Babel - Volume XI

Babel

Babel A Journal of Early Modern Studies Volume XI

The Early Modern Studies Programme University of King’s College

Published 2012 The Early Modern Studies Society University of King’s College Halifax, Nova Scotia

Babel Editor-in-Chief: Naomi Cooperman Assistant Editor: Noga Schwartz Fifth Year Editor: Solomon Rosenberg Fourth Year Editors: Rachael Bethune, Noah White Third Year Editors: Will Barton, Holly Winter Second Year Editors: Anna Dubinski, Hilari MacLeod Special Thanks: Stephanie Bethune

Front cover adapted by Naomi Cooperman from: Georg Hinz, Cabinet of Curiosities (1666)

Printed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada By etc. Press

“Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

-John Milton, Areopagitica-

The Early Modern Studies Society would like to thank all of contributors and editors of Babel, whose hard work and dedication made this journal possible. We would also like to thank the passionate faculty of the Early Modern Studies Programme: the product you see before you is the result of their wisdom and guidance.

This journal could not be published without the financial support of the King’s Student Union. Your dedication to student societies and student academia allows projects like Babel to thrive.

Student Contributors Culam Agnew is a third year student majoring in History of Science and Technology and Economics. His paper “Newton, Leibniz, Metaphysics: How Newton differed and public and private and why this is important” was written for Dr. Steve Snobelen’s The Scientific Revolution.

Tessa Elliott-Israelson is a fourth year honours student majoring in European Studies. Her paper “Visions of Authority: Rousseau, Blake, Marx and Engels” was written for Dr. Ronald Tetreault’s Euro 2101 – Europe: Ideas, Culture and Society to 1900.

Natasha Hay is a fifth year honours student majoring in German and Contemporary Studies. Her paper “‘Being in so preposterous estate’: Nature, art and love in The Winter’s Tale” was written for Dr. Neil Robertson’s Honours Seminar in Early Modern Studies: The Development of Aesthetic Theory in the Early Modern Period.

Shannon Higgins is a fourth year honours student majoring in Classics and Early Modern Studies. Her paper “Everything in Moderation” was written for Dr. Simon Kow’s Conceptions of State, Society, and Revolution in the Early Modern Period.

Theo Holland is a fourth year honours student majoring in Philosophy and Early Modern Studies. His paper “Dialetheism in Erasmus” was written for Dr. Simon Kow’s Religious Warfare and Political Theory in the Early Modern Period.

Max Ma is a fourth year honours student majoring in Classics and Early Modern Studies. His paper “Historical Reason vs. Rational History: An Interpretation of Montesquieu’s Contractualist Heritage” was written for Dr. Simon Kow’s Conceptions of State, Society, and Revolution in the Early Modern Period.

Dante Maderal is a third year student majoring in Classics and Early Modern Studies. His paper “Faust is Saved Because God is Dead” was written for Dr. Neil Robertson’s Structures of the Modern Self.

Haritha Popuri is a second year student majoring in Religious Studies and History of Science and Technology. Her paper “Poetic Inspiration in Titian's Fête Champêtre” was written for Dr. Janette Vusich’s Studies in Early Modern Aesthetics: Love, Lust and Desire in Italian Renaissance Art. Ariel Weiner is a first year King’s student. Her paper “The Death of Desdemona: On Hope, and The Vow in Shakespeare’s Othello” was written for The Foundation Year Programme.

Eliza West is a third year student majoring in Costume Studies and Early Modern Studies. Her paper “Blood and Beauty in the love of Apollo and Hyacinthus” was written for Dr. Janette Vusich’s Studies in Early Modern Aesthetics: Love, Lust and Desire in Italian Renaissance Art.

Forward It is with proud hearts and crossed fingers that the Early Modern Studies Society would like to present to you the latest volume of Babel. This volume of Babel is particularly special to us as it marks the tenth anniversary of the first Babel, released in 2002. Its editorial team included, just to name a couple, beloved FYP tutor Ron Haflidson, and Lisa Mullins; a dedicated tutor for both the History of Science and Technology department, as well as Dr. Kathryn’s Morris’s course in “Witchcraft”. Nothing shows the development of a department more than having its students return as teachers and mentors. This is merely one example to show how the Early Modern Studies department has grown and thrived in the past ten years. This edition of Babel includes two essays from the recently formed “Art” course

by Dr. Janette Vusich, which has expanded the art knowledge of Early Modern Studies students, up to and including this year’s cover of Babel.

Next year we greatly anticipate Dr. Simon Kow’s “Pirate” course, whose launch was celebrated this year was an Early Modern Studies Society celebration. Including the emergence of these new classes there are also the returning or the established courses which are always anticipated and whose material we can always count on, such as the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost from cover to cover in EMSP4000. The quote we have chosen for this edition is one from another of Milton’s works and we chose it because it articulates the reason many of us were attracted to EMSP and to King’s in general: a love of great books. During the editing day for Babel a sense of pride was articulated in the fact that Early Modern Studies, and Early Modern Studies distinctly, manages to grow and develop its thoughts and theories while remaining steadfast to already established structures. It is this growth and development, with a sense of history and tradition, which has seen Babel and the Early Modern Studies Programme through ten wonderful years.

Rachael Bethune and Naomi Cooperman Early Modern Studies Society President and Vice-President 2011-2012

Contents 1

Ariel Weiner The Death of Desdemona: On Hope, and The Vow in Shakespeare’s Othello

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Natasha Hay “Being in so preposterous estate”: Nature, art and love in The Winter’s Tale

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Eliza West Blood and Beauty in the love of Apollo and Hyacinthus

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Haritha Popuri Poetic Inspiration and the Fête Champêtre

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Calum Agnew Newton, Leibniz, Metaphysics:How Newton differed and public and private and why this is important

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Dante Maderal Faust is Saved Because God is Dead

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Theo Holland Dialetheism in Erasmus

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Shannon Higgins Everything in Moderation

55

Max Ma Historical Reason vs. Rational History: An Interpretation of Montesquieu’s Contractualist Heritage

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Tessa Elliott-Israelson Visions of Authority: Rousseau, Blake, Marx and Engels

The Death of Desdemona: On Hope, and The Vow in Shakespeare’s Othello Ariel Weiner A central theme in Shakespeare’s Othello is that of the vow and, more specifically, the vow of matrimony made between the characters Othello and Desdemona just prior to the beginning of the play. Unlike the antagonist Iago, the character Desdemona believes in the power of the vow to bind the human will beyond all earthly contingencies, and to transcend even the contingency of death.

Desdemona is able to conceive of the vow in this transcendent way because of her adherence to the Christian virtue of hope, which holds the attainment of salvation above all rational considerations, as the ultimate arbiter in the act of decisionmaking, and binds the will beyond the temporal world to this transcendent end.

Desdemona’s hope demands that she prioritize the fate of her soul above that of her earthly life, and it is this ordering of values that places Desdemona outside of Iago’s power to “turn her virtue into pitch” (Shakespeare II.iii.345). For it belongs to Iago’s power to affect Desdemona’s appearance of virtue, but only to the power of her will to affect her state of virtue as such. Desdemona dies a guiltless death in accordance with the values by which she lived her life; the transcendence of her hope makes hers a willful and not a passive death, and her innocence in death, is vindicated in the sight of the community, her husband, and God. In this way Desdemona is finally incorruptible by Iago’s villainy because she adheres so perfectly to the transcendent virtue of hope.

There are multiple instances in Othello that demonstrate the character of Desdemona as believing in a code of honour that exceeds both self-interest and rational contingency. One such instance occurs in Act III, Scene iii wherein Othello’s recently discharged lieutenant Cassio implores Desdemona to recommend him to her husband. Here she states that, “If I do vow a friendship I’ll perform it/ To the last article” (III.iii.20-1) and goes further saying, “thy solicitor shall rather die/ Than give thy cause away” (III.iii.27-8). In so saying, Desdemona is acknowledging her awareness that having made a vow to help Cassio, she is bound to it by her will, even if it should be the cause of her unmaking. Likewise in Act IV, Scene iii, Desdemona’s code of honour is revealed with respect to marital fidelity. In response to Emilia’s assertion “who would not make her/ husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?” (IV.iii.70-1) Desdemona responds “Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong/ For the whole world!” (IV.iii.73-4). A sharp line can be drawn between the morality of Emilia, for whom “The world’s a huge thing: it is a great price/ For a small vice” (IV.iii.63-4) and that of Desdemona, for

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whom the question is not one of costs and benefits, but rather of sufficient or insufficient will with respect to the demands of the vow.

The most crucial example of Desdemona’s conception of the vow is revealed very early in the play. In Act I, Scene iii, Desdemona is asked by her father to identify “Where most you owe obedience?” (I.iii.178-9) and to this she responds, I do perceive a divided duty.

To you I am bound for life…

But here’s my husband; And so very much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge I may profess Due to the Moor my lord. (I.iii.180-8) The significance of this exchange is that it reveals Desdemona’s understanding of obedience as a component of the marriage vow. Appreciating Desdemona’s conception of obedience as a vow she has made and owes to her husband, bound beyond all mortal contingencies, is essential to an accurate understanding of Desdemona’s motivations in the later narrative of the play.

In Act II, Scene iii, Cassio laments his loss of reputation as the loss of “the immortal part of myself,” (II.iii.254) to which Iago responds saying, ‘Reputation’ is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.” (II.iii.259-62) There is an uncanny truth that resonates from Iago’s words – ironically, a truth that he would have Othello disregard for the purposes of his deception. For the power held by Iago is only ever over Desdemona’s reputation, never over her virtue itself.

His suggestion that reputation is often lost without deserving ominously foreshadows future events in the narrative. In saying “I will turn her virtue into pitch” (II.iii.345) it would be, perhaps, more accurate to suggest that Iago will attempt to make Desdemona’s virtue appear as pitch. Iago’s admission of the ephemerality, or malleability, of a person’s reputation speaks to the illusory nature of this power. Iago’s further claim, that a reputation is not truly lost unless its loss is personally affirmed, is echoed by Desdemona in Act IV, Scene ii in response to accusations of her infidelity when she states “I am sure I am none such” (IV.ii.123). Desdemona’s sense of morality is absolute, exceeding all appearances, and finally requires none but her own and God’s awareness of her state of virtue.

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Therefore, as the “immortal part” of a human is not to be understood as one’s reputation, but, rather, as one’s soul, Desdemona’s will is able to withstand corruption by Iago’s treachery because he lacks the power to compromise the state of her soul and, by extension, the hope of salvation that is its reward.

In Act IV, Scene ii, the language used by Desdemona, in response to Othello’s accusations of infidelity, clearly illustrates the transcendent nature of her hope. In this exchange Othello says, “Come swear it: damn thyself,/ …Swear that thou art honest” (IV.ii.35-8) and Desdemona responds, “Heaven doth truly know it” (IV.ii.39). The implication of Desdemona’s response is that her innocence is known in the sight of God, and she does not, therefore, require justification by any earthly tribunal as assurance of her salvation. Later in this scene, Othello asks, “What, not a whore?” (IV.ii.86) to which Desdemona replies, “No, as I shall be saved” (IV.ii.88). This choice of language by Desdemona points to the transcendence of her hope, in that she declares her anticipation of salvation, in place of any temporal circumstances, as evidence of her honesty and fidelity.

Furthermore, the word “hope” is repeated several times by Desdemona in both this, and the final scene, wherein Desdemona dies at the hand of Othello. In Act IV, Scene ii Desdemona says to Othello, “I hope my noble lord esteems me honest” (IV.ii.65) and in Act V, Scene ii states, “I hope you will not kill me” (V.ii.35) and then, “Some bloody passion shakes your very frame:/ These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,/ They do not point on me” (V.ii.45-7). These invocations of the word “hope” may point again to the transcendence of Desdemona’s conception of her vow to obey her husband. In this way, Desdemona will not defy the will of her lord, Othello, but hopes instead to be vindicated both in life and death not by persuasion or appearance, but on the merits of her virtue alone. Ultimately, Desdemona hopes for, but does not require, justification through her husband in life, but instead only through divine salvation in death.

When Desdemona dies at the end of Act V, she dies upholding her vow of obedience to her husband and, therefore, in accordance with the code of honour by which she lived her life. In Act IV, Scene ii, Desdemona reaffirms this vow before Iago, stating “his unkindness may defeat my life, / But never taint my love” (IV.ii.160-1). This affirmation is the ultimate consequence of the vow of obedience that Desdemona makes reference to when questioned by her father in Act I. As with all vows sworn and upheld by Desdemona, her marriage vow binds her will, in love and obedience, to Othello beyond all reason or earthly contingency, including that of her own natural life. In Act IV, Scene ii, Othello, having planned the murder of his wife, commands Desdemona to dismiss the attendant of her bedchamber, (IV.ii.5-7) and subsequently Desdemona says to her attendant, “It was his bidding; therefore, good Emilia,/ Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu:/ We must not now displease him” (IV.ii.13-5). It would seem that the purpose of

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this exchange is to emphasize the role that obedience plays as a motivation for Desdemona’s actions. In this case, Desdemona’s will to obey her husband sets the stage for her imminent death. Upon discovering that her husband means to kill her, Desdemona does not defy his will, nor call for help, she simply says, “Then heaven/ Have mercy on me” (V.ii.32-3). Although this line may be understood as an indication of passive acceptance, it can alternately be seen as the expression of a transcendental act of will. In this moment, Desdemona is willfully sacrificing her earthly life, beyond rationality, to uphold the conditions of her marriage vow in the hope of divine salvation. This conception of Desdemona’s death reveals the meaning of her, otherwise ambiguous, last line. In answer to Emilia’s question of “who hath done this deed?” (V.ii.123) Desdemona replies, with her dying breath, “Nobody – I myself. Farewell –/ Commend me to my kind lord” (V.ii.124-5). By this understanding, Desdemona’s death can be viewed in accordance with her transcendental will. Desdemona elected to die by an act of will in conformity with the demands of her vow, and would not break that vow even to incriminate her husband as her murderer, making true her previous words, “I never did/ Offend you in my life” (V.ii.60-1). Desdemona’s death can and must be understood as an extension of her conception of hope and of the will, which exceeds all rational circumstances of the world.

In death, Desdemona is justified not only in the sight of God, but also in the human world. Unlike Desdemona, whom Iago could not deprive of salvation, Othello discovers that Iago “hath ensnared my soul and body” (V.ii.300) and consequently dies in damnation and disgrace. He laments his belated discovery of Desdemona’s innocence saying “Whip me, ye devils,/ From…this heavenly sight” (V.ii.276-7) and so too does Emilia affirm, “she was heavenly true!” (V.ii.135). In the end, Desdemona’s purity is vindicated in the sight of God, her husband, and the community. Iago, unlike Desdemona, accepts no transcendent code of honour, but instead claims to “follow but myself –/…not I for love and duty,/ But…for my peculiar end” (I.i.58-60). He is permitted to live at the end of the play, however, his persistence does not testify to his victory over virtue, but rather to the deficiency of his hope. Iago’s victory, if it is such, is but a worldly one and utterly short-lived, whereas Desdemona’s satisfaction is a spiritual one, and her triumph is transcendent. It should, therefore, be acknowledged that although Othello is itself a tragic narrative, Desdemona’s death, in essence, is not so.

Desdemona’s motivations in the narrative of Othello can be explained in terms of a belief in the transcendent nature of the vow, and the power thereof to bind the will beyond all rational contingencies of the natural world. This belief has its basis in the Christian theological virtue of hope, which prizes the attainment of spiritual salvation above any worldly end. Desdemona’s marriage vow bound her in obedience to her husband Othello regardless of temporal circumstance, and she

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adhered faithfully to her vow, even beyond the contingency of death. It is in this sense that Desdemona’s is not a tragic death, for it accords with the principles by which she lived her life, and she died by an act of will in accordance with them.

The transcendent nature of Desdemona’s hope is what renders her incorruptible by the temporal evils of the villain Iago, and grants her the justification she sought in death.

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Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Othello. New York: Oxford Press, 2006.

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“Being in so preposterous estate”: Nature, art and love in The Winter’s Tale Natasha Hay One of the marks of William Shakespeare’s singular genius in comparison to the other playwrights of his era is his playful transformation of the very structures of theatrical narrative. The rigorous classification of Shakespeare’s plays into “histories”, “tragedies”, and “comedies” cannot hold for his late work, so scholars have settled with some ambivalence on the hybrid term “romance” for this period in the playwright’s craft. Shakespeare’s fantastical romances combine tragic and comic elements in order to portray the experience of love as an exemplary case of the ambiguity of the human condition. The narrative arc of one of these romances, The Winter’s Tale, sets forth three interpretations of the relationship between nature and art that comes to light in a particular mode of love. It presents a critical engagement with the idea of the redemption or restitution of natural life in and through artistic creation. Ultimately, the statue of Hermione is portrayed as the point of intersection between art and life. She is the figure of a potentiality created by art rather than an actuality destroyed by it. At the conclusion of the play the miraculous event of Hermione’s resurrection through art restores rather than violates the harmony between the cyclical life of nature and the linearity of human action.

