The Virtual Stoa

On Friday and Saturday, 30 November and 1 December 2012, the Philosophy Department of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) will host a workshop entitled “Meet the Author: Christopher Brooke’s Philosophic Pride“.

This interdisciplinary workshop is of interest for philosophers and historians working on the 17th and 18th centuries. It is coorganised by the Universities of Berne (Department of General and Historical Educational Science), Lausanne (Department of Philosophy), and Fribourg (Department of Philosophy).

The workshop centers on themes from Christopher Brooke’s Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton 2012), with quite some interest in Rousseau.

Organising Committee:
lic.-phil. Lukas Boser (Berne),
Dr. Christian Maurer (Fribourg),
Prof. Dr. Fritz Osterwalder (Berne),
Prof. Dr. Simone Zurbuchen (Lausanne).

The workshop language is English. Participation is free, but please register by 23 November.

For registration, further information and a detailed program please contact the coordinator in Fribourg: christian.maurer(at)unifr.ch; or visit the conference website.

From this week’s TLS:

It is one of the many strengths of Christopher Brooke’s fascinating new study, Philosophic Pride, that he is aware of the multifarious nature of his subject; he knows that he is dealing with a fluid cluster of ideas and themes, not as a unitary philosophical movement. Not that he has set out, in any case, to write a history of (Neo-)Stoicism; his task is both narrower and harder than that. The subject of this book is the relationship between Stoicism and early modern political thought; since there was scarcely such a thing as a worked-out body of Stoic political theory (unless we count Seneca’s fanciful portrayal of the monarchical ruler – Nero, of all people – extending the empire of reason), this means that an already elusive subject is considered here from a variety of oblique angles…

It’s a long review, too, filling all of p. 5.

Some of you will have seen this before–it appeared on Facebook a while ago–but I think it deserves a second outing: this is–I am afraid to say–Ptolemy’s reaction to my book, Philosophic Pride.

It’s been charitably suggested that he isn’t so much yawning as roaring his approval, but when the photo was taken the only vocalisation that Ptolemy could really produce was a still-surprisingly-kittenish “mew!” (though he now has a noise which I first thought meant, “I am dissatisfied”, but I now realise means, quite specifically, “I am disappointed in you”).

It should be coming out in April. Webpage here.

One of the things I’ve been finishing off this Summer is the book project that’s been kicking around for far too long, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and the Politics of Self-Love from Lipsius to Rousseau.

And for entertainment and instruction, here’s a slightly-squished Wordle of the full manuscript, so you can see what it’s about. (Click on it for the full-sized, less-squished version.) I like Wordles.

This just in. No idea who or what is behind it. Sounds fun, though.

Reminder: Republic Day – 17 March 2009

On 17 March 1649, Parliament voted to abolish the office of king, and England became a republic until 1660. We will be marking the 360th anniversary of that historic occasion, and reaffirming the current relevance of the issues raised then – the monarchy and House of Lords, democratic rights and civil liberties – with a rally in Oxford town centre.

Professor David Norbrook to speak

We are delighted to confirm that amongst the speakers will be Professor David Norbrook, Merton Professor of Renaissance English literature at Oxford University, and author of such works as Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance and Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660.

Also speaking will be city councillors John Tanner (Labour) and David Williams (Green Party), as well as Bill MacKeith on behalf of Oxford and District Trades Union Council, and representatives from a variety of left and progressive organisations from the city. We will also read out a message of support we have received, from the Society for Robespierrist Studies, an association of French scholars who specialize in revolutionary history.

Event: Republic Day outdoor rally
Date: Tuesday 17 March
Time: 6pm to 7pm (approx.)
Location: Carfax

Go here (and also here and here and possibly later also to other pages on Ted’s blog) for the one, the only, the first, the last, the very special Death of Oliver Cromwell 350th Anniversary Mini-Blog-Carnival!

