Milton’s Preconditions for Freedom

This 'essay' appeared recently in the Ewha Voice

Milton’s Preconditions for Freedom

Ewha Voice

Professor's Column

Horace Jeffery Hodges

I sometimes wonder if people still believe in free speech. It is often attacked these days as an unnecessary concession to political adversaries when one has power over them. Or such freedom is cynically defended when one is out of power. On the positive importance of free speech, I can do no better than borrow John Milton’s earnest defense of the preconditions to free expression in his essay Areopagitica, which presupposes a morally 'fallen' world in which good and evil are mixed and must be unmixed through experiencing both:

It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by evill. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdome can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure one.

Perhaps this Early Modern English passage requires 'translation' into Modern English:

It was from out of the skin of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil as twins clinging together leapt forth into the world. And perhaps this is that judgment that Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil. The state of humankind is now this: what wisdom can there be to choose, what restraint to maintain, without the knowledge of evil? He who can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, that one is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies forth to face her adversary, but slinks out of the hot, dusty race for which that immortal garland is run. Certainly, we bring not innocence into the world; rather, we bring much impurity. That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. The virtue that is therefore a mere youth in contemplating evil, and does not know the utmost that vice promises her followers, and rejects it, is only a blank virtue, not a pure virtue.

Milton borrows heavily from the Genesis temptation story to describe our existential circumstances in a post-Genesis world, where we come to know good by knowing evil. And this, says Milton, is our judgment. We judge and are judged by means of the same judgment: our own. Without freedom, we would be mere mechanisms. We ourselves do not esteem forced obedience: neither does God. Providence therefore left mankind free. Or so thinks Milton, and he has been very influential on this point.

If mankind has free will, but nobody has a monopoly on truth – and Milton affirms these – then one can reasonably infer that we should be free to act in accordance with political freedom: namely, to speak freely. Do we have this right? That is a topic for another essay.

Enough almost already! (Almost.)

André Aciman

Wikipedia

As a university freshman many years ago, I was cautioned by my English professor Morse Hamilton against overuse of the word "almost," but I'm now told by Professor André Aciman, writing in "An Adverb That Defies Certainty" (NYT, September 15, 2012), that "almost" is almost always right . . . though he acknowledges that others would disagree:

"Almost" is not the favorite word of all authors. One can imagine -- though no one's counting -- that Hemingway was not a friend of "almost." Nor was Teddy Roosevelt. Nor, I'd wager, would the frugal, unimaginative Messieurs Strunk and White have been well disposed to it had they been asked about its eloquence.

Actually (another word I've been cautioned against), I exaggerated. Aciman doesn't claim that "almost" is usually right. He simply praises its correctness -- when it is correct, as it often is -- and with rare literary eloquence explores its meaning:

We know what "almost" means. Dictionaries, however vaguely they define the word, agree on this, that "almost" means something between "short of" and "sort of." We also know that "almost" is mostly used as an adverb, and adverbs can define a verb, adjective or another adverb. But "almost" is also a stringer, a filler. Two extra syllables, like blush after makeup, just that requisite fuzziness, like ambiguity in an instance of total candor. A halt in midspeech, an extra tap on the piano's pedal, a suggestion of doubt and degree, of resonance and approximation, where straight, flat surfaces are the norm. "By using 'almost,'" says the writer, "I'm saying there is 'less than'; but what I mean to suggest is that there is possibly 'more than.'"

That's entirely right -- no almost about it! I need to direct my Korean students to this explanation of how to use the word, for they almost invariably use it to mean "all." That doesn't happen with native speakers, of course, who know better. Not that they are so much better about using it with style, for in defense of my freshman composition professor, who was an excellent writer, "almost" is too often poorly used. Strunk and White would have had their reasons:

But then there are writers who with an "almost," or a "presque" in French, can suddenly illuminate a reader's universe. "She asked herself why she had done something so perilous, and she concluded that she had embarked on it almost without thinking."

