Universal Capacity to Wonder

 I argue that philosophy is a universal intellectual activity that has been pursued by peoples of all cultures and that the propensity to raise fundamental questions about human experience can be found in peoples belonging to different cultures, even though the answers may be different, despite our common humanity, and may not all be equally compelling. Yet, our common humanity, which inclines human beings to adopt similar (or nearly similar) responses to experiences of various kinds, tends to lead thinkers to be exercised about fairly similar questions or puzzles and to reflect on them in search of answers or explanations. The human capacity to wonder is not only boundless but universal. The context of our wonder is of course human experience. We wonder about the nature of the universes and our place in it, about who or what we are, the existence of some ultimate being, the nature of the good life, and about many other aspects of our experience that are beyond our ken and are, thus, not immediately rationally explicable by us. Wonder leads some individuals in various cultures to raise fundamental questions and, in this way, to engage in philosophical reflections.

[Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, Temple University Press (Philadelphia: 1995) pp. xiv-xv.]

Philosophers and Poets, Bores and Murderers

 “I’ve had the most interesting talk of my life!” she exclaimed, taking her seat beside Willoughby. “D’you realise that one of your men is a philosopher and a poet?” 

 “A very interesting fellow—that’s what I always say,” said Willoughby, distinguishing Mr. Grice. “Though Rachel finds him a bore.” 

 “He’s a bore when he talks about currents,” said Rachel. Her eyes were full of sleep, but Mrs. Dalloway still seemed to her wonderful. 

 “I’ve never met a bore yet!” said Clarissa. 

 “And I should say the world was full of them!” exclaimed Helen. But her beauty, which was radiant in the morning light, took the contrariness from her words. 

 “I agree that it’s the worst one can possibly say of any one,” said Clarissa. “How much rather one would be a murderer than a bore!” she added, with her usual air of saying something profound. “One can fancy liking a murderer. It’s the same with dogs. Some dogs are awful bores, poor dears.”

Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, Chapter IV.

Links of Note

 * Emily FitzGerald, How to Practice Embodied Pedagogy, at "The APA Blog"

* David A. Ciepley, Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation (PDF)

* Peter West, Philosophy is an art, on Margaret Macdonald, at "Aeon"

* T. Parker Haratine & Kevin A. Smith, Anselmian Defense of Hell (PDF)

* Chris Matarazzo, The Tao of the 80s Girl, at "Hats and Rabbits"

* Mark Sentesy, Are Kinetic and Temporal Continuities Real for Aristotle? (PDF)

* Daniel Dennett has died. His early work was always interesting; I think around about Freedom Evolves it became much more hit-and-miss. He was always one of the great philosophical communicators of his generation, though.

* Hao Dong, Leibniz as a virtue ethicist (PDF)

* Jeremy Skrzypek, Objects and Their Parts: The Problem of Material Composition, at "1000-Word Philosophy"

* Eric L. Hutton, On Ritual and Legislation (PDF)

* Richard Y Chappell, Utopian Enemies of the Better, at "Good Thoughts"

* Gregory Salmieri, David Bronstein, David Charles, & James G. Lennox, Episteme, demonstration, and explanation: A fresh look at Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (PDF)

* Freya Möbus, Socrates on Cookery and Rhetoric (PDF)

Annotation

 Passer Mortuus Est
by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Death devours all lovely things;
 Lesbia with her sparrow
 Shares the darkness,--presently
 Every bed is narrow.  

Unremembered as old rain
 Dries the sheer libation,
And the little petulant hand
 Is an annotation. 

 After all, my erstwhile dear,
 My no longer cherished,
 Need we say it was not love,
 Now that love is perished?

Doctor Magnificus

 Today is the feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury, also known as Anselm of Aosta and Anselm of Bec, Doctor of the Church.