Jasper Milvain buys the Saturday edition of the Guardian, and has very kindly forwarded to me a discussion of hair that appeared there yesterday, and which was curiously suppressed from the online edition. John Mullan was reviewing Alastair Fowler’s new edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Here’s Mullan:

“So if the longer notes at first appear digressive, they return you to the poem convinced that the editorial digression showed you the very by-ways of Milton’s imagination. Take the long paragraph of Fowler’s small print excited by Milton’s first description of Adam and Eve’s hairstyles — of Adam’s “hyacinthine locks” and Eve’s “wanton ringlets”. We start with Saint Paul’s strictures on when women should cover their hair, then wander through a mini-essay on the significance of hair in epic poetry, a parenthesis on Milton’s own hairstyle and hair-colouring, suggestive examples of the depiction of women’s hair in 17th-century painting and some speculation about Milton’s “special sexual interest in hair”. You might think this is like listening to an engagingly eccentric professor, free-associating, in the library of his mind, yet soon the clinching references to the ways the poem fixes on Eve’s “golden tresses” convince you otherwise. Her “dishevelled” hair signifies what is both lovely and vulnerable about here, and the poet is as fascinated as the devil who gazes at her from his hiding place.”

Here’s what Fowler wrote in the 1971 edition of his book (I think I’ve got a later edition at home, so I’ll post any of Fowler’s subsequent thoughts on hair before too long):

“iv.301-8. The hair-length proper for each sex follows directly from the statement of their hierarchic relation; for, according to St Paul, ‘a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man: for her hair is given her for a covering’ (1 Cor. xi 7, 15; cp. the A. V. marginal glass on 10, which explains the covering is a ‘sign that she is under the power of her husband’). hyacinthine locks] When Athene ‘shed grace about his head and shoulders’, Odysseus’ hair flower ‘like the hyacinth flower’ (Homer, Od. vi 231). If a colour were implied, it might be either blue, the colour of the hyacinth flower or gem (i.e., the sapphire; cp. l. 237n), or just possibly tawny (the hyacinth of heraldry, near to the colour of M.’s own hair), or black (Eustathius’ gloss on the Homeric passage) or very dark brown (Suidas’ gloss); in fact, almost any colour at all. But it is just as likely that a shape is meant (the idealized treatment accorded to hair in antique sculpture?), or an allusion to the beautiful youth Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo but doomed to die. The elaborateness of the present passage lends some support to the theory that M. had a special sexual interest in hair. (In this connection cp. 496f, Lycidas 69, 175.)”

And here’s John Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.300-311:

“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She as a veil down to her slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.”

Welcome to the latest Early Modern instalment of Carnivalesque, hosted for the first time at the Virtual Stoa, and with apologies for appearing a little later than I think I said it would.

Kicking off in Tudor England, we’ve got another entry in the Dead King Watch, conceivably inspired by a regular feature on this blog, who knows?, with this one devoted to Edward VI.

Something Earmarks saw on telly brought Thomas Wright�s 1604 The Passions of the Minde in Generall to mind.

Misteraitch over at Spamula has been considering the artist Jacques de Gheyn, 1565-1629.

And while we’re thinking about artists in the Low Countries, the Interesting Thing of the Day a few days ago was a discussion of the possible use of a camera obscura by Johannes Vermeer.

Crossing back over the Channel, Escalus is advertising the Early Modern English Ballad Archive and shares a favourite ballad, “A Looking-Glass for Lascivious Young Men: OR, THE Prodigal Son SIFTED”, together with a bit of discussion and an attempt to date it to the 1680s.

And it’s ballads ballads ballads at the Carnivalesque, with Blogging the Renaissance telling us all about “My Bird is a Round-head”, a fine ballad from 1642.

Continuing the Puritan theme for a short while, at least, Early Modern Whale interested in face patches, and in what puritans thought about them (not keen).

And moving towards the broad sunny uplands of the eighteenth century, David Davisson has helpfully reproduced the text of a 1773 Connecticut law against mountebanks and told us a bit about his proposed research on itinerancy in colonial America…

… Brandon Watson has some valuable words and links about Moses Mendelssohn…

… and we end over at The Skwib with its presentation of lost power point slides of the Marquis de Sade…

The next Carnivalesque for Early Modern History (Loosely Defined) is going to take place here at the Virtual Stoa some time in the middle of June, so do send in your candidates for inclusion using the Official Submission Form, which will probably make its way back to me in the fullness of time. More over here.

I know that I’m supposed to be a sort-of kind-of early modernist, and really ought to know the answer to this, but I’m stumped. Why did people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries think that the Egyptians worshipped vegetables in general and leeks in particular? (Perhaps they did?)

Here’s Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, ch.44:

For if it be enough to excuse it of idolatry to say it is no more bread, but God; why should not the same excuse serve the Egyptians, in case they had the faces to say the leeks and onions they worshipped were not very leeks and onions, but a divinity under their species or likeness?

