Thursday, December 1, 2016

The Tale of a Wolf, a Dog, and Collars


Moral tales, sometimes called fables in older literature, have extraordinarily long and robust lives. The one that interests us here is Aesop’s A Wolf and Dog.
Bennett's A Dog & A Wolf

§ A very succinct biography of an ugly slave with a witty tongue
Aesop, whose dates are circa 620-560 BC, was a Greek slave who had an incredible knack for spinning a tale with a moral tweak. When these tales were eventually compiled, they of course began to go by the name of — (no real spoiler alert necessary, surely): Aesop’s Fables. Historically speaking, Aesop’s dates put him squarely in the period of many of the earlier Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers and teachers of wisdom, such as Thales and Anaximenes both at around 585 BC, Anaximander at c. 610-546 BC, Pythagoras from 571-497 BC, and Xenophanes at c. 570-475 BC. There is, however, no evidence that Aesop knew or was known by any of these very wise and clever folks. Historical sources for Aesop include Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch.
            According to one ancient tradition, which is not considered very reliable by those in the know (viz. The Aesop Romance; vide wiki for the biographical details that follow), Aesop was an amazingly ugly slave who, because he was quite clever, wins his freedom and goes on to become a counselor to the hoity-toity of his day.
Scholarship and tradition have postulated for Aesop a variety of possible birthplaces, most of which are in modern day Turkey. The non-Turkish possibility is a town in ancient Thrace called Mesembria, which is Nesebar in modern day Bulgaria, just a hop, skip, and a jump up the Black sea coast road from old Byzantium. Apparently, Nesebar is today “one of the most prominent tourist destinations and seaports on the Black Sea,” in addition to sporting what many consider to be the highest number of churches per capita. An accomplishment indeed.
In Turkey, choices for birthplace seem to favor either someplace in Phrygia, which is modern-day Erdogan’s authoritarian stomping grounds in central Turkey; or perhaps Sardis, an ancient city close to Ephesus on the west coast of Turkey, located in the ancient kingdom of Lydia; or, finally, some undetermined place generally located within the borders of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. From this diversity of geographical possibilities, it can be safely said that one may assume almost nothing about Aesop’s birthplace.
            On the question about where Aesop might have practiced his craft as entrepreneurial story-teller and slave, Aristotle (Rhetoric 2.20), Herodotus (Histories 2.134), and Plutarch (On the Delays of Divine Vengeance; Banquet of the Seven Sages; Life of Solon) all had something to say.
From Aristotle and Herodotus we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff… Before this fatal episode, … Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis.

Pushkin's Aesop
It is a disingenuous hypocrisy of Aesopian scholarship that although almost everyone in the know agrees that The Aesop Romance (the AR) is not historically or biographically reliable, nevertheless almost all the historical and biographical information that passes for such derives from just that very source. For example, the following rather detailed description of an African, or more precisely, an Ethiopian Aesop is given in the AR:
he was "of loathsome aspect... potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped—a portentous monstrosity," or as another translation has it, "a faulty creation of Prometheus when half-asleep." The earliest text by a known author that refers to Aesop's appearance is Himerius in the 4th century, who says that Aesop "was laughed at and made fun of, not because of some of his tales but on account of his looks and the sound of his voice." The evidence from both of these sources is dubious, since Himerius lived some 800 years after Aesop and his image of Aesop may have come from The Aesop Romance, which is essentially fiction; but whether based on fact or not, at some point the idea of an ugly, even deformed Aesop took hold in popular imagination. […] The presence of such slaves in Greek-speaking areas is suggested by the fable "Washing the Ethiopian white" that is ascribed to Aesop himself. This concerns a man who buys a black slave and, assuming that he was neglected by his former master, tries very hard to wash the blackness away.  

Ethiopian Aesop_Delphi
There is no evidence, however, that Aesop injected himself autobiographically into this fable about “Washing the Ethiopian While,” which leaves all academic speculation fanciful—nothing new there, of course. The idea of a black Aesop catches hold in the tradition, though, and traveling hither and yon from interpretation to translation until it has established a firm foothold for itself in 17th and 18th century iconography, in popular perception Aesop and his fables eventually find themselves being linked at the hip to “the stories of the trickster Br'er Rabbit told by African-American slaves.”

