Ruefle: "another catches fire"

Samuel Pepys

Portrait by John Hayls

Wikipedia

I've started re-reading Mary Ruefle's recent book, Madness, Rack, and Honey, and since I'd only just finished it the day before, I was struck by what was surely an intended resonance:

In poetry, the number of beginnings so far exceeds the number of endings that we cannot even conceive of it. Not every poem is finished -- one poem is abandoned, another catches fire and is carried away by the wind, which may be an ending, but it is the ending of a poem without end. (Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey, 1)

The resonance was with a journal entry lifted from The Diary of Samuel Pepys and placed between the last essay and the "Acknowledgments:

Then we fell to talking of the burning of the City; and my Lady Carteret herself did tell us how abundance of pieces of burnt papers were cast by the wind as far as Cranborne; and among others she took up one, or had one brought her to see, which was a little bit of paper that had been printed, whereon there remained no more nor less than these words: "Time is, it is done." (Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, quoted by Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey, 311)

But what is time?

For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present -- if it be time -- only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be -- namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be? (St. Augustine, The Confessions, Book 9, Chapter 14, edited by Philip Schaff)

Ruefle disagrees?

[W]e have only fragments -- but even this seems fitting, for what is the moment but a fragment of greater time? (Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey, 13)

Does the moment tend not to be, an infinitesimal, or is it a fragment, a temporal atom? In either case, my allotted time is up . . . for today.

Mervyn F. Bendle on "Existential Terrorism" and the "Augustinian Paradigm"

City of God

St. Augustine

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just read Mervyn Bendle's article "Existential Terrorism: Civil Society and its Enemies," Australian Journal of Politics and History (Volume 52, Number 1, 2006, pp. 115-130), which is available online through subscription. Here are the first three paragraphs, which clarify Bendle's point that much contemporary terrorism, the prime example being Islamist terrorism, aims at undermining the very possibility of civil society, that "social realm between the family and the state," and which also assert, though without yet clarifying, some connection between this contemporary terrorism and the thought of St. Augustine (page 115):

This paper relates a central trend in terrorist strategy to the history of attitudes towards civil society. Contemporary terrorism increasingly eschews attacks on political, military, diplomatic or corporate targets, and instead selects targets within civil society designed to maximize civilian deaths and injuries. This existential terrorism seeks to undermine the taken-for-granted ontological security that makes everyday life possible. This paper seeks to identify and analyze the origins and meaning of the ideological world-view that gives rise to such a terrorist strategy.

Civil society is the social realm between the family and the state composed of interrelated networks of intermediate institutions, including businesses, unions, voluntary associations, educational facilities, media, the Internet, charities, and churches, and that accommodates the free play of economic and cultural forces, and individual and group interests and differences. The importance of civil society is widely recognized in the social sciences, as Fukuyama notes: "Today [. . .] virtually all serious observers understand that liberal political and economic institutions depend on a healthy and dynamic civil society for their vitality." (Francis Fukuyama, Trust (Harmondsworth, 1995), p. 4.)

A vital aspect of the current crisis is that contemporary terrorism targets not only people and institutions that operate within the realm of civil society but civil society itself, i.e., terrorism targets the very possibility of an autonomous realm of everyday life, a social space of spontaneity, freedom, and difference. This impulse was manifest in the policies of the Taliban -- Al-Qaeda's Islamism in action -- but it is found in any group, regime, or society that has fallen ideologically under the control of what might be called the "Augustinian paradigm" of civil society. The present exploration of this situation provides insights into both contemporary terrorism and the nature of civil society. (page 115)

This is an intriguing insight, namely, that "contemporary terrorism targets . . . the very possibility of an autonomous realm of everyday life, a social space of spontaneity, freedom, and difference," in short, it targets civil society's very existence. Bendle finds this targeted attack on civil society by Leftists and Islamists, whose critiques of civil society are apparently interconnected, though Bendle doesn't demonstrate precisely what these links are. He does note the Left's post-1968 turn to the "Third-World" out of disappointment over the proletariat's nonrevolutionary character (page 127), but he doesn't clarify the Left's precise ideological impact on Islamism despite asserting that Islamism was influenced by Marxism-Leninism (page 116).

Bendle's identification of the "'Augustinian paradigm' of civil society" as culpable for the targeting of this "autonomous realm of everyday life" might seem odd, but he has already explored this to some extent in his article on "The Apocalyptic Imagination and Popular Culture," published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (Fall 2005, Volume 11). Perhaps we can excerpt, for clarification, the specific work by Augustine that Bendle holds responsible for the terrible devaluation of civil society, namely, The City of God:

Book XIV Chap. 28: "Of The Nature Of The Two Cities, The Earthly And The Heavenly"

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,"--that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride, -- "they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, "and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, "that God may be all in all." (Paul Halsall, editor, Medieval Sourcebook: Augustine (354-430): The City of God: excerpts on the Two Cities)

In Bendle's reading, this Augustinian tradition of two cities gives rise to a pessimistic view of civil society, the locus of evil and impurity, over against the optimistic view of a utopian, pure society someplace up above or sometime in the future. Two aspects are emphasized by Bendle as characteristic of the "Augustinian paradigm": 1) totalism and 2) apocalypticism. Concerning the former, both Leftists and Islamists (though also Fascists, he notes) deny civil society its autonomy and seek to replace it with a different, totalizing system in which everything is controlled by the Leftist state or by the Islamist elite. Concerning the latter, Leftists and Islamists claim access to a 'revealed' truth of the utopian society to come, especially if the path to that future society is blazed by apocalyptic violence.

Clearly, this interpretation of Augustine's two cities is a controversial one. I'm not yet persuaded Bendle's is the most reasonable reading of Augustine, and I'd need to see more on this point. The interpretation looks to me to be of a radicalized Augustinian tradition. But even if this interpretation were the most reasonable, I'd really want to see how Islamism is heir to Augustine. Is there supposed to be a direct line from Augustine to Islamism, or some influence via Leftist ideology (or via Fascism?), or is the "Augustinian paradigm" an ideal construct describing a system of thought that can arise within different traditions without direct or even indirect influence?

I'll look around some more, but I might need to shoot an email to Dr. Bendle . . .

John Heilbron: "nimis cupiditas cognoscendi"?

Linus Pauling

(Image from Oregon State University)

In looking yesterday for the video interview of John Heilbron by Harry Kreisler, I came across another interesting video featuring John, this time of a lecture, "Remarks on the Writing of Biography," given in 1995 at a conference dedicated to Linus Pauling. In that talk, John remarks (somewhat with tongue in cheek):

Biographers may be particularly prone to what Saint Paul called nimis cupiditas cognoscendi -- that is, too great a desire to know.

My Latin isn't very good, but the English translation that John provided didn't immediately strike a chord of memory despite some overtones in Paul's warning words about interesting oneself in human knowledge:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8, King James Version)

A Google search for "nimis cupiditas cognoscendi" turned up only John's talk. Perhaps I'm exhibiting this condemned intellectual sin, but I'd like to know where this expression came from. I've managed to find the English expression "too great a desire to know" in Kempis's Imitation of Christ:

Rest from too great a desire to know, because therein is found great discord and delusion. Learned men are very eager to appear, and to be called learned. There is much which it profits the soul little or nothing to know. And foolish indeed is he who gives his attention to other things than those which make for his salvation. (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated by EM Blaiklock, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979) page 24)

Another translation offers this:

Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise. (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated by Aloysius Croft and Harold Bolton (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1940))

This passage appears in Kempis's second chapter, which opens by quoting Aristotle's famous words from the initial line to his Metaphysics: "Every man naturally desires knowledge." Kempis then goes on to cite Augustine's warning about knowledge, which places Kempis's own warning squarely within the lengthy Christian tradition that put restrictions on curiosity. Indeed, a search for "curiosity" in Kempis's Imitation reveals many warnings against it. However, I lack a Latin copy of Kempis and therefore cannot check the original behind "too great a desire to know."