Here’s Blaise Pascal, in the Pens�es (and I’ve quoted this passage before:

He alone [ = God] is our true good. From the time we have forsaken him, it is a curious thing that nothing in nature has been capable of taking his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, snakes, fever, plague, war famine, vice, adultery, incest. From the time he lost his true good, man can see it everywhere, even in his own destruction, though it is so contrary to God, reason, and nature, all at once.

And here’s David Hume, in the Natural History of Religion, �12:

How can you worship leeks and onions? we shall suppose a Sorbonnist to say to a priest of Sais. If we worship them, replies the latter; at least, we do not, at the same time, eat them. But what strange objects of adoration are cats and monkeys? says the learned doctor. They are at least as good as the relics or rotten bones of martyrs, answers his no less learned antagonist. Are you not mad, insists the Catholic, to cut one another’s throat about the preference of a cabbage or a cucumber? Yes, says the pagan; I allow it, if you will confess, that those are still madder, who fight about the preference among volumes of sophistry, ten thousand of which are not equal in value to one cabbage or cucumber.”

So where does this trope come from? And does anyone know of any other examples? (And let’s hope this doesn’t turn into another bout of furious beaver-blogging…)[Thanks.]

UPDATE [12.20pm]: This page might provide a clue or two, and points us towards Numbers 11:5: “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.” But nothing about worshipping.

There’s also Malebranche, from The Search after Truth, with a reference to this bit of the Bible:

“It is true that reason does not tell us that we ought to worship, for example, leeks and onions as the sovereign divinity, because they cannot make us entirely happy when we have them, or entirely wretched when we do not. Thus the pagans never honoured them as much as the great Jupiter, on whom all their deities depended. Nor as much as the sun, which our senses represent to us [200] as the universal cause, which gives life and movement to everything, and which you could not help regarding as a divinity if you assumed (like the pagan philosophers) that it included in its being the genuine causes of what it seems to bring about, not only in our body and in our spirit, but also in all the beings around us.”But even if you should not render sovereign honour to leeks and onions, you could still offer them some sort of restricted worship � I mean think about them, and love them in a certain way. If it is true that they can give us a certain sort of happiness, then we should honour them in proportion to the good they can do. And it is certainly the case that people who accept the evidence of their senses think that these vegetables are capable of doing them good. For example, the Israelites would not have missed them so deeply in the desert, and they would not have considered themselves wretched for lack of them, if they had not imagined that they would in some way be made happy by having them.”

And here’s John Wesley, in Sermon 102, which really doesn’t make me warm to the man:

But that the generality of men were not one jot wiser in ancient times than they are at the present time we may easily gather from the most authentic records. One of the most ancient nations concerning whom we have any certain account is the Egyptian. And what conception can we have of their understanding and learning when we reflect upon the objects of their worship? These were not only the vilest of animals, as dogs and cats, but the leeks and onions that grew in their own gardens. Indeed, I knew a great man (whose manner was to treat with the foulest abuse all that dared to differ from him: I do not mean Dr. Johnson — he was a mere courtier compared to Mr. Hutchinson) who scurrilously abused all those who are so void of common sense as to believe any such thing concerning them. He peremptorily affirms, (but without condescending to give us any proof) that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt had a deep hidden meaning in all this. Let him believe it who can. I cannot believe it on any man bare assertion. I believe they had no deeper meaning in worshipping cats than our schoolboys have in baiting them. And I apprehend, the common Egyptians were just as wise three thousand years ago as the common ploughmen in England and Wales are at this day. I suppose their natural understanding like their stature, was on a level with ours, and their learning, their acquired knowledge, many degrees inferior to that of persons of the same rank either in France, Holland, or Germany.

Oh dear, it’s beaver-blogging all over again. Must. Stop. This. Now.

You can read up on the story of the Gunpowder Plot over here, at Wikipedia, or use the Guardian’s nice little graphics show; the BBC has a sensible-looking “what if it had succeeded?” page or two; there seems to be quite a lot over at gunpowder-plot.org, the people at spartacus.net have their own telling of the tale, and the busy bees at the Parliamentary Archives, no less, have produced two versions of the story, for children and for adults. If I’ve missed any other good links, please add them in Comments.