The first stage of the play shows how dangerous – and ultimately diabolical – an imagination that is not connected to reality can be. The ruler of Sicilia, Leontes, is “an Othello who is his own Iago” (Harold Bloom Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human 639). He succumbs to the jealous suspicion that his wife Hermione is having an affair with his best friend Polixenes. Leontes’s heart has been corrupted by power and culture: he treats Hermione as a territory over which he enjoys the right to exclusive possession rather than as a person with rights of her own and a free relation to him. As Allan Bloom argues in his work Love and Friendship, “sexual desire, like heresy, an unknowable disposition of the mind, becomes the central object of justice” (Allan Bloom Love and Friendship 378-79) and the impossibility of forbidding access to his wife’s body or of gaining access to her soul is an outrage to Leontes. To him, Hermione becomes an archetypal incarnation of the sinful and dangerous sensuality of womanhood. Her sexuality is identified with nature as a force whose irrationality and lawlessness threatens his absolute rule. Incensed by a courtier’s doubt that Hermione’s gestures toward Polixenes attest to adulterous inclinations, Leontes erupts in a sort of early modern nihilism in which, “nothing himself, [he] beholds what is not there, as well that the nothing that is” (SIH 645). He questions “Is this nothing?/Why then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing,/The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,/My wife is

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nothing, nor nothing have these nothings/If this be nothing” (Shakespeare I.ii.28993). Harold Bloom holds this sublime litany to mean that “where there is nothing, everything is possible” (SIH 645). Sexual jealousy and metaphysical nihilism as modes of tyranny expose the darker aspects of eros on its pathway to evil.

The cause of Leontes’s jealousy is unclear, but his behavior becomes pathological or delusional to the extent that he cannot truly perceive what is happening around him. The speculative bent of his own mind has combined with the supreme power accorded to an absolute monarch. Though Leontes may strike his breast in anguish at what he thinks and feels, Camillo is telling the truth in his advice to Polixenes, “You may as well/Forbid the sea for to obey the moon/As or by oath remove or by counsel shake/The fabric of his folly, whose foundation/Is piled upon his faith” (Shakespeare I.ii.421-25). The pathos of Leontes’s selfish blindness is never greater than in his certainty that his young son Mamillius has sickened from moral revulsion at his mother’s sexual license. In actual fact, Mamillius feels bewildered sorrow at the enforced absence of his beloved mother.

Mistaking a king’s vengeful desires for the righteous man’s embodiment of the law, the monstrosity of Leontes’s malady is brought to light in the terrifying parody of justice which occurs in Hermione’s trial. The following exchange between Hermione and Leontes is heartbreaking as Leontes maniacally asserts his own self-certainty to be the sole legitimate source of truth: “Hermione: Sir,/You speak a language that I understand not./My life stands in the level of your dreams,/Which I’ll lay down.//Leontes: Your actions are my dreams./You had a bastard by Polixenes,/And I but dreamed it” (Shakespeare III.ii.78-82). In the chilling phrase through which Leontes condemns Hermione, the total lack of connection between the plain reality of Hermione’s noble and chaste conduct and the tangled nightmare of Leontes’s paranoid hallucinations becomes visible.

At the height of this spectacle, the very world that Leontes has tried to negate returns in the prophetic speech of an oracular revelation. However, Leontes’s repentance as he receives the subsequent news of his son’s death cannot balance the scales of his guilt before his own conscience. As Harold Bloom asserts, Shakespeare is portraying “a mind of winter unable to cease its reductions until the deaths of others ... shocks it back into reality” (SIH 645), but that very reality has been rendered unbearable by deeds performed as though in a dream. Confronted with the fact that his past actions are irreversible, Leontes must grapple with their irreparable consequences in spite of his change of heart. He has lost his first wife, his young son, and his newborn daughter; with these losses he has also forfeited the possibility of a future that might differ from the endless winter of his jealous, tyrannical, nihilistic soul (Jean E. Howard 2877). The narrative arc of The Winter’s Tale serves to correct the penitent king’s original error in perception: Leontes must

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come to see Hermione as the person who she truly is, so that their love for one another and the common world in which they live can be renewed.

The second stage of the play shows love in an “earthly paradise” or “state of nature” otherwise referred to as Bohemia. The younger generation of the royal families of Bohemia and Sicilia are newcomers who have the potential to fundamentally change the primitive nature and decaying culture of their respective realms. Perdita, the daughter of Leontes, and Florizel, the son of Polixenes, love one another so artlessly: as Perdita responds to Florizel’s proposals, “I cannot speak/So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better./By th’pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out/The purity of his” (Shakespeare IV.iv.375-78). In contrast to the jealousy and doubt of Leontes, Perdita and Florizel share an absolute trust that the other will be true. Whereas Leontes lacks the ability to escape from himself and encounter the world, Perdita and Florizel experience a natural ecstasy in which they love the beauty of the world found within one another. In a passionate declaration, Florizel depicts a grace wholly Perdita’s own and wholly a gift of nature: “What you do/Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,/I’d have you do it ever ... When you dance, I wish you/A wave o’th’sea, that you might ever do/Nothing but that; move still, still so,/And own no other function” (Shakespeare IV.iv.135-43). It is no exaggeration to say that to Florizel, Perdita is perfect; she is the Good and the Beautiful in and of herself. Both in his ability to recognize a princess – to perceive nobility of nature despite the absence of external signs of rank – and in what Allan Bloom amusingly terms his “intense self-control” (LF 381-82), Florizel’s temperament and character are the opposite of those of Leontes and Polixenes.

His beloved, Perdita, joyously embraces the vitality of nature from which her father recoiled in horror. If Leontes’s fear of cuckoldry has poisoned nature, then Perdita’s artless tenderness is the remedy for culture (SIH 656). Harold Bloom delights in her character as an “unfallen Persephone” (SIH 653) who incarnates the “courageous vitalism” and “heroic naturalism” of the pastoral deities of the ancient world (SIH 656). She will not cultivate hybrid flowers which damage the sanctity of created life and the genuine beauty of nature any more than “were [she] painted, [she] would wish/[Florizel] should say ‘twere well, and only therefore/Desire to breed by [her]” (Shakespeare IV.iv.101-3). According to Allan Bloom, Perdita’s position in the horticultural debate with Polixenes is basically a “religion of nature” (LF 382) insofar as her gentle, earnest, vivacious disposition reflects the nature to which she renders such a touching encomium. Her poignant claim on nature’s behalf elicits sympathy for her purity as a person: “Perdita is not interested in art that mends or changes nature; she cries out instead for an unfallen nature that would be its own art” (SIH 657). Death has yet to touch her desire to make garlands out of springtime blossoms for her “sweet friend,/To strew him o’er and

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o’er ... like a bank for love to lie and play on,/Not like a corpse; or if, not to be buried,/But quick, and in mine arms” (SIH 658), and she has not yet anticipated that such a paradisiacal nature could ever be broken and cry out against itself for mending or transformation.

The sheep-shearing festival in Bohemia is presented as a “Primavera” scene which is wholly of this earth. It is a joyous celebration of pagan ritual in which the beauty of nature - and the beauty of a lover as the image of the divine - is complete in itself. However, the apolitical bliss of Perdita and Florizel’s shared love of the beautiful can only be a transitory state, since Polixenes forbids the marriage between a peasant girl and his princely son. In contrast to Perdita and Florizel’s pastoral innocence, Polixenes has experience of both civilized Sicilia and wild Bohemia. He has been wounded by Leontes’s jealousy over Hermione and he wounds Perdita when he refuses to allow her to be Florizel’s bride. Aware of the rift between nature and culture in his own soul, Polixenes can understand the need for art to heal our damaged lives: “Yet nature is made better by no mean/But nature makes that mean; so over that art/Which you say adds to nature, is an art/That nature makes ... This is an art/Which does mend nature - change it rather - but/The art itself is nature” (Shakespeare IV.iv.189-97). For Polixenes, art is not merely a supplementary ornament to the organic unity of nature, but the realization of possibilities at nature’s source which change and mend its present condition.

Having experienced the vulnerability of relations on this earth, Perdita may begin to perceive the justice of Polixenes’s argument for the redemption and restitution of natural life in and through artistic creation. As Florizel’s appreciation of Perdita’s Queen of May costume foreshadows, only artifice will allow these characters’ genuine selves to be revealed.

Neither Allan Bloom nor Harold Bloom is pleased with academics who argue that Shakespeare’s own plays are examples of Polixenes’s statement about the virtue of art. However, the lesser claim that the function of the statue in The Winter’s Tale - that is to say, the purpose of a single work of art within the play, rather than the essence of the play itself as a work of art - is in agreement with Polixenes’s views seems to be plausible and accurate. For most of the play, Hermione has been outside the space and time in which its events occurred. The assumption on the part of other characters that she perished from grief has simply been one of the structural elements of the play’s developing narrative. Throughout the events which follow Hermione’s premature demise, the reader or spectator not yet familiar with The Winter’s Tale is simply longing for Perdita to be found by others or to find her way home. When the royal families of Sicilia and Bohemia pay their respects to the statue of Hermione, the expected outcome is a contemplative experience of recollected loss in the face of the work of art. As Allan Bloom explains, devotional statues in Roman Catholic churches were meant

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to be sources of consolation for the faithful in their fallen condition (LF 390), so a mild satire of the cult of Mary combined with deeply felt religious overtones might have sufficed for the reunited mourners. However, no mere willing suspension of disbelief is at issue: “It is required/You do awake your faith” (Shakespeare V.iii.94-95) as Hermione’s resurrection breaks into the continuity of the play in a reversal of its expected conclusion.

The living statue of Hermione is necessary to the recognition scene between herself and Leontes as well as the reconciliation between Sicilia and Bohemia. In the shock of beholding the statue of his beloved come back to life, Leontes truly sees Hermione for the first time. Immersed in regret and memory, he had lost touch with the passing of time to the point that he admired sixteen-year-old Perdita as an appropriate second wife for him. By contrast, Hermione’s suffering has marked her face with the wrinkles of time. Returning to her old life, she herself is radically new: her experience of pain, deprivation, and solitude has transformed her own personhood and her relations with others. Although I think that Allan Bloom is rather presumptuous to read Shakespeare’s art as conforming to the Hegelian philosophy avant la lettre, one does not have to interpret The Winter’s Tale as “the poet’s phenomenology of spirit” (LF 392) in order to see the justice of Bloom’s depiction of Hermione as the figure in which nature is perfected through the mediation of art (LF 393-94). The kingdoms in The Winter’s Tale appear to be opposed to one another: Sicilia represents urban culture whereas Bohemia represents pastoral nature. However, neither kingdom can stand on its own: only an interdependent alliance between Sicilia and Bohemia can further an art of living which holds together nature and culture. In blessing the marriage of Florizel and Perdita, Hermione binds together the spirits of both nations and inaugurates a new order in their shared world.

A poetic mode of faith – provisionally defined by Paulina’s namesake as “the substance of things hoped for/and the argument for what is not seen” (Alighieri 64-5) - almost acts as the force which resurrects Hermione. The imaginative faith of the characters who respond to Paulina’s injunction allows the miraculous event to occur: the spectators who behold the first breaths of the living statue will only be moved to the extent that they grant credence to this wonder (Northrop Frye 18-19). Such leaps of faith are the beginning of human freedom from fate: “the spectators, both onstage and off, seem to participate in willing the statue to life. When Hermione descends from her pedestal, the audience can feel itself present at the miraculous resurrection of the dead: (Howard 2881). Paulina requires the pilgrims to awake their faith rather than their knowledge in the face of the statue: even though Allan Bloom argues that moments of synthetic comprehension are the highest thing in Shakespeare’s plays (LF 385), a moment of incomprehension is the crucial experience in The Winter’s Tale.

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The ending of The Winter’s Tale coincides with an essential turn in its characters’ lives, but the course of its events are open to further interpretation.

Although Leontes is released from his bondage to the past in accordance with the structure of the late romances, (NP 118-19) the feelings of spectators, characters, and readers tend to be bittersweet (Howard 2876). Now past childbearing age (2876), Hermione will never have another son by Leontes, and no divinity intervenes to resurrect the young prince Mamillius from his blameless, senseless death. The original innocence portrayed in Polixenes’s account of his youthful friendship with Leontes is not restored, so the characters must resume their lives in a fallen world: they may hear the voice of Apollo’s oracle, but they never see the god himself. The Norton anthology of Shakespeare’s plays refers to this mode of resolution as “the true miracle of partial restorations” (2881): moments of redemption which break into but are nonetheless bound to time. The promise of happiness at the end of The Winter’s Tale partakes in the fragile vulnerability of mortal creatures living in the natural world. In the words of Harold Bloom, “no poet, not even Shakespeare, purges time of its destructiveness” (SIH 639), and the very title of The Winter’s Tale is a testament to the play’s momentary vision of the correspondence between the seasons of nature and those of the heart.

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Works Cited Bloom, Allan. Love and Friendship. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. C. H. Sisson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Frye, Northrop. A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.

Howard, Jean E. “The Winter’s Tale”. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997: 2873-81.

Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale. Ed. Stephen Orgel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

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Blood and Beauty in the love of Apollo and Hyacinthus Eliza West In his sculpture of Apollo and Hyacinthus, Benvenuto Cellini depicts a scene from a Greek myth which was put into verse a millennium and a half earlier by the Roman poet Ovid in his book Metamorphoses. The story is about the God Apollo and the Spartan boy with whom he falls in love. The sculptor and the poet, though working from the same story, have chosen different aspects to emphasize. Despite its tragic ending, this tale is a love story, and as a result, any interpretation of it must address the subject of love, but as we can see in the examples addressed in this essay, that can mean several different things. Ovid’s poem focuses on the death of Hyacinthus and the resultant anguish of love-struck Apollo. Cellini, on the other hand, chooses a moment earlier in the story and the result is that his sculpture lacks the emotional turmoil of Ovid’s work. The sculpture focuses instead on the adoring love of Hyacinthus for the God. Cellini uses his skill as an artist to make his work into an exemplification of beauty, but with the emphasis on the good looks of his figures, the raw emotion of the poem is abandoned. Cellini has also chosen to tread lightly where he might offend. The sculptor manages to avoid any flagrant depictions of passion in favour of a more platonic, teacher/student dynamic. While the sculpture focuses on a tender moment between the lovers, Ovid’s poem is more passionate. The poet’s concentration on the death of Hyacinthus makes the poem a more passionate and moving depiction of love than Cellini’s beautiful but frankly tepid posing of the lovers.

Cellini’s white marble sculpture of Apollo and Hyacinthus shows extremely lifelike nudes of a man and boy. Both figures are ideals of beauty with perfect musculature. Apollo stands with his weight shifted to the right. His left arm is bent, with the hand near his waist holding an indeterminate object. The fingers of his right hand caress the hair of the kneeling Hyacinthus. Apollo’s gaze is angled leftward with his attention focused out and away, not looking at the boy.

Hyacinthus, who has clearly not yet gained the height of a man, is made to look even smaller by his pose in relation to the Olympian. Since both figures face out, the sculpture can be seen as intended to be viewed from all sides. However, Cellini has positioned Hyacinthus’ gaze so that even though the figures do not face each other, the boy still looks up at the God. Despite their physical proximity, the composition is such that the figures barely touch. The back of the kneeling boy touches Apollo’s calf and Hyacinthus’ right hand rests upon his own head, casually making contact with Apollo’s hand, the fingers of which are entwined in the boy’s soft curls.

The moment the artist has chosen to represent is tender, but not overtly romantic. Neither does this depiction seem to show equality in love; the boy

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adores, his face emotionally open and giving, while the God seems restrained, more like a figure of authority than a lover. With Hyacinthus kneeling behind Apollo, there is no ambiguity surrounding the relative power of the two figures.

The pose subjugates Hyacinthus so that he seems to be in the position of a student or disciple. This choice of positioning seems to suggest a desire for propriety, or social ordering. It hints that if a love affair is taking place, at least both parties understand their expected positions in society and relation to each other. The homosexual affair is acceptable if Apollo can be seen as serving the role of mentor, and if Hyacinthus shows appropriate adoration.