But maybe this is barking up the wrong tree anyway. Perhaps John meant not "nimis cupiditas cognoscendi" but "nimis cupidus cognoscendi"? I don't think that Saint Paul said that, either, but the second-century writer Apuleius did, in Book Two of his wonderful novel The Golden Ass, which tells how Lucius follows his overeager curiosity into a world of trouble wrought by his transformation into a donkey as punishment for his inquisitive ways, characterized by Lucius as "nimis cupidus cognoscendi quae rara miraque sunt," i.e., "too great a desire to know what is rare and miraculous." Apuleius doesn't have quite the cachet that Saint Paul has, but Augustine did stoop to cite him on the dangers of curiosity, so I think that we can allow him entrance here in John's lecture as the probable source behind what was quoted as "nimis cupiditas cognoscendi."

Future biographers writing on The Life of John Heilbron will undoubtedly thank me for clearing this up . . . especially if I can get John himself to supply a comment to this blog entry.

Hellbender Salamanders: Etymology?

Salamander Alchemy

(Image from Wikipedia)

One longstanding, albeit erroneous belief about salamaders is that they can imperviously withstand the flames of even very hot fires, as I learned in my history-of-science days, thereby prompting my speculation yesterday:

I wonder if "hellbender" has some connection to old beliefs about salamanders. They were believed impervious to fire, able to live in flames, and therefore somehow linked to the devil. But I'm just guessing. Anybody know the etymology?

I've tried to find evidence, though the links are only tenuous, but here's some information from an online Medieval Bestiary:

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 86): The salamander is a shaped like a lizard, but is covered with spots. A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash. Salamanders only appear when it rains and disappear in fine weather. (Book 11, 116): It is fatal to drink water or wine when a salamander has died in it, as is drinking from a vessel from which the creature has drunk.

Augustine [5th century CE] (City of God, Book 21, chapter 4): If the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded, this is a sufficiently convincing example that everything which burns is not consumed, as the souls in hell are not.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:36): The salamander alone of animals puts out fires; it can live in fire without pain and without being burned. Of all the venomous animals its strength is the greatest because it kills many at once. If it crawls into a tree it poisons all of the fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will die; if it falls in a well it poisons the water so that any who drink it die.

The site then helpfully links to images from bestiaries. One image from the Museum Meermanno (Hague, Netherlands) has a manuscript dating from 1450 that shows what appears to be a serpent in a tree offering an apple to a man:


The text, however, identifies this creature as a salamander: "Een salamandra vergiftigt de appels in een boom; een man eet een vergiftigde appel" (translation: "A salamander poisons the apples in a tree; a man eats a poisoned apple"). The Medieval Bestiary website describes the scene in this way:

Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25 (f. 43r) shows the salamander as a snake spiraling up an apple tree; the snake has an apple in its mouth, making the scene very similar to some manuscript illustrations of the temptation of Eve. A man holding an apple stands near the tree, a hand to his head and looking sick.

The belief that salamanders could live in fire, the remarks by Augustine about salamander-like souls in hell remaining unconsumed by hellfire, and the pictorial connection between salamanders and Satan all suggest that further investigation into the etymology of "hellbender" with respect to bestiary books and alchemical texts could prove fruitful.

Perhaps some Medievalist could supply more information?

Heading for Soraksan Nature Preserve

Ulsanbawi Peak

Soraksan Nature Preserve

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'll be away with my family until Thursday, vacationing on the eastern coast of Korea at Soraksan Nature Preserve, which boasts the highest point in the Taebaek Mountain Range, the 'famous' Daechongbong Peak (대청봉), which rises to 1,708 metres (5,603 feet) and thereby makes for the third-highest point in South Korea and -- by the way -- 1,564 feet higher than the towering Mt. Sunflower of Kansas!

My wife insists that I won't be doing any blogging from there. I'm not sure how she knows that, but she's sometimes right about the things that I can't do. Like when I can't have that third beer. She's sometimes right about that. It's a mysterious thing, how she can be right, but that third beer will sometimes return to the fridge. I don't fully understand this predictive power that she has, and I often suspect that she's not so much 'predicting' as actually . . . well, this sounds odd, but as actually determining the future. It's a little scary.

While I'm away from blogging (should my wife be correct again), I'm concerned that Uncle Cran will have nothing to occupy himself, and as we all know from experience, the Devil makes work for idle hands. In my uncle's own words from an early email this morning:

With the cooler weather, the daylight hours shorter, and shadows longer, the feeling of fall is in the air. We still have a lot of hummingbirds here on Hummingbird Lane, they will start heading south in a couple of weeks.

Last week our first golden orb spider built her nest by our back patio. Her tiny potential boyfriend was carefully trying to approach her. I think he suffers the same fate as the black widow male if he makes a false move. I sometimes catch a small grasshopper and put it on the nest to watch the action. She has poor eyesight, and just waits patiently until the hopper wiggles, places her feelers on different strands, locates the victim, checks him with her feelers, determines whether predator or lunch, then shoots out webbing, takes her hind legs and flings the webbing on din-din, wraps him up, and keeps adding more webbing as she spins him around and around, then and only then does she do the fatal bite and inject the venom. Then she goes back and rests as the venom dissolves the insides of the hopper. Later, she leisurely inserts her feeding tubes and dines sumptiously (or as I do at mealtimes, downs a bellyfull).

You can see a person's idea of a pastime changes with old age. I still read and work the crossword puzzle, so I have other interests beside spider watching.

I'm surprised to learn that Uncle Cran also downs a bellyful of 'grasshopper', for Ozark hillbillies don't generally do that, but I've seen fried grasshoppers in various places, and here in Korea, people even 'enjoy' silkworm larvae. I can't quite work up the nerve to try those.

At least I'm not yet idle, unlike Uncle Cran, and therefore undergo no temptation to toy with spiders and their prey. Saint Augustine warned about such dangers posed by that sort of curiosity:

Nevertheless, in how many most minute and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and who can number how often we succumb? How often, when people are narrating idle tales, do we begin by tolerating them, lest we should give offence unto the weak; and then gradually we listen willingly! I do not now-a-days go to the circus to see a dog chasing a hare; but if by chance I pass such a coursing in the fields, it possibly distracts me even from some serious thought, and draws me after it,—not that I turn the body of my beast aside, but the inclination of my mind. And except Thou, by demonstrating to me my weakness, dost speedily warn me, either through the sight itself, by some reflection to rise to Thee, or wholly to despise and pass it by, I, vain one, am absorbed by it. How is it, when sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they rush into her nets, oftentimes arrests me? Is the feeling of curiosity not the same because these are such tiny creatures? From them I proceed to praise Thee, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but it is not this that first attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly, and another not to fall, and of such things is my life full; and my only hope is in Thy exceeding great mercy. For when this heart of ours is made the receptacle of such things, and bears crowds of this abounding vanity, then are our prayers often interrupted and disturbed thereby; and whilst in Thy presence we direct the voice of our heart to Thine ears, this so great a matter is broken off by the influx of I know not what idle thoughts. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I, Volume I, Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book X, Chapter 35, Paragraph 57)

Such are the dangers posed to the souls of the curious. Take care, Uncle Cran, in my absence. Guard your thoughts and actions carefully.

John Milton: Curious Curiosity

John Milton

Unenamored of curiosity?

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of the immediate summer projects that I have before me is a report on "curiosity" that I have agreed to write for Warren Reich, who is researching and writing a history of "care," and because one of the scholars on the Milton List asked if the angel Raphael was right to rebuke Adam for his curiosity, I decided to look into this and see what Milton thinks of curiosity (and all passages are borrowed from Thomas H. Luxon, ed., The Milton Reading Room, July, 2008).