As I reported three years ago, which is a long time in the World of Blogs, there used to be a theory floating around a subsection of my mother’s family that we were descended from one of the Gunpowder Plotters – two of whom were called Wintour, with my Catholic maternal grandmother’s maiden name being Winter – but this page makes me think it’s probably not true.

Here we go, to end this mini-serial, broken up into a number of shorter paras for ease-of-reading convenience.

We may go one step farther. The property of labour, you say, overbalances the community of land: because the value of it, when compared with the value of land, is worth ninety nine parts in a hundred. Now if, by saying, that the property of labour overbalances the community of land, you only mean, that labour is worth much more than uncultivated land, we might allow it. But if you mean, that, because the value of labour is so much greater than the value of land, the labour of one man will overrule or set aside the common claim of all mankind, we must deny it.For suppose the labour of him, who cultivates the land, to be worth ninety nine parts in a hundred of the whole value of the land, after it is cultivated; all that could be due to the labourer, upon this supposition, would be no more than the produce of his own labour: the ninety nine parts, which belong to him, would not swallow up the hundreth part, which he had originally no exclusive right to. This hundreth part, that is, the land itself, must therefore still remain in common, as it was before; he might labour in it again, if he pleased, as one of the joynt commoners; but he would have no property in it.

Let us try this reasoning in another instance. The landlord, as we call him, or the owner of the soil, after property has been introduced, has an exclusive right to some certain quantity of land, suppose for instance, to an acre which bears twenty bushels of wheat: the tenant ploughs and sows this land; and besides the mere personal act of labour, he uses his own materials in cultivating the land. Now the labour of the occupyer puts the chief value upon the land, and without this labour it would be worth little; for it is to [p.61] this, that we owe all its useful production. For whatever the straw, bran, bread, &c. of that acre of wheat is worth more than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effects of labour.

You see then how much the property of labour overbalances the property of land. But no one will be led to conclude from hence, that, because, according to this reckoning, in the value of an acre of land ninety nine parts in a hundred are owing to the labour of the occupyer, the property, which he has in his own labour, will swallow up the property, which the landlord has in the soil; and that the land, because he has cultivated it, will for the future become his own.

But if the right of property in the soil, which in estimating the value of land, is but one part in a hundred, is not overruled or set aside by the overbalance in the value of labour; I can see no reason why the same overbalance should be supposed to set aside the common claims of mankind to land, which was never appropriated. Let the right be what it will, whether it is a right of property, or of common claim, if an overbalance in the value of the labour, which is joyned to it, will not swallow up one of them, no good reason can be given, why it should swallow up the other.

And that’s your lot.

I’ve broken up the inordinately long final para., to help bring this epic to a digestible conclusion:

To strengthen this opinion concerning the introduction of property, and to answer an objection, which has been hinted at already, Mr. Lock compares the value of labour with the value of the land, with which it is so mixed.

“Nor is it, says he, so strange, as perhaps before consideration may appear, that the property of labour should be able to balance the community of land. For it is labour indeed, that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think, as he goes on, it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth, useful to the life of man, nine [p.59] tenths are the effects of labour: nay if we will rightly estimate things, as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety nine parts in a hundred are wholly to be put on the account of labour.”

But we may ask in return, what the value of pure labour is, when considered merely as the personal act of the labourer? If neither the timber of his plough, nor the horses that draw it, nor the meat, which they eat, nor the manure, which he lays upon his land, nor the grain, with which he sows it, are his own, what will you rate his labour at? Certainly you rate it much too high, if upon comparing it with the value of the land, you set it at ninety nine parts in a hundred, or even at nine parts in ten. But you will suppose all these materials to be his own. I ask therefore how he gained property in them? You answer, by his labour, and explane this labour to be only the act of taking them or separating them from the common stock. Now this labour is of little or no value at all; and consequently you cannot say, in this instance, that the common right of mankind is overbalanced by the labour of the occupant. And if, in one instance, a labour, which is worth nothing, when compared with the thing acquired, will give the occupant property; then we can have no reason to imagine, that it is the high rate of labour, when compared with the value of land, which so overbalances to the common right of mankind to the land, as to give the labourer an exclusive right to it. You have only dazzled our eyes with this high account of the value of labour; since you must, in order to give it so high a value, suppose property to have been introduced before- [p.60] hand by a labour, which is of little or no value at all.

