Author: Kleiner

Frequent visitors to this blog are surely tired of my ranting on and on about how no one reads great books anymore. Hell, I’m tired of hearing myself complain about it.  But I cannot resist.  A First Things ‘On the Square’ article about it being ‘hard times’ for great books here.

My complaints are not gripes, for it is not a trivial matter.  The way in which members of a civilized society spend their leisure time is almost all-important to the ongoing welfare (not to mention possible flourishing) of their culture and society.  For those that have not read it, I cannot recommend Josef Pieper’s book ‘Leisure, The Basis of Culture’ highly enough.

Please, for your own sake and for the sake of our civilized society – turn off the tv, put away the ipod and the game station and read Chaucer, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, … great books!

This came up in a discussion I had with Huenemann earlier today:

You’ve all heard the expression – ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ – used to disparage the apparent waste of good brain-power in trying to sort out pointless problems.  

Two things:

a) What is the origin of this question?  I had long thought that no medieval philosopher really asked it, but that the question was made up later in order to lampoon those ‘silly’ Scholastics.  After doing a quick bit of research, I think I have identified the origin of the question:  It seems it was first asked in a satirical book called ‘Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life’, a book written under the pseudonym ‘Martinus Scriblerus’ (Alexander Pope, Johathan Swift, and others collaborated on the work).  They were making fun of Scholastic philosophers, and in particular Thomas Aquinas.  

Aquinas did produce a very sustained ‘angelology’, still thought by many to be the most complete investigation of angels.  He used both scriptural and non-scriptural (Aristotle) sources to try to sort things out, determining that angels were immaterial intellects of great power who can assume bodies and who learn through a kind of direct communion with the mind of God.  In fact, the way that Plato describes humans (learning through recollection, knowledge of the Forms) is pretty close to what Aquinas says about angels. 

But, as best as I can tell, it is not the case that Aquinas or any other medieval thinker asked this particular question regarding angels dancing on the head of a pin (though they did ask related questions).

b) That said, now that the question has been asked, it may turn out to be a decent question.   Aquinas does think that angels have locomotive powers (the ability to move from one place to another), and he debated whether or not they have to pass between all intermediate points when moving from A to B.  He thought they need not move through all points when traveling between two points but instead can ‘jump’ from one location to another in a non-continuous way (thus anticipating similar suggestions in contemporary string theory).  Read here.

And he wondered whether several angels could be in the same place at the same time.  In the end, he did not think that many angels could be in the same place at once.  Read here.

Now, no matter what we might think about Aquinas or angels, the issue raises some interesting questions.  Huenemann had recently read a book on early modern physiology that asked related questions: What is the relationship between matter and space?  Why does matter occupy space, and why can’t more than one object occupy the same space?   What is the relationship between matter, mass, and location?  Are mass and location essential qualities of space (that it is the ‘form’ of matter to have those attributes)?

Thoughts?

In my Plato Republic course, one topic of discussion was the music that Plato selected for the guardian/warriors.  In particular, there was some debate as to whether the modes he chose were appropriate. 

Briefly, Plato was convinced that listening to music in various modes would form the soul and would cultivate and encourage certain virtues and activities.  Most in the class were willing to sign on to this claim.  The more controversial question was whether Plato had really selected the best modes for the purposes of cultivating bravery in the soul of the guardians.

I am, sadly, musically illiterate and so am not capable of really treating this point with much care.  Fortunately there are some students in the class that know more then enough about music.  Dan is one of those students, and also one who thought Plato’s choice of modes was, shall we say, odd.

To sort this out, Dan has compiled 4 songs, one in each of four modes.  He admits that he stacked the deck a bit here with his choices, but still it is telling that songs like “Scarborough Fair” would be in the same mode as Plato’s warrior music!

By way of reminder, Plato had his warriors listening to the Dorian and Phrygian modes only.

In addition to Dan’s “playlist” below, click here for a website that offers some discussion and some examples.  In fact, there is a sidebar where you can listen to the same made up tune in all the different modes.  Dan’s playlist seems like a knock-down argument against Plato’s choices, but when I listen to the same tune in the various modes it is not as obvious (at least to my tin ears).

You can download the songs below.  If you don’t want to do that, go to my blog.  I have embedded the songs there (you don’t have to download them).  But post comments here (that way all comments are in one place).

Ionian Mode-track-1

Lydian Mode-track-02

Dorian Mode-track-03

Phrygian Mode-track-04

Here is a short but provocative article on TS Eliot and the relationship between religion and humanism.

While I am sure my friends in SHAFT will disagree, I don’t think humanism can survive without religion.  But what is interesting here is Eliot’s claim that religion cannot survive without humanism.  

(On the first claim, of course in order to decide what humanism needs we first need an adequate anthropology – that is, we need to know what a human is.  The folks over at SHAFT are probably all materialists, so we already don’t agree there.  I want a humanism that is worthy of the human person as a whole).

For those interested in reading more on religious humanism, I would direct you to John Paul the Great (JPII).  His personalism is a fine example of authentic humanism, and it is philosophically informed (you may recall that JPII first ‘job’ was as a philosophy professor).

I will leave this wide-open for students to post on their reaction to Scalia’s talk.