I recently interviewed for a teaching job and the interviewer asked me what I meant by saying that I respected and imitated the teaching methods of the Rabbis. I was referring specifically to their search for “surface irregularities” and the manner in which their interpretations of these glitches, holes, and repetitions enables a deeply particular creative form. As I’m preparing for teaching this summer, I just read a famous portion from the Talmud in which one rabbi asks for a sign from heaven to prove his point, at which point the sign is given, but then another rabbi jumps up and says, quoting, “It is not in heaven” at which point the Holy One (that is, God) starts laughing, saying, “my children have won over me, my children have won over me!” In no other religious tradition do we see this kind of resolute orthodoxy and textual mastery mixed with the most stubborn sense of the rightness and space of the human spirit. This sense that God must abide by God’s own law, respecting the sanctity of man’s response. But instead of obsessing over the fact that this seems to limit God, we should notice how much freedom and spirit it gives to man. And putting aside the question of how and whether God works on his own, let’s take note of the fact that God has given men and women an astounding responsibility, one to which even nature pays heed (check out Baba Mezia, 59a-59b, Talmud). It was this Jewish spirit (as found in Kabbalah) from which Pico della Mirandola took his inspiration when he penned one of the most optimistic calls to human action and responsibility, in his famous Oration, and in many of his other writings. In my meager researches in Sophia, this is something that immediately came out to me about her, that she was the spirit of human action and necessity–almost, in a way, putting aside the question of what God can do, here we are faced with a divine humanity whose limits have not yet been spanned. The Rabbis saw the formation of the Talmud as man’s response to the Divine Word given on Sinai, and the limits of this response were something that even God seemed to respect. I would argue that Sophia should be conceived in an analogous manner.
Cynthia has graciously offered to repost my Boethius series at Per Caritatem. Read it here. Apparently, she doesn’t realize how shoddy my forays into philosophy actually are. That said, my hat’s off to her for her courage in reposting my paper. And if you follow along you might actually get the conclusion to the paper, which I didn’t post here.
Dear all TLOU readers,
Our sincerest apologies for the dearth of posts. Aron is in New Mexico recording a new rawk album, and I am still playing Tetris with moving boxes in my new place. Things should be settling down in the next couple weeks and then we’ll get back to the same quality The Land of Unlikeness posts that you’re used to…. to which you are used….. whatever.
And if you’re wondering why I never finished the Boethius jawn, it’s because Cynthia at Per Caritatem has asked to repub it for her blog. So, if you want to read the awesome conclusion, you’ll have to do so there. While you’re there, you ought to check out the CFP for her upcoming Augustine blog conference. Go Augustine racer.
How to read the Consolation with a touch nuance
Two contemporary scholars have argued against Claasen’s and Chadwick’s kind of didactic reading (see last the post here). Both Joel C. Relihan and John Marenbon share the theory that Boethius is questioning Philosophy’s ability to lead him to an attainment of the good, but they differ as to Boethius method and what degree of impact the Menippean format has on Boethius’ project.
John Marenbon’s thesis, on one hand, is simply as he states in the introduction to his book: “The Consolation is, as its complex literary structure should immediately suggest, not just a work of but about Philosophy; a subtle text which could be understood on various levels.” But as Marenbon is also quick to point out, our approach to the Consolation requires more than philosophical proficiency. The Menippean Satire, rather than providing a neutral structure, as Chadwick and Claassen believe, infuses the work with a satirical bent (as the “satire” in Menippean Satire suggests). As such, the inclusion of poetry serves to help make sense of the gaps in Philosophy’s arguments, the fact that while she leads Boethius to the good (III.10), she can not help him attain it. In fact, Marenbon argues that the inclusion of the Menippean format is even more crucial to the Consolation than either the consolatio or the dialogue genre. While “modern discussion of the Consolation has tended to be either philosophical or literary,” he suggests that two factors are necessary for a whole reading: the poems, and Boethius’ Christianity. Operating between these two invisible hermeneutical poles are the two stated goals of the Consolation: 1. curing the sick Boethius by means of Philosophy’s remedies; and 2. demonstrating what true happiness is. Thus, Marenbon has the task of showing how his reading can better elaborate on these two goals. In terms of Boethius’ Christianity, Marenbon points to textual evidence. “The Consolation is a dialogue between a figure who is recognizably a Christian - Boethius - and a figure who is not - Philosophy. The reasons for making this assertion are almost too obvious to remark.” He also points to inconsistencies in Philosophy’s arguments when she’s forced to deal with issues raised in light of Boethius’ faith, as in book V when she (inadvertently?) defends causal determinism. Continue reading ‘Satire and Sufficiency III’
