"I don't know how we get invited over here"--Whigwham (upon, I think, Ben the Baptist Pastor flicking a wine cork and hitting my head after asserting in conversation [for a half an hour or forty-five minutes] that women should be good at cooking and men should be good at discerning good wine, tailors and bourbon)

"We don't; we invite ourselves." --Ben the Baptist Pastor

500 Days of Summer (For Once, There Are No Spoilers Here)

The clothes! The music! Mostly, the clothes (and the fact that the leading lady wears bows in her hair--I want to adopt this). And the charming, too-old, little, little sister. Also, I like that the film was basically timeless--there weren't lots of cell phones or anything like that--the only thing that gave away when the movie was set was a scene in which they were playing wii.

Delightful Situations:

--Wystan, an Americano, a scone, a pretty coffee shop with lots of windows and good music playing, and Wilson Carey McWilliams's Idea of Fraternity in America

--my red polka dot swimming suit beside a pool, a developing dissertation draft, a laptop with a battery (this cannot be taken for granted), dangly earrings, in the late afternoon of a late summer day

Gone for the Moment Or The Last Hurrah of Summer

From My Latvian Penpal (Resurrected Due to Facebook)

"How are your sisters? On photoes you 3 look like 1 age and on some of them like 1 face, really."

Grumble (I Don't Even Have Enough Energy for a Rant)

Turns out dissertating (or faux dissertating) is literally petrifyingly scary. It is less that I mind doing work (I know, even me!) and more that I mind doing this particular work. And by "mind," I mean am scared by.

I did, however, fulfill a dream today: I flew first class. Turns out, it isn't so so different. They gave me a candy bar and my diet coke was in a glass rather than in a plastic cup. I felt mostly like a faker--all of the other people in first class were men and looked bored.

From the Weekend

"...Reading every third word in Maimonides..." --GP (Myrrh's friend)

"It's probably every thirteenth word." --RH

"Yeah, it's not trinitarian!" --MH

Lancelot

Told from the perspective of a man who is in an insane asylum, the novel is basically a monologue of a man who is remembering to his priest/doctor friend the reason that he’s there—he was burned when he blew up his wife, her lover and some of their friends by flooding their house (an old New Orleans mansion) with gas. The man (Lancelot, after both the knight and Lancelot Andrewes) is Protestant; his friend is Catholic. He sees the world in three stages: original innocence, fallenness, and then a recovered innocence that comes when people experience the worst evil and live in spite of it.

When married to his wife, he was an alcoholic who did not experience things until he discovered his wife’s infidelity and came alive in proving it and then punishing it. While in the asylum, he lived next door to a social worker who had been gang raped and was entirely unresponsive. He treated her so tenderly that she came back to herself, and he wants her to join him in his attempt to start over—to move away from society, which had gone so far awry, and to move to Virginia (as he tells us—the cite of the first Revolution [from Britain], the second [unsuccessful] revolution [of the South from the North], and will be the cite of the third revolution—the one that he would spearhead). Lest his siding with the South be interpreted as racist, let me note hear that he was a liberal New Orleans lawyer who primarily took cases that defended blacks.

Through his monologue and the way that he sees into his friend’s soul, we see that he gradually calls his friend back to himself (the implication is that he is a failed priest/doctor, and, by the end, he is returning to his calling). In the end, we see two ways of going about with the third revolution and healing the great evil that exists—the way of the Catholic priest (who will move to a little parish in Alabama), which doesn't promise to change anything and, like the friend, is battered and worn, and the way of Lancelot himself, which is to go to the hills and start over.

Especially because the book is in this monologue (I think that the priest/doctor has a total of four or five words on that last page of the book), you wouldn't think it would be intriguing in the way that it is. You see as the book progresses, Lancelot coming more and more back to himself and his mind becoming clearer; you also see him embracing action over his lethargic stupor. All this to say, the novel is well written and intriguing and thoughtful.

The Dark Knight Or Spoilers!