Milton doesn't actually use the term "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, but he does use it in Samson Agonistes 775, where Dalila (Delilah), the Philistine woman who betrayed Samson to his Philistine enemies, admits to curiosity as a weakness:

Samson Agonistes 773-777:

First granting, as I do, it was a weakness
In me, but incident to all our sex,
Curiosity, inquisitive, importune
Of secrets, then with like infirmity
To publish them, both common female faults:

We ought to note that Dalila is speaking here, not Milton, but the reader can hardly overlook the apparent allusion to Eve's curiosity in the Edenic temptation scene under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . except that Milton never uses the word "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, let alone employ it to describe Eve's interest in the forbidden tree.

However, we do find Milton in Tetrachordon (Matthew Places) quoting St. Augustine to support his own opinion about those who ask "curious" questions:

Tetrachordon, Matthew Places:

This also may be thought not improbable, that Christ, stirr'd up in his spirit against these tempting Pharisees, answer'd them in a certain form of indignation usual among good authors; wherby the question, or the truth is not directly answer'd, but something which is fitter for them, who ask, to hear. So in the Ecclesiastical stories, one demanding how God imploy'd himself before the world was made? had answer, that he was making hell for curious questioners.

By "curious questioners," Milton in this instance means those who pose questions not out of a serious intent to discover the truth but as an attempt to mislead.

And elsewhere, in The Reason of Church Government, Book 2, Milton explains the motivation for all his writing, which he describes himself as having already been conscious as a young man on his European wanderings, and assures his readers that the motive was "not to make verbal curiosities" his aim:

These thoughts at once possest me, and these other. That if I were certain to write as men buy Leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had, then to Gods glory by the honour and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latines, I apply'd my selfe to that resolution which Ariosto follow'd against the perswasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toylsom vanity, but to be an interpreter & relater of the best and sagest things among mine own Citizens throughout this Iland in the mother dialect.

In this instance, Milton does not refer to curiosity in the sense of a misdirected search for knowledge but as an overwrought and artificial literary construction. Milton intends for us to know that his aim is serious, for he wishes to artfully adorn the "best and sagest things."

Use of the term "curious" to describe overwrought artifice occurs in Paradise Lost 4.242, where Milton contrasts the natural wonders of Eden, watered by a "Saphire Fount," to the artificial gardens of England:

PL 4.237-243

How from that Saphire Fount the crisped Brooks,
Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold,
With mazie error under pendant shades
Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art
In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon
Powrd forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine

Concerning "Beds and curious Knots," Thomas Luxon informs us that "Tudor formal gardens were often very intricate affairs, carefully planned and tended . . . [but that the] late 17th and 18th century began to prefer more natural looking landscapes and views (The Milton Reading Room).

In Paradise Regained 1.319, Satan, in the guise of an "aged man," is described as having a "curious eye," in the context meaning that he looked with curiosity, and some 14 lines further, in 1.333, Satan himself acknowledges being "curious" to hear what is new:

PR 1.314-334

But now an aged man in Rural weeds,
Following, as seem'd, the quest of some stray Ewe,
Or wither'd sticks to gather; which might serve
Against a Winters day when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet return'd from field at Eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious eye
Perus'd him, then with words thus utt'red spake.
Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place
So far from path or road of men, who pass
In Troop or Caravan, for single none
Durst ever, who return'd, and dropt not here
His Carcass, pin'd with hunger and with droughth?
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seem'st the man, whom late
Our new baptizing Prophet at the Ford
Of Jordan honour'd so, and call'd thee Son
Of God; I saw and heard, for we sometimes
Who dwell this wild, constrain'd by want, come forth
To Town or Village nigh (nighest is far)
Where ought we hear, and curious are to hear,
What happ'ns new; Fame also finds us out.

Given that the devil is portrayed as "curious," we can probably infer that Milton is using the term in a negative sense, which is also likely the case in Paradise Regained 4.42, where the context refers to a Satan tempting Jesus:

PR 4.25-43

He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long but in bredth not wide;
Wash'd by the Southern Sea, and on the North
To equal length back'd with a ridge of hills
That screen'd the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts, thence in the midst
Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With Towers and Temples proudly elevate
On seven small Hills, with Palaces adorn'd,
Porches and Theatres, Baths, Aqueducts,
Statues and Trophees, and Triumphal Arcs,
Gardens and Groves presented to his eyes,
Above the highth of Mountains interpos'd:
By what strange Parallax or Optic skill
Of vision multiplyed through air, or glass
Of Telescope, were curious to enquire:
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke.

Here, the narrator uses "curious" to designate an activity of the mind that would be tangential to the issue at hand, a distraction from the central point.

I've already noted that in The Reason of Church Government, Milton uses "curiosities" to refer to overwrought artifice, and he does so twice more in the same text:

The Reason of Church Government, Book 1

But so exquisit and lively the description is in portraying the new state of the Church, and especially in those points where government seemes to be most active, that both Jewes and Gentiles might have good cause to be assur'd, that God when ever he meant to reforme his Church, never intended to leave the governement thereof delineated here in such curious architecture, to be patch't afterwards, and varnish't over with the devices and imbellishings of mans imagination.

The Reason of Church Government, Book 2

Next if I were wise only to mine own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as of it self might catch applause, whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as the publishing whereof might be delayd at pleasure, and time enough to pencill it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultlesse picture, whenas in this argument the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to doe her office, art cannot have much.

Also, in Tetrachordon (Deuteronomy Places), Milton uses "curious" in a less negative sense to refer to the "care" displayed by the Law of Moses about washing vessels and vestures:

Tetrachordon, Deuteronomy Places:

What more unlike to God, what more like that God should hate, than that his Law should be so curious to wash vessels, and vestures, and so careless to leave unwash'd, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in their Souls? what would we more? the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: and if all, then this of Divorce.

Here, Milton does not imply anything wrong with the Law, but does imply that to be "curious" about purifying ritual objects while neglecting the purifying of something far more important.

In short, Milton seems to share the traditional, negative view of curiosity held by so many in the Medieval Church. Nevertheless, he does not use the term to describe Eve's interest in the fruit of the forbidden tree . . . a point that I find curious.

"Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain"

Alexander Pope, ca 1727

Studio of Michael Dahl

National Portrait Gallery

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of my more regular readers, who calls himself "Kapok," recently contacted me by email to ask about Alexander Pope's line that the "proper study of mankind is man" (An Essay on Man, 1734) and wondered if this were a limitation on curiosity stemming, ultimately, from the writings of Augustine.

My initial response was tepid, for I imagined that Augustine would not focus so much upon man as upon the state of his own, individual soul in its fallen condition and its need for guidance from God.

Moreover, the couplet that opens Part 1 of Epistle 2 of Pope's Essay on Man stems more directly from the pre-Christian Greek world:

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.

The expression "know thyself" (Greek: γνωθι σεαυτόν or gnothi seauton) comes from the ancient Greeks and is popularly associated with Socrates, whose turn from cosmology to anthropology fits the advice well, but according to the second-century AD Greek writer Pausanias, in his Description of Greece (10.24.1), the expression was an inscription carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, so any number of ancient writers would have known it well -- which may explain how the expression came to be attributed to such various figures as not only Socrates but also Heraclitus, Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, and Solon of Athens, if Wikipedia's entry is to be believed.

Pope could thus have been drawing on any one of a number of thinkers, perhaps even being aware of them all.

But some less direct link to Augustine might be lurking in Pope's Christian heritage, for in his "Argument of Epistle 2," he summarizes Part 1 as teaching that "The business of Man [is] not to pry into God, but to study himself," the operative word here being "pry," with its implication of "busybodiness," "nosiness," or various other aspersions that Augustine and other Medieval Christian thinkers heaped upon "curiosity."

Indeed, the five couplets terminating Part 1 could have come from the incisive pen of St. Augustine:

Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness;
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which served the past, and must the times to come!

