8 Personal Qualities for Troubled Political Times According to Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

On March 26^th, our group’s subject was John Stuart Mill’s “The Criterion of a Good Form of Government,” a chapter from his book Representative Government. Mill considers how political philosophers describe the elements of a good government. He sees these elements becoming boiled down to “a partition of the exigencies of society between the two heads of Order and Progress.”

He goes on to delineate the following qualities of individuals that contribute to Order:

• Industry
• Integrity
• Justice
• Prudence

 Additional qualities that lead to Progress are

• Mental Activity
• Enterprise
• Courage

Mill concludes the Order and Progress debate, in reality, hinges on a false distinction between the two societal goals, and it's “unscientific and incorrect.”

He nevertheless does offer a plan for good government, one that's based on human excellence as an amalgam of the human qualities just mentioned. He expresses another idea that's key to his argument when he says, “If there is anything certain in human progress, it is that valuable acquisitions are only to be retained by a continuation of the same energies which gained them. Things left to themselves inevitably decay.”

Mill goes on to invoke an eighth attribute: Originality, or Invention.  In other words, we must (a) be constantly vigilant in order to preserve democracy, and (b) discover fresh means to protect it from decay.

Do you find this Millian formulation relevant to today's politics?

An Interpretation of Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand"

A reader who has even a passing familiarity with the 19^th-century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne understands he struggled with the theological concerns of his New England forebears. The title character of Hawthorne’s story “Ethan Brand” began his philosphical musings during long hours spent by his kiln on the slope of Mount Graylock. Ethan Brand represents a type of individual who wrestles with concepts like Unpardonable Sin. He says upon his return to the mountain after a 20-year quest for the Unpardonable Sin, that it was “the sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man, and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!”

The character of old Humphrey fascinates me the most. He, like both Ethan and the Jew of Nuremberg who sells dioramic views to the local populace, is a wanderer.  Hawthorne tells us Humphrey’s wandering has a specific purpose: to inquire of people as to the whereabouts of his daughter, whom Hawthorne calls “the Esther of our tale.” When Humphrey sees Brand, he upbraids him for heisting his daughter away and pushing her into a life as a circus performer. She was, Hawthorne writes, “the very girl whom with such cold and remorseless purpose, Brand had had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.”

Later, Brand sits by the kiln by himself, and reviews his spiritual metamorphosis.  He thinks about how the “Idea that possessed his life had operated as a means of education,” but concludes, “So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That indeed, had withered – had contracted – had hardened – had perished!” It turned him into an unfeeling observer, “looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.” Hawthorne again means to tell us his sin-obsessed character viewed others, on whom he sought to impose his beliefs, as unwitting experimental fodder.

The Wandering Jew of Nuremberg also knew Brand’s reputation, and earlier in the story says “I find it to be a heavy matter in my show box – this  Unpardonable Sin. By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry it over the mountain.”

Do we ever discover what the Unpardonable Sin was? Based on our examination of Hawthorne’s astonishing allegory, I can only conclude: IF Hawthorne believes in Unpardonable Sin at all, it would be the sin of imposing a heavy-handed belief system on other people whom you intimidate intellectually. That would be enough to make anyone want to join the circus.

Concept Map for Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand"

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

At Monday night's meeting, on "Ethan Brand," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we'll inquire as to what Brand is really searching for in his quest for the "Unpardonable Sin."

An important key to the story is Brand's relationship to the various people in his sleepy village in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. See the "concept map" below. It will serve as a step-off point when we get together for our discussion of Hawthorne's brilliant allegorical piece.

How do the characters interrelate?

Glossary of Terms in Keats from Greek Mythology

John Keats (1795-1821) wrote these great odes in his early twenties.

The three Keats poems we take up on January 22nd contain many allusions to Greek myths.  In order to understand them on the highest level, it pays to understand the mythological backstory.  What follows is a handy glossary to the terms you will encounter in these poems.