It is easy to see Cellini’s sculpture as a representation of love. However, what first strikes the eye is not that, but the individual elegance of the figures. With these beautifully sculpted male bodies, Cellini stakes his claim to the highest rank of Renaissance artists – those who can depict the perfect nude form. Since the sixteenth century associated beauty with virtue, he also makes a claim for the worthiness of his subject. What this does not allow for is a representation of love like that which Ovid gives us in his poem on the same subject. Part of what makes the sculpted Apollo and Hyacinthus so stunning is their tranquility. If the sculpture depicted the death of Hyacinthus, which is the moment Ovid’s poem focuses on, then Apollo’s face would be contorted in grief and Hyacinthus’ body would lie marred by the fatal discus toss. Ovid’s words give us that unruly love that Cellini’s sculpture does not. The poet does not bother giving descriptions of his character’s physical charms – though at the very least Apollo’s godly good looks are assumed.

The closest that he comes to a discussion of beauty is when he lets us imagine their athletic bodies naked and shining with oil as they play their game of discus (Ovid, 87-8). This is because the appearance of his characters is inconsequential. There is no need to correlate beauty with virtue, or even virtue with love. The poem is not meant to convey the comeliness of its characters, or the comeliness of love. On the contrary, this poem shows how tumultuous and painful love can be. However, this passion and tragedy are not what Cellini wishes to show us. Instead the artist gives us an idea of love which is about appreciation, restraint and beauty, not about passion. With his handsome characters, Cellini gives us an example of decorous love and sacrifices the chance to show a deeper passion like that in Ovid’s poem.

The result of Ovid’s passionate telling of the myth is that the Apollo of the poem has none of the nonchalance or distance of Cellini’s figure. Instead Ovid’s Apollo is enthralled by the Spartan boy to such an extent that the God “no longer honor[s] the bow or the lyre/And, forgetful even of himself, [is] willing/To bear hunting nets, hold the dogs on leash,/Accompany [Hyacinthus] on the rough mountain ridges,/And with long intimacy feed his love’s flame” (180-4). The Apollo represented here is so completely in love with the boy that he will abandon his godly duties and play the servant, holding leashes and trekking mountain passes

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in the wake of a mere boy, simply to spend time with Hyacinthus. The high Olympian God makes himself low because high or low, Lord of Delphi or bearer of hunting nets, his status lacks importance in the face of his love of Hyacinthus.

Not only is this devotion much more immediate than that which can be observed from Cellini’s sculpture, but a reversal of roles can also be seen. Ovid’s poem is written from Apollo’s perspective. Where in Cellini’s sculpture the young boy gazes adoringly up at the older figure of a God, here the God, regardless of position, society, or propriety, makes himself a slave to love. This fact augments the sense in which Ovid’s poem describes a love that is truer and more powerful than the socially acceptable adoration seen in Cellini’s sculpture.

The whole narrative of Ovid’s poem talks about the love of Apollo and Hyacinthus, but the lines that strike the deepest are surely those regarding the latter’s death. In running after Apollo’s discus, the boy is struck in the head.

Apollo, from whose hand the discus flew, is the cause of Hyacinthus’ death, but still the God cries: “and yet what is my fault, unless playing with you/Can be called a fault, unless loving you/Can be called a fault?” (Ovid 212-4). This scene, in which the dead boy lies in the lap of his Olympian lover, is the heart of Ovid’s poem. Here the reader truly comes to understand the passion of Apollo and Hyacinthus. If they had not played at discus, they would not have fully expressed their love. The discus killed Hyacinth, but Apollo cannot feel guilty for playing, because the game was a manifestation of their love, and that love was the most important thing. Ovid does not make his story pretty or shrink from telling us of the spilled blood of Hyacinthus, because what society thinks of this affair is of no concern to him. This poem’s purpose is to move the reader to feel a glimmering of what Apollo felt.

The greatness of Cellini’s sculpture is in the perfect and otherworldly beauty of its figures. Both God and boy are flawless in proportion and in pose. They have strong, well-muscled bodies, and the smooth power of their limbs is the definition of elegance. Both are in positions of rest, and yet one can sense that Hyacinthus has just turned his head, just raised his hand to meet Apollo’s, and that in a moment the God will turn and meet Hyacinthus’ gaze. Cellini has chosen to represent a point in the myth before the fateful game of discus, so that the sculpture avoids the messy tragedy of death and instead focuses on the affection of the figures. The sculptor must be congratulated for the refinement of his work here.

His tremendous skill is what gives this sculpture its merit, because it is not the narrative of the story that speaks in this sculpture, but the beauty of the figures.

This sculpture is a piece of Renaissance art, created for a Renaissance society, and so the love observed between the figures is, in a way, staid and refined, eliciting an intellectual response, whereas the first reaction to a reading of Ovid’s poem is an emotional one. That twist of sympathetic pain for the heartbroken God makes

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Ovid’s poem more powerful, and less appropriate. To see love how it ought to be, we must look at Cellini’s sculpture, but to understand what love truly feels like, we must read Ovid’s poem.

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Works Cited Cellini, Benvenuto. Apollo and Hyacinth. 16th Century. Marble. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Italy.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

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Poetic Inspiration and the Fête Champêtre Haritha Popuri Titian’s Fête Champêtre (c.1511) is a complicated painting in terms of its history and pulsating, mysterious imagery. Interpreters of the work generally restrict themselves to a particular aspect, such as the genre, because the wealth of meanings does not always comfortably align. The nude female figures, the relationship between the two young men, and the significance of the natural setting enrich one’s understanding of the piece, but they are by no means easy components to analyse. The poetic nature of the scene tends to provide strong resolutions that many scholars have taken up successfully, and a close reading of the painting leads to the conclusion that Titian’s goal is to illustrate poetic inspiration itself. He depicts the movement from artistic stimulation to its fullest expression by the multivalent interactions between the figures and the bountiful, rustic setting.

The focus of the Fête Champêtre centres around an elegant dandy dressed in luxurious fabrics of warm sienna, with a voluminous puff on his right sleeve to emphasise the slender, nimble hand with which he is about to strum the lute he holds across his lap. Sitting cross-legged on a grassy knoll in the middle ground, his attention is directed at the rustic, barefoot young man on his left. This man semi-lounges on the gently sloping hill, one leg comfortably outstretched before him. He inclines his head towards the lute-player with eyes closed in pleasant contemplation. Two nude female figures flank the men like luminous columns of supple flesh. Their idyllic beauty combined with a pointed lack of any attention from the young men and their prominent situation in the foreground suggests that these women are mythological figures invisible to all but the viewer. One of these women is seated on the ground, her back to us, blocking the middle part of the rustic man’s body. Her head is turned away from the beholder and so we know nothing of her face. The only distinguishing mark about her is the flute or recorder she holds in her right hand, pulled away from her mouth as if she has just now taken a break. Together, the three seated-figures form a pleasant arc at the centre of the painting. However, the standing female positioned by the fountain on the left upsets this balance of composition. She is so distinct from the others, in fact, that it goes so far as to be anomalous at first glance, but this only invites further examination.

The woman leans with her right hand on a plain-faced stone fountain, her left arm stretched across her twisting torso, slyly covering her breasts. Her focus is intent upon the carefully poised glass pitcher she holds in her left hand; she is about to pour water into the fountain. Her lower half is partially exposed and her bare legs are crossed, right over left, with a heavy cream-coloured fabric draped artfully around and between them. Unlike the other nude figure she has two simple

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adornments: a translucent hair band with its end trailing down her right shoulder, and a gold ring on the index finger of the same hand. She seems wholly separate from the affairs of the two men, especially given that her tranquil gaze is directed away from them. Nevertheless, the soft golden light that brings out the motion of the lute-player’s right arm also highlights the sinuous curve of her body. More importantly, the artful bend of her left hand is a visual complement to the luteplayer’s own. Together, they are poised to carry out the two main actions of the painting—pouring the water and strumming the lute—exactly in time with one another. We conclude, then, that the standing female figure has a connection both to the lute-player and, by virtue of their shared mythological reality, to the seated female as well. Together, the four personages create a striking and harmonious image in the fore and middle grounds of the painting.

If we are to wonder from where the musician takes his inspiration, we see that he finds it in the lush, varied landscape of the backdrop. At the right-hand side stands a dense copse of trees in varying earthy shades, from russet to deep green.

The brushwork here creates a great deal of texture, giving a strong impression of the leaves and an overall sense of fecundity. On the ground beneath them is a shepherd carrying his crook over his right shoulder and a flock of sheep or goats surround him. The left side of the background is dramatically different from the right. It shows a picturesque vista of the town in the upper ground, as well as of a river and the winding, rocky banks that rise from it. In contrast to the crop of trees on the right, there are only two slender ones on this side, leaning slightly to the left, suggesting perhaps the presence of a breeze. The sky has a fairly dark grey-blue hue that contrasts with the warm, golden tone of the scene. Perhaps it is late afternoon and a summer storm is imminent.

Despite its wealth of imagery, the Fête Champêtre remains a puzzling piece of work. The primary contributors to this difficulty are its lack of an original title and evidence of its commission. Even the authorship was credited wholly or mostly, not to Titian, but to Giorgione, until the twentieth century. Within the painting itself, there is a distinct lack of symbols or other signage to indicate the characters of the four figures, especially the two nudes in the foreground.

Understanding these women is crucial in an interpretation of the painting as a whole. With these ambiguities in mind, scholars have been thoroughly challenged by this work and this has led to some very inspired readings. Each interpretation, although different, develops the same basic concept of the painting’s poetic theme.

In his article, Philip Fehl addresses questions regarding only the female figures. One of Fehl’s drawbacks is that he spends too much time on comparison to extemporaneous works of not enough on the Fête Champêtre itself. Although this can be a legitimate technique, in his article it results in a too broad overview of the piece rather than a rigorous analysis. He lingers only momentarily on his answer to

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the initial question of the nude females’ identities, concluding that they are invisible nymphs attracted by the music of the lute-player. He claims that they act as embodiments of the physical beauty of the landscape (Fehl 157). This is a viable starting point, but he goes no further and the argument becomes inadequate for two reasons. For one, this makes the scene altogether too passive as the nymphs only act in the capacity of observers. He also overlooks the significance of the standing nymph’s pouring motion and gives scant regard to the men at centre, despite their significant positioning and intimate modelling towards one another. Nonetheless, Fehl introduces the poetic theme of the Fête Champêtre, drawing from the Arcadian atmosphere he believes to be inspired by Ovidian poetry. What stands out most to Fehl is the representation of the capacity of poetry to present two different realities simultaneously but also to remain a cohesive whole (162). The motif of poetry continues in later scholarship, but is carried through to a higher degree of precision.

Patricia Egan argues much more convincingly for the allegorical significance of the female figures in her article, “Poesia and the Fête Champêtre.”

She insists several oppositions originate from the social division between the men at centre, developing the left and right sides of the painting into a set of contrasts.

For example, she points out that behind the aristocratic lute-player is a white, elaborate structure situated close to the river whereas a plain, brown farmhouse features behind the rustic man at his side, whom Egan identifies as a shepherd.

Furthermore, a dense population of lush, verdant trees stands to the right of the painting, under which the goatherd is walking. More importantly she argues that the nude female figures are also opposed in a number of ways. One stands alone while the other sits with the men, and the one standing by the fountain presents a frontal view while the other exposes her back. Furthermore, the standing female concentrates on the act of pouring water. These apparent contradictions do not situate themselves comfortably within the pastoral genre that is frequently associated with the painting. Nevertheless, Egan argues that there is a concurrent unity in the painting, or as she describes it, the scene is “to be at once halved and whole” owing to the two female figures she identifies as allegories of Poesia (Egan 304). It is their prominence in the foreground that causes Egan to suggest Allegory of Poetry as a better title to describe “the harmonious entirety of the scene and the thematic union among its parts” (304).

To further elucidate her point, Patricia Egan calls our attention to the image of Poesia, which figures in a special deck of cards called the Tarocchi, first produced around 1460. Poesia is found in a set that includes the seven liberal arts, philosophy and theology. This reflects the elevated position poetry enjoyed in Renaissance intellectual culture (304-307). The image depicts a fully dressed woman seated beside a fountain, holding a pitcher in one hand and playing a flute

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with the other. A sphere of the heavens and earth rests at her feet, while her head is crowned with a laurel wreath. The two women in the Fête Champêtre work in conjunction to display these qualities. Egan further puts forth that Aristotle’s Poetics, a popular humanist text in the Renaissance, adds another dimension to Poesia’s role in artistic inspiration and eloquence (306). She pays particular notice to the dialectic Aristotle indicates between higher and lower forms of poetry, corresponding to the quality of the man who appreciates them. Returning to the oppositions she elucidates earlier, she argues that the left side of the painting represents this higher form of poetry, that the aristocrat is in fact relating something of this art to his untutored friend. The seated muse, by virtue of her simplicity and humble position, matches with the rustic shepherd and represents the lower form (307). Egan makes a very compelling argument, but it is somewhat troublesome to reconcile this stratification to an overall harmony that she claims is her goal. But she goes on to draw a conclusion that brings everything together to unify the piece. Poetry, represented by the two female figures, transfers the gift of eloquence from its source in the mythical realm to the natural world. It appears that poetry is the device through which the two realities come together, allowing inspiration to find real-world expression (312).

An interesting development takes place by the time Harold Wethey compiles his monograph of Titian’s works in 1975. X-Ray analysis not only shows Titian to be the primary author of the Fête, but also provides an important insight into the composition of the standing female figure. Titian made drastic changes to Giorgione’s original design, which had her standing upright and facing the luteplayer (Wethey 11), calling into question Egan’s understanding of the connection between the water-pouring allegory of high poetry and the sophisticated luteplayer. Following Giorgione’s original design, the connection between them would have been clearer than ever, showcasing them as embodiments of the higher, more refined arts. However, the fact that Titian intentionally turns her away from the group makes it seem that there is a different reason for her separation from the seated figures. It is possible that Titian made the modification purely for aesthetic reasons or to showcase his prowess, but there is conclusive evidence that he wants the viewer to focus on the relationship unfolding between the two men at the focal point of the painting.

It is true that the two female figures have a conspicuous yet enigmatic presence that justifies the concentration Fehl and Egan give them. Nonetheless, the painting showcases the lute-player and shepherd’s relationship even further. For instance, their heads bow towards each other in the precise centre of the canvas. In addition, the female bodies appear to bracket the lute-player, whose presence is further exaggerated by clothing dyed in the one colour that jumps out from the earthy palette of browns, mossy greens and muted golds. Another visual point to

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consider is the well-constructed, immense puff of his right sleeve that amplifies the quick flick of his hand. This motion is literally highlighted across the thumb and index finger in tones that replicate the colour of the women’s flesh.

Ross Kilpatrick proposes that the men depicted are the eminent lyric poet Quintus Hortatius Flaccus (Horace) and elegist Sextus Propertius and that the rest of the scene is inspired by their poetry (Kilpatrick 126). The basic premise comes from Horace’s Epistle 2.2 in which a lyric poet and elegist are involved in a singing contest, fiercely duelling to out praise one another. “Odes I compose,” Horace writes at line 91, “and he elegiacs—wonderful to see!—/work engraved by the nine-fold Muses!” (126). Kilpatrick agrees that the two women in the painting are indeed muses, the one on the ground being Euterpe, who is often depicted with a flute and known for inspiring music and lyrical poetry, along with Calliope, queen of the nine and champion of eloquence (125). Horace, represented by the shepherd, justifies Euterpe’s presence in being a writer of that genre. The other muse derives from Propertius’ Elegy 3.3, which describes a dream where Calliope wets his lips with the divine waters of the Philetian River (126). Thus, the luteplayer is none other than Propertius, his Calliope nearby, feeding water into the fountain of creativity. The strength of Kilpatrick’s argument is that he gives each man an equal voice. Moreover, the playful nature of their competition marries well with the levity of the scene, which is conveyed by the brightly lit atmosphere, pleasant landscape and enchanting colour scheme. This is not a case of a power imbalance between superior and inferior arts as in Egan’s interpretation, rather it stresses the equally legitimate claims of each style as a form of poetic expression.

Overall, Kilpatrick’s claim is neat and precise, but there is still something more at work in the painting. There is an instantaneous impact from the juxtaposition between man’s act of artifice against the backdrop of nature. Both are powerful creative forces that result in beautiful things, but there is something in art that makes it a gross elaboration in comparison to nature. Patricia Emison touches on this in her examination of the painting; she notes that the muse’s act of pouring water into the fountain is one of superfluity, which jars with our “pastoral sensibilities” of simplicity and ease (Emison 195). Moreover by being the only figure standing in the painting, the muse exerts herself beyond the humble posturing of the others. One could add that her body position is also exaggerated, that the contortion, while interesting to the eye, is highly unnatural. In summation, there is artificiality in the composition of the water-pouring muse, which further corresponds to an identical superfluity in the lute-player’s actions that sharply opposes the spontaneity of the pastoral.

Taking all theses viewpoints into consideration, one’s reading of the Fȇte Champȇtre becomes increasingly nuanced as one moves past the initial analysis.