Try that latter sentence without "almost" and hear how much is lost. Almost everything.

And this line wouldn't work at all . . . if not for "almost."

Word of the Weak: "Weepers"

Erin McKean

Wikipedia

Erin McKean, who writes a column on language for the Boston Globe, has a recent article, "New words from noncelebrity neologizers" (January 22, 2012), in which she introduces a new term that beer lovers can use:

You may not have reason to refer to pint-size liquor bottles that often, but if you do you'll appreciate knowing that Jemaleddin Cole calls them weepers: "the sad, drinking-alone counterpart of a growler of beer." (A growler is an older word for a pail or pitcher of beer, now used for a half-gallon jug.)

I said "beer lovers" due to the 'etymology,' but liquor lovers of all kinds can use the term. Cole thinks that this word "weepers" meets the conditions set by Allan Metcalf's acronymically named FUDGE scale:

Neologism expert Allan Metcalf, the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, gives five factors by which to judge the success of a new word: what he calls the FUDGE scale. FUDGE stands for "frequency of use" (more use means a higher chance of success), "unobtrusiveness" (is it too jokey?), "diversity of users and situations" (is it used by a lot of different people?), "generation of other forms and meanings" (can you verb it?), and "endurance of the concept."

McKean might be right, but I wonder if "weepers" is just a mite too jokey in its acute cuteness.

Readers' opinions?

Expat Living: Assay at an Essay

Writing that Essay

It's all so logical...

(Image from Free Dictionary)

My most recent language column appeared in yesterday's "Expat Living" section of the Korea Herald (April 23, 2008), a newspaper -- as you will recall -- that does not allow links to specific articles, which provides me at least one good reason for posting the article here on Gypsy Scholar.

You'll find no poetry in this particular language column . . . sniff. Yes, it's sad, but I was asked to tone down the poetry since most people don't generally read poetry because they find it difficult to understand.

Well, that's what they said. They also said that people are bitter, cling to their guns, their religion, their xenophobia (oops, foreign, elitist word), and their anti-trade sentiment (um . . . somewhat of a mixed message, that). Who ever knew that poetry could be so alienating.

So, anyway, I wrote the following, very prosaic piece on 'logical' writing:

"The what and the why of theses"

Because students learn best through writing, I require my students in nearly every course to write a research essay supporting a thesis.

People often complain about difficulty in composing their essay's thesis statement, but the basic statement is really quite simple. On some topic that you have chosen, ask yourself two questions: "what?" and "why?"

That might sound obscure, so let me provide an example.

Put yourself in Aristotle's shoes and suppose that you want to write some piece debunking Socrates, your philosophical rival's teacher, whom your rival portrays as having faced death courageously by anticipating an afterlife.

Reflecting upon these views, you ask yourself what you think and then, because you are Aristotle, you reply with the claim that Socrates is mortal. Next, you ask yourself why you think so, and you give as your reason the fact that Socrates is human.

You then compose your thesis statement by conjoining your claim to your reason: "Socrates is mortal because he is human."

Note that this has the following logical form: A is B because A is C.

That sounds fairly reasonable, but a concessive clause might further establish your reasonability: "Although Plato defends the soul's immortality, Socrates is mortal because he is human."

Not an especially impressive example, perhaps, but one of my students has already accounted for the statement's intellectual deficiencies by noting that we often fall short of using our intellectual gifts to their fullest:

Although humans have good brains, many people don't use their brains well because they don't recognize the importance of using their brains well.

To help this student use his own brain well, I have tidied his grammar and spelling, but I suspect that he needs to do some hard, brainier thinking before this thesis statement can capably sustain a semester-length research essay.

I will grant that his thesis statement has the proper logical form, but that alone does not suffice, as two more examples demonstrate. For instance, one student, perhaps having considered the oft-expressed comparison of sports to battle, takes that comparison perceptibly further:

Although military strategy and position are different from soccer strategy and position, soccer is similar to war because it has strategy and position.