For injustice is not the kind of thing which infects and corrupts the soul in the way that poison infects and corrupts the body; nor does it do something in the way that happens when a wicked man does evil deeds. When a savage beast breaks its bonds and rages about wildly, and when a ship—if the helmsman leaves the rudder and delivers the vessel to the wind and the waves—strays and is driven into dangers of one kind or another, we say that the absence of chains or of a rudder causes these events. [We say this] not because their absence is something or does something but because if they had been present they would have caused the wild animal not to rage and the ship not to perish. By comparison, when an evil man rages and is driven into various dangers to his soul, viz., evil deeds, we declare that injustice causes these deeds. [We say this] not because injustice is a being or does something but because the will (to which all the voluntary movements of the entire man are submitted), lacking justice, driven on by various appetites, being inconstant, unrestrained, and uncontrolled, plunges itself and everything under its control into manifold evils—all of which justice, had it been present, would have prevented from happening. 

 [Anselm of Canterbury, De Conceptu Virginali, Chapter 5, Jasper Hopkins, tr.]

A Coronet I'll Weave

"Oh, Deck Me Not with Gems"
A Song
by Caroline E. R. Parker

"Oh, deck me not with gems," she said,
 "Oh, deck me not with gems;
 I care not, for the princely light
 Of jewelled diadems,
 But give me flowers, the fresh, the fair,
 Oh, give me fairy flowers
 To deck my robe, to deck my hair,
 From my own garden bowers."

 "I know where gleam bright gems," she said,
"Bright gems in emerald set,
 Fair rose-buds glistening in the dew,
 And blue-eyed violet.
The jasmine stars, like orient pearls,
 I'll twine amid my hair,
 And lilies of the valley sweet
 Upon my bosom wear." 

 "Nay, let me go," the fair girl said,
 "Nay, let me go and wreathe
 A chaplet of my garden flowers,
 A coronet I'll weave.
 You'll say 'tis fairer far than gems,
 You'll say it is more fair,
 My coronet of garden flowers,
 Than gems of beauty rare." 

 "I care not for bright gems," she said,
 "I care not for bright gems,
 I care not for the jewelled light
 Of princely. diadems.
 My heart is with its early home,
 And its dear garden bowers;
 Oh, deck me not with gems,” she said,
"But give me sweet home-flowers."

Holy High Elf

 Today is the feast of St. Aelfheah of Canterbury, more commonly known in English as St. Alphege or Alfege. He was born in the tenth century somewhere around Bath and became first a monk and then an anchorite, and in 984 was appointed Bishop of Winchester. He was a competent bishop, doing a fair amount to build up and maintain the local churches, but his claim to fame began to develop when a Viking raid in 994 went in an unexpected direction. Viking raids could be very, very nasty, but Vikings were also sometimes willing to listen to better offers, if you had any. The locals offered to negotiate so that the Vikings could go away wealthy without the hard work of seizing the wealth themselves, and it just so happens that one of the Viking leaders was a man named Olaf Tryggvason. Tryggvason's beloved wife had recently died, which is why he was out raiding in an attempt to get away from home and its memories, and he had some unusual experiences that led him to think that Christianity might actually be true. We don't know the exact timeline here. It's possible that Tryggvason was already baptized and was mostly just winding up his raiding voyage, or it might be that he was still considering it and saw this as a good opportunity to take the final leap. There's fairly good reason to think that St. Alphege was the bishop who gave him confirmation. In any case, Tryggvason received danegeld, was either baptized and confirmed or at least confirmed, and promised never to raid England again. Tryggvason, of course, would go home and begin the Christianization of Norway.

In 1006, St. Alphege became Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding St. Aelfric. In 1011, a raiding party of Danes sacked Canterbury. He and several others were taken hostage, the Danes hoping to squeeze a ransom out of him. So he stayed a prisoner for seven months. As he refused to allow anyone to pay a ransom for him, however, the Danes saw no particular reason to keep him around. So one day, when they were drunk, they played the game of throwing rocks and bones at him and then finished him off by smashing his head in with the butt of an axe. Stories diverge on whether the axe-blow was part of the sport or a mercy-killing when he was already at the ragged edge. According to some stories, Thorkell the Tall, who was the leader of the Vikings, tried to protect Alphege, but it's hard to control a bunch of bored drunk Vikings; this may have contributed to Thorkell eventually joining the fleet of Aethelred the Unready, defending England from Viking invasion.

Aelfheah literally means 'High Elf', 'high' indicating either status (noble) or height (tall). 'Elf', of course, is a word used in Anglo-Saxon for spiritual beings, so we could perhaps also translate it as 'Noble Spirit'.