean.

We do not work for perishing food,
but for the Bread of Life, Food of Souls;
our treasure is not in worldly things,
but eternal in the vaults of heaven.
Fasting and prayer open bright gates.

The polished mirror reflects splendor;
our souls when polished reflect glory.
From soul to soul the light of Christ shines,
ever greater, never diminished.
Fasting and prayer spread a great light.

By Your prayer You taught us to pray;
by Your prayer You brought hope to us.
By Your fasting You taught us to fast;
by Your fasting You redeemed your Church.
Fasting and prayer give the Kingdom.

Fortnightly Book, February 7

Of all his works, the one that Evelyn Waugh himself regarded as his best was Helena, which is the next fortnightly book. It tells the tale of Helena, a British princess who falls in love with an marries Constantius, a Roman officer. In Diocletian's reorganizing of the Empire into the Tetrarchy, Constantius would be raised to high office, and eventually would become one of the co-emperors. The son of Helena and Constantius would be Constantine, of course. Helena herself will eventually become Christian and go on a pilgrimage to find the True Cross of Christ.

St. Helena, as Waugh occasionally notes, is a good subject for a novel: there is a definite historical framework, a fair amount of legendary material of varying and difficult-to-untangle degrees of historicity, and a lot of unknowns. Waugh doesn't pretend to be doing any more than giving us a novel, although, outside a few liberties he explicitly mentions in the preface, he avoided anything that directly contradicted known historical fact or could not receive some support from something in the tradition.

The edition of the book I have has a portion of a 1960 interview, in which he explains what he saw himself doing in the work:

The fact of the True Cross was that there was an actual piece of wood, a historical fact, behind the Gospel. Whether or not the wood she found was the Cross is open to doubt, but at that time all those Asiatic cults, the Gnostics and people, were trying to theorize and symbolize and fine away the simple facts of an actual crucifixion on a piece of wood; and she I represented as being a simple English girl thrown greatly to her disgust into the imperial life, not the least enjoying her high position, and putting her finger at once on what was wrong with imperial Rome at that time, which was that they were losing the sense of actuality. That you might indeed say was a didactic book.

****

Evelyn Waugh, Helena, Little, Brown and Company (New York: 2012).

Maronite Year XXI

Great Lent in the Maronite calendar is somewhat longer than the Latin version. In general, the Maronite calendar tends to emphasize Sundays over other days, in part because there have been long stretches of time in Maronite history in which Divine Liturgy on days in addition to Sunday was difficult enough to be only an occasional event. (With things like saint's days there was always a lot more flexibility with marking the day, but if you see a major feast in the Maronite calendar, other than a saint's day, that is not always on a Sunday, you can pretty much guarantee that the feast is either very old or very new.) Thus, Great Lent is opened with a Sunday. Since the Gospel reading for the day is the Wedding at Cana, the First Sunday of Great Lent is most commonly known as Cana Sunday.

I happened to attend a Divine Liturgy by the Maronite bishop last night, and in his homily he noted that Great Lent in the Maronite calendar is framed by two conversions. On Cana Sunday, which opens Lent, Christ turns water into wine; on Holy Thursday, which closes it, Christ turns wine into His blood.

Sunday of the Entrance into Great Lent
Romans 14:14-23; John 2:1-11

You, O Lord, changed water into wine;
change us into children of God.
You gave us good wine pressed on Your cross;
give salvation to those who thirst.
You gave delight to the wedding guests;
give us delight in You, O Lord.

   Lady Fasting knocks now at the door;
   Lent, the crown of heroes, has come.
   Turn to wine the water of fasting;
   by fasting we blot out misdeeds.

The Virgin Mary was standing there;
they came to her with petition.
By her wish you changed water to wine.
We come for her intercession;
change our evil acts into good deeds,
bring us into Your own kingdom.

   Lady Fasting knocks now at the door;
   Lent, the crown of heroes, has come.
   Bring us into Your great wedding feast;
   through fasting the Kingdom is ours.

O Christ, Artisan of all good things,
You worked the sign of Your great love.
End our pride, undo our vanity,
purify our hearts, give us strength;
quench parched hearts with your forgiving blood,
to peace and joy in the Spirit.

   Lady Fasting knocks now at the door;
   Lent, the crown of heroes, has come.
   Infuse within us Your holy light;
   by fasting we gain morning-wings.