The contradictions that Egan points out in the landscape, the two men, and the two

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sides of Poesia do not reflect a stratification between higher and lower arts but rather emphasize a dichotomy of artistic inspiration and execution. The role of the women seems to suggest a mythological presence as muses rather than allegories because of the few but highly significant symbols that are present, such as Euterpe’s flute and Calliope’s subtle embellishments. There is something about inspiration that is excessive and in this painting it is clearly drawn from the overabundance of nature itself. The landscape is bursting with vitality and supports an endless variation that is beautiful to behold. We see the connection between this superfluity of the muse’s action and the appearance of the lute-player, but the crux of this painting lies in his interaction with the shepherd. I suggest that rather than teaching the rustic young man a “higher art,” or imposing in any way his greater social status, the lute-player is deferring to the shepherd’s ease of expression. The distinguishing feature between art and nature is that one must be selective in order to effectively communicate to an audience, whereas the other has a presence that is intuitively grasped. Consider that Calliope is also the giver of eloquence, suggesting the connection between a work of inspiration and the ability to express it meaningfully. Nature has spontaneity, has the only kind of chaos that makes sense. By referring to it as “simple” in the pastoral style, nature can be misjudged as something inferior to art. However, it is the latter that must be simplified despite its abundance of inspiration. All in all, the painting speaks to the contradictions of excess and restraint, of the wealth of inspiration and frugality of expression that separates art from nature, although both are ultimately unified in the creation of beauty.

Titian’s Fȇte Champȇtre is a challenging piece of art that can be read in a number of compelling ways. Despite the fact that the figures appear to be living in a world, or perhaps two worlds, apart from the viewer, we are still invited to observe and gain insights as we look in greater detail. The painting is telling us something about art itself, about its inspiration and subsequent expression. While it cannot reproduce the infinite detail of nature, art is able to select and organize stimuli into something that can be read with profound meaning by the viewer.

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Works Cited Egan, Patricia, “Poesia and the Fête Champêtre”. The Art Bulletin 41 (1959): 303313.

Emison, Patricia, “The ‘Concert Champêtre’ and Gilding the Lily”. The Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 195-196.

Fehl, Philipp, “The Hidden Genre: A Study of the Concert Champêtre in the Louvre. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 16 (1957): pp. 153168.

Kilpatrick, Ross S., “Horatian Landscape in the Louvre’s ‘Concert Champêtre’”.

Artibus et Historiae 21 (2000): 123-131.

Wethey, Harold E., The Paintings of Titian: III. The Mythological and Historical Paintings. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1975.

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Newton, Leibniz, Metaphysics: How Newton differed and public and private and why this is important Calum Agnew Attempting to completely dissociate the public persona of a given individual from their private life is highly problematic for historians; actions and ideas that might otherwise be inexplicable or unprecedented often have their origin in unpublished work. It is this intuition, which has made the study of journals and letters crucial to historians of science looking to construct a genealogy of ideas.

Isaac Newton is a particularly interesting case, because his published oeuvre is both of incredible importance to the history of science, and relatively small compared to the colossal archive of his journals, notebooks and correspondence.

These texts could not be more different from the ironclad mathematical and rational works of The Principia and Optics. Judging solely by the quantity of his collected works, Newton, who was for a time considered the Enlightenment rationalist par excellence, was far more interested in heretical theology, prophecy, and alchemy than he was in mathematical accounts of nature.

Newton’s unpublished texts are of interest to historians for a number of reasons. His notebooks, amidst the alchemy and theology, contain a history of natural philosophy itself, the history of the idea of Newtonian gravity, for example, and in his letters, Newton is often more candid and accessible than in his published writings, which are exceptionally difficult. However, despite the benefits that interrogation of his private texts may bring, maintaining the distinction between public and private selves remains critical to the study of Newton. The attempt to fully integrate the unpublished works, Newton’s private self, with his public works runs the risk of eliding what was perhaps the most remarkable feature of Newton’s natural philosophy: what he did not say.

In the preface to the Principia entitled “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” Newton says, “philosophers have hitherto made trial of nature in vain” (Newton “Preface” 225), Newton’s work “concentrate[s] on mathematics as it relates to natural philosophy” (224). He is following both the ancients,1 who allegedly considered mechanics, the physical interaction of bodies, to be the greatest importance; and the moderns who have rejected substantial forms and occult qualities. Instead of reducing nature to mathematical laws, Newton understands his work to be synthetic, combining the mechanics of the ancients and the mathematics of moderns to answer what he believes is “the basic problem of philosophy,” which is discovering “the forces of nature from the phenomena of 1

Newton, here, is most likely alluding to ancient atomists in particular

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motions and to demonstrate the other propositions from these forces” (225). These fundamental2 forces are phenomenon such as “gravity, levity, elastic forces, [and] resistance of fluids” (225). Newton does not propose to solve the problem of philosophy by revealing the cause of the coherence, attraction, and repulsion of “the particles of bodies,” but only to describe these forces in the hope he might “shed some light on either this mode of philosophizing or some truer one” (225).

His preface makes it clear that Newton considered the problems concerning natural philosophy to be the problems concerning motion.3 This is an interesting claim because of what it excludes from the philosophic tradition: ontology and epistemology, which is to say, metaphysics. Newton makes no claim to an explanation of what is or how we come to know it.

Newton’s withdrawal from metaphysics did not go unnoticed and in the eighteenth century, Newton and his “experimental philosophy” were lauded by some and criticized by others. In Colin Maclaurin’s “From An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries”, a popularization of Newton published in 1748, the mathematician wrote that Newton would “admit no objection against plain experience from metaphysical considerations, which he saw, had often misled philosophers” (123). Maclaurin remarks that “speculative men, by the force of genius, may invent systems that will perhaps be greatly admired for a time: these, however, are phantoms ... while we are pleas’d with the deceit, true philosophy, with all the arts and improvements that depend upon it, suffers” (122).

Newton’s disposition towards experience with no regard for metaphysical assumptions has been called “phenomenalism,” and is perhaps the defining characteristic of Newton’s “experimental philosophy” (123).

In his correspondence with Clarke, the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz argued against the very possibility of Newton’s “experimental” philosophy. He claimed one cannot have a natural philosophy without a metaphysics. Leibniz was uniquely qualified to critique the Principia, as his mathematical knowledge was second only to Newton himself. But for Leibniz, Newton’s exclusion of metaphysical and natural theological questions from his philosophy at the outset brings the work perilously close to materialism — Newton and the atomists differ only in the amount of matter they attribute to the universe (Leibniz Second Paper). Leibniz’s criticism is that one cannot establish causality, let alone true causes, without making metaphysical assertions about the capability of reason. Mathematics alone does not suffice, as he says “in order to proceed from Mathematiks to Natural Philosophy, another Principle is requisite ... the Principle of sufficient Reason” (Second Paper). Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of 2

Perhaps “principle forces.”

It is interesting to consider this division in terms of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics — although it is not essential. Newton himself probably thought the philosophical project had gone array long before Aristotle.

3

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Natural Philosophy” is groundless from the outset. There can be no mathematical principles of philosophy, only rational principles.4And crucially, the principle of sufficient reason, once granted, allows one to advance from phenomenon. By this “Principle ... that there ought to be a sufficient Reason why Things should be so, and not otherwise, one may demonstrate the Being of a God and all the other part of Metaphysics or Natural Theology” (Second Paper). Leibniz saw the rational principle as integral to the work of all past philosophers — “Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle” — but argues that he was the first to establish it demonstratively in his Theodicy (Second Paper). By rejecting reason’s access to truth, “experimental” natural philosophy excludes the essential quality of philosophy from the outset.

But it is the same principle of sufficient reason which makes the content of Newton’s philosophy untenable for Leibniz: Newton’s gravity requires a cause, and this is either the “supernatural” intervention of God, which is simply “reducing a hypotheses ad absurdum: for every thing may be easily accounted for by Miracles;” or gravity must be explained “naturally,” by God in the world — which is, if not mechanistic, pantheistic and akin to Spinoza; a position equally untenable.

In short, Leibniz argues that reason alone, which includes mathematical reasoning, allowed one to access true causes. Newton’s refusal to acknowledge the principle of sufficient reason and correlatively, his belief that he need not explain the “occult” force gravity was a refusal to engage in true natural philosophy. However, Newton’s aversion to metaphysical hypotheses does not absolve him from the metaphysical consequences of his philosophy once subjected to the principle of sufficient reason.

Newton, aware of Leibniz’s criticisms, wrote a text written under a pseudonym and published in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society.

Here Newton argues: “The Philosophy [of the Principia and Optiques] is Experimental; and it is not the business of experimental philosophy to teach the causes of things any further than they can be proved by experiments. We are not to fill this philosophy with opinions which cannot be proved by phaenomena” (Commercium Epistolicum 161). He argues that they “differ very much in philosophy” — while he “proceeds upon the evidence arising from experiments and phaenomena, and stops where such evidence is wanting.” Leibniz “is taken up with hypotheses and propounds them, not to be examined by experiments, but to be believed without experimentation” (163). At stake is the role of reason alone in the investigation of difficult things. While Leibniz believes reason alone can access causes, Newton argues that only experience and experimentation can give certain knowledge of causes. Newton is not uninterested in metaphysical questions.

4

“... According to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (for mathematical Principles determined nothing in the present case) ...” — Mr. Leibniz’s Second Paper. Leibniz’s criticism here may well serve as a distinction between ‘natural philosophic’ and ‘scientific’ thought.

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Rather, he is intentionally withholding such premature claims from his philosophy in the name of certainty. This is not to say that Newton’s public works does not presuppose a God, or advance from metaphysical assumptions — far from it. There is little justification to be found for Newton’s apparent atomism.5 In Query 28 of the Opticks, Newton remarks that the phenomenon of the world seem to require a first cause, a “Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent.” For Newton, every “true step made in this philosophy” brings us not “immediately,” but “closer” towards this cause (“Queries 28 and 29” 189). In the General Scholium of the Principia, Newton remarks that the “most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being” (General Scholium). However, God is not given a causal role in Newton’s experimental philosophy, nor is his existence required to describe the phenomenon themselves. Although he hints that divine power, referred to as “Spirit,” might be responsible for gravity at in the General Scholium, he refuses to make the obvious connection. Instead, he says that “hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses ... and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical ... have no place in experimental philosophy” (General Scholium). For Newton, the search for truth is not made possible by the principle of sufficient reason, but rather is compromised by it.

In his Prolegomena, Immanuel Kant remarked “that the spirit of man will ever wholly give up metaphysical investigations is just as little to be expected, as that in order not always to be breathing bad air we should stop breathing altogether” (Kant 105). Indeed, although Newton attempts to withhold from making metaphysical claims, keeping “bad air” from his published works, he cannot avoid making metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature of substance in his scientific texts — he grants atomism a self-evidence that is probably unwarranted. But Newton’s private works nicely affirm Kant’s aphorism: Newton was, in fact, profoundly concerned with metaphysical and theological questions. It would be a grave error to interpret Newton’s aversion to “hypotheses” in his published works as a sign that Newton himself was a skeptic, as Newton’s private texts evidence anything but. Much of his theological writing is concerned with prophecy — it is hard to conceive of a less experimental discipline.6 In private, Newton was entirely prepared to “hypotheses”, which he disparages quite intensely in his published works. Those who wish to portray Newton as the hyper-rational, purely experimental, skeptical proto-scientist par excellence must reconcile themselves with millions of words of occult alchemy and theology. On the other 5 6

Technically “corpuscularianism.” A view which Leibniz himself rejected.

Although there are notable parallels between his prophecy and his rules for philosophy.

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hand, those who wish to portray Newton as a natural philosopher in the classical mode, or a mystic must acknowledge the distinction between public and private life. Newton only chose to publish works that were free of hypotheses not found in phenomena.

It would be mistake to approach Newton’s private works with the intention of excavating “the real Isaac Newton”. Attempting to re-state his works in the light of a newly revealed unitary rationality or imposing a metaphysics linking Newton’s private and public self is not only impossible but also misleading.

Leibniz would argue that the metaphysics necessary to undertake natural philosophy makes it inseparable from natural theology, and ultimately, ethics — that philosophy is by definition, and from the outset, holistic. However, this assumption is unnecessary if, perhaps, not untrue. 7 Newton was certainly concerned with metaphysics and it is Newton’s relative silence on such hypotheses in his natural philosophy that is remarkable.8 The comforting implication of the division between Newton’s private, occult self and Newton’s public, phenomenological work is that the rigorous investigation of the natural world is not predicated by a particular mode of being towards the world, rather, it is a form of practice. Scientific activity need not be accompanied by philosophical skepticism, nor is it compromised by metaphysics. If later scientific work rightly abstains from metaphysical hypotheses in the search for truth, then Newton, one of the great scientific thinkers, suggests that the truly disciplined scientist himself need not.

7

Which is to suggest that Leibniz’s criticism of ‘experimental philosophy’ may accurately distinguish ‘natural philosophy’ from what will become science.

8 Whether metaphysical assumptions can ever be absolutely silent in a text (which is to say, absent) is another question.

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Works Cited Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Trans. Paul Carus.

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977.

Maclaurin, Colin. “From An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries.” In Newton. Eds. I. B. Cohen and R. Westfall. New York: Norton & Company, 1995. pp. 122-126.

Newton, Isaac. “Queries 28 and 29.” In Newton. Eds. I. B. Cohen and R. Westfall.

New York: Norton & Company, 1995. pp. 184-191.

---------- “From ‘An Account of the Book entitled Commercium Epistolicum.’” In Newton. Eds. I. B. Cohen and R. Westfall. New York: Norton & Company, 1995. pp. 161-164.

---------- “Newton’s ‘Author’s Preface to the Reader’ of the Principia.” In Newton.

Eds. I. B. Cohen and R. Westfall. New York: Norton & Company, 1995. pp.

224-226.

Course Handouts for HSTC 3000.

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Faust is Saved Because God is Dead Dante Maderal There are numerous differences between Marlowe’s Elizabethan play Dr. Faustus and Goethe’s considerably later Faust, a Romantic-era interpretation of the same legend. Though there are several important differences between the legend of Faustus, recorded first by Marlowe and then by Goethe, perhaps the most distinct are the ways in which the respective authors choose to end their works.

Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is gripped by doubt and seems always on the verge of repenting right up until the final scene in which, though he wishes to, he is prevented from raising his voice to beg for forgiveness from the hands of invisible devils; “Oh, he stays me toungue!” the doctor cries, “I would lift up my hands, but see, they hold them, they hold them!” (Marlowe 54). Therefore Dr. Faustus is damned, dragged to hell in the company of devils, unable to repent at the very last.

Goethe’s Faust, on the other hand, suffers only from mild bouts of regret and is always moving forward. Faust’s manner of living is “[w]hat slipped my grasp, I let it go again” (Goethe 11436). As Faust approaches the end of his life, it is not regret he feels but pride, even joy. He expects his earthly works to last and to remain as a testament to his life, “And in anticipation of such bliss/ What moment could give me greater joy than this?” (11585-6). Yet Faust is not damned, as Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is, though he has certainly earned damnation. Faust is saved because, though not literally, ostensibly, God is dead.

Faust’s salvation is a two-step process, the first of which is embodied in Mephistopheles and his negation of the world. This, of course, can be explained with a number of examples from Goethe’s text, but before we examine these, let us look at some other Mephistophelean characters from a different author.

Dostoevsky writes his novel The Brothers Karamazov in the second half of the nineteenth century, a mere fifty or so years after the death of Goethe. In this novel, the concept of negation as a necessary step toward salvation is further explained. In fact, Ivan Karamazov is visited (or hallucinates a visit) by Satan himself, who claims to “have been designated to be the Negator,” despite the fact that he is “really very poorly fitted for ‘negation’” (Dostoevsky 860). In Faust Mephistopheles responds to the Chorus’ exclamation that “All’s over now” (Goethe 11594) with a simple explanation of his purpose: “Over! A stupid word!/ Why ‘over’? What can be/ ‘Over’ is just not there; it’s all the same to me!”

(11595-7). This concept of negation is not alien to Faust, though unlike Mephistopheles, it is not the “Eternal Void” (11603) that Faust seeks. Faust’s intolerance towards anything that he did not create is a kind of Mephistophelean negation, as seen in the eagerness with which Faust’s diabolical servant acomplishes any task that will result in destruction, such as the removal of Baucis

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and Philemon. Although Faust’s desire for their removal is clear when he says “those few trees not my own/ Spoil the whole world that is my throne” (11241-2), the manner in which it is done leaves Faust frustrated. The difference between Mephistopheles’ method and Faust’s aim reveals the distinction between the diabolical negation for the sake of void and the human negation for the sake of creation. Faust cries “I said exchange, not robbery!” (11371) when he learns that Mephistopheles killed Baucis and Philemon, as well as a stranger who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Faust’s goal was to continue his creation by moving the elderly couple to a place within the new land he has made.