I’d been hearing good things about this film for some time and only finally watched it on my brother’s laptop at the beach last week. I understood why the Straussians like this film—Batman and the Joker are both outside of society—one is a god and the other a beast. Batman is clearly somewhat uncomfortable with his role as a god: he gives power to his trusted colleague at one point in order to make sure that he doesn’t have too much power himself; additionally, he tries to run himself out of business by encouraging politics—he teaches Harvey Dent, the DA, to be just, both in the public eye and outside of it and aids the growth of his career. Batman, although not limited by the political morals that govern the society as a whole (he goes to Hong Kong, brings one of the bad guys back, and hands him over to the law), does have a code that he follows: he does not kill unless his life is threatened.

The Joker, on the other hand, is not governed by any code: he wreaks havoc simply in order to have chaos. He sees himself as the yin to Batman’s yang—they need each other in order to engage in play with the society. For this reason, he does not want to kill Batman, and trusts Batman not to kill him.

The Joker takes Harvey Dent and encourages him toward evil. Suddenly Dent, half of whose face was burnt off, is flipping coins to decide if his victim would die or not (okay, so actually, if the coin didn’t flip the way that he liked, he sometimes thought of other ways to kill them; also, this reminds me of No Country for Old Men—I can’t think exactly of the particular horribleness that happens when violence is attached to chance, but it seems to be there). We realize at the end of the film that Batman must continue to fulfill his role—political justice is not sufficient.

Moreover, Batman argues for the necessity of the noble lie: the people must not find out that Harvey Dent turned evil; rather, they must continue to see him as good in order to have faith in the existence of goodness. This is parallel to Plato’s noble lie in the Republic—it teaches us some truth about man (in this case that man is capable of being just and good), although not strictly true. In order to perpetuate this noble lie, Batman takes the fall and appears to be evil, suffering the consequent ostracization. Batman realizes that his position outside of society, as one who is not strictly subject to it (although he recognizes that he is still subject to some standard of good and evil), brings with it the fact of being misunderstood by society itself.

Weddinging

Old Indian Man (pointing to Wystan): “He’s quite a dancer! You need to keep your eyes on him.” (minutes later) “But no hanky-panky!”

I ended up wearing two dresses to the wedding I asked about; the bride wore three (!). She basically changed as often as possible.

The music alternated between Bollywood music and rap; basically, at every song, half of the people dancing didn’t quite know what to do (Wystan: “That’s not true; I know what to do all the time.”; Okay, it isn’t actually true: it was more like 80 percent Indian people dancing—definitely not half and half). All that to say, a bunch of Indian men of different ages gathered around Wystan and tried to copy him; it was adorable.

The final song of the evening was the song at the end of Slumdog Millionaire—I definitely wished that I’d picked it up better at Myrrh’s wedding. Alas.

Going to, Basically, Heaven (as of 4 a.m. Saturday)

Dear Reader,

I am Wystan's guest for a wedding in NJ next weekend, which has an interesting schedule: The wedding is at 10:30; there is a lunch buffet following; cocktail and a dinner reception start at 5:30.

So, in effect, this is both a morning and an evening wedding.

What to wear?

A friend of his writes, "Your question is a great one (I kind of feel like a dear abbey in a magazine...very cool). ... The same outfit should be fine, as long as the day outfit is formal. It would also not be inappropriate to wear two different outfits if this is her desire."

Which doesn't come down too strongly on one side or the other.

Do vote: one dress or two?

Yours,

Emily

Exam Day

Giving oral exams today was really delightful--the kids were really scared and studied hard, but my point was not to give them a hard time in the exam itself. I simply asked them further questions about their papers, who their favorite person we read was, why, and what he said about the nature of man and the nature of politics. It was delightful to me to see the way that the course came together for them and to hear their reflections on it--sort of like an exit interview. It was delightful, too, to see the one boy who struggled most in the course with his carefully rehearsed answers:

Emily: "Who was your favorite philosopher that we read?"
D: "Probably Plato"
E: "Why?"
D: "He is probably the one I read most thoroughly."
E: "Who else?"
D: "Probably Aristotle."
E: "Why?"
D: "I also read him well."