"Ode to a Nightingale"

Dryad: wood-nymph
Hippocrene: fountain on Mt. Hellicon sacred to the Muses, the nine goddesses of arts and sciences.
Bacchus: Roman name for Dionysus, Greek god of wine

"Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Tempe: A valley in Thessaly, northeastern region on the Greek peninsula
Arcady: Mountainous interior region of the Peloponnesus
Attica: Most southerly part of the Greek mainland

"Ode on Melancholy"

Lethe: River in the Underworld
Proserpine: Goddess of the Underworld
Psyche: Beautiful daughter of an unidentified king.  Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was annoyed that people had ceased to worship at her shine because of Psyche's transcendent beauty. Aphrodite designed to make her son Cupid have Psyche fall in love with a man without wealth or reputation. Cupid and Psyche end up romantically involved in the end.

Additional note: "Ode to a Nightingale"
also alludes to the biblical story of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite woman who returned to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law Naomi after the death of Naomi's husband and her two sons, one of whom, Mahlon, was Ruth's husband. Though homesick, Ruth loves her mother-in-law. She finds a new husband, Boaz.

The Hekabe-Agamemnon-Polymestor Triangle in "Hekabe" by Euripides

"Hecuba discovers the corpse of her son Polydorus,"
by André-Joseph Allan (1825-1926)

The captured Trojan Queen Hekabe suffers the loss of both her daughter Polyxena and her son Polydorus.  The Greeks have sacrificed Polyxena because she has been promised to join the slain Achilles in the afterworld.  Polydorus has been killed by the Thracian king Polymestor for the gold Polydorus had brought from Troy.

Hekabe tells the Greek king Agamemnon, "I seek revenge on one who well deserves it." Agamemnon agrees to allow Hekabe to pass through the ranks of his men in order to get near to Polymestor.

Hekabe feigns ignorance of her son's death to Polymestor, who lies to her in saying Polydorus remains alive.  Hekabe  and her chorus of Trojan women lure Polymestor and his young sons into her tent with a promise of a cache of jewels. Once inside the tent, he is blinded and his sons murdered.

Agamemnon as the Greek leader must tread a thin line.  His army has defeated Troy, and to save face with his men he must not be seen to give assistance to a Trojan Queen in her pursuit of revenge. Nevertheless he considers her to be in the right. As he says to the blind Polymestor,

What you have done we find contemptible ...
  not the sort of fault we overlook.
I would condemn myself in acquitting you.
And this I shall not do.
Since you have unleashed evil,
  you must let it drag you where it will*

Perhaps Hekabe gains satisfaction for her grief through her attack on Polymestor.  She never does get back at the Greeks for what they've done to Polyxena.  It is up to Agamemnon to assert his authority as king.  His unease in this role is evident when he says, "I have no liking for the place I'm in. If I judge another's wrongs, it is because I must." Heavy weighs the crown.

*From Euripides's "Hekabe," Robert Emmet Meagher, translator; Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1995.

Euripides's "Hekabe"

On Monday evening we consider Euripides's "Hekabe," a drama concerning the aftermath of the legendary Trojan War.

Euripdes (484 - 407 B.C.)

Hekabe, widow of the Trojan king Priam, is taken hostage to Thrace.  The Tracian king, Polymestor, has murdered Hekabe's son Polydorus.  Her daughter, Polyxena is to be sacrificed on the grave of the Greek hero Achilles.

The Polydorus and Polyxena stories are separate sagas, yet they both flow through Euripides's presentation of their mother.  The British classical scholar H. D. F. Kitto writes, "The play, quite simply, makes its own impression, and that is its 'meaning' .... [Hekabe herself] is a symbol ... and the play derives its unity and power not from the symbol, but from the thing symbolized."*

*Kitto, H.F.D., Greek Tragedy, 3rd edit. (London: Methuen, 1961), p. 222.

O'Brien's "The Things They Carried": Vietnam War Stories

Tim O'Brien (1946-   )

On Monday evening we take up "The Things They Carried," the title story of Tim O'Brien's 1990 story collection based on his tour of duty as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1969-70. O'Brien occasionally interjects himself into the twenty-two stories in the collection, although mostly they are about his fellow soldiers. The book's title page states it is a "work of fiction by Tim O'Brien." The dedication, however, states "This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa," all of whom play roles in the title story and in fact throughout the collection.  O'Brien speaks of a "story truth" that underlies events, and you the reader might find the notion of "story truth" to be an excellent point of departure as you approach this narrative of the human tragedies of war.