Page’s philological prudence

T. E. Page’s edition (with commentary) of Virgil’s works (first edition 1898) is enormously useful. (The volume on the Bucolics and Georgics is available here). Here is an illustration of Page’s singular philological prudence.

He considers Georgics 2.140–144 (Virgil refers to Jason’s sowing of a dragon’s teeth):

haec loca non tauri spirantes naribus ignem
inuertere satis immanis dentibus hydri,
nec galeis densisque uirum seges horruit hastis;
sed grauidae fruges et Bacchi Massicus umor
impleuere; tenent oleae armentaque laeta.

Other commentators, he notes, have “raised a difficulty” over the phrase satis … dentibus, which can be understood as an ablative absolute. The difficulty is that “as ploughing precedes sowing … you would not plough the land ‘when the teeth had been sown.'” (The perfect tense of the participle satis would typically indicate time prior to that of the main verb invertere.) To escape the (apparent) difficulty commentators have resorted to various explanations: It is a hysteron proteron; or a dative approximating to either serendis dentibus (Wagner) or propter sationem dentium (Madvig)—”for the sowing of (a dragon’s) teeth.”

Not page. Here is his explanation:

The strong simplicity of the passage, however, precludes these artificial explanations, and the obvious rendering is the right one—’these lands no fire-breathing bulls ever ploughed when dragon’s teeth were sown’ or ‘at the sowing of a dragon’s teeth.’ In referring to a remote mythological event the minute question as to which of two acts preceded the other is not in Virgil’s mind, but he mentions the two as jointly constituting one event. … Moreover, the past sense of the past participle is not always prominent, and the rendering ‘when dragon’s teeth were being (not ‘had been’) sown’ is perfectly justifiable.

“jusqu’à ce qu’il comprenne qu’il est un monstre incompréhensible”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées 418, 420:

Il est dangereux de trop faire voir à l’homme combien il est égal aux bêtes, sans lui montrer sa grandeur. Il est encore dangereux de lui trop faire voir sa grandeur sans sa bassesse. Il est encore plus dangereux de lui laisser ignorer l’un et l’autre. Mais il est très avantageux de lui représenter l’un et l’autre.

Il ne faut pas que l’homme croie qu’il est égal aux bêtes, ni aux
anges, ni qu’il ignore l’un et l’autre, mais qu’il sache l’un et l’autre.

(420) S’il se vante, je l’abaisse; s’il s’abaisse, je le vante; et le contredis toujours, jusqu’à ce qu’il comprenne qu’il est un monstre incompréhensible.

Translation here:

It is dangerous to make man see too clearly his equality with the brutes without showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to make him see his greatness too clearly, apart from his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very advantageous to show him both. Man must not think that he is on a level either with the brutes or with the angels, nor must he be ignorant of both sides of his nature; but he must know both.

(420) If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.

“wide and generous encounters with the whole of humanity”

Alan Jacobs:

Blogging is a poor tool for political resistance; clicktivism is not activism. Kottke thinks that the problem is that people don’t know what’s going on — which is why he’s blogging about it — but you can tell that that’s not true from the fact that almost everybody he quotes is writing for very widely-read outlets, from the New Yorker to The Verge to Wired. Everything’s readily available; there’s no real value proposition in Kottke’s aggregating it. And Kottke himself has no distinctive political knowledge or expertise. Rather than reading him, you could just put these outlets in an RSS reader and skip the middleman. And even if you did that you wouldn’t be one step closer to engaging in meaningful resistance.

But there’s another reason I won’t be headed in Kottke’s direction: I don’t believe there’s anything more morally corrupting than an utterly single-minded focus on defeating your political enemies, even when those political enemies really deserve to be defeated. To think only in terms of Winning and Losing is dehumanizing, both to your enemies and to yourself. It’s virtually animalistic, and it makes you forget a lot of things you need to remember.

Kottke says, “I still very much believe that we need art and beauty and laughter and distraction and all of that” — indeed, but why do we need it? I believe that we need “art and beauty and laughter,” and history, but not merely to give us a break from political struggle, but also for political reasons: because only fully human persons, persons formed by wide and generous encounters with the whole of humanity, are able to think and act wisely in the political realm.

That’s why I won’t be posting on our current political moment.

If this resonates, you can support Prof. Jacobs’s writing here.