Mephistopheles is incapable of understanding the creative aspect of this drive and sees only the destruction involved in negating the old world. At Faust’s death Mephistopheles remarks “Poor fool! Unpleasured and unsatisfied,/ Still whoring after changeful fantasies” (11587-8). Smerdyakov, the twisted bastard of The Brothers Karamazov, takes up Ivan’s phrase “everything is permitted” in a similar fashion (Dostoevsky 837). Just as Mephistopheles can negate only for the sake of further negation, Smerdyakov murders Fyodor Karamazov only for the sake of negation. He steals a large sum of money in the process, not to use, but to hide the fact that he committed the murder, and to shift blame to the more likely suspect, Dimitry. Such a negative existence is intolerable to the human condition and Smerdyakov, in conformity with this, commits the ultimate act of negation by hanging himself (873). The argument of everything being permitted, however, is not meant as a negative argument but as a creative argument, as Ivan’s devil repeats back to a very sick Ivan Karamazov (871). Faust’s relation to negation is such that he is negating what is no longer useful to him in order that he may create the world in his own image. This creative drive is ultimately what results in his salvation and Mephistopheles, try as he might, is unable to stifle the drive that pushes Faust toward salvation.

Strangely, it is Nietzsche’s famous line “God is dead!” (Nietzsche 11) which spells salvation for Goethe’s Faust. The character of Faust can be explained as having undergone the second transformation of the soul Nietzsche describes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Having been a camel and achieving the highest possibilities as a “weight-bearing spirit” (23) Faust has accomplished all the learning there is for him on earth exclaiming, “Well, that’s Philosophy I’ve read,/ And Law and Medicine, and I fear/ Theology too, from A to Z” (Goethe 354-6).

Goethe introduces to the audience a man ready to reject the present world. Faust is as the lion, ready to “wrestle for victory with the great dragon” (Nietzsche 23). The golden-scaled dragon, “Thou shalt”, no longer has any power over Faust who for the vast majority of the play embodies the idea of the lion, “I will”. Faust has climbed “high mountains in order to tempt the tempter” and indeed this is precisely what drives the action of the play (23). Faust’s ambition is the mountain which

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supplies such a great temptation to Goethe’s “tempter”, Mephistopheles. Faust’s salvation lies in that he is actively creating his own world, rather than receiving a predetermined reality from above, and simultaneously this active creation, this ambition, is his most vulnerable point and it is this drive which Mephistopheles must stifle if he is to damn Faust. The initial wager made between the two of them over Faust’s soul, is how Mephistopheles attempts to take advantage of Faust’s constant striving for the infinite. It is the unity of the finite and the infinite which Faust seeks and it is this unity, which Faust knows he cannot achieve, that leads him to be so sure that he will never lose his wager. He bets “If ever to the moment I shall say/ Beautiful moment, do not pass away!” then he will lay down his life and Mephistopheles will have won (Goethe 1699-1700). Yet, this is the very language Faust uses as he dies, and rather than Mephistopheles claiming his soul, a choir of angels raises it to heaven. Literally, Faust loses his bet. He says quite clearly just before his death “Beautiful moment do not pass away!” (11582).

Mephistopheles may feel cheated but the context of the beautiful moment Faust seeks to hold on to is of immense importance. In a way the language of a “moment” is entirely inappropriate here. Faust, rather then negating the infinite by begging a finite moment not to pass, is affirming the infinite in his present time, by begging the ongoing process of striving to continue. The “beautiful moment” is not a moment in time but a moment outside of time, an infinite and ongoing process.

“Only that man earns freedom, merits life,/ Who must reconquer both in constant daily strife” (11575-6). At the very last moment Faust undergoes the third transformation. As a lion, merely willing against the order of things, Faust was just as involved in the process of negation as Mephitopheles and would have been damned. Nietzsche argues that “To create freedom for oneself and a sacred Nay even to duty: for that my brothers, the lion is needed,” proving that the affirmation of creation must take place after the negation of the pre-established order if Faust is to be saved (Nietzsche 24). That affirmation requires the third transformation of the soul, from a lion to a child; “Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed” (24).

Faust is saved because God is dead. There is a contradiction in this phrase that I think sums up the character of the play perfectly and which is further exemplified by the salvation and damnation of Gretchen (dealt with only passingly here). In the prison cell when Gretchen rejects negation entirely, she is simultaneously condemned by Mephistopheles and redeemed by a voice from above that can only be assumed to be divine (Goethe 4610). Yet her rejection of Mephistopheles has in it a curious contradiction as well. In rejecting the idea of negation she is, in a way, practicing negation herself. Gretchen though, rejects only Mephistopheles, not Faust, and so her negation is not of negation in general but of negation for the sake of negation. The contradiction lies in the fact that Gretchen is

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both redeemed and condemned. Mephistopheles condemns her from the point of view of the world and of the passing finite laws of humanity, while the voice redeems her from the point of view of infinite affirmation. Both are true and the striving of Faust comes from the attempt to reconcile these apparently contradictory positions. The phrase “Faust is saved because God is dead” seems just as contradictory. Yet, in reality, it is just as true as Gretchen’s dual salvation and damnation. Gretchen is redeemed by her self, and condemned by her received world. The self can will its own salvation only if the ideas of salvation and damnation are no longer received from the divine but created by the will. Faust’s salvation is self-willed not divinely determined.

As Nietzsche’s third transformation of the soul, the child, “wills its own will, the one who had lost the world attains its own world” (Nietzsche 24), so is Goethe’s Faust a soul that has created its own salvation. By joing Mephistopheles in negation Faust was freed of the received morality of the world and able to create for himself existence in his image. His salvation lies in the freedom acquired through negation and the creation of his own world acquired through the affirmation of the infinite. And so by eternally striving and blessing the “moment” that is no moment but recognition of infinite process, Faust rejects the words of the Lord “Man is too apt to sink into mere satisfaction” (Goethe 340).

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Works Cited Dostevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew.

Bantam Books, New York. 2003 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust Part One. Trans. David Luke. Oxford University Press, New York. 1998 ----------. Faust Part Two. Trans. David Luke. Oxford University Press, New York.

2008 Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. Dover Publications, Inc. New York. 1994 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Graham Parkes Oxford University Press, New York. 2008

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Dialetheism in Erasmus Theo Holland Erasmus's Complaint of Peace is a literary plea to the Christian world for peace, by a personification of Peace herself. The structure of the piece is such that, based on the dialetheism inherent in Judeo-Christianity, the propensities of human beings are discussed from the natural state, through various institutions, to the ruling class. Erasmus presents us with a series of paradoxes that this paper will attempt to deconstruct – to whatever extent possible. The paradox of human beings' natural propensity both toward and away from peace is the first example discussed.

Later, Erasmus moves on to various institutions and how they are simultaneously geared towards peace and fundamentally opposed to it. This leads to suggestions of free will and what it means to be a Christian. The paradoxical nature of free-will and determinism solidifies the kind of dialetheism that is littered throughout the piece. This seems to stem from, amongst other things, the paraconsistent logic in the unity of the Old and New Testaments. Thus the political and social positions offered are a sort of paradox – Erasmus, writing in the name of Peace, attempts to consolidate self-defense and non-violence. Moreover, he goes so far as to raise questions of human fraternity regardless of religious differences. Furthermore, his ultimate concern regards the survival of the Christian faith. How can a religion of fundamental non-violence survive if it must resort to violence to defend itself and its tenets? How can one accept, as a fundamental religious tenet, “peace on earth, and good-will towards men,” (Erasmus 10, his emphasis) if one is faced with war from non-Christian powers? Finally, how can one maintain that one is Christian and then engage in war – the very antithesis of Christianity?

Erasmus's first use of dialetheia – equally true but contradictory observations – is man in relation to nature. Using examples of animals, he shows that the natural order promotes peace amongst species: “Lions show no fierceness to the lion race.

The boar does not brandish his deadly tooth against his brother boar. The lynx lives in peace with the lynx. The serpent shews no venom in his intercourse with his fellow serpent; and the loving kindness of wolf to wolf is proverbial” (Erasmus 7).

Furthermore, he shows that such co-peaceful existence is not sufficient for humans who necessarily depend on each other to a greater degree – he writes, “[w]ith difficulty could man be born into the world, or as soon as born would he die, leaving life at the very threshold of existence, unless the friendly hand of the careful matron, and the affectionate assiduities of the nurse, lent their aid to the helpless babe” (9). Thus, he establishes man's natural propensity towards, and necessity of, peaceful and helpful co-habitation. He then discusses humanity’s natural superiority to animals in the forms of community, intelligence, reason, benevolence, and charity (7-10). Erasmus sees this as a cosmic magnet for peace,

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and observes that the Christian man is even more well-suited to peace than the non-Christian (10); this praise, however, does not last long.

If man – Christian man – is so suited to peace, then why do we experience war? He suggests a number of things, from desensitization to custom (9); however, this raises a poignant question: if mans’ sociability, reason, frailty, and pull toward community are natural, and precisely that which makes man most inclined toward, and suited for, peace, how can these be the very forces that naturally result in the violent tendencies of men? It seems here that Erasmus is positing that human beings are both naturally inclined towards, and endowed with the capacity for peace to a larger extent than any other living being; conversely, they are, through the various institutions that arise from their sociability and natural inclinations, prone to the most despicable and horrific evil – war. There is no clear point at which Erasmus does, or arguably can, distinguish between the natural roots (peaceful) and the current state (warlike). This makes man both naturally peaceful and naturally warlike. It is important to note that Christianity cannot be seen as the lacking element in contemporary warlike man. This distinction will be discussed later, in reference to the Greeks and the Romans. This is not the last time Erasmus will suggest dialetheia, or paraconsistent logic, in this piece.

He starts the narrative by broadly surveying humanity. The character of Peace searches for a place to dwell, but finds that the “common people ... are tossed about, like the waves, by the winds of passion” (10). If groups of humans are not the place for Peace, than perhaps the individual is. Each man, however, “is at war with himself” (Erasmus 12). People are not at peace within themselves due to the raging passions naturally competing for attention. As a result, Peace explores other potential individuals, in various positions, and what better individuals to start with than those that have embraced their reason – one of the natural roots of peace?

Amongst the universities and between scholars Peace “find[s] war of another kind, less bloody indeed, but not less furious” which results in “stab[bing] one another with pens dipt in the venom of malice” (11). Again, we see Erasmus reaffirming this dual natural propensity for and against peace.

Hoping that places of worship may hold suitable candidates, Peace moves on “to the houses of religion? Religion! that anchor in the storm of life? The profession of religion is indeed common to all christians; but they who come recommended to us under the appellation of priests, profess it in a more peculiar manner, by the name they bear, the service they perform, and the ceremonies they observe” (11). However, from the Pope, to members of the Reformation, to different sects of monks, Peace is unable to find anyone not engaged in controversy or violence (11-12). All members of all the religious orders “have gradually adopted the manners of the world, even in the retreat of the church and the cloister” (11). Thus the people who are in the best position to promote Christ's

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message of “peace on earth, and good-will towards men” (10) fail to do so, when, by their nature and their station, they should be compelled to.

In the palaces of kings and princes Peace finds numerous displays of cordiality, respect and deference, but ultimately determines that the leadership “is corrupted by open faction, or by secret grudges and animosities ... and [the] sources of all the wars that ever cursed mankind, and desolated the universe” (10).

Here one may find a potential argument for the catalyst that turned human beings from peaceful to warlike; however, that argument would rely on a proof that kings and princes predate violence, which is absurd. Thus the people in the positions of the greatest social responsibility and honour, with the power to make decisions regarding peace, and ability to lead by example, fail as well, when, by their nature and their station, they should not fail.

Erasmus then goes on at great length to discuss the absurdity of war and corruption, reaffirming the hypocrisy of Christians killing Christians. But more importantly, he comes full circle. Appealing to the general message of Christ, he seems to turn his attention, once again, to the common people. While discussing the virulent and abhorrent behaviour of war-like kings, he writes, “[y]et, wretches, brutes, and fools as they are, they are called christians, and have the impudence to go with a face of piety to church, and dare even to kneel at the altar. Pests of mankind, worthy to be transported out of civil society, and carried with convicts to the remotest islands, in exile for life” (20). Here we see that perhaps Peace is to find a home in the common man after all. If kings are the “sources of all the wars that ever cursed mankind, and desolated the universe” (Erasmus 10), then they deserve to be removed. This is the first piece of real political and social advice offered in The Complaint of Peace. It seems to suggest that there is a place for “active Christianity,” and that in order to be a true and good Christian, free from hypocrisy, one must act.

This brings us to the question of free will and the root of Erasmus's dialetheism. Comparable to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Erasmus suggest the reality of free will when he discusses Jesus at the last supper, saying “‘That they may be one, as we are,’ who are one and the same in a most perfect, yet unspeakable and inexplicable manner. He [Jesus] indicates at the same time, that mortals can obtain salvation, or immortality, by no other means than the preservation of peace among themselves, during the whole of this transitory life” (Erasmus 15, emphasis added). Further on, he writes that “in life and action...you may freely choose your conduct” (18). Here we see that Erasmus believes in both free will and the active participation in one’s own salvation. However, at no point does he deny the omnipotence and omniscience of God; therefore, his belief in free will is also paraconsistent. God both knows and ultimately controls the outcome of Judgment day (in the form of determinism and predestination), but human beings

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also play an active role in obtaining that salvation (free will). Now the suggestion is that fundamentally Erasmus believes that two contradictory statements can be simultaneously true, as proven in his reference to the trinity.

Furthermore, his dialetheism extends to his position on the Old and New Testaments. When attempting to provide a defense against the violent behaviour of God in the Old Testament, he writes, “[t]here is a great difference between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, notwithstanding God, in his own essence, is one and the same” (Erasmus 13). This statement is a clear affirmation of his belief in dialetheia – God is immutable and unchanging (in his essence) but has been different in nature at two different times. We see emerging now a consistency to this piece. While difficult to decipher, the paraconsistent logic employed by Erasmus throughout this exposition can be seen as consistent with his deep rooted beliefs in the nature of free will, of the trinity, and of the relationship between the depictions of God in the Old and New Testament.

Having firmly established Erasmus's view on dialetheism, let us move on to the practical political and social views offered by Erasmus in The Complaint of Peace. We have seen that Erasmus finds war to be hypocritical of a good and true Christian. In fact, as war is tantamount to anti-Christianity, he writes, “How can you say our Father, addressing the universal parent, while you are thrusting the sharp steel into the bowels of your brother? for such you confess him to be by this very prayer, ‘Our Father’” (15). Furthermore, as a Christian one should live in emulation of Christ who died on the cross – “[t]hat cross is the standard of him who conquered, not by fighting, but by dying; who came, not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (23). We see that this anti-Christianity is even more pervasive in alleged Christians than in non-Christians. Referencing the conquering of Greece, and presumably other nations, by the Romans, he claims that heathens were actually less virulent and wicked in their wars. He writes: As to the heathen despots, it is true, the thirst of glory goaded them to battle; but yet even they conquered fierce and barbarous nations to civilize them; insomuch, that it was often an advantage to be conquered, the conquerors endeavouring to render every service in their power to the people whom they had subdued. They took pains to render their victories as little bloody as possible, that the conqueror might be rewarded with a more honourable renown, and that the clemency of the victor might afford consolation to the vanquished. But I blush to record, upon how infamously frivolous causes the world has been rouzed to arms by christian kings. One of them has found, or forged, an obsolete musty parchment, on which he makes a claim to a neighbouring territory. As if it signified a straw to mankind, thus called upon to shed blood, who is the person, or what the

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family of the ruling prince, whoever he be, provided he governs in such a manner as to consult and promote public felicity. (19-20) This further solidifies his position that a deep and drastic shift is necessary in the way Christians operate, both socially and politically. The number one goal in war, if a just war is possible, is to ensure lasting peace and prosperity. He discusses a shift in view that must be made in regard to what it means to be a Christian and a member of the Christian Church: What is meant by denominating the whole body of christian people, the church, but that it should admonish them that they are united, and ought therefore to be unanimous? Now, what possible agreement can there be between camps and a church? A church implies union and association; camps, disunion and discord. If you say you belong to the church, what can you have to do with the operations of war? If you say you do not belong to the church what have you to do with Christ? (18) Here we see a suggestion for a unification of Christianity under a common banner of peace in the belief in Jesus Christ. But, in light of the two passages immediately above, we are faced with the question of a “just war”, which is a pressing concern in light of Erasmus's strict call for pacifism and non-violence. He admonishes unjust war when he writes: “Now then, warrior, halt and consider ... what will be the effect of wars of ambition, wars of revenge, and wars of furious anger?”

