Great Books*Addy

Back in Santa Fe

I have arrived back in Santa Fe.  This is my fifth summer living in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, my second studying the liberal arts at the Graduate Institute for Liberal Education at St. John's College.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold.  Hopefully it will continue to provide me with a brief record of some of the things I was thinking about during my studies and, at the same time, also allow those interested to follow along.

My free time is limited while here, so I cannot post nearly as often as I might like, but I will make an effort to touch base with those two goals now and then throughout the summer.

In the summer of 2008, I took the Politics and Society segment.  This term, Philosophy and Theology.  My elective preceptorial course is on the Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations by Spaniard and Catholic theologian and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno.

Oh, and the reading list for this segment is posted in the column on the right of my blog.

Aristotelian Bravery

Below you'll find an excerpt from a short paper I wrote this past summer on Aristotelian bravery, defined and applied.  The entire paper is loaded as a PDF, if you'd like to read it.

[...] it seems difficult to know, based on the Ethics, if Aristotle would accept social pressure as somehow analogous to his tyrannical antagonist, because nearly all of the text is concerned only with developing the ethics related to an individual—the development of the virtues of the individual.  Still we can look to his example of the coercive tyrant for an answer.  The tyrant is a force that is external to the actor.  His power is known to the actor, as is, presumably, his resolve and his likelihood to follow-through with his threats.  Similarly, Ethel’s quasi-antagonist is known to her in that reactionary forces that punished white resistance to segregation would have had a presence she could sense both in her community and place of employment.  Ethel would also be aware of the agency of the segregationist forces and we already supposed a situation where she knew that they would follow-through with retaliatory actions.  It seems then, as though social pressure could be looked upon as coercive force.

If being compelled by coercive force to do a thing does not necessarily make it blameworthy, how might the threshold for blame or pardon be identified?  How could one behave so that the decided upon action could be met with praise, rather than blame?  At least in this context, is the threshold for praiseworthiness found in the virtuous disposition in the face of rightfully fearful things that constitutes bravery?  Or, will a decision to inform police be merely praiseworthy and not, necessarily the act of a brave person? In aiming to answer these questions, we can gain a better understanding of bravery outside of Aristotle’s own tyrant and sinking ship examples.

Download TutorialPaper1SJCAddyFreeSummer2008.pdf

First Oral Exam

I've been inattentive to this blog for a bit--sorry.  The workload for me here has just had its peak and now it's winding down, though I do still have a long paper to write, due after my return to Saint Paul.

Today was my first oral exam at St. John's.  I sat with my seminar tutor Ms. van Boxel and discussed the application of Rousseau's On the Origins of Inequality, as well as the essential differences between the ancients' and the moderns' view of the human end.  The exam was to last half an hour and went on for forty-five minutes.  It was a fascinating conversation for me--hopefully for her as well.

I still plan on posting my first tutorial paper here, as well as the second tutorial paper I handed in today and some summary thoughts on Tocqueville.

This weekend I have a lot of Marx's early writings and also the Dred Scott case to read.

Patriotism in America, per Tocqueville

I was reading from Democracy in America yesterday for our tutorials on Alexis de Tocqueville and found this witty gem:

Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans.  A stranger may be well inclined to praise many of the institutions of their country, but he begs permission to blame some things in it, a permission that is inexorably refused.  America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody should be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals or of the state, of the citizens or of the authorities, of public or of private undertakings, or in short, anything at all except, perhaps, the climate and the soil; and even then Americans will be found to be ready to defend both as if they had co-operated in producing them.  (ca. 1835)

Brideshead

In order to get a little sanity restored to my life after such intense readings of mind-blowing and disorienting readings and discussions, I decided to try to fit in a bit of non-program reading before getting started on my next two papers.

I picked up Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, upon which an acclaimed BBC miniseries was based, as well as the 2008 Hollywood studio feature that is getting pretty awful reviews.

I'll give you a passage in order to entice you to borrow or buy the book.  It's bright.

I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him.  That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour which seemed to know no bounds.  My first sight of him was as we passed in the door of Germer's, and, on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large Teddy-bear.

"That," said the barber, as I took his chair, " was Lord Sebastian Flyte.  A most amusing young gentleman."

"Apparently," I said coldly.

"The Marquis of Marchmain's second boy.  His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, wend down last term.  Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman, quite like an old man.  What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted?  A hair brush for his Teddy-bear; it had to have very stiff bristles, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky.  He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he's having "Aloysius' engraved on it--that's the bear's name." The man, who, in his time, had had ample change to tire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly captivated by him.

[...]

Nor, when at last we met, were the circumstances propitious.  It was short before midnight in early March; I had been entertaining the college intellectuals to mulled claret; the fire was roaring, the air of my room heavy with smoke and spice, and my mind weary with metaphysics.  I threw open my windows and from the quad outside acme the not uncommon sounds of bibulous laughter and unsteady steps.  A voice said "Hold up"; another, "Come on"; another, "Plenty of time ... House ... till Tom stops ringing"; and another, clearer than the rest, "D'you know I feel most unaccountably unwell.  I must leave you a minute," and there appeared at my window the face I knew to be Sebastian's--but not as I had formerly seen it, alive and alight with gaiety; he looked at me for a moment with unseeing eyes and then, leaning forward well into the room, he was sick.