Particularly the half-line "Mere curious pleasure," by which Pope dismisses so much of human knowledge, sounds remarkably Augustinian -- though it could have come from the Medieval tradition more generally.

For those interested, here's the entirety of Part 1 in Epistle 2:

Epistle 2.

I. Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all Nature's law,
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape
And showed a Newton as we show an ape.
Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?
Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,
Explain his own beginning, or his end?
Alas, what wonder! man's superior part
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;
But when his own great work is but begun,
What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness;
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which served the past, and must the times to come!

Apparently, I would do well in my 'curious' studies to look further into this work by Alexander Pope for its links to Augustine (hat tip to Kapok) as well as for the other things that it offers -- but for the moment, it's just another curious distraction from more pressing matters.

Elias Baumgarten: "Curiosity as a Moral Virtue"

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Enemy of Curiosity?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Two days ago, I looked at Thomas D. Kennedy's views on 'Idle' Curiosity, which seemed to be the only kind of curiosity that he recognized -- curiosity as a sort of inattentive distraction from important things. As such, Kennedy stands squarely within the Augustinian tradition in its rejection of curiosity as a vice.

Ours is not an age to receive such curious criticism equably, so the critique likely touches a sensitive point and at least for that reason merits our attention. Let us therefore consider the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted by Kennedy, criticizing curiosity:

The curious person spends much time pasturing these [sinful, hence 'goatlike', eyes and ears] when he does not care to know in what condition he has left himself within. And truly, O man, if you concentrate hard on the state you are in it will be surprising if you have time for anything else. Hear what Solomon says, curious man. Hear, foolish man, what Wisdom says. "Guard your heart with all your might." (Prov. 4:23), so that all your senses may be alert to protect the source of life. (Thomas D. Kennedy, "Curiosity and the Integrated Self: A Postmodern Vice," Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 4.4 (2001) page 46, citing Bernard of Clairvaux, Selected Works, trans. G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 123-24.)

Bernard understands curiosity much as Augustine did some 700 years earlier: it means meddlesomeness. A curious person is meddlesome, the sort of nosy individual who's forever looking into other people's business and then gossiping about it in a manner likely to engage the curiosity of others.

Well, nobody truly likes a busybody, so if curiosity means nosiness, then it's certainly a bad thing.

Kennedy therefore counsels us to restrain our curiosity by focusing attentively upon God . . . and, interestingly, upon the world:

To love as God loves, that is the goal of Christians, but so to love requires a self and an attentiveness to God and the world difficult to come by in our noisy times. Curiosity trades upon our delight in the riches of creation and demands that we abandon careful attention to the world present to us for the sake of thrill around the corner. It is a subtle vice, its tentacles hard to notice. If curiosity kills cats, it but wounds us, though wounds us deeply, perhaps imperceptibly. But we can learn to love, can learn to study God and God's creation, can learn attentiveness. To that end, a return to our quiet rooms may be both the beginning and end of wisdom and delight. (Kennedy, page 53)

Note that Kennedy maintains that "[c]uriosity . . . demands that we abandon careful attention to the world" (italics mine). And the Bernard quote cited previously insists that "[t]he curious person . . . does not care to know in what condition he has left himself within" (italics mine). Kennedy, following Bernard and placing himself within the Augustinian tradition, holds that curiosity has no genuine care for the objects of its inattentive gaze.

This is a curious point, as we shall see by looking at a passage from another article on curiosity published at the same time as Kennedy's article, both of them in the autumn of 2001. The following passage comes from Elias Baumgarten:

An important feature of curiosity is its fecundity: it tends to lead to other virtues. The virtue of curiosity does not depend on its leading to other virtues, but its having this instrumental value is morally significant. Curiosity bears a close relationship to, and is often bound up with, care and concern. Curiosity is rooted linguistically in the other-regarding activities of "care" and "cure" (from the Latin cūrāre, to take care of). We use the same term, "indifference" to describe both a lack of interest in other persons or things and a lack of concern about their welfare. For one to overcome indifference and be curious about something does not conceptually imply that one will also care about its welfare, but there is often a close relationship. In this section I will explore the connection between curiosity and care or concern in our relationships both with other people and with the non-human world, and I will also try to distinguish curiosity from several closely related character traits. (Elias Baumgarten, "Curiosity as a Moral Virtue," International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Volume 15, Number 2 (Fall 2001), part 2, paragraph one)

Kennedy and Baumgarten, though at odds over curiosity, perhaps know nothing of one another's work. Nevertheless, what we have here is a failure to communicate, foundered upon radically differing views of what "curiosity" means. Kennedy draws upon a tradition in which "curiosity" had come to imply a superficial concern with inessential matters, a meaning established by the the term's use. Baumgarten draws instead upon the sense of the word "curiosity" established by its Latin origin in cūrāre, "to take care of," a meaning established by the term's etymology.
But who is correct, Kennedy or Baumgarten? In a narrow sense, both are right if one can stipulate what a word means for the purposes of one's argument. In a larger sense, they're both right in that the term "curiosity" has both negative and positive meanings, depending upon the tradition to which one appeals -- a strong Medieval tradition denigrates curiosity, but an equally strong Modern tradition extolls it.

I'm latitudinarian enough to accept both views so long as they're working with different meanings of the same word, insofar as they're not talking about the same thing. As such, we would need merely to add, for example, the qualifier "idle" or "attentive" to the noun "curiosity" to know which view we're talking about.

The issue, however, is not quite that simple, for what if they're actually talking about exactly the same activity but evaluating it differently? Augustine, for instance, confessed that his curiosity misled him into watching a spider capture flies within its web instead of focusing upon the state of his soul on its journey toward God. Yet, precisely that curious attention to the details of this world, and to many things other than God and our souls, results in the fruits of science and technology as well as the knowledge of many other fascinating things.

Personally, I find Baumgarten's article more rich in insights, for it leads to connections that I hadn't previously thought about, so I'd recommend it for those curious about curiosity (though I wouldn't neglect Kennedy either).

I also find curious an incidental, even accidental connection in the timing of the two articles' publication. In a number of blog entries, I have investigated the concept of a voluntarist deity, a radically absolutist God unrestrained by reason or ethics and, arguably, intolerant of our curiosity. Hans Blumenberg argues that precisely this conception of God in one Medieval school of philosophy, i.e., nominalism, caused the Christian synthesis of faith and reason to fracture and that the Modern Age arose from those ruins through an act of human self-assertion legitimating theoretical curiosity and the Modern Age. Blumenberg doesn't make the process sound quite so heroic as that, but I'm summarizing, and moreover, times may now require intellectual heroism.

Kennedy and Baumgarten both published in the fall of 2001, and since that dire autumn, we have come to understand the very physical threat posed by the fiery thought in men's minds of a radically voluntarist deity, which strongly suggests that the debate about curiosity deserves our serious attention.

Expat Living: "Eyes, I's and lustful desires"

My Expat Seoul's New Dawn?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Today's Korea Herald has my column in its Expat Living pages, along with the columns of such better known figures as Robert Koehler, aka The Marmot, who -- as he tells his readers -- "is the administrator of The Marmot's Hole blog," a source of enough wonder, information, and bitchiness to keep the one's idle curiosity idling for hours.

Or you can also let yourself be more briefly distracted by my article in the Expat Living, but since the Korea Herald maintains the unusual practice of preventing netizens from linking directly to online articles, I can link only to the newspaper itself, but if you follow the link and let your eyes and cursor scroll briefly down the left margin, you'll find the link to Expat Living, where the section's most recent columns will appear . . . for a few days, perhaps.

The man organizing this new section, Matthew Lamers, has encouraged those of us with blogs or similar online sites to publicize our collective efforts and even to re-post our own columns after they appear in the Korea Herald, so I'm posting mine today, for the online site published it yesterday evening and the paper's hard copy has already been delivered this morning.

What you'll read here is my original copy, but if you want to read the edited version, which differs a bit, then take a look at the Korea Herald's Expat Living section . . . if it hasn't been pushed out of sight by the time you read this.