I rather like this argument's redundancy, though I am not quite clear on what "position" means . . . but at least my insufficient understanding means that I still have something to learn from this student.

The other example -- a thesis statement that I rather fancy -- comes from a student with ecological concerns:

Although many people say that it is not too late to prevent global warming, the earth will be destroyed because it is already getting hotter.

I have noticed this myself. March was noticeably warmer than February, and if this trend continues through April and beyond, I expect that we will be suffering considerable heat by early July and utter destruction by early August.

If this student and I are truly lucky, the foretold destruction might occur even before grading.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com - Ed.

Regular readers will recognize that I have again cannibalized a previous Gypsy Scholar post. Once again, I defend myself with the justification that the work put into my blogging ought to have some practical benefit for me.

So there.

Expat Living: "Dictating language to so and so"

Lincoln Steffens

"I've seen the furniture,

and it lurks (on the horizen)."

- ad blurb written for IKEA,

while riding a train through Sweden

(Image from Wikipedia)

Today's the day that I get to be 'lazy' and just post my latest from the Korea Herald, a column written in response to a reader who didn't like my previous article there on "Mucking up the English language" and accused me of speaking like a tyrant.

I know the guy from the Milton List. He's one of those old unreconstructed Marxists from the 1950s whose readings of what I and others post on that literary listserve are similar to what you'll see below in the quote that I provide from his 'critique' of my previous column:

Dictating language to so and so

I take delight in reporting a most passionate response to my recent column, "Mucking up the English language." Fellow Milton scholar Professor C. Cox has troubled himself to quote me briefly and comment upon my words:

"Horace Jeffery Hodges (in his column) wrote: '. . . Licentiousness, regrettably, is not liberty,' which as Lincoln Steffens magnificently argued, is not just not true, it is viciously untrue. This false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty, and not (as Milton argued) necessity [and liberty] is the true plea of the Tyrant."

Thank you, Professor Cox. I take heart in having attentive readers and appreciate the gallant corrective, but you have neglected the context, which begins: "Lest pedants once again correct me on a point that I know full well . . ."

I myself would hardly be earning my own keep as official pundit pedant if I failed to draw attention to the unorthodox capitalization of "Licentiousness," "Liberty," and "Tyrant." Professor Cox is either reverting to seventeenth-century orthographic conventions, as perchance befits a Milton scholar, or he is committing the fallacy of misplaced abstraction, perhaps reading my frivolous remark as some Grand Pronouncement.

Or possibly, in hastening to correct me, the good man has simply erred in capitalizing these three common nouns. Well, hasten slowly, sir, so as not to sow the wind, for a stitch in time saves nine, else your white canvas doublet will sully! But not too slowly, either, for indolence begets indigence. Let me word it so:

So ...

I s'pose you know
It's best to sow
Than be a lazy so and so!

Though even the lazy sow and sow
If forced to, though.
I s'pose that's so.

When I say "sow,"
I don't mean "sew"!
If I meant so,
I'd tell you "sew"!

It's just, you know,
We'd better sow
To be in dough -- don't you think so?

Although, of those who sew and sew,
I s'pose also
It's also so.

I trust that I have made myself as vehemently clear as professor Cox has made himself. Vehement, that is; not clear.

For instance, I am not quite certain what the professor means by referring to the "false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty." By "false contrast," does he mean that licentiousness and liberty are not altogether opposite in meaning? If so, I agree, for licentiousness even derives from a Latin word for freedom: licentia. Or does he mean, instead, that licentiousness and liberty are identical in meaning, having no contrast at all? I would find that problematic, for licentiousness entails the flaunting of rules, whereas liberty covers rather a broader range of meanings, including the freedom that one gains through following rules.