(Erasmus 14).

However, he does suggest later on that he does “think very differently of wars, bona fide, just and necessary, such as are, in a strict sense of those words, purely defensive, such as with an honest and affectionate zeal for the country, repel the violence of invaders, and, at the hazard of life, preserve the public tranquillity'” (30). This seems to support his finding the conquering of barbarians by the Romans to be significantly less reprehensible than war amongst Christians. But does this give any right to wage war against the Muslims and the Ottoman Empire?

He suggests that perhaps war is so instinctual and such a large part of human nature that it may be that “exertions against the common enemy of christianity, the unbelieving Turk” could be helpful in eradicating at least Christian on Christian warfare, “[y]et...is not the Turk a man—a brother? Then it were far better to allure him by gentle, kind, and friendly treatment, by exhibiting the beauty of our christian religion in the innocence of our lives, than by attacking him with the drawn sword, as if he were a savage brute, without a heart to feel, or a reasoning faculty to be persuaded” (30-31). Here we see Erasmus's

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views on the necessary changes come to fruition. Violence is only ever permissible in a purely defensive war.

This suggestion, however, is undermined when, to the opposite effect, he writes, “suppose the cause the justest in the world, the event the most prosperous, yet take into the account all the damages of war, of every kind and degree, and weigh them in the balance with all the advantages of victory, and you will find the most brilliant success not worth the trouble” (35). This seems to suggest that even in a war of self defense, the cost is not worth the result. So what of invasion?

Should a country defend itself at the threat of invasion? He writes, “[i]f the preservation of peace is attended with the necessity of submitting to some circumstances rather disadvantageous, and perhaps unjust, do not say to yourself, that you incur such a loss by resolving on peace instead of war, but that you purchase the inestimable benefit of peace at such a price” (36). Is a defensive war permissible then? It seems that a combination of the above citation with his reference to the heathen wars of old leaves Erasmus in favour of allowing invasion through non-violent acquiescence, and that Christianity demands this even if one nation allows itself to become subjected to another. He seems then to be completely and totally committed to non-violence. But it is not merely an ultimatum; he offers very real and practical steps to dissuade war.

He suggests that “the clergy agree to refuse burial in consecrated ground to all who are slain in battle” (30) and that “[i]f, after all their efforts, the clergy cannot prevent the breaking out of war, let them never give it the slightest approbation, directly or indirectly, let them never give countenance to it by their presence at its silly parade or bloody proceedings” (29). Additionally, in regard to the Roman Catholic Church, he makes an observation with an implicit suggestion: “The pontiff summons to war. He is obeyed. He summons to peace; why is he not obeyed as readily?” (26). Clearly, this suggests that any call to peace should be readily obeyed. He goes on to warn about rulership, writing that “while each king obeys the impulse of his passions, the commonwealth, the community, suffers; and at the same time, the poor slave to his passions is frustrated in his private and selfish purposes” (26) and suggests that a king may “exercise his power as far as he pleases, within those bounds which he will always see clearly, when he remembers that he is a man governing men, a free man at the head of free men, a christian presiding over a nation of christians (27). The implication of which is that the “best method of enriching and improving his realm, is not by taking from the territory of others, but by meliorating the condition of his own” (28). In regard to the factional “war” of the different sects of Christianity he writes, “[p]reachers of all denominations! to you I appeal. Preach the gospel of peace. Let the doctrines of peace and good-will for ever resound in the ears of the people” (40). This suggestion seems to be a call for change amidst the Catholics and Protestants alike

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– a call to a new order of Christianity that is first and foremost about peaceful cohabitation and the preservation thereof.

While all of these practical suggestions seem to be good ones, especially in light of his dialetheism, we see a conundrum emerge. If Christians are to lead by example, adhere to strict non-violence, and – even when threatened by invasion – recognize that war is never worth the cost, how is the Christian faith supposed to survive? He paints a beautiful picture of the non-violent Christian realm as a sort of super country – the power of peace and faith in Christ transcends national and cultural boundaries to create one church and one family in Christ: “peace, by opening an universal intercourse among mankind, renders, in some measure, all the neighbouring dynasties one common country” (35). And while this is ideal and highly appealing, there is still the threat of outside, non-Christian forces.

If we return to his suggestion that war in self-defense is permissible, and accept it as valid for a moment, what are the consequences? Erasmus questions What must we suppose a nation of atheists, (if any such there be) or of unbelievers in Christ, think and say? what reproaches must they vomit out against Christ, when they see his professed followers cutting one another in pieces, from more trifling causes than the heathens; with greater cruelty than atheists, and with more destructive instruments of mutual murder than pagans could ever find in their hearts to use, or in their understanding to contrive. (38) This seems to reflect back to several points: no war is ever worth the cost, encouragement to lead by example, and the absolute dictate of “peace on earth, and good-will towards men” (10). It seems that even in light of an outside threat, there is dubious support for going to war and even that is quickly rejected upon seeing Erasmus, in the voice of Jesus, writing “love one another, and that not in the common way, but, as I have loved you. The precepts of philosophers are innumerable, the laws of Moses are various, as well as the edicts of princes; but one commandment, says he, I give you, and it is, love one another” (Erasmus 15).

Once again we are left with dialetheia. Christianity seemingly can not survive being warlike. War is the antithesis of Christianity and goes against Christ’s and the Apostles’ way of leading by example. However, if under the threat of non-Christian invasion, the result seems to be subjugation, which is also detrimental to the survival of the Christian faith. While it seems that Erasmus does not want Christians to go to war, he also does not want to see Christianity subjugated to non-Christians. This is the first point at which we see an inconsistency in The Complaint of Peace. Having held steadfast to paraconsistent logic stemming from the relationship of the Old and New Testaments, the mystery

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of the trinity, and the two impulses of humanity, Erasmus now seems stuck in a place in which he must decide which of the two is right. He has added a caveat for war in defense, but that is deeply inconsistent with his view on the highest good being the emulation of Christ, and the salvation of our souls being inexorably dependent upon preserving peace. He suggests that war is never worth the cost, but the cost of the potential subjugation of the Christian faith to Muslims is clearly unacceptable to him as well. If we allow for the “just war” caveat, we must then look back and see where else caveats could and should be placed. If we allow caveats we are left with no discernible basis for choosing emulation of Christ over other figures in the Old or New Testaments (the vengeful, violent, and jealous Old Testament God), for they could be added to the Christian doctrine via caveat. Or a caveat to permit inappropriate human behaviour, such as allowing a little greed for the common man and perhaps a little squabbling acceptable in the academic world.

Perhaps a little selfishness allowable to Kings – in fact, why not let them emulate the warlike kings of the Old Testament, fighting and killing for the glory of God? We see that the entire system depends on a consistent dialetheism undiluted by caveats and exceptions. The very beauty of Erasmus's The Complaint of Peace is that it holds a kind of mysterious logic to it, a paraconsistent logic. However, the end result is that, while it does give very real and practical suggestions for changes in the social and political order, the reader is left with much larger questions remaining unanswered. Searching for those answers, while academically rewarding, yields less useful practical results.

Thus, Peace was looking for a place to dwell; the masses were too swayed by their passions, the academics by their arrogance and vehemence, the clergy by their corruption, and the kings by their selfishness. While each group is deplorable, even the individual is at war with himself. These conflicts arise from the very nature which makes men so greatly suited to peace; thus, man is both greatly suited to, and the enemy of, peace. This seemingly contradictory statement was derived from a paraconsistent understanding of the mystery of the trinity, the relation of the Old and New Testaments, and the nature of free will. While in Christ we find a role model to follow in order to overcome our violence, we are left with no defense and must either suffer like martyrs and allow invasion or fight and become antiChristian – both of which are unacceptable and untenable for the survival of Christianity. In conclusion, we see that Erasmus offers many good and practical solutions to dissuade war, and suggestions for how the individual, the clergy, and the kings should live, teach and rule respectively. The Complaint of Peace can be said to contain a great deal of good advice. Furthermore, its literary style and use of dialetheism make it academically valuable, interesting, and worthy of deep consideration; however, ultimately this characteristic, which makes it so appealing, undermines its ability to be taken entirely as a valid doctrine for social and political

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change. Conversely, due to its literary nature and paraconsistent logic, it seems that it may not be fair to take it as a doctrine at all; rather, it should be taken as an elucidation of the fundamental inconsistencies in Christian action and the tenets of Christianity.

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Work Cited Erasmus, Desiderius. "The Complaint of Peace." Online Liberty Fund. Trans.

Thomas Paynell. Web 22 Oct. 2011. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/>. (Chicago: Open Court, 1917).

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Everything in Moderation Shannon Higgins Jonathan Swift employs a twofold satirical structure in A Tale of a Tub, simultaneously critiquing learning and religion. The two satires do eventually come together in Swift’s digression on madness, and the unity of the two satires emphasizes Swift’s conservatism, moderation and scepticism of modernity. The allegory of the three brothers is meant to represent the Reformation, with Peter representing the Catholic Church, Martin representing Martin Luther, and Jack representing John Calvin. Peter is depicted as tyrannical and oppressive, and Martin and Jack rebel against him. Jack is a radical, eventually driving himself mad with his extremist views, whereas Martin is moderate and conservative, redirecting himself back to the original and ancient wisdom of his father.

Lutheranism, and by extension, Anglicanism, is depicted as the proper reformation stance, as opposed to the more radical Calvinism, and by extension, Puritanism.

Swift is expressing his own moderation and reservations about the moderns, with respect to religion, and implicitly, politics. While mirroring the Reformation, the allegory of the brothers also alludes to Swift’s mild political stance, wishing to return to more conservative values, while avoiding radical rebellion, compatible with Lutheran views on Church and State, and problematizing Calvinist views.

Phillip Harth writes that John Sharp, Archbishop of York, gave a sermon that may have been an inspiration for Swift’s allegory. However, there are certain differences. Sharp wrote about an estate, given by a father to his sons and a legal document dictating the rights regarding it. Swift, on the other hand, wrote about coats and a will instructing how to wear and manage these coats. Sharp’s primary concern is who had rights to Papal authority and who is bound to obey it. Swift’s concern is “the proper standard of Christian belief and practice and the correct method of interpreting this standard” (Harth 19). This distinction between Sharp and Swift is important to make because while this text may have political implications for Swift, it is not strictly political. Swift’s priority is to write a Christian commentary and cast doubt on the assumption that modern progress is necessarily beneficial. Any political conclusions drawn from A Tale of a Tub, including those regarding the relation between Church and State, must be done by inference on Swift’s behalf, based on the religious allegory.

The allegory of the three brothers begins with the father giving each of his sons a coat and his will regarding the coat. This represents the garments of the Israelites and the New Testament (Swift 34). He instructs them to live together in perfect harmony and equality, and they do so for seven years, until they meet three women. These women represent covetousness, ambition, and pride, and the decline of the brothers begins there (35). Harth helpfully unpacks this passage, writing that

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the initial peace and equality that the brothers experience parallels the peace and equality that the early Christians lived in. This could only continue, however, until their vices got the better of them (Harth 15). The brothers then encounter a tailor, who suggests that certain adornments to the coats yield certain traits. The brothers, desirous to increase their popularity, decide to try out these new fashions, twisting their father’s will to suit their desires. What began as merely adding shoulder knots to the jackets soon progressed into gold lace, flame-coloured satin, silver fringes, and so on. The brothers finally decide to lock their father’s Will away in a box because they no longer need it, and it only hinders their decisions to abide by societal conventions (Swift 42).

In religious terms, the brothers wished to be able to create clauses and new aspects of the will without feeling bound to it. They chose to reinterpret it, and when that became problematic, they hid the will from sight, in order to accommodate their changes. This entire section represents the decline of the proper practice of Christianity in modern times. Following the description of this decline, the digression in Section III praises the moderns, flying in the face of the allegory and highlighting the satirical nature of A Tale of a Tub. After presenting a situation where the excesses of modernity had damaged the original will, the narrator makes himself foolish by praising modern innovation. This emphasizes the folly of the brothers, and subverts the narrator, simultaneously.

As the allegory of the brothers continues, Peter assumes superiority over Martin and Jack, and begins to subject them to his authority (Swift 50). Ian Higgins describes this as the absence of the actual patriarch, as their father had died, but the presence of patriarchal authority remains (Higgins 129). This assertion of patriarchal authority, in the absence of a true patriarch, signifies the moment in which Peter begins to represent Catholicism. Peter offers false remedies to the people for their wrongdoings, linking him to the policy of absolution through indulgences that the Catholic Church promoted, and he creates a whispering office, ridiculing auricular confession (Swift 51). Peter’s corruption goes so far that he begins to call himself “God Almighty, and sometimes monarch of the universe.”

These terms liken Peter to the Pope, who is the Vicar of Christ and even called himself God on Earth, on occasion (55). Peter’s excess soon causes the people to lose respect for him, Martin and Jack resolve to abandon him, and they return to their father’s will to determine where exactly Peter went wrong (58).

At this point, Swift’s critique turns away from merely modernity, and towards Catholicism. Peter is made out to be a modern and foolishly corrupt. The digression following this section, again, highlights this folly. The narrator writes, “Here I think it fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege, of being the last writer. I claim an absolute authority in right, as the freshest modern, which gives me a despotic power over all authors before me” (62). Although written in

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terms of authorship, the narrator here mirrors Peter. He claims “absolute authority,” deems himself to be “modern,” and claims “a despotic power.” By following up the tale of Peter’s abuses with such language, Swift makes it clear that the narrator is not to be taken seriously, and he is a mode for further highlighting Peter’s offences. The narrator concludes this digression by asserting that he had just “forc[ed] into the light, with much pains and dexterity, [his] own excellencies and other men’s defaults” (63). This truly emphasizes the ridiculousness, arrogance, and modernity of the narrator, making the satire obvious.

The solution presented for Peter’s corruption is the reformation efforts of Martin and Jack. The two younger brothers return to their father’s will and begin to reform their coats to their original state. Martin does this in moderation, beginning zealously but eventually tempering his efforts, and finally stopping, lest he damage the fundamental structure of his coat: “He concluded the wisest course was to let it remain, resolving in no case whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer injury; which he thought the best method for serving the true intent and meaning of his father’s Will” (66). Although some adornments must remain, all of the original fabric and structure is intact.

Jack, on the other hand, felt very spiteful and hateful towards Peter, and he carried on his reformation of the coat with much more zeal than Martin: “For the memory of Lord Peter’s injuries produced a degree of hatred and spite which had a much greater share of inciting him, than any regards after his father’s commands, since these appeared at best only secondary and subservient to the other” (66). In his zeal, Jack ends up doing much damage to the original fabric of the coat, and straying from his father’s instructions as much as Peter had done. Higgins writes that the language of “rending” and “tearing” that Swift used in moments describing Jack’s destruction of the coat resonates with “High Church Tory polemical literature against ‘schismatic’ dissent” (117-18). This is an instance where Swift’s religious allegory resonates with some political implications. By employing this language, he is indicating his Tory allegiance and conservatism.

Against Jack’s apparently “schismatic dissent,” Martin implores him to remember that Peter is still their brother and to show some sympathy (Swift 67). At this point, the brothers cease to represent merely Lutheranism and Calvinism, and grow to represent Anglicanism and Puritanism. Harth argues that Swift’s message is that Anglicanism is restoring Christianity to its original purity – via inspiration from Luther – in light of the Catholic corruption, but Puritanism is a parody and another corruption of Christianity – via Calvin’s reformation (16-18). Higgins further illuminates this, writing that Swift would have acknowledged the doctrinal differences between Anglicanism and Lutheranism, but Martin’s significance comes from the moderation and conservatism he represents, rather than his

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connection to Luther (131-35). Swift is not trying to distinguish between groups of Protestant dissenters but rather indicate that this Anglican path, represented by Martin, is the purest, and that an effort to moderate the extreme positions of Peter and Jack is required (103-05). Higgins suggests, however, that Martin’s moderation and reason are too normative and imply that Swift felt some ambiguity towards him (132). To rebut this, the point of the satire is to demonstrate religious moderation and to warn against modernity and excess. Although Martin is not emphasized as a unique character, his moderation makes the contrast between him and his brothers even more significant.

Harth writes that the intent of this allegory is to speculate about how to interpret God’s will (18). However, Swift does more than merely speculate; he asserts a conservative and moderate approach, rooted in the original will, represented by Martin. As usual, the following digression serves to reinforce the message in the preceding section of the allegory. “A Digression in Praise of Digressions” (Swift 69) is presented: another digressional ornament, emphasizing the ridiculousness of the narrator as he continues to ornament, even after ornaments have been conceptually done away with in the allegory.