Originally, I wanted to call my column "Expatiate" and today's headline "Eyesore," but the editors had other ideas, and that's their call, so they're calling the column "Jeffery Hodges on Language" and today's headline "Eyes, I's and lustful desires," which is not bad, actually, and might get more attention than my original punning title.

Anyway, here is my original copy:

Expatiate: "Eyesore"

If language really is a virus from outer space, as William S. Burroughs claims, then my words could prove contagious. Despite that risk, I write the Language column for Expat Living.

I interpret this to mean that I can write about anything I please so long as I use language. That sounds straightforward enough, but there is one restriction. I am told to avoid overusing the word "eye."

Apparently, well-written journalism shuns this word, which is news to me. Whatever happened to eyewitness reports? I do not mean to imply that eyewitnesses are entirely dependable, for the eyes often fool us. Think of a magician's sleight-of-hand trick in making things disappear before our very eyes!

That happens even when our eyes are striving to perceive the truth. More disturbing, if religious thinkers are right, our eyes actively deceive and mislead us. The Bible's First Letter of John warns against "the lust of the eyes," for their lustful desires turn us toward worldly things.

Saint Augustine, commenting on this very letter, cites that same scriptural expression to disparage ocular curiosity, which distracts one from proper, spiritual pursuits and focuses one’s attention upon worldly affairs. In his infamous Confessions, he even provides an example of curiosity gone disturbingly wrong, describing how it draws his fascinated gaze to the sight of a spider entangling flies that have rushed into its web.

Lest one imagine distrust of the eyes to be a purely religious concern, the historian Martin Jay has shown in Downcast Eyes that even many secular thinkers denigrate vision. The atheist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, coined the expression "the gaze" in Being and Nothingness to describe how the observing eyes of strangers transform us into mere objects in their field of sight.

So great a cloud of witnesses would darken anyone's view of vision. Perhaps Expat Living's censure of the word "eye" has merit: "eye" as eyesore!

Yet, the word has also a venerable history and is beloved by poets. Consider W.B. Yeats' eyeable poem A Drinking Song:

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

Lovely poem. And yet . . . is it true? Has not Yeats perhaps attributed too much significance to the eye? Arguably, he has. If so, has he thereby overused the word? Arguably, he has. Ought I therefore misquote the poem? Arguably, I should:

Booze comes in at the mouth
And lust comes in at the ear;
We'll not know north from south
If we grow too old on beer.
I lift the glass to my mouth;
I look at you, and I leer.

Just look how this radical eye surgery has marred Yeats' formerly lovely poem! All that now remains is a none-eyed leer! Though the rhyme scheme works rather better. After all, "truth" does not truly rhyme with "mouth," does it? I have therefore excised that eye-rhyme, which ought to make the Expat Living authorities happy.

Speaking of whom, those same individuals will doubtless also be very pleased to hear that further columns of Expatiate will avoid overusing the forbidden word "eye."

(The restricted word is not "eye," but "I." - Editor)

Ah . . . I see. Er, this columnist sees. That being so, today's column has apparently wrong-footed everybody. My most sincere apologies offered to all who were misled through my egregious misunderstanding. Uh . . . will my column for Expat Living be allowed to continue?

Regular readers will note that I've cannibalized Gypsy Scholar to write this column. I promise to continue masticating bites of my blog to be incorporated within future language columns for Expat Living, so you might as well get used to this.

Finally, a practical role for my impractical blog...

A Curious Thalesian Tale

Thales of Miletus

Well might he look down

from time to time...

(Image from Livius.org)

In my recent 'literary' diversions touching upon Christmas, Boxing Day, St. Pugnacious, and Islamist song-and-dance, I've detoured from my serious interest in the trial of theoretical curiosity.

As perhaps became apparent from my Ciceronian post, distrust of curiosity for distracting one from more immediate, serious matters did not begin with the Church Fathers, but those fathers were able to mine the rich, classical veins for nuggets of ancient wisdom either explicitly or implicitly critical of curiosity's distractions.

In Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates criticizes those philosophers who concern themselves with distant, abstract things but neglect practical affairs closer to hand:

[T]he lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees, as they are called, of the state written or recited; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of office . . . do not enter even into their dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which the philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order; that he may gain a reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human things, is "flying all abroad" as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach. (Plato, Theaetetus, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Part 1, Page 38)

Socrates illustrates this with an anecdote about Thales:

I will illustrate my meaning . . . by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet. This is a jest which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal; he is searching into the essence of man, and busy in enquiring what belongs to such a nature to do or suffer different from any other.... (Plato, Theaetetus, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Part 1, Page 39)

The Church Father Tertullian, brilliant rhetorician and skilled lawyer but somewhat neglectful of details, picked up on this anecdote to disparage curiosity:

Now, pray tell me, what wisdom is there in this hankering after conjectural speculations? What proof is afforded to us, notwithstanding the strong confidence of its assertions, by the useless affectation of a scrupulous curiosity, which is tricked out with an artful show of language? It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, "Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?" His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor. (Tertullian, Ad Nationes, Book II, Chapter 4)

Tertullian knows the story, but he has 'forgotten' that the one who twitted Thales was a Thracian maiden and has substituted, in her stead, an Egyptian. He has also changed the story from one illustrating the point that philosophers ought to apply their intellectual concentration upon practical affairs to one illustrating the point that philosophers ought to direct their curiosity toward God.

Actually, Tertullian's wording has implied that philosophers ought not to "indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects" but on "their Creator and Governor" -- as the translator has realized and as the Latin original shows:

qui stupidam exerceant curiositatem naturae quam prius in artificem eius et praesidem (Tertullian, Adversus nationes II 4, quoted in Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 629, n. 68)

Tertullian, however, surely did not mean that one ought to "indulge a stupid curiosity" on one's "Creator and Governor," i.e., God, but (like Homer) had simply nodded off -- and was thus also 'off' his otherwise dependable rhetorical brilliance.

Nitpicking aside, let us turn to Hans Blumenberg, who also notes the Thalesian anecdote and Tertullian's use of it:

The first philosopher to live in Athens, Anaxagoras, could be accused of impiety because he had maintained that the sun was a glowing mass; and even if this accusation was only an explicit formula for the demythologizing of philosophy that he definitively carried out, it was nevertheless certainly not accidental that it became the central charge against him. Perhaps the anecdote about Thales that Plato hands down also has a similar background; the laughter of the Thracian maid over the philosopher who fell in the well while sauntering and observing the stars may represent not only the malicious pleasure of the unfree in observing the consequences of idleness, but also an understanding of the revenge taken by her tellurian gods on the Milesian who devoted his attention entirely to the stars. In the patristic polemics, the gaze upward is still contrasted, as the one capable of transcendence, to the downward gaze of the heathens, who are in the power of material idols. But the Thracian maid's ridicule of the protophilosopher Thales also hints at a further motif, which was to reappear in the course of the process through which the theoretical attitude became questionable: the conflict between the distant and the nearby, between that which has no immediate effect in life and the daily duties of a citizen in a community. He knows his way about the heavens, but he does not see what lies before his feet, sneers the slave girl. (Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 245-246)

Although Blumenberg implicitly acknowledges that he is speculating in suggesting that the Thracian maid inferred that Thales was being divinely punished for his (curious) attention to the stars instead of to the gods closer to hand, the speculation allows Blumenberg more readily to draw out the implications of the tale for Tertullian:

[F]or Tertullian . . . [curiosity] has scarcely anything to do with the Augustinian "pleasure of the eyes" but exhibits a more 'literary' character, comparable to the vanity of education and the pleasure of dialectical activity. To this the simplicity of the anima idiotica [uneducated soul] is contrasted. To the extent that the cognitive appetite directs itself at nature, it is reprehensible not on account of the nature of its objects but rather because it prefers the inferior realm of the dependent and the conditioned to the immediacy of its relation to its author. Thales's astronomical curiosity is reprimanded for this metaphysical short-sightedness. (Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 302)

Tertullian thus draws out the implication of divine displeasure that Blumenberg has imputed to the Thalesian tale and criticizes philosophers for their "stupid curiosity" about contingent things rather than an intelligent curiosity about the ground of all contingent things, i.e., God.