Let’s get didactic
The idea that Boethius’ use of poetry is not so simply wrangled into Philosophy’s service, but is actually functioning as part of a larger satirical structure, is not the popular answer to the difficult question of how exactly we are to read the Consolation. Wayne Hankey takes it as a given that Boethius is writing a straightforward consolation: “The Consolation of Philosophy records the purely philosophical doctrine which persuaded and comforted, and would persuade and comfort, Christians even in extremis for a millennium and a half.” Chadwick, whose text has provided a standard interpretation of Consolation for philosophy and theology for the past twenty years, also takes a literal reading of the Consolation. The title alone tells its genre and the object of the consolation, Philosophy, is the consoler. He takes Boethius at face value when he says that he is trying to make the interpretive task easier for the reader by including poetry, and suggests that the meter sections merely extend the arguments. Boethius uses poetry, “with the intention of lightening the reader’s task with a difficult subject.” But does this mean that we are to simply mine the poems for content similar to that in the prose sections? Chadwick seems to say yes. “The poems normally have subtle links with the prose sections that precede or follow them.” Beyond this, as Joel Relihan says, tongue in cheek, “it seems much safer to confound Philosophy and pedantry and attribute [the Consolation’s] perceived dullness to high-mindedness.” Chadwick notes that the Consolation resembles other works written in a Menippean Satire format (a combination of prose with poetry that is lighthearted or pokes fun at the matter of the prose), like Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury, which also is about a kind of pilgrimage. He applies the same interpretive formula to these as well. Hermeneutically speaking, Chadwick doubts that Boethius is performing anything unusual, ironic or groundbreaking by employing the Menippean format.
Philosophers are not the only ones that have read the Consolation this way. Even recent literary theorists expound on it in light of its supposed genre, taking a literal tack to the characters’ arguments. Continue reading ‘Satire and Sufficiency II’
Due to the fantastic response we’ve garnered from our little Boethius snippet below, I’ve decided to push the envelope and post my recent essay on Boethius’s subtle subversion of philosophy. This is the first part.
The Consolation of Philosophy has long been interpreted as a philosophical tour de force, written under duress, but no less magnificent or influential because of that duress. In fact, its dominance in medieval philosophy and theology was rivaled only by the renewed interest in the philosophical sources which it conveyed to scholastics of the middle ages, due in no small part to Boethius’ ambitious attempt to translate and comment on the Platonic and Aristotelian corpii. Its sway in the humanities has been less recognized in theological and philosophical circles. Not only was it translated into verse and prose by King Alfred, Queen Elizabeth I, and Chaucer, and borrowed heavily from by Dante; its creative combinations of original poetry and prose (prosimetrum), as well as philosophical dialogue and mythology arguably provided structural and substantial bases for The Divine Comedy and a number of Chaucer’s shorter poems and stories as well as “The Knight’s Tale” and “Troilus” in Canterbury Tales.
Modern Christian readers tend toward two readings of the Consolation: they either baptize Boethius in a flat, non-literary, pedantic reading of the Consolation as a Christian text instructing a particular use of Philosophy, or they denounce him as at best a confused Christian engaged in an overly Platonized form of Christianity. Between these modern poles, we have Chaucer who uses the Consolation not to provide a “stable” intellectual platform for Christianity, but rather to destabilize reason and accepted norms, whether Christian or otherwise. Chaucer “was sensitive … to the tensions and uncertainties of Boethius’ text, the Roman author’s literary and intellectual subtlety, and his awareness of the uses of obliquity.” Following John Marenbon, I am suggesting that Chaucer’s model of a middle use is actually the proper use of the Consolation because it respects the milieu philosophical argumentation, the use of mythology, its several genres, and the author’s religious commitments.