I think those may have been the only two he read the whole of. I asked him which questions he wanted to answer--he told me about Aristotle and the relationship between politics and ethics in great detail (he's bff with the smartest boy in the class, and I could tell that they had studied together). He then suggested that we talk about Rousseau and education and he proceeded to tell me the focus of each of the five books of Emile (although he forgot one or two) and recounted the story of the boy flying the kite. I really can't express how precious this was. He couldn't remember much about the state of nature in Hobbes, but prompting helped.

And the boy from Columbia said that he most liked Hobbes and his view of man, but didn't agree with the government he promoted, and proceeded to explain why diffused power is better. He'll clearly be a politician.

The boy who won't stop talking was the only exam that went over ten minutes--it was more like fifteen. And he really wanted to squeeze in a few more questions before we finished, just to show me all that he knew.

What was really delightful was that it was one last opportunity to teach kids a couple of things that were unique to their interests in a one-on-one setting--I wanted to make a point about the relationship between Aristotle and Burke to the sweet, very young Republican girl, so I drew it out of her through the questions I asked. And I wanted to make a point about general and special revelation to the very smart boy, who is Jesuit educated and had already read lots of Aquinas and Augustine.

They were all very nervous as most of them had never taken an oral exam before, but, as I told one of my students, I'd never given an oral exam before (although I omitted the part in which I was very nervous, too). All in all, it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Ilana: "Hey guys, do you know about 422?"

Stearns and Emily look confused. Emily: "Oh, you mean 420?"

In Defense of Tattoos on On the Permanent Things

Tattoos are wonderful because they are permanent. Oakeshott would like tattoos. Also, tattoos are wonderful because they can be funny or ironic. Moreover, the right tattoo can be very pretty, or, in men, hot.

My Last Class

I gave my little last lecture (after admitting that I wrote it at 2 a.m. and that it might be sentimental) and they clapped! And then I was close to tears and so I shoved the course evals at them and ran out the door. I managed to not cry. Just to give you an example of how silly I am, this is the last bit:

What do I want you to leave this class—these twenty-five days of conversation—with? First, I want to see the ways in which tradition affects you and the ways in which you can’t get away from it. I want you to think of yourselves as rooted in particular cultural, religious, and philosophic traditions. I want you to see that as something that you can’t scrape off and pretend isn’t part of you. Sometimes you change from those things, we always do, in fact, but their formation on you is important. Second, I want you to see that as you read widely and travel and reflect, you may be able to see where the traditions in which you are raised are not sufficient. I want you to be able to analyze arguments—to see where they’re weak or don’t make sense all together or don’t correspond to the world that we live in. I want you to do this because you read old things—not just new things. You have a depth of thought and won’t be easily led astray by every new, very persuasive argument that you read. Rather, you will be able to think of it in a much deeper context, among other thinkers. Third, I want you to see the importance of having these discussions within a community—we have people in this class of different ages, different backgrounds, different nationalities, and different personalities. The insights you each brought to the discussion were valuable and enlightening. Different people responded to the texts in different ways; different people like different things. Through our conversation with each other, however, I think we were all able to learn much more than we would have been alone. There’s a sort of friendship that we engaged in with each other (sure, it’s a friendship of utility), but in the context of that friendship, we could pursue and seek the good together. Fourth, I want you to take what we’ve discussed this summer and the ways of thinking that we’ve encountered into your future professions. I know that that may be awhile away for some of you, but for others it’s very close. If you understand that the philosophic way of life is the highest, as Plato and Aristotle showed us, and if you understand that you may have to engage in practical politics regardless (we are constantly being called to practical work in the world), then no matter what you choose to do—whether it be law school or graduate school or farming, you can see where it fits into the whole social and political order and you can reflect on your relationship to the whole. Without this way of thinking, you could just be a farmer to get food for your family, which is fine, but I hope that you all will be more reflective after reading the authors that we’ve read this semester.

Who Knew?

Rose Wilder Lane, who helped her mother by extensively editing the Little House on the Prairie series, is apparently a founding mother of sorts of the libertarian movement.

"E,

Your blog posts need some extra spice.

Lawrence (of Arabia)"

Ah! What sort of extra spice??! (I am taking suggestions.)