Augustine, as we have seen, suspects that not merely stupidity but something more demonic is at work in the attractions toward which curiosity leads, but unlike Tertullian, Augustine went through a Gnostic phase, and Blumenberg thinks that he carried over into his orthodox Catholicism a continuing Gnostic distrust of the cosmos.

I'm not sure, however, that Augustine's Manichaean brand of Gnosticism would explain this, but more on that another time.

James J. O'Donnell: Augustine's curiositas as "concupiscentia oculorum"

James J. O'Donnell

'...surrounded by spectacula to tempt

the concupiscentia oculorum'

(Image from James J. O'Donnell UPenn Website)

Yesterday, we encountered the usefulness of James J. O'Donnell's Augustine: Confessions, an online text with scholarly commentary, for it provides insight and links concerning Ancient and Medieval views on curiosity.

Curiously, however, in his commentary to Augustine's Confessions Book 10, Chapter 35, Paragraph 54, O'Donnell tells us: "Curiositas (for the concept in A. before conf., see on 3.2.2)" -- which I will spell out as this: "For the concept of 'curiositas' in Augustine prior to his fuller view in his Confessions, see the commentary to Confessions Book 3, Chapter 2, Paragraph 2," which we will do in a moment, but let us first see what the passages itself says in Latin:

rapiebant me spectacula theatrica, plena imaginibus miseriarum mearum et fomitibus ignis mei. quid est quod ibi homo vult dolere cum spectat luctuosa et tragica, quae tamen pati ipse nollet? et tamen pati vult ex eis dolorem spectator et dolor ipse est voluptas eius. quid est nisi mirabilis insania? nam eo magis eis movetur quisque, quo minus a talibus affectibus sanus est, quamquam, cum ipse patitur, miseria, cum aliis compatitur, misericordia dici solet. sed qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis et scenicis? non enim ad subveniendum provocatur auditor sed tantum ad dolendum invitatur, et actori earum imaginum amplius favet cum amplius dolet. et si calamitates illae hominum, vel antiquae vel falsae, sic agantur ut qui spectat non doleat, abscedit inde fastidiens et reprehendens; si autem doleat, manet intentus et gaudens lacrimat.

If your Latin is as wonderful as mine, you'll also need help, so let us seek guidance from the Holy Catholic Church -- I mean its encyclopedia, which provides this translation of Confessions Book 3, Chapter 2, Paragraph 2:

Stage-plays also drew me away, full of representations of my miseries and of fuel to my fire. Why does man like to be made sad when viewing doleful and tragical scenes, which yet he himself would by no means suffer? And yet he wishes, as a spectator, to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched insanity? For a man is more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person, it is the custom to style it "misery" but when he compassionates others, then it is styled "mercy." But what kind of mercy is it that arises from fictitious and scenic passions? The hearer is not expected to relieve, but merely invited to grieve; and the more he grieves, the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. And if the misfortunes of the characters (whether of olden times or merely imaginary) be so represented as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and censorious; but if his feelings be touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.

Augustine would here seem to be arguing against Aristotle's defense of 'poetry' (cf. Plato's critique of poetry in The Republic), which included drama, particularly of tragic drama, which Aristotle argued acted as a sort of catharsis, a purifying of the spectator. Augustine, like Plato, disagrees with Aristotle on tragic drama's effect, finding that it does not purify but, rather, corrupts.

Be that as it may, you will now see why I found 'curious' that O'Donnell would direct us to his commentary to Confessions Book 3, Chapter 2, Paragraph 2, for Augustine does not use the term "curiositas" in this passage. However, we can understand if we see that the passage fits what Augustine elsewhere says of "curiositas" as "concupiscentia oculorum," i.e., "curiosity" as "lust of the eyes."

Anyway, let's see what O'Donnell has to say:

Curiositas is always a vice for A. For a definition using the word itself, vera rel. 52.101, 'quid enim appetit curiositas nisi cognitionem quae certa esse non potest nisi rerum aeternarum et eodem modo se semper habentium?'; though the word is absent, more revealing perhaps is vera rel. 33.62, 'ille [animus] autem vult mentem convertere ad corpora, oculos ad deum. quaerit enim intellegere carnalia et videre spiritalia, quod fieri non potest.'

For bibliography, see on 10.35.54. There is much originality to A.'s development, but the possible influence of Ambrose has not been sufficiently considered. Not that Ambrose has a concept of curiositas, but some of his suspicions of the excesses of the philosophers are at least apposite to A.'s own thoughts, though A. develops them further. See Amb. off. 1.26.122 (written 386), 'itaque tractant in veri investigatione tenendum illud decorum, ut summo studio requiramus quid verum sit, non falsa pro veris ducere, non obscuris vera involvere, non superfluis vel inplexis atque ambiguis occupare animum. quid tam indecorum quam venerari ligna, quod ipsi faciunt? quid tam obscurum quam de astronomia et geometria tractare, quod probant, et profunda aeris spatia metiri, caelum quoque et mare numeris includere; relinquere causam salutis, erroris quaerere?' Such ill-guided search for knowledge Amb. then contrasts to Moses' superior wisdom.

The subject emerges early and pervades the years before conf.; at ord. 1.8.26 he recalls watching a cock-fight: 'cur . . . nos ipsa pugnae facies aliquantum et praeter altiorem istam considerationem duceret in voluptatem spectaculi?' Later in the same work, he cautions measure in inquiry: ord. 2.5.17, 'si quis temere ac sine ordine disciplinarum in harum rerum cognitionem audet inruere, pro studioso illum curiosum, pro docto credulum, pro cauto incredulum fieri' (cf. ord. 1.11.31, 'curiosi vel nimium studiosi'); specific examples are offered: ord. 2.12.37 (the trivial pursuits of grammarians), 2.15.42 (on astronomy: 'astrologiam genuit, magnum religiosis argumentum tormentumque curiosis'); cf. quant. an. 19.33. The noun curiositas itself is introduced at mus. 6.13.39, 'avertit [a contemplatione aeternorum] denique amor vanissimae cognitionis talium rerum. . . . curiositas nascitur ipso curae nomine inimica securitati, et vanitate impos veritatis'. Connection with 1 Jn. 2.16 (see on 1.10.16 and on 10.30.41) is slower coming, though it may underlie mor. 1.21.38: 'quamobrem recte etiam curiosi esse prohibemur, quod magnum temperantiae munus est. . . . reprimat igitur se anima ab huiusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate, si se castam deo servare disposuit.' Similar discussions occur later: cf., e.g., trin. 10.1.3, 'aut si tam curiosus est ut non propter aliquam notam causam sed solo amore rapiatur incognita sciendi, discernendus quidem est ab studiosi nomine iste curiosus; sed nec ipse amat incognita, immo congruentius dicitur, odit incognita, quae nulla esse vult dum vult omnia cognita.'

A clear echo of 1 Jn. 2.16 occurs at lib. arb. 2.19.53 (nothing in the work can be surely dated before it was put in final form, which may have been as late as 395), 'ad proprium convertitur [1], cum suae potestatis vult esse; ad exterius [2], cum aliorum propria vel quaecumque ad se non pertinent cognoscere studet, ad inferius [3] cum voluptatem corporis diligit. atque ita homo superbus [1] et curiosus [2] et lascivus [3] effectus excipitur ab alia vita quae in comparatione superioris vitae mors est.' But comparable echoes may be found at Gn. c. man. 1.23.40 (quoted on 10.30.41) and 2.18.27 ('genus tertium temptationis his verbis figurare, quod est curiositas').