It is my opinion that the normative, modern reception of the Consolation casts it as a didactic text, merely part of the compiling, commentary tradition of that era. However, if the above thesis is correct, that something like Chaucer’s “middle way” reading is best, then one can read the Consolation as Boethius challenge to Philosophy’s very ability to cash out her claims - to lead philosophers to the ultimate end of humanity. Thus, a suspicion or chastening of Philosophy is buried deep in the structure of the Consolation, making it anything but another work of the commentary tradition. It is not that Boethius has renounced Philosophy or is replacing her with something else. It is still the Consolation of Philosophy. And after all, Philosophy does come to comfort the innocent prisoner on death row. Rather, I am suggesting that couched within this overarching positive presentation of Philosophy is a subtle and far more complex subversion of Philosophy’s sufficiency, that is, her ability to exhaustively meet the demands of the classic Aristotelian doctrine of true happiness as not merely knowing but grasping or apprehending the good. While Philosophy makes many claims to be able to lead Boethius to such a grasp, the author Boethius never allows Philosophy to finish her quest or present a unified argument. Rather, one finds significant gaps in her overall presentation, due in part to the character Boethius’ voracious questioning, and also to Philosophy’s own arrogance and pretension.
…the enchantment of her song left me spellbound. I was absorbed and wanted to go on listening. After a moment I spoke to her.‘You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits. By the weight of your tenets and the delightfulness of your singing you have so refreshed me that I now think myself capable of facing the blows of Fortune. You were talking of cures that were rather sharp. The thought of them no longer makes me shudder; in fact I’m so eager to hear more, I fervently beg you for them.’
‘I knew it,’ she replied.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, III.1.1-10
She can be a real tart… sometimes.
This is my second time posting this … post. Anyway, the server lost the first one, or kidnapped it, or whatever.
Anyway, the original post said something like you all should read one of Janet’s most recent posts. She summarizes and builds on several months of discussion on Deep Grace of Theory. Especially interesting to me right now as I write yet another conference paper is her stuff on -ike. Rather than summarize it for you, I’m going to append a segment, and encourage you to read the entire post.
The “-ike,” of course, as my readers here will know, is a reference to this original theory of knowing, the Greco-European vision that inspired education for 2000 years in the West until the rise of science in the 17th century gave birth to a new “theory of knowledge.” The term “ike” derives from the manner in which the Greeks formed disciplinary names by adding -ike to the name of the subject matter, as in poietike, musike, logike, grammatike, physike, arithmetike, and so forth. (This would eventually yeild our “poetics,” “physics,” “arithmetic,” “mathematics,” and so forth.)
The -ike suffix, in other words, indicated that a “techne” or an “episteme” was in view. (Poietike or arithmetike were short for techne poietike or techne rhetorike, but the “techne” part dropped out most of the time.) The Romans translated the Greek techne as the Latin ars, artis, and along with this, they translated the Greek episteme as scientia, thus giving us our modern “arts and sciences.”
Yet today we tend to forget or overlook, given our deeply engrained scientific outlook in the Modern West, that while Aristotle formalized an existing distinction between the technes and epistemes as the “productive” ikes and the “theoretical” ikes, nontheless he still frequently employed either word in order to refer more generally to any formalized disciplinary practice, irrespective of its subject matter and methodology. (We would view arithmetic as a scientific discipline, for example, but while Aristotle saw it as “theoretical” and hence an episteme, it was still called techne arithmetike, just as poetics was called techne poietike. This wasn’t incidental, either, but crucial to take into our account.)
By the way, Plato and Aristotles insisted upon using fluid vocabularies because they were concerned with teaching the nature of thought itself, and so, as teachers first, they inculcated the capacity to register and attend to the complicated formal levels of organization manifested by the various kinds of things. This emergence of flexibility and deftness on the part of their students was more important to them than the modern insistence on honing an exact set of technical terms.
Aron made me agree to post my paper before he’d let me put his up. If you haven’t listened to his yet, please do. It’s not only a great introduction to Lacan, but also an interesting theological reflection. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.. or at least, you shouldn’t be.
So, here’s my presentation from this year’s AAR MidAtlantic Regional conference. This is pretty much the same paper that Cynthia posted on Per Caritatem a couple months ago - Thanks again, Cynthia! I had a great response in the Q&A time, but failed to record it. Anyway, let us know what you think about all this podcasting stuff. I’m thinking about getting a better mic than the one that comes with the macbook, but would like to know if this stuff is relevant or even helpful to the lot of you before I invest in it.
Cheers,
Dan
Aron gave a great paper yesterday, and I secretly recorded it. If you use itunes, you’ll be able to see a couple pictures that I snapped of him during the presentation.
Have a nice weekend,
-dan
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