Constancie

N.B. There is a George Herbert poem at the end of this, and it is better than my reflections. 

When waiting, especially with children around, the words, "Be patient!" fall with a certain regularity. I remember one historic moment when my notoriously impatient grandmother, while feeding my cousin's infant, and when the child would not stop crying, exclaimed, "Why can't you learn to be patient!" But, he was an infant, so he could not. 

The curious thing about such anecdotes is not so much the absurdity of demanding virtue from an infant but the conception of virtue implied in the demand. When we say, "be patient," what we really mean is "Wait. What you want is coming." But, is the ability to delay gratification while being certain that gratification will come really being virtuous? My question is similar to Glaucon's in the Republic, can you defend justice if you take away pleasure from it? Is patience worthwhile if you're not guaranteed to get what you want, if you are waiting, but unsure of what you're waiting for? 

For the Christian, at least, patience is not merely waiting. Waiting means the ability to put up with something until you get what you want. Patience, on the other hand, means receptivity to the will of God. Or to phrase it ethically rather than theologically, patience is the denial of one's desires and steadfastness in adversity in the belief that ultimately virtue, whether or not it brings what you want, is better than its opposite. Penelope's "steadfast heart" perfectly exemplifies this constancy and patience. She hopes for the return of Odysseus, but she perseveres without any real proof that she will ever get what she wants. Penelope is not merely waiting; she endures, knowing that the instant gratification of a new mate would not bring her happiness. To be patient, to hope requires uncertainty. There is little virtue in "doing the right thing" when we feel guaranteed a reward. 

For this reason, prayer without real patience and hope is perhaps more dangerous than it is good. In Laws 688b-c, the Athenian stranger comments, "it is dangerous for one who lacks intelligence to pray, and the opposite of what he wishes comes to pass. If you want to take me seriously here, you may." What exactly the Athenian stranger's addendum signifies, I am unsure. But, the comment (and the discussion that precedes it) underscores the problem with prayer: we pray for what we want, not what is good for us. 

In his poem "Constancie", George Herbert asks who the honest man is, and as the poem develops, it becomes clear that no single virtue exists without the rest. 

   Who is the honest man?
He that doth still and strongly good pursue;
To God, his neighbor, and himself most true;
   Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpinne, or wrench from giving all their due.

   Whose honestie is not
So loose or easie, that a ruffling winde
Can blow away, or glitt'ring look it blinde;
   Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behinde.

   Who, when great trials come,
Nor seeks nor shunnes them, but doth calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh:
   All being brought into a summe,
What place or person calls for he doth pay.

   Whom none can work or wooe
To use in any thing a trick or sleight,
For above all things he abhorres deceit;
   His words and works and fashion too
All of a piece, and all are cleare and straight.

   Who never melts or thaws 
At close tentations: when the day is done,
His goodnesse sets not, but in dark can runne:
   The sunne to others writeth laws,
And is their vertue, Vertue is his sunne.

   Who, when he is to treat
With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway,
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way;
   Whom others' faults do not defeat,
But though men fail him, yet his part doth play.

   Whom nothing can procure,
When the wide world runnes bias, from his will,
To writhe his limbs, and share, not mend, the ill.
   This is the Mark-man, safe and sure,
Who still is right, and prayes to be so still. 

I particularly love the lines, "The sunne to others writeth laws, / And is their vertue, Vertue is his sunne" because they very subtly hint at love poetry. While this poem may seem emotionless and overly stoic in its approach to virtue, these lines betray that the honest man does not merely act virtuously; he loves virtue. I also love the very last lines as well. The intelligent man prays not for particular things, but for the virtue and wisdom to know what things to pursue and to pursue them with a steadfast heart. As Thomas More once famously said, "The things, Good Lord, that I pray for, give me the grace to labor for." Amen. 

The Just Man Justices

I regret my prolonged absence from this blog. My silly side project of a fashion blog (http://backwardfashion.blogspot.com/) had been distracting me from TRS for a while. But, when I noticed that some of the posts on this blog, despite not having been updated in a long time continued to get a significant amount of traffic, I decided it was high time to return. 

Over Christmas break, I met up with my friends PLP and GG for drinks. The topic of conversation was a prolonged argument about whether or not language could exist if there were no distinction between seeming and being. It naturally evolved into a conversation about the first couple chapters of Genesis. If Word itself is a creative act on the part of God (which is fascinating if we bear in mind John's words that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."), it is somehow bound up in the thing itself. But, what does it mean for Adam to name the animals? After all, they already exist; God has spoken them into being. So, what can Adam's of appellation give to them? 

If we are not trying to elucidate the obscurity of appearance and reality, why speak? But, Hopkins, in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," provides an alternative reason for speech: meditation. It can add nothing to the being of a thing but merely palpates what it is. But, curiously, in this meditative speech, the rules of syntax necessarily breakdown. The distinction between verb and noun becomes irrelevant, for a thing is not just what it is, but what it is is what it does. The just man justices. 

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfisher catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came. 

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--
Christ--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

The poem is magnificently lovely. And, one could not begin to enumerate the lovely and intriguing parts of it. But, one thing that seems particularly relevant to me now is Hopkins' choice of verb. Christ plays in ten thousand places. In Plato's Laws, the Athenian stranger describes education as play; a child must play the part of what he will become in order to learn about it. Christ plays in the nature that He created. God plays in Man. He, who knows all, comes down to us and learns with us. The image of God in the first book of Genesis is movement over the face of the waters. God moves, though there cannot possibly be anything for which he moves. He learns though he knows all. 

Plato and Benardete

Seth Benardete from his Commentary on Plato's Symposium:

"Pride made man scale heaven, shame made him realize his defectiveness. Eros, then, is an ever-to-be-thwarted longing for a second try on heaven. We turn to each other in lieu of our rebellion against the gods." 

And from the Symposium itself: 

"For wisdom is one of the most beautiful things, and Eros is love in regard to the beautiful; and so Eros is--necessarily--a philosopher; and as a philosopher he is between being wise and being without understanding." (from Mr. Benardete's translation, 204b)

Does this mean we turn to philosophy in lieu of rebelling against the gods?

And again from the Symposium:

"And after these pursuits, he must lead [the beloved] on to the sciences, so that he [himself, the lover] may see the beauty of sciences, and in looking at the beautiful, which is now so vast, no longer be content like a lackey with the beauty in one, of a boy, of some human being, or of one practice, nor be a sorry sort of slave and petty calculator; but with a permanent turn to the vast open sea of the beautiful, behold it and give birth--in ungrudging philosophy--to many beautiful and magnificent speeches and thoughts..." (210c-d)

Thus, we must not be content with the beauty of an individual or of an activity/practice. This seems to suggest that philosophic activity is not the aim of eros, rather it is a side-effect of it. And yet, one is to give birth in ungrudging philosophy. And, one is to give birth to speeches and thoughts. Speeches to what purpose? One does not simply speak without purpose. Does this mean there is an implicit aim behind philosophy? Is philosophy different from philosophic activity? Why this emphasis on beauty? Isn't Socrates concerned with the good, not the beautiful? What is the difference?  

Comments would be appreciated.