The last thing A. wrote before his ordination in 391 was vera rel., whose structure and contents are heavily influenced by 1 Jn. 2.16; there are clear attacks on curiositas at vera rel. 3.4, 4.7 ('nam tertio vitio curiositatis in percontandis daemonibus'), 29.52 ('in quorum consideratione non vana et peritura curiositas exercenda est, sed gradus ad immortalia et semper manentia faciendus'), 38.70, 38.71 (quoted on 10.30.41 for the link between the temptations of 1 Jn. and the three temptations of Christ in the desert), 49.94 ('iam vero cuncta spectacula et omnis illa quae appellatur curiositas, quid aliud quaerit quam de rerum cognitione laetitiam?'), and cf. also vera rel. 52.101-54.105, and see div. qu. 68.1, quoted on 5.3.5 below.

When we bring our modern incomprehension to A.'s disdain for what is now an unquestioned virtue, we forget that for him curiositas led directly to demons: cat. rud. 25.48, 'qui christianum nomen oderunt . . . et adhuc simulacris et daemoniorum curiositatibus servire desiderant,' and Io. ep. tr. 2.13 (on 1 Jn. 2.16), 'iam quam late patet curiositas? ipsa in spectaculis, in theatris, in sacramentis diaboli, in magicis artibus, in maleficiis ipsa est curiositas.' See also trin. 4.11.14-4.12.15, civ. 10.26, 10.28 (where he presents Porphyry playing to an audience of the curious: 'ut talium quoque rerum quasi peritus appareas et placeas inlicitarum artium curiosis, vel ad eas facias ipse curiosos'), and 10.29. (A familiar villain for fourth-century Christians was similarly led astray by curiositas, acting in concert this time with ambitio saeculi: civ. 5.21, 'apostatae Iuliano, cuius egregiam indolem decepit amore dominandi sacrilega et detestanda curiositas'.) For the word and the thing, see further on 10.35.54.

Curiositas emerges here in narrative as A. comes to the great city and finds himself surrounded by all manner of marvels. One innocent recollection may date to this awed time: civ. 16.8, 'quosdam [homines] sine cervice oculos habentes in umeris, et cetera hominum vel quasi hominum genera, quae in maritima platea Carthaginis musivo picta sunt, ex libris deprompta velut curiosioris historiae.'

spectacula . . . imaginibus: Students were discouraged by the local authorities from too much spectacle-going: cod. theod. 14.9.1 (12 March 370), 'neve spectacula frequentius adeant'. The same law declared that indiscipline could be punished (at least at Rome and Constantinople) by whippings and forced rustication. A similar moralizing restriction was enjoined upon the young Julian by his tutor Mardonius (Julian, misopogon 351c-d), and Libanius (ep. 976.) thought the theater a distraction for students. A.'s remarks here make it clear that it was the enacted stories that appealed to him most, as later the circus (6.7.11-12) and the gladiatorial combats (6.8.13) would appeal to Alypius; these seem to have been the three main classes of entertainment available to A. (and classed by him as spectacula): s. 198.3, 'delectantur nugatorio spectaculo et turpitudinibus variis theatrorum, insania circi, crudelitate amphitheatri, certaminibus animosis eorum qui pro pestilentibus hominibus lites et contentiones usque ad inimicitias suscipiunt, pro mimo, pro histrione, pro pantomimo [these three are from the theatra], pro auriga [from the circus], pro venatore [from the gladiatorial amphitheater].' 1

Spectaculum in A. is almost always accompanied by verbs of seeing, frequently with word-play on spectare; in this paragraph note 'spectacula', 'spectat', `spectator', `spectat', and add 3.2.3, `spectaculi', 3.2.4, `spectare', 3.8.16, 'spectatores', 3.8.16, 'principandi [1] et spectandi [2] et sentiendi [3] libidine'; the recapitulation at 4.1.1 (parallelling the recapitulation of Bk. 2 at 3.1.1) speaks of 'spectaculorum nugas'.

The appeal is to the concupiscentia oculorum (s. Den. 14.3, 'quae mala facit turpis curiositas, concupiscentia vana oculorum, aviditas nugacium spectaculorum, insania stadiorum, nullo praemio conflictus certaminum!'; cf. Io. ep. tr. 2.13, quoted above). Compare Alypius covering his eyes at the gladiatorial spectaculum, but yielding, 'curiositate victus' (6.8.13); cf. 1.10.16 ('eadem curiositate magis magisque per oculos emicante in spectacula'), 1.13.22, 10.35.54 (`ex hoc morbo [curiositatis] in spectaculis exhibentur quaeque miracula'); theatra also appeal to curiositas (10.35.56). Cf. vera rel. 22.43, 'nec ob aliud a talibus prohibemur spectaculis, nisi ne umbris rerum decepti ab ipsis rebus quarum illae umbrae sunt aberremus'; sim. at vera rel. 49.94, 54.105; and again at trin. 4.11.14. civ. 2.4, 'veniebamus etiam nos aliquando adulescentes ad spectacula ludibriaque sacrilegiorum, spectabamus arrepticios, audiebamus symphoniacos, ludis turbissimis qui diis deabusque exhibebantur oblectabamur, Caelesti virgini et Berecynthiae matri omnium, ante cuius lecticam die sollemni lavationis eius talia per publicum cantitabantur a nequissimis scaenicis qualia non . . . matrem ipsorum scaenicorum deceret audire. . . . quae si inlecta curiositate adesse potuit circumfusa, saltem offensa castitate debuit abire confusa.' civ. 2.26, 'ante ipsum tamen delubrum, ubi simulacrum illud [Caelestis] locatum conspicebamus . . . intentissime spectabamus, intuentes alternante conspectu hinc meretriciam pompam, illinc virginem deam.' See also civ. 1.32-3, 1.35, 2.8, 7.26.

G-M, Theiler P.u.A. 60, and BA all attempt to situate this text in the tradition of ancient discussions of the emotional impact of the theater. There is nothing here in conf. to connect A.'s views with any of the surviving discussions, but he is surely their heir at some distance (at civ. 8.13 he even invokes Plato's suspicion of poets in support of his views). Dominant is surely his own notion of the connection to curiositas. His works nevertheless (including the passages just cited from civ.) offer some glimpses of what the life of the spectacula entailed in the Carthage of his day. See also en. Ps. 103. s. 1.13 ('videtis quid faciat civitas ubi abundant spectacula: in agro securius loquerer'), 146.4, 147.8, s. 241.5 (quoted on 1.13.20, 'Aeneae nescio cuius'). Alfaric 32-33 offers additional texts.

O'Donnell provides even more commentary, but the above remarks are most relevant to our interest in curiosity. I notice that O'Donnell notes that Augustine "invokes Plato's suspicion of poets in support of his views," a point that I raised above. But O'Donnell's opening remark is the most significant: "Curiositas is always a vice for A." As O'Donnell explains, "When we bring our modern incomprehension to A.'s disdain for what is now an unquestioned virtue, we forget that for him curiositas led directly to demons" -- a reminder, however, that probably renders us not so much baffled in our incomprehension as aghast in our revulsion. One has to wonder how much of Augustine's mind remained captivated by a Gnostic distrust of the cosmos.

But let us return to this Blumenbergian theme later...

James J. O'Donnell's Augustine: Confessions (Commentary: Curiosity in 10.35.54)

Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-1497), "Take up and read"

Fresco Series, Life of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

San Gimignano (1465)

(Image from James J. O'Donnell UPenn Website)

In my curious wanderings about the internet, following the lust of my own eyes for seeable knowledge, albeit 'seeable' only with the mind's 'I', my abstract eye was caught by something foreseeable though unforeseen by me, an up-to-date online annotated edition of Augustine's Confessions, with a commentary that even draws upon Hans Blumenberg.