The end is nigh…

Here’s a bit more, with similar editing principles as in earlier instalments.

[p.57] “In Mr. Locks opinion, property in immoveable goods, such as the earth or soil, is acquired in the same manner and is governed by the same measure, as property in moveable goods.

“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”

But what is this again, but the exercise of a common right, instead of such an exclusive right as property is. For not to insist here upon the limitation of having property only in so much land, as we can use; let us try the effects of this right, and see whether they are the same with the effects of property. Suppose then, that the man, after he has for some time tilled the land, and cultivated it, was either by age or sickness to become incapable of tilling and cultivating it any longer: if the mixing his labour with it was his whole title to it; when his labour ceases, his title to the land must cease with it; the land can be his no longer, than he can cultivate it; and when he is disabled for labouring, he cannot sell or let it to any other person: that is, it was his to labour in, but not his to dispose of as he pleases: and consequently his right could only be a right to use, and not an exclusive right of property. This Mr. Lock might have been sensible of, if he had attended [to] his own reasoning.

“He, say this author, that in obedience to the command of God, to improve the earth to the benefit of life, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something, that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could, without injury, take from him. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of [p.58] land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided for could use.”

If then his title to the land, which he occupies, rests upon this principle, that there was enough for others, besides what he had taken for his own use; it is plane that, unless there had been enough for others, his title would not have been a good one: and from hence it follows, that all his title is no more than a common right to use what he wants, and no an exclusive right of property: because the right of property does not at all depend upon the convenience of others.

Just one more paragraph to go — but it’s a long ‘un.

A bit more, carrying on from where we left off. I’ve indented the quotes from Locke, to break up the long paragraphs somewhat.

That it is this common right which a man exercises, when he separates a thing for his own use, and claims to use it, because he has so separated it, will appear [p.54] from the limitation, which Mr. Lock himself puts upon what he calls property, when it is thus acquired.

“God has given us all things richly, is the voice of reason, confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of, to any advantage of life, before it spoils, so much he may, by his labour, fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.”

But certainly, to take no more than we want, or no more than we can make use of, before it will be spoiled, is a limitation unknown to property: it belongs only to the exercise of a common right in a joynt stock; where no one of the commoners has an exclusive right to keep, but all and each of them have a joint right to use.But Mr. Lock endeavours to take off this limitation, and to shew us by what means, upon the same principles, property might be accumulated.

“The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such, as if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver, and diamonds, are things, that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things, which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right to as much as he could use, and property in all he could effect with his labour; all, that his [p.55] industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns, or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods, as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, then he made use of it. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts, that would last good for his eating a while year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; he destroyed no part of the portion of goods, that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells or wool, for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep them by him all his life, he invaded not the rights of others; he might heap up as much of these durable things, as he pleased; the exceeding the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of any thing uselessly in it.”

But this writer seems here to take for granted the point in question. We contend, and he allows, that the right of him, who gathered acorns or plums, extends no farther than to such a quantity of them, as he can use before they are spoiled: and in shewing how this limitation may be removed, he reasons as if there was no such limitation. How else should he, who had collected more plums, than he could use before they were [p.56] spoiled, or more sheep than he wanted to cloath or to feed himself, barter away the plums for nuts, which would keep the year round, or for metal, that would keep as long as he lived? The very notion of bartering implys property. Our author therefore must suppose the man to have property in what would spoil before he can use it; or else he could not suppose him to barter it away: that is, since this contrivance of bartering was introduced, to shew how property might be accumulated, or to take off the limitation of appropriating no more than can be used, whilst it is good; in order to apply this contrivance, he must suppose the limitation to be taken off already, and the man to have property in plums, or sheep, which he does not want, and which he could not use, before they would perish in his hands. Indeed in mankind would consent and submit thus to barter one with another; this consent would be sufficient to take off the limitation, and to introduce a true right of property. For if I knowingly and willingly bargain with another about my own goods, which are in his possession, as if they were his; this act of mine may well be construed as a tacit consent to make them his. And if in like manner mankind would bargain with one another about goods, which belonged to all in common, as if they were the property of the possessor, they tacitly give up their claim to those goods, and so they become his property. But property, when introduced after this manner, is introduced by consent of parties, and not by the labour, which the possessor, or occupant, has employed in separating the things, which he possesses, from the common stock.

More to come…