Goatsong

The Greek word from which we get the English 'tragedy' is τραγῳδία; it is best translated as 'a song of the he-goat'. Most people believe that this is because such performances were carried out just before a goat was sacrificed to the gods.

I was having one of those fractured chats with the Hierophant, about current events, when we noticed the similarities between some of those events and a traditional Greek tragedy: there is a heroic figure with a flaw (hamartia, ἁμαρτία), which blossoms into overweening pride (hubris, ὕβρις); there is a Greek chorus of wailing women; there are aspersions and dispersions with interspersions; there is an agent of retribution (nemesis, νέμεσις). There was only one thing missing.

We wondered if there would be a modern Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides to write the play. It would probably have been a smash hit in some circles.

As it is, in local circles, already some supporters have made mention of the terrible opposition this figure has faced since he dropped the green and black for the blue and gold, and found favour with neither. It is like invoking the Angry Ones (Erinyes, Ἐρινύες) to say such things.

Leverage

Perhaps one of the most momentous phrases of the ancient and departed West are these words of Archimedes on levers — δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω — as reported by Pappos the Geometer. In English, they might be translated, "Give me a standing-place and the earth I shall move." It is an ambitious thought, to say the least.

But that really is the reach of the levers of our mind. Sitting where I am, linked to the web (or net, or whatever poor Ariadne's distant child has become), I am able to move thoughts a world away, provoke action and evoke emotion, invoke intangible concepts from the vasty deep. I am able to draw data from the cosmos and drink it, transforming it to information or speculation as it courses through the bowels of my mind.

We are makers of our own knowledge. Yet in some ways, that's a trap we should be wary of springing. Sometimes, the philosophy we manufacture is a false love; it is a love of sophistry and not of sophia, whom the Greeks called Wisdom. I laugh at the epistemology of science: it is so because it is so, and if it ain't so, we will muck around till it matches. The truth is that we have made our universe in the image of whatever we can keep whole in the collective cavity of our human minds — and it might not be the Universe entire.

Perhaps Blake's outrageous ramblings were correct: "To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower; hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." You really have to sit through his Auguries of Innocence all the way to "God appears, and God is light, to those poor souls who dwell in night; but does a human form display to those who dwell in realms of day."

If you do that, you will pass by a lot of extremely odd lines, in which he talks about the triumph of empiricism and why states are doomed by licensed gambling and prostitution. But that was Blake, ever trying to shift the universe from the place where he stood in London. Poetry is a lever too, but the place it stands is really the mind of man.

Word of the Day: Prosopon

It was to my amazement that I saw someone write that prosopon was a technical term in some aspects of literature and theology. The reason for this was that I first came across the word in my New Testament Greek days, a word that was translated from Koiné as 'face' or 'countenance'. I didn't know that it was in any normal English vocabulary. (Ah, yes, normal. Hmm.)

At that time, my research led me to capture the gist of prosopon as 'that which presents itself to the eye'; i.e. the surface manifestation of a person, the outward being or exterior humanity of someone. Then someone else introduced me to the idea of hypostasis, the 'underlying state' or 'fundamentally unchangeable state' as the complementary or oppositional concept to prosopon. Ai! All this from a culture only too productive of theologians, philosophers and philosophical theologians (and yes, these terms also are Greek).

So what is prosopon? Well, it is what is, in the sense of what appears to be there when you look at it. We would probably say, 'taking things at face value' is to apprehend and accept the prosopon. It is the countenance of things, regardless of what lies beneath. It is not the underlying reality, and indeed, sometimes it need not be. But mostly, it is; it is the undivided and proper surface manifestation, extendable by clothing and implements and creative prowess, of a specific person.

But as with much of Greek philosophy, it can lead you into error through considerations that modern Anglophile speakers would not necessarily think about. Was Jesus Christ one person (prosopon) with two natures (hypostases) or with a single hypostasis? The answer must be considered carefully, lest ye be charged with heresy. Heh, those early Church philosophers...

This Is Education, Nor Are We Out Of It

I look back on a mere fifteen years as a professional educator. I look forward, God willing, to many more. But in a historical context, I look back on four generations of professional educators – eight of my direct ancestors in those four generations bearing that gift and the associated calling.

Among them are the turbulent forces that in an ignorant time might have been called the human equivalent of 'principalities and powers'. Mere mortals, of course, all - just as I am, and without one plea - but mortals touched with a spirit of fire. As I reflect upon my ancestors and that lineage which alone in itself ought to humble me, I realise we are humbled by a common master. And that master is not Education, a process anthropomorphised.

Here for example is a fairly normal exegesis of Education in a small and infamous south-east Asian nation-state. The title of this post relates to that through the simple tactic of misquoting from this, or at least from Marlowe's Faustus if you want to read the whole thing.

For what we blithely call 'Education', that Roman ideal so anathematic to the Greeks before them and to generations thereafter, is actually one or the other of these: it makes a hell of the world, or a hell of a world. The Good Book never said, "Go and educate the masses." The word educaré means 'to draw out' in Latin; the word didaskein means 'to instil wisdom' in Greek. The directions of Roman and Greek philosophy are hence opposite in direction! The former sought to draw out from humanity, much as that educational heretic Socrates did; the latter sought to instil within humanity something greater.

But what does the Good Book say about the two directions of learning? Well, it says this about the Roman view and this about the Greek view. I leave you to judge. Think hard upon it; is it better to draw out from the instinctive and natural, or to drink in from the evidence of the eternal around us? Not an easy thing to ask, or to answer.

And yet, until it is answered, this is Education, nor are we out of it.