As the site itself says, "This document is an on-line reprint of Augustine: Confessions, a text and commentary by James J. O'Donnell (Oxford: 1992; ISBN 0-19-814 378-8)."

"Nice find," I thought, then found that I had found it before without realizing its significance. I had drawn from it in my blog entry of December 6 for its online reproduction of the Latin text to Book 10, Chapter 35, Paragraph 54 in Augustine's Confessions:

huc accedit alia forma temptationis multiplicius periculosa. praeter enim concupiscentiam carnis, quae inest in delectatione omnium sensuum et voluptatum, cui servientes depereunt qui longe se faciunt a te, inest animae per eosdem sensus corporis quaedam non se oblectandi in carne, sed experiendi per carnem vana et curiosa cupiditas nomine cognitionis et scientiae palliata. quae quoniam in appetitu noscendi est, oculi autem sunt ad noscendum in sensibus principes, concupiscentia oculorum eloquio divino appellata est. ad oculos enim proprie videre pertinet, utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus, cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus. neque enim dicimus, 'audi quid rutilet,' aut, 'olefac quam niteat,' aut, 'gusta quam splendeat,' aut, 'palpa quam fulgeat': videri enim dicuntur haec omnia. dicimus autem non solum, 'vide quid luceat,' quod soli oculi sentire possunt, sed etiam, 'vide quid sonet,' 'vide quid oleat,' 'vide quid sapiat,' 'vide quam durum sit.' ideoque generalis experientia sensuum concupiscentia (sicut dictum est) oculorum vocatur, quia videndi officium, in quo primatum oculi tenent, etiam ceteri sensus sibi de similitudine usurpant, cum aliquid cognitionis explorant.

Readers will recall that I then posted the translation provided by the Catholic Encyclopedia website:

10.35.54. In addition to this there is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lies in the gratification of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who "are far from You perish," there pertains to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being the chief amongst the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine language, "the lust of the eyes." (1 John 2:16) For seeing belongs properly to the eyes; yet we apply this word to the other senses also, when we exercise them in the search after knowledge. For we do not say, Listen how it glows, smell how it glistens, taste how it shines, or feel how it flashes, since all these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, See how it shines, which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is. And thus the general experience of the senses, as was said before, is termed "the lust of the eyes," because the function of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the pre-eminence, the other senses by way of similitude take possession of, whensoever they seek out any knowledge.

But we've seen all this before, so why do I again call attention to it here now? Because of the linked commentary with scholarly observations, references, links, and abundant abbreviations (penultimately demystified below) that James J. O'Donnell conveniently provides:

Curiositas (for the concept in A. before conf., see on 3.2.2): the noun (see TLL 4.1489-92; cf. Labhardt, Mus. Helv. 17[1960], 209) occurs only once in Cicero (Att. 2.12.2) and becomes common with Apuleius and Tertullian; the adj. is in Cicero and Varro in senses congruent to its use here several times but then does not occur regularly for another century. (The adj. has a less flattering, earlier sense that appears in Terence, e.g.: 'inquisitive, curious, meddlesome, interfering' [OLD]; and at util. cred. 9.22, A. implies that the word is ordinarily unflattering: 'sed scis etiam curiosum non nos solere appellare sine convicio, studiosum vero etiam cum laude'.) curiosus/curiositas in conf.: 1.10.16, 1.14.23, 2.6.13, 3.3.5, 5.3.3, 5.3.4 (see on 5.3.4 for Ps. 8.8-9 and en. Ps.), 6.8.13, 6.12.22, 7.6.8, 7.6.9, 10.3.3, 10.35.55 (2x), 10.35.57, 10.37.60, 10.42.67; only twice in later books are the three temptations are evoked: 13.20.28, 'genus humanum profunde curiosum', 13.21.30, 'venenum curiositatis' (in both cases in 1 Jn. 2.16 triads).

For an archaic, evasive view: G-M: 'In ages of decadence, such as that in which A. lived, morbid curiosity takes the place of honest, healthy curiosity: jaded nerves and blasé characters crave for unwholesome stimulants.' 26 The dissonance between A.'s mistrust and modern reverence and the difficulty in specifying sources for his attitude have helped give rise to a substantial bibliography. Special note should be taken of the work of H. Blumenberg, whose articles on A. (REAug 7[1961], 35-70 and Studia Patristica 6[1962], 294-302), contribute to his ambitious Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (first ed., Frankfurt, 1966; Eng. trans. from revised edition, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age [Cambridge, Mass., 1983], where see 309-23 on A.). See also H. J. Mette, in Fetschrift Snell (München, 1956), 227-235, on Hermetic connections and the ps.-Apuleian Asclepius, a work A. knew later in his career at least; A. Labhardt, Mus. Helv. 17(1960), 206-24 (from Cicero to Augustine: excellent); R. Joly, Ant. Class. 30(1961), 5-32; and S. Lancel, RHR 160(1961), 25-45 (Apuleius).

Texts from the mature A.: qu. ev. 1.47, 'cupiditati quae in curiositate est, opponitur timor mortis: . . . in illa cognoscendarum est aviditas'; agon. 4.4, 6.6, 12.13; b. coniug. 12.14; Gn. litt. 11.31.41 (on Gn. 3.7, 'aperti sunt oculi eorum' : 'audax curiositas mota est, avida experiri latentia'); trin. 10.5.7, 12.11.16 ('cum enim neglecta caritate sapientiae, quae semper eodem modo manet, concupiscitur scientia ex mutabilium temporaliumque experimento, inflat, non aedificat: ita praegravatus animus quasi pondere suo a beatitudine expellitur'); civ. 3.9, 4.34, 5.21, 5.26, 7.34, 9.16, 10.27, 16.8 ('historici de sua curiositate gloriantes'); en. Ps. 80.19, 101. s. 2.10; c. Iul. 6.7.17 ('contra curiositatem quae minus solet mirari quod potuerit comprehendere, incomprehensibilia esse opera dei').

The strength of A.'s distaste for this element of his own character may be measured by his reaction when, around 410, he encounters a correspondent not unlike his own younger self (Dioscorus: almost certainly not the brother of Zenobius, the dedicatee of ord., though PLRE II [s.v. Dioscorus 2] and some others would identify them). A. rebukes him roundly for his curiositas: ep. 118.1.1, 'ego te autem vellem abripere de medio deliciosarum inquisitionum tuarum et constipare inter curas meas, ut vel disceres non esse inaniter curiosus, vel curiositatem tuam cibandam atque nutriendam imponere non auderes eis quorum inter curas vel maxima cura est reprimere ac refrenare curiosos. . . . vanae atque fallaces cupiditates tuae . . . nescio qua umbra honestatis et liberalium studiorum nomine velatae atque palliatae . . . .'

A.'s own intrinsic 'curiosity' (the sort that leaves him agape at the sight of hound and hare: 10.35.57) is on display at civ. 21.4, 'magnetem lapidem novimus mirabilem ferri esse raptorem; quod cum primum vidi, vehementer inhorrui,' followed by a circumstantial description. The 'miracula' described there and in the following chapters do give a hint of the grounds of A.'s aversion to 'curiositas' : attending to the wonders of nature led, more often than not, to ascribing those wonders to divine powers of various sorts. A.'s own notorious early aversion to miracle-stories in general (see on 9.7.16) probably arises from the same desire to avoid competing, to avoid crediting non-Christian deities with special powers. By the time of civ. 22, he had obviously chosen to compete with the non-Christian gods on their own ground; this decision may be variously judged, but it is at least a sign of increasing confidence in his own position.

O'Donnell's labor in this field (and laboriously put online by Anne Mahoney) will certainly prove labor-saving for me as I delve further into Augustine's critique of curiosity.

To identify the abbreviations located in the passage above, see O'Donnell's "Prolegomena." You'll need to scroll down about a third of the webpage, to 'Abbreviations and Methods of Reference'.

That's all for today because I'm still grading final essays.