Similarly puzzling in its manner of expression is the professor's larger assertion that the "false contrast of Licentiousness and Liberty . . . is the true plea of the Tyrant." In identifying a "false contrast" as a "true plea," professor Cox might appear to be asserting a contradiction, but I think that I understand his meaning. The expression "true plea of the Tyrant" should be read as "true Tyrant's plea." The professor means that I expressed myself with the voice of a genuine tyrant when I wrote these words:

"Licentiousness, regrettably, is not liberty, and trapped in this prison house of language, I reflect upon my own linguistic crime of passion and perceive that I stand guilty of the very thing for which I have accused Larkin."

Professor Cox is right. I have been tyrannical in judging myself so harshly. I deserve amnesty, and as tyrant, I hereby declare myself pardoned.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com -- Ed.

Well, judge for yourself my putative tyrannical character. I expect that Professor Cox will.

Meanwhile, can someone direct me to where Lincoln Steffens argued so magnificently about licentiousness and liberty?

Expat Living: "Profane expressions: fuggedaboudit"

Today's Korea Herald has my latest Expat Living column on language . . . which strikes me as odd, for it was supposed to have published my next-to-latest column. That other one would have been more appropriate, for it dealt with Ozark dialect, and I'm currently visiting family and friends in the Ozarks.

However, I must face profane reality, as does my column itself, so unless the use of explicit profanity offends you, go look for my column under Expat Living on the Korea Herald's buggy website with distracting popups -- or read it all here on Gypsy Scholar:

"Profane expressions: fuggedaboudit"

Although my old buddy Al Termini, who drove the Gutenberg Express between the Stanford and Berkeley libraries back in the 1980s, would litter his language with profane expressions like fuggedaboudit, I never expected to see a t-shirt with that word unabashedly emblazoned across its front, but the cursed thing is available at Amazon.com, which at least admits that this is an "Adult T-Shirt." Despite its adult status, however, anyone can access the site and order that shirt!

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I blame Norman Mailer for initially popularizing the basest form of this word in his World War II novel, "The Naked and the Dead." Here is a typical instance of a character wantonly mouthing this term:

"Minetta was becoming irritated. It was impossible ever to win an argument with Pollack. "Aaah, fug you," he said (60).

Could this word possibly be more crudely spelled out? Mailer's trashy novel should have been banned 60 years ago, but that ship has long sailed and returned with cargo.

Some of that cargo has recently gotten unloaded in John Green's teenybopper novel, "An Abundance of Katherines," which not only incessantly uses the word but even depicts its 19-year-old main character openly hailing Mailer's book:

"(I)t's 872 pages, and it uses the word fug or fugging or fugger or whatever about 37,000 times. Every other word is a fug, pretty much" (120).

In homage to Mailer, this character and his best friend adopt the vulgar term for their own use. Shocking, yes, but not nearly so astounding as the fact that Green's book placed as a finalist for the Michael L. Printz Award in literary excellence!

Literary? A word like that, literary? Why, the word itself is a gross misspelling, as the renowned stage actress Tallulah Bankhead acidly observed upon first meeting Mailer: "So you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell."

Mailer's crude misspelling has spread even beyond the literary world and into popular culture, where it has undoubtedly wreaked even more harm by piercing the virgin ears of any who have ever heard of that rock band whose name was coined in 1965 by the band's cofounder Tuli Kupferberg as homage to Mailer's illiteracy: The Fugs.

Now, many may think me alarmist, but consider the long-term effect of Mailer's illiterate vulgarism. Language already suffers from a deleterious tendency toward semantic drift, and I see no good reason to encourage this vagabond neglect of proper English, so I've written a poem, "Semantic Drift," to warn against Mailer's misuse of our fine English language and to graphically protest his unorthographic influence:

"Wood" now no longer sounds crazy,
While "stout" only scarcely seems strong;
"Foul" connotes nothing of lazy,
And "sin" suggests nothing much wrong.

Words molt old meanings like feathers,
Make speaking a spiel of dumb luck,
Bring us all to the ends of our tethers
Leave us all without giving a f**.

This is my protest. I utterly refuse to use Mailer's three-letter word. Fuggedaboudit.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com -- Ed.

Thus runs my column this week. Tomorrow, back to my Ozark reports...