Following this digression, the reader expects to be presented with another section of the allegory of the three brothers, as was the pattern previously.

However, there is a section dedication to the nature of inspiration and the Aeolist sect. Wind, and particularly belching, is considered to be the cause of inspiration (72-77). The reader is left puzzled as to how this piece fits into the text, unrelated to anything that preceded it. The following digression, however, illuminates this inconsistency. Entitled, “A Digression concerning the Original, the Use, and Improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth” (Swift 77), the digression expounds the function of madness. The very structure of A Tale of a Tub becomes illogical and dissolves into madness. To cap off the mad structure of the previous two sections, Swift adds a third, seemingly unrelated section. Section X contains further digressions regarding the nature of books and authorship, completely driving home the apparent madness of the narrator in his lack of coherence and flow, and the madness of the structure of A Tale of a Tub. This descent into madness may appear to have no foundation or context, but its relation to Jack’s madness is what pulls all of the digressions along with the allegory of the three brothers completely together. In the early lines of “A Digression Concerning ... Madness,” Jack is described according to the narrator’s definition of madness: “A person whose intellectuals were overturned, and his brain shaken out of its natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a distemper and call by the name of madness or frenzy” (Swift 77-78). The satire of the brothers combines with the satire of the narrator, as both reduce into sheer madness. Although Harth recognizes the significance of the placement of this

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section (68), as the final decline and madness of Jack followed, he writes that the section on madness is not necessary to in order to understand the allegory (58).

However, this neglects to stress the importance of this section to the overall narrative. The digressions ornament and punctuate the allegory in their satire, but they are not wholly connected until the section on madness unites the narrator with Jack.

In his madness, Jack gives rise to a sect of Aeolists, which Harth notes is meant to represent and satirize the Puritans (59). Jack begins to read a “deeper and darker” meaning into the will (Swift 93) and begins to develop certain mad behaviours: “He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat” (93); “He would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets” (94); “In winter he went always loose and unbuttoned and clad as thin as possible, to let in the ambient heat; and in summer lapped himself close and thick to keep it out” (95). Harth writes that Anglican rationalists, like Swift, emphasized reason against the Orthodox Christians of their time who accepted the mysteries of the Christian religion (21).

Although Jack is considered ridiculous for reading all of these mysteries into the Bible, Swift was not as strict as the Anglican rationalists in denying all mystery and relying solely on reason. Swift held a position that reason and mystery, or revelation, can cooperate, which was also the official position of the Anglican Church (Harth 21-23). Peter, Martin, and Jack all should have embraced the mystery within the will, but should not read anything “deeper” or “darker” into it, allowing their reason to moderate this. This was also the position held by Richard Hooker, who was highly influential on Swift. God provided reason and revelation both, and while revelation, or Scripture, should be obeyed as a supernatural truth, this does not necessitate doing away with all reason (25-26). Martin represents this middle position, embracing the mystery in the will, but not going so far as to create additional mystery.

The extreme positions of Peter and Jack involved both of them making modern innovations on their father’s old will. Although Jack was a reaction to Peter, he was equally misguided, initially attempting to return to the will, but ultimately misinterpreting it, and destroying his coat. Harth writes, “Swift satirizes ‘fanaticism and superstition’ as they appear to him under the guise of Puritanism and Catholicism” (13). Neither is the correct path because both assume extremes.

Rather, Martin’s moderate approach – or in Swift’s view, the Anglican approach – is the correct one.

From Swift’s obvious religious conservatism, one may gather a similar political conservatism. Although Swift does not write explicitly about his political views in A Tale of a Tub, it can be inferred that he values the same moderation.

Regarding Swift’s political views, Higgins writes that Swift’s attack on Puritanism, for example, marks the “remarkable intertexuality between A Tale of a Tub and the

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pamphlets of Tory extremists” (97). He continues, writing that Swift spoke of “successors of those Puritans” as his, and the Tory’s, “present dissenters” (98).

Although Swift does not adopt political language or themes explicitly in A Tale of a Tub, clearly the implicit references are there, as well as general themes of moderation. A Tale of a Tub “advanced his prospects with the Tories” and although Swift tried to keep the text anonymous, it was eventually revealed to be his and is one of his few published anti-Whig texts (99-100). Swift’s conservatism certainly arises in A Tale of a Tub, alongside his moderation and anti-modern stance. Swift did not desire a revolution, but merely a return to older practices, and a humbling of the modern mind. Although Martin and Jack move on to represent not only Luther and Calvin, but also Anglicanism and Puritanism, Swift’s moderation compares much more with Luther’s politics.

While Luther and Calvin both had a similar Reformation and Predestination doctrines, they diverged in their political stances. In On Secular Authority, Luther posits two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world (8). While these two kingdoms may be compatible, they have different realms and deal with different matters. God deals with spiritual matters, and secular leadership with worldly matters: “Laws and the secular Sword cannot possibly find any work to do among Christians … law is given for the sake of the unjust” (9). Luther continues, “Neither is enough for the world without the other” (12). In his moderation, Luther recognizes the place for revelation in God’s kingdom, and the place for reason, in the kingdom of the world, where secular rule is required in order to keep the wicked in line. Harro Höpfl writes that Luther is only concerned with secular power in this treatise, and for that reason does not address priests or ministers (xii).

This secular power of the prince, while not ultimate because he too will always be subject to God, must be respected. He writes that citizens should always submit to a prince, until he tries to take their faith: So, if a prince or a secular lord commands you to adhere to the papacy, to believe this or that, or to surrender books, then your answer should be: it is not fitting for Lucifer to sit next to God. My good Lord, I owe you obedience with my life and goods. Command me what lied within the limits of your authority, and I will obey. But if you command me to believe, or to surrender my books, I will not obey. For then you [will have] become a tyrant and overreach[ed] yourself, commanding where you have neither right or power. (Luther 29) It is important to obey the Prince, even if he does an injustice. God will reward the faithful and obedient, and punish the sinners. However, Luther limits this: if one’s faith is threatened, one ought not to give in. Höpfl explains that, for Luther, there

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are no “citizens,” merely “subjects,” who must be obedient (xiv). Luther is not searching for a revolution, merely a reformation – a return to Scripture and a return to faith. Höpfl writes that Luther is creating a starker distinction between the secular and sacred than ever before, but he is also more tolerant in doing so (x).

Swift, like Luther, does not desire a revolution, but merely a return to moderation and toleration.

Calvin, on the other hand, has a much more radical reformation approach.

Initially, Calvin seems to follow Luther, positing two compatible, but distinct kingdoms: “We have just warned that [secular] government and the spiritual and internal kingdom of Christ are quite distinct. But equally we must recognize that they are in no way incompatible with each other” (Calvin 49). Although Calvin shares some overlap with Luther, his position is much more radical. He writes of his magistrates: “They have a commission from God, that they are endowed with divine authority, and that they in fact represent his person, acting in a certain sense in his place” (51). The people must obey the magistrate; otherwise they are disobeying God himself (50). This divine magistrate has the right to use his sword to uphold civil and religious order, where as Luther’s prince was only concerned with secular matters. Although the magistrate is still ultimately subject to God (Calvin 83), that does not make the citizens any less subject to the magistrate.

Unlike Luther, and Swift, Calvin is very radical and austere in his reformation efforts, leading to revolution. Höpfl writes that Calvin interpreted Luther’s sanction to resist tyrants as an argument advocating war against the Emperor (xviii). Höpfl also notes, however, that a clergy governs the Calvinist Church after 1543 with some independence and authority (xx), indicating a degree of regression in his reformation. Clearly, Swift aligns more closely with Luther’s moderate reformation, than with Calvin.

Although A Tale of a Tub does not mention Swift’s political stance explicitly, through his Tory-like language and subject matter, and through the favourable characterization of Martin, it is clear that he has much in common with Luther’s views on Church and State. Swift was an Anglican, however, not a Lutheran, but nonetheless the role that Martin plays in A Tale of a Tub is symbolic of this mediating role between the corruption of Puritanism, or Jack, and Catholicism, or Peter. The digressions serve to highlight these points that Swift is making concerning religion, and to highlight a critique of learning, where Swift debases the moderns and their apparent innovations. These two satires unite in the section on madness and, by likening the narrator both to Peter and to Jack, Swift’s satire on extremist religion and modern arrogance is unavoidable and undeniably powerful.

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Works Cited Calvin, John. “On Civil Government.” Luther and Calvin: On secular authority.

Ed.,Trans. Harro Höpfl. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Pp. 47-86.

Harth, Phillip. Swift and Anglican Rationalism: The Religious Background of A Tale of a Tub. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1961.

Higgins, Ian. Swift’s politics: A study in disaffection. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Höpfl, Harro. “Introduction.” Luther and Calvin: On secular authority. Ed., Trans.

Harro Höpfl. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. viixxiii.

Luther, Martin. “On Secular Authority.” Luther and Calvin: On secular authority.

Ed.,Trans. Harro Höpfl. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Pp. 3-43.

Swift, Jonathan. “A Tale of a Tub.” A Tale of a Tub and Other Works. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 1-103.

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Historical Reason vs. Rational History: An Interpretation of Montesquieu’s Contractualist Heritage Max Ma Is Montesquieu a sociologist or a liberal? Much ink has been spilled on this question. Thomas Pangle reads him as a liberal, and thinks Montesquieu “veers close to his modern predecessor’s notion of ‘natural law’ as constructs of reason” (Pangle, Theological, 23). In this paper, I will demonstrate that Pangle is mistaken in his assertion, and that there is a resolute break between Montesquieu’s supposition of history’s relationship to reason, and that of his contractualist predecessor, as exemplified by Locke.

Lockean contractualism articulates two normative conclusions. The first, as Dunn points out, is derived from a theological axiom that “there exists a benevolent God who provides a set of sufficient rules for the direction of human beings throughout their lives” (11). Locke presupposes the existence of a makerworkmanship relation between God and man. On the foundation of this relationship, Locke establishes the authority of the law of nature as God’s purpose for man. Moreover, he grounds our obligation to the law of nature, both in and out of society, in the form of a fundamental religious duty. The second normative conclusion of the Lockean contractualism, I argue, posits contents of his law of nature by equating this normative law with reason, and reason with God’s purpose for man. For Locke, man is by nature rational, and capable of knowledge.

Adhering to the contractualist tradition, Locke regards the law of nature as the law of God, disclosed to us through the order of nature, which reveals God’s intentions.

As the law of nature is “promulgated or made known by reason only”, Locke also calls it “the law of reason” (57). Formulated as the law of God, known to us by our natural faculty of reason, the Lockean law of nature serves as an intermediary that effectively equates the law of God with that of reason, and consequently equates God with reason.

For Locke, our natural reason dictates a fundamental law: “man [is] to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred” (Locke, 16), and that the society ought to be likewise preserved, “(as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it” (134). As Locke attributes this fundamental law, as a dictate of reason, “to the will of God, of which that is a declaration” (135), and imports it as the normative content of the natural law, he bases his argument on an equation between God and reason. The equation between God and reason serves as the premise of what I consider the second normative conclusion of Lockean contractualism. Moreover, it

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necessitates that the Lockean conception of rationality include both what is intelligible, such as what is positively rational, and what is sensible, such as what is normatively rational. By being intelligible, I mean that the Lockean man acts in a manner that is intelligible to the rest of their kind by diligently pursuing their interests and procuring objects of their desires. By being sensible, the Lockean man, as the workmanship of God, is concerned with the prospect of an everlasting afterlife, obligingly follows his earthly duties, and acts in accordance with the law of nature. This requirement for man to act both intelligibly and sensibly9, in and out of society, is the a priori criterion that Locke labors to establish by positing the conjectural history of a state of nature in his contractualist theory.

This value-laden conception of rationality is at the heart of Locke’s enterprise in justifying the right of resistance to the Crown in the context of an English mixed constitution. For Locke, a government is legitimate only when a rational man, who acts both intelligibly and sensibly, would consent to it. Absolute monarchies are illegitimate, and therefore should be rightfully resisted. They are “a worse condition than the state of nature”, and the rational man will never “quit the freedom of the state of nature” and consent to a government that does not “preserve their lives, liberty, and fortunes”, nor “by stated rules of right and property”, “secure their peace and quiet” (137). In other words, Lockean contractualism seeks to demonstrate that certain forms of government are illegitimate, and therefore ought to be resisted. In order to determine the legitimacy of any form of government, Locke relies on a hypothetical question – would the rational man contract himself into this society? The merit of asking such a hypothetical question premises on Locke’s a priori criterion that by nature man ought to act rationally, meaning both intelligibly and sensibly.

Following Locke’s path, Montesquieu also posits that prior to all positive laws, there are “the laws of nature”, which “derive exclusively from the constitution of our being”, and in order to understand these laws of nature, “it is necessary to consider man before the establishment of society”, as he is in “the state of nature” (Montesquieu SL 1.2). However, Montesquieu’s description of state of nature, as a state prior to man’s development of concepts and acquisition of knowledge, marks a crucial departure from the contractualist tradition, as exemplified by Locke. Despite being in this pre-conceptual state, the actions of Montesquieu’s natural man are nevertheless intelligible to us. However, without any conceptual tools providing for an investigation into the origins of his being, the natural man has no notions of a creator, nor religious conviction of any kinds.

Understandably, “the first ideas conceived by man would not be speculative: he 9

Man, so long as not mad, necessarily acts intelligibly. However, to act sensibly, man has to keep in check his feeble passionate nature.

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would concern himself with the preservation of his being before investigating its origins” (SL 1.2). With an underdeveloped faculty of reason and a lack of awareness of any God, the natural man lives in a state of moral vacuum, prior to any differentiation between right and wrong, just and unjust. The contractualists’ state of nature asserts that since man is by nature sensible, and therefore able to choose reasonably according to an a priori moral or theological principle, he should always seek, in and out of society, to obey a set of rules understood as being essential in maximizing his freedom and security. Montesquieu’s state of nature posits no such requirement for sensibility, binding to human actions in the state of society, as derivative from the constitution of man’s natural being.

In other words, whereas the contractualists’ laws of nature are juridical, obligatory for all men both in and out of society, Montesquieu’s laws of nature are merely descriptive. They are applicable only in the state of nature, and are necessarily followed without any enforcement by a superior force. Nevertheless, Montesquieu’s state of nature is inherently impermanent. As humans eventually “succeed in acquiring knowledge”, and realize “a new motive for uniting”, “the fourth law of nature” – “the desire to live in a society” – they usher in a drastic transition into the state of society. (SL 1.2) Montesquieu writes that “As soon as men are in a state of society, they lose their sense of weakness. The equality that once existed among them comes to an end, and the state of war begins” (SL 1.3).

Unlike the state of nature, which Montesquieu describes as a historical progression over time, this initial state of society, the state of war, seems to exist only momentarily in history, if at all. Man leaves the state of nature, as his rational faculty becomes fully developed, and is able to immediately recognize a fundamental contradiction, between the first law of nature’s demand for peace and the fourth law of nature’s desire to live in a society. This irreconcilable contradiction in Montesquieu’s initial state of society necessitates a state of war between individuals and amongst nations. The only way out of such a state is to replace the laws of nature with a brand new set of man-made positive laws. As the laws of nature in accordance with the state of nature, are shown to be discordant with the state of society under the newly acquired light of reason, “Laws are established among men by these two forms of the state of war” (SL 1.3).

In Montesquieu’s peculiar articulation of the contractualist theory, there is an underlying assumption that human political history contains within itself a necessity which can be discovered by a broad study of all the societies in its concrete existence. We are able to comprehend the necessity in the transition from the state of nature to the state of society though a theoretical state of war. Likewise, we should be confident that our reason can also make intelligible all the changes and constancies in the history of humanity, and that “in the infinite diversity of [our] laws and moeurs, [men] have not been guided only by their fantasies”

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(Montesquieu “Preface”). Locke assumes a requirement for intelligibility and sensibility in human actions so as to establish the illegitimacy of certain forms of government. On the other hand, Montesquieu takes a step towards the other direction by assuming an inherent intelligibility and necessity in human history in order to examine “the principle trend [that] carries along with it the outcome of all particular accidents”, from the fall of Rome to “the chance loss of a battle” (Montesquieu Considerations 18).

Pangle reads Montesquieu as a liberal, and claims that “The chief purpose of Montesquieu’s study of the forms of government is to discover how and to what extent each serves man’s freedom or security” (Pangle Montesquieu’s 45). Pangle acknowledges that for Montesquieu there is an “enormous distance between the original, natural situation of man and the situation in which man finds himself in developed, civilized society” (Montesquieu’s 43). He asserts, contrary to my reading, that Montesquieu’s description of the laws of nature is “a discussion of the juridical norms” that are applicable also to men living in the state of society.