“the higher reconciliation of the moral and the intellectual”

Jacques Maritain:

Morality as such aims only at the good of the human being, the supreme interest of the Subject who acts; intellectuality as such aims only at the Object—what it is, if it is a question of knowing it, what it ought to be, if it is a question of making it. What a temptation for poor human nature to be faithful to one only at the expense of the other! It is true, we know, haec oportebat facere, et illa non omittere; but how are the children of Adam to keep the balance? …

Christ Crucified draws to Him all that is in man; all things are reconciled, but at the height of His heart.

Here is a religion whose moral exigencies are more elevated than those of any other, since the heroism of sanctity can alone fully satisfy them, and which at the same time loves and protects the intelligence more than any other. I say that this is a sign of the divinity of this religion. A superhuman virtue is necessary to assure among men the free play of art and science under the rule of the divine law and the primacy of Charity, and thus to achieve the higher reconciliation of the moral and the intellectual.

diaphanous thought

Mortimer J. Adler (St. Thomas and the Gentiles, p. 89):

St. Thomas has no more a system of philosophy than Shakespeare has a point of view or a message. In Shakespeare’s poetry nature is imitated so well, so properly, that all the wide world is presented to us with artistic objectivity. So, too, in the philosophy of St. Thomas the world is laid before us; his thought about it is diaphanous, a perfect medium of vision. In both cases, the art conceals itself by performing its task so well. And in both cases, the art introduces order and proportion into a vast multiplicity of things. Let us not confuse the notion of “system” with the more general idea of a good arrangement of parts. System in the mathematical sense is rigid, selective, exclusive: it has the kind of artificiality which is appropriate only to mathematical objects; but where mathematics deals with the ideal and the possible, philosophy deals with the real and the actual. The real can be ordered by art without distortion; it cannot be systematized.

humana sapientia, divina fides

The collect prayer for today’s saint, Albert the Great:

Deus, qui beátum Albértum, epíscopum, in humána sapiéntia cum divína fide componénda magnum effecísti, da nobis, quǽsumus, ita eius magistérii inhærére doctrínis, ut per scientiárum progréssus ad profundiórem tui cognitiónem et amórem perveniámus.

Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fílium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

“God, you made Blessed Albert, the bishop, great in his synthesis of human wisdom and divine faith; grant to us, we pray, so to cleave to the lessons of his teaching, that through advances in human knowledge we may reach a deeper knowledge and love of you.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.”

“more Christian politics”

James K.A. Smith (via Alan Jacobs):

When I suggest we need more Christian politics rather than less, I can imagine my secular progressive neighbor getting anxious, as if theocracy is around the corner. But in fact, the opposite is true. All should hope for a more Christian politics. What currently passes for Christian politics is a sub-Christian syncretism that prays to a vaguely moralistic god who plays favorites, a deity of our making whom we trot out to license nationalism and self-interest. This politics shows no signs of being disturbed by the cross, the ascension, or the eschaton. It is concerned only with winning, revenge, and resentment. In other words, our so-called Christian politics have been captivated by the liturgies of the earthly city rather than the city of God.

A more robust Christian political witness would be a gift to a pluralist society, even if it is also a prophetic challenge. Christian citizens will bring a life-giving imagination to our public life when they are nourished by Christian formation in the polis that is the church. Christians, of all people, should be the least inclined to treat temporal political allegiances as ultimate—which is precisely why we should resist demonizing our political adversaries. As O’Donovan provocatively puts it, “the most truly Christian state understands itself most thoroughly as ‘secular’”—not a godless, atheistic state but a politics that understands when we are, in the meantime of the saeculum.

This sort of eschatological orientation to time changes our expectations, not our goals. The work of public life—building institutions to organize and administer our shared life, collaborating to maintain libraries and economies—all of this is part of our creaturely calling to unpack and unfurl the possibilities of creation itself. That creaturely calling is renewed and directed by the cross and resurrection, and the biblical images of the kingdom of God in the prophetic texts are sketches of what flourishing looks like revealed by the One who made us.

“ex umbris et imagínibus in plenitúdinem veritátis”

Deus, qui beátum Ioánnem Henrícum, presbýterum, lumen benígnum tuum sequéntem pacem in Ecclésia tua inveníre contulísti, concéde propítius, ut, eius intercessióne et exémplo, ex umbris et imagínibus in plenitúdinem veritátis tuae perducámur.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.