Meditations on First Philosophy

Title page from the 1641 Paris Edition of the Meditations of René Descartes. The Latin reads, "Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul Will Be Demonstrated."

When Descartes talks of "First Philosophy," he really means "Metaphysics."

Gratuitous Descartes Joke

René Descartes (1596-1650) by Frans Hals.

The famous assertion by René Descartes, "Cogito ergo sum," ("I think therefore I am") has often been challenged on the grounds that it starts with "I."

If Descartes attempts to prove his own existence, he ruins his argument by presupposing his own proposition.

He puts de cart before the horse.

The Story of Samson

Our selection this month is "The Story of Samson," as told in Judges 13-16. Samson was a Nazirite, meaning one who was "separated" or "dedicated," who would abstain from alcohol, who did not cut his hair, who would not engage in "unclean" acts such as going near a corpse (cf., Numbers 6:1).  Samson became a "judge," or leader of the Israelites, who lived under Philistine domination at that time. Curiously, these chapters depict Samson as a warrior and womanizer, but not much of a leader.

Samson and Delilah by Anthony Van Dyke (1599-1641)

Cheever's "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill"

Cheever on cover of his collected stories, standing at Scarsdale, N.Y. train station

Time magazine once referred to John Cheever (1912-1982) as "Ovid in Ossining."  Cheever, like the Roman poet Ovid, spun cycles of tales in which characters appeared to morph into others.  He lived in Ossining, New York, in the bucolic hamlet of Scarborough.

Stories like "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," which we'll discuss Monday night, earned Cheever a reputation as a chronicler of middle-class suburban angst. His body of work, however, encompassed other locales and characters (Italian expats, prison inmates, to name two examples).

In "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," however, there is more to Johnny Hake's story than meets the eye at first.  He overcomes his difficult early years to achieve a modicum of happiness with his wife and children.  If only Johnny can stay on his boss's good side, and keep his kleptomania in check, he'll be alright. Two cheers for life in the New York suburbs!!

Nature vs. Nurture in Munro's "Boys and Girls"

Kudos to the 24 who ventured to the library in muggy weather last evening for our discussion of the short story "Boys and Girls," by Alice Munro.

The conversation spun around two poles.  As a coming of age story, the narrator comes to terms with her "girlness."  That "girlness" becomes defined by her relationship with her younger brother, Laird, as they grow up.

The setting of the story, a fox farm in Ontario, provides an interesting backdrop -- not wholly wild, not wholly civilized -- to the evolution of the personalities of the two kids.  The father runs the enterprise, the fox fur business, and the mother concerns herself with the home and the hearth.

The messy little secret of the operation is that the foxes subsist on the meat of horses killed after they have outlived their usefulness to the farmer.  After seeing one of the horses, Mack, killed by her father, the girl impulsively abets the escape of a mare, Flora, from the farm.  The father, Laird, and the hired hand Henry Bailey capture Flora and kill her.

The narrator is, as Munro writes, "absolved and dismissed" from her action because she starts crying when Laird identifies her as the one who let Flora out of the gate.

There were some in attendance last night who thought the narrator's actions were determined by the inexorable laws of sexual development.  Others considered them to be imposed from without, by a social construct of what it means to be female.

Author of the Month: Alice Munro (1931- )

"Boys and Girls," this month's featured selection, relates an episode in the life of a young girl growing up on a fox farm in rural Ontario. She is repelled by the killing of old horses to provide meat for the foxes. In a moment of revelation, she comes truly to understand the differences between boys and girls.

Munro is a prolific Canadian short story writer who is published often in the New Yorker magazine. "Boys and Girls" offers a child's-eye view of gender roles on the farm. Our narrator watches her mother canning fruits and vegetables in the kitchen and says, "It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father's service, was ritualistically important."

Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle: These Things Shall Be"

On Monday night, May 20th, the selection under consideration will be "Tell Me a Riddle: These Things Shall Be," by Tillie Olsen. This novella tells the story of Eva and David, a long-married couple. It is both a retrospective of their marriage and a meditation on an important pending life decision they must make together.  It raises many questions about living with modest means, the raising of children, retirement options, extended family's role in eldercare, political activism, and the relations between the sexes.