(Montesquieu’s 42) Pangle expects Montesquieu, as a liberal republican theorist, to explicitly state such universal applicability, and considers Montesquieu’s refusal “to discuss any normative rules deducible from the natural laws” a “great difficulty in the plan of the Spirit of the Laws” (Montesquieu’s 42). As Montesquieu describes the object of his study of “the Laws” and their “Spirit”, as “the various relationships that laws may have to things” (Montesquieu SL 1.3), Pangle interprets him to mean, by “various relationships”, the “appropriateness” “between the universal principles of human nature understood by reason and the particular sociopolitical environment to which this reason is to be applied in the form of laws” (Pangle Montesquieu’s 43). Pangle’s “appropriateness” expounds Montesquieu’s “various relationships” to be normative, and equates reason to historical intelligibility. Historical intelligibility then produces laws according to particular sociopolitical environments, along with reason as moral and theological sensibility. With this sensibility, we are able to understand to universal principles of human nature. In this light, Pangle sees more continuity than break between Montesquieu’s thought and those of his contractualist predecessors than what I have suggested.

Althusser, on the other hand, reads Montesquieu as a sociologist, “an opponent of the theory of natural law”, and one who “refuses to judge what is by what ought to be” (29). Althusser writes: “A refusal to subordinate the material of political facts to religious and moral principles, a refusal to subordinate it to the abstract concepts of the theory of natural law, which are nothing but disguised value judgment, that is what clears away the prejudices and opens the royal road of science. That is what introduces Montesquieu’s great theoretical revolutions” (31).

Although I do not see Montesquieu as “an opponent” of the contractualist tradition,

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I agree with Althusser’s interpretation of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws as “the laws of relation and variation that can be disengaged from human laws” and “are distinct from those laws themselves” (36). Contrary to Pangle’s assertion, I think Montesquieu’s “relativeness” is meant to be positive. Montesquieu recognizes that man does not always obey the laws, either positive or divine: “As an intelligent being, he never ceases violating those laws established by God and changing the others he has himself made” (Montesquieu SL 1.1). Laws of religion, of morality, and of particular states are all subject to man’s violations, alternations, or reinterpretations. Yet the spirit, which governs the various relationships between these laws and their contexts, is necessarily obeyed by all beings, knowingly or unknowingly. The spirit establishes the relativeness of laws to the temperament of the people, the nature and principle of the government, the physical characteristics of the country and the climate, et cetera.

Like his contractualist predecessors, Montesquieu says that “[l]aw in general is human reason,” yet he qualifies that “it would be highly unlikely that the laws of one nation could suit another” (SL 1.3). Without a universality in the contents of the laws, Montesquieu’s concept of law in general, meaning human reason, suggests a pure positive intelligibility, untainted by any requirement for a normative sensibility. The universality lies instead in the relativeness of the laws to their contexts, and is posited by Montesquieu on many occasions with phrases like “ought to be” or “should be”. This demand for universality is premised on the existence of a necessity in human history and its intelligibility, and is necessarily met by the same necessity. Hence, it is necessarily positive. Without any normative criterion, a law is relative to a people simply by the merit of belonging to that people. What Montesquieu seeks to explain is why a certain people have devised a certain set of laws, and how they are able to more consciously exercise their agency in political governance. For that purpose, he launches into a comprehensive examination of the nature and principles of various forms of government.

Montesquieu categories forms of government into three species: republics, monarchies, and despotisms, with each possessing a unique nature, which “makes it what it is”, and a unique principle, which “makes it act” (SL 3.1). Nature describes the form of government, and principle refers to the passion in the hearts of the people that maintains the government. A government persists when its form is maintained by a corresponding passion, and falls when it is not. Together the nature and principle of a government constitute the most direct and effectual context that determines the contents of the laws. Other determinant contexts act on the contents indirectly by affecting the nature and principle of the government. For instance, the geographical dimension of a state affects the nature of its government.

A small one is more likely to persist as a republic, a medium one as a monarchy, and a large one as a despotism. The climate of a state, on the other hand, affects the

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principle of its government by conditioning the temperament of the people. A torrid climate does not directly produce despotic laws, but together with other causes such as “religion, laws, maxims of government, examples drawn from the past, moeurs, manieres”, it constitutes what Montesquieu calls “the general spirit of a nation” (SL 19.4).

Through constituting the spirit of a nation, laws and maxims of government are able to participate in the conditioning of the principle of the government. Here Montesquieu posits a reciprocal causality that allows the content of the laws to affect its context, and the nature of the government to affect its principle.

Crucially, this reciprocal causality cannot occur without a prior and more dominant affectivity. While the dialectical totality of nature, and principle of government functions as the motor of political history, they are not equal partners in the relationship. The principle of a government, though effected by its nature, is the pre-condition of its nature, and the passion of a people exists prior to the establishment of any form of government. This is why “The corruption of every type of government almost always begins with the corruption of its principles” (SL 8.1). Likewise, before there are any positive laws, the context for these laws already exists. In despotic states, for example, there are “no laws, but only moeurs and manieres. Once these are overthrown, everything else is overthrown as well” (SL 19.12). Both serve to regulate human behaviors in the state of society. Laws, moeurs, and manieres are differentiated as such: “laws are directed primarily at men’s actions qua citizens”, while “moeurs, at their actions qua men” (SL 19.16), and while “laws are established by a legislator as his own”, “moeurs and manieres are established by a nation as a whole” (SL 19.14). In other words, while positive laws are particular to a government, moeurs and manieres are particular to a society, and are therefore prior to the establishment of any positive laws. With this conclusion in mind, we shall return to Book I of The Spirit of the Laws.

Although Pangle acknowledges that “Montesquieu never called ‘the relationship of justice prior to positive law,’ ‘laws of nature’”, he insists that “While there is no justice in the state of nature, nevertheless the reasons for justice and therefore the standard for justice are derived from the state of nature”.

Moreover, “There is a natural source of justice: justice is not simply created by human making” (Pangle Montesquieu’s 29). Pangle considers Montesquieu’s statement that “Before laws were made, there were relations of possible justice. To say that there is nothing just or unjust other than what is committed or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before circle is traced all its radii are not equal” (SL 1.1). In light of this statement, Pangle arrives at a misguided conclusion by simplemindedly presuming that what Montesquieu refers to as prior to the positive laws are “the permanent needs of man… in the ‘state…prior to the establishment of societies’” (Montesquieu’s 29). There is inherently nothing just or

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unjust in the state of nature, for it is a state prior to the development of any rational concepts. The equality of radii does exist prior to any circles actually being drawn.

However, such a statement does not hold true prior to the concepts of “equality”, “radii”, and “circle” being defined by human reason. There can be no relations of justice or equity prior to the concepts of justice and equity. Before our faculty of reason develops concepts and acquires knowledge, nothing and everything can be just and equitable.

What Montesquieu refers to by possible relations of justice and equity, I think, are not normative laws established by the state of nature or God, but moeurs and manieres established by a particular society as a whole. As moeurs and manieres, these relations of justice and equity vary from society to society, and can be changed, not by devising laws, but by introducing other moeurs and manieres.

Contrary to Pangle, I see a resolute break between Montesquieu’s more historical account of society, laws, and government, and the contractualist theories of his processors, such as Locke. For Montesquieu, the circumstances of the state of nature provide no universal standards for legitimacy for the laws and governments in the state of society. The laws of nature are not applicable outside the state of nature, and there can be no a priori principles of justice or equity derivative from this state of darkness, deprived of the light of reason. To my mind, it is exactly this lack of reason, understood as a normative sensibility in the ideal history of Montesquieu’s state of nature, that allows him to propose a positive intelligibility that accounts for the deep diversity in the real history of the state of society. And this is where political philosophy turns into political science.

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Works Cited Althusser, Louis. Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx.

Translated from the French by Ben Brewster. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959.

Dunn, John. The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2002.

Montesquieu. Selected Political Writings. Translated and Edited by Melvin Richter. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1990.

Pangle, L. Thomas. Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on “The Spirit of the Laws”. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973.

----------. The Theological Basis of Liberal Modernity in Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws”. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.

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Visions of Authority: Rousseau, Blake, Marx and Engels Tessa Elliott-Israelson The development of European society coincides to a great extent with the rise of autonomy for the individual. Agitated by a history of social confinement, a courageous few specify and search for means of self-governance over man’s shared condition. Man in the state of society seems overwhelmed by despondence, disillusioned by corruption, imprisoned by rigid hierarchies, and disconcerted by predetermined central authorities. In order to free ourselves from this imprisonment, an emphasis on the individual is necessary. While those who reject the natural order of things risk a loss of identity, isolation, and ostracism, they gain subjectivity free from social authority, and an independent sense of self. In this line, thinkers throughout many historical movements have provided a variety of arguments that have set in motion the wheels of cognizant dissent. In attempts to evoke a modern selfhood, one that is characterized outside of civil and religious rule, different literary methods of organization have been used effectively. The use of language as a means to independence within society belongs to a political tradition that extends throughout many periods. Treaties such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract examine the relations between selfhood and social order, while transitional works of literature like William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, illuminate the possibility of inverting and re-envisioning conventional world-views. This tradition is perhaps most fundamentally activated, though, in The Communist Manifesto written by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.

Their platform puts pressure on disproportionate sovereignties by suggesting a reconditioning of production and labour, and demanding an acknowledgement of equality. It is clear that the tenable balance between the individual and society has been taken up and expanded over time in many ways. Despite some discrepancies, these discourses all promote the discussion of a need to re-evaluate traditional structures in terms of the individual, proving themselves essential in the development of the modern self.

For Rousseau, contemporary society is an imprisoning force that threatens our survival and freedom; “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (12).

In a historical progression, men have moved away from the state of nature and formed a civilization in which one must constantly relinquish one’s liberty.

Mankind has been organized into a system whose mechanisms propagate inequality. However, Rousseau stipulates that by defying social custom in favour of revolutionary change, men can free themselves from these chains and function with an independent sense of self. The ideal solution for the problem of society is outlined in The Social Contract. Society must undergo a leveling process, finding commonalities among mankind and establishing a political authority that upholds equality and freedom. For Rousseau, this can be accomplished through the general

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will, a man-made foundation of the state that will transform and exalt humanity.

The general will is universal, distinct from all of men’s individual wills, and endowed with “Liberty, because all particular dependence is that much force taken from the body of the state; equality, because liberty cannot subsist without it” (46).

This driving force of freedom and egalitarianism reconciles man’s individual desires towards a mutual aim, coordinating a system of government that harmonizes society. The general will restructures our dependence on government in such a way that is the highest expression of individual freedom. This freedom, Rousseau claims, is infallible, inalienable, indivisible, and absolute. It is humanitarianism at its best, for the general will restricts the instinctual inclinations that enslave mankind and allows it to follow self-imposed laws that are determined not by external forces, but by mankind itself. In this way, the general will not only enforces a structured liberty, but enables one to internally free oneself. Treaties like The Social Contract make it necessary to reconsider social structures. As Christopher Betts writes in his Introduction to The Social Contract: “It is this sense of effort towards the fulfillment of an ideal, but an ideal that is always under threat from within the society it is supposed to direct, that gives Rousseau’s argument its enduring ability to provoke and inspire reflection” (xiii). This idea of tension between ideal and actual society will be clearly expressed later on in The Communist Manifesto.

Blake’s work similarly re-emphasizes individualism and the primacy of selfhood outside of traditional structures. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake reacts against eighteenth century rationalist philosophy and the restraints of religion, depicting them as something to be renounced. Published in the early 1790s, Blake describes a rebellion against the hierarchical ideals of rationalism and empiricism by positing the need for opposites to coexist. For a complete human experience, enthusiasm for irrationalism, immoralism, and individualism are essential. In a series of texts that invert opposites, Blake deconstructs institutions of moral and religious order to illuminate the possibility for a deeper engagement with the internal, spiritual self. This idea of inverting opposites is made clear in “The Argument”: “Without Contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell” (Blake). Blake reverses good and evil to show that both are delusions that disguise themselves under reason. He builds on this method of exposing opposites in “Proverbs of Hell”: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion” (Blake). Later on in “Proverbs of Hell” Blake directly transfers the supremacy typically assumed by the higher forces of God and nature to the human spirit; “Where man is not, nature is barren ... Thus men forgot

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that All deities reside in the human breast” (Blake). For Blake, the inner spirit is the only true element of man, and redemption can only come through personal faith and imagination. “The Proverbs of Hell” exemplifies Blake’s desire for a complete reversal of social convention, and also clearly shows a hatred of moral restraint. Kate L. Dickinson summarizes Blake’s ideas on individualism in her work William Blake’s Anticipation of the Individualistic Revolution: “Freedom, complete liberty for spiritual development through creative energy from the laws of reason, freedom from moral obligation, freedom from all laws except that of one’s own eternal, spiritual being; this is the gospel of Blake” (52). By reversing traditional values, he extracts the individual from a series of implicit conventions, liberating a modern sense of self by drawing attention to moral and religious customs. In this line, Blake advocates a disruption of order, not through passive goodness, but by dynamic strength. Dickinson elaborates: “Not only does Blake formulate a fairly consistent theory of individualism, but he has a definite idea of the method by which it is to be attained. This is to be done through art” (39). While Marx and Engels in their later work are less interested in the power of art, they similarly emphasize the importance of human creativity through their discussion of production. For Blake however, it is through the purification of the spiritual self that true individualism will be able to transcend beyond conservative conceptions of good and evil. In doing so, he demands from his readers an active engagement not only with their own identities, but also with a process of finding themselves in relation to a limited view of morality.

Marx and Engels pick up this train of thought in the spirit of industrialism.

In The Communist Manifesto published in 1848, they write forcefully on the imprisoning effects of society, advocating the indisputable need for selfsufficiency within the state. They contend that different forms of society rise and fall as they progress, and inevitably inhibit the development of the human productive power. For Marx and Engels, history progresses through a variety of necessary methods of production. These methods in turn have invariably been characterized by class struggle: In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. (Marx 92)

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Industry has suppressed the individual; consequently shaping a modern society that denies power and autonomy to the every man. For Marx and Engels, natural right and order cannot be eternally valid, as those outdated structures are inevitably coloured by conventions based on material resources. In this way, the social precedents of right and wrong have nothing to do with innate self-sufficient morality. The Communist Manifesto argues that in a capitalist society, that appearance of justice, equality, and rationality is painted by class prejudices. They claim that the culminating result of this struggle to overcome the tyranny of society is indisputably revolution. Only through a re-ordering of society, namely into a communist state, can true autonomy be sustained. Free from dependence on social authority, we can strive for independence within a larger, collective whole: “Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress” (Engels 91). Defined by rank, it is only through socialism that man can succeed in combating the inhumane control of capitalist society. This control affects man both internally and externally, for how man works affects his consciousness, and his consciousness also affects the way man works. He loses touch with his own reality. This for Marx, is alienation, one that is newly formed by denying political forms of enslavement and taking the conditions of production into our own hands: “Freedom and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an interrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (79). In order to find a way toward self-governance, the means of production need to be owned by all, by the people themselves in a “classless society”. In this kind of society, there will be an agreement between ability and need. Moreover, labour now belongs to the workers themselves, and capitalist alienation ceases: “Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class” (85). The Communist Manifesto is an expression of revolutionary change. In citing a transformation of political construct and placing the sovereignty of material production into the hands of the people, self-directed governance and equality in and through society might be achieved. Works like this provide the motivation for an emergence of social mobility by means of individual autonomy.

Throughout several historical movements, a canon of European thinkers with a common aim towards individualism has developed. There is a clear pattern of preservation, beginning in the early enlightenment with the radical writings of

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, through the transitional literary work that followed by William Blake, right into the age of industrial revolution with ideas posited by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. This pattern seems committed to finding ways to achieve enlightened self-determinism without turning it into a merely abstract and alienating idea. In order to be free ourselves, we must not only cast off outdated modules of society, but construct a society of self-determining individuals. In this process of relinquishment, emotional and personal attachments to natural hierarchies must be sacrificed for greater freedoms. The process is by no means easy; it requires courage, introspection, and revolution, often encountering opposition and adversity. Nevertheless, achieving equal legitimacy between our individual selves and a greater universal humanity is of paramount importance. For these thinkers, the future of human society will not make progress through compliant cooperation with circumstance, but will carefully and laboriously be taken up by individuals through the art of discourse, to improve and inform, ultimately expressing a critical need for an autonomous sense of self.

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Works Cited Betts, Christopher. Introduction. The Social Contract. By Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. i-xxiii.

Blake, William. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” The Alchemy Website. Ed. Dan Levy.17 Nov. 2011.

Dickinson, Kate. L. William Blake’s Anticipation of the Individualistic Revolution.

New York: J.B. Shufeldt & Company, 1963.

Engels, Friedrich, & Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto. Great Britain, Penguin Books, 1970.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.