§ There, and back again to Aesop’s ‘A Wolf and Dog’
It is reasonable, and not at all anachronistic to read in this very short Aesopian moral tale a precocious enlightenment story, which is to say, a tale about right attitudes, and wrong, toward liberty and slavery. This notion of the burden of enlightenment to be a cause of freedom does not change, whether in the times of the early Greek philosophers or in the 18th reprisal of their philosophical themes.
According to the wiki-folks on this fable, Aesop’s A Wolf and Dogis one of [the] Fables, numbered 346 in the Perry Index [=Chambry 226]. It has been popular since antiquity as an object lesson of how freedom should not be exchanged for comfort or financial gain.” So, we can see right off the interpretative bat that the notion of slavery in this moral tale is not to be construed literally, but is already presented figuratively, as a deliberate choice to put ourselves, or not, on the slaver’s auction block in exchange for material comforts.
            A perhaps primary, because skeletal version of this fable is found in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae [TLG: AESOPUS et AESOPICA Scr. Fab. Fabulae {0096.002} Fable 294], of which Phrontisterion proposes the following translation:
A wolf asked an enormously large dog shackled by a neck collar to a property stake: “Who is it who, by putting this chain around your neck, has trained you to act this way? And the other answered: “My huntsman master.

·  ΛΥΚΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΚΥΩΝ
(1) 
  λύκος ἐν κλοιῷ δεδεμένον ὁρῶν μέγιστον κύνα ἤρετο·
δήσας τίς <σ’> ἐξέθρεψε τ<οι>οῦτον; ὁ δὲ ἔφη· κυνηγός.

This (very) short original text suggests some core postures and attitudes that, in a happy footnote of history, will be confirmed in the later amplifications and translations of the fable. These also have the virtue of translating wonderfully into more concrete philosophical ideals.
Perhaps the most obvious idea in this fable is that the Wolf encounters here an enormously large and powerful Dog, who would under normal circumstances be quite an intimidating animal. This use of megiston [μέγιστον] is superlative, which gives us the idea that this is really an exceedingly powerful Dog in his prime. The irony, of course, which becomes apparent to the Reader in the Wolf’s question, is that this powerful Dog, which is by its own canine nature both powerful and mobile, has been transformed by his collar and chain into a harmless piece of quasi-motionless real estate. The Dog is become property; and its obvious natural strength and ability to be active is debilitated by a forced immobility, by a repressive neck collar that fetters it, and reduces its active world to a very limited patch of land in close proximity to a stake in the ground.
A second powerful idea in this fable is that the Dog has learned to accept his persona and role as chained piece of property; it was not born to be as it has become. But the Dog has been bowed for so long that, being now in the prime of his life, the years of habitual bowing have accustomed Him, have trained him up in the way he should go, might have said the Ecclesiast (Proverbs 22:6), and he finds comfort in the familiarity of his demeaned posture.
A third idea in this fable is that it is only in respect to the huntsman that this Dog-property has value. Which is to say, that its value is not personal, it is not integral to the Dog, but rather determined uniquely by its utility to its master.
And, finally, it is patently obvious in this fable that the Wolf thinks 1) that it is definitely uncool to be in the Dog’s position, and 2) that the Wolf, apparently, thinks the Dog has some power to change his condition. When we meet the Dog in this Aesopian fable, his mind and spirit are already light-years removed from the heroic mind and spirit of, for example, Boethius’ Hercules (c. 480-524; Consolation of Philosophy, IV, lns. 29-35):
As his last labour he with unbended neck
Bore up the heavens, and as his reward
For that last labour, heaven deserved.
Go then, you brave, where leads the lofty path
Of this great example. Why in indolence
Do you turn your backs in flight? Earth overcome
Grants you the stars.

The Dog has also left long-forgotten in some dim past the moving idea of the free hearts and free foreheads of Ulysses’ comrades, which so inspired Tennyson (1809-1892; Ulysses)
My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

§ ‘A Wolf and Dog’ expanded.
Using the TLG short text as our spring board, we can now consider the longer and expanded Chambry Greek version of this fable [Chambry 226=Perry 346] in an attempt to elucidate how the core idea was interpreted already in Aesop’s day. In the Townsend translation it reads like this:
A WOLF, meeting a big, well-fed Mastiff, having a wooden collar about his neck, inquired of him who it was that fed him so well, and yet compelled him to drag that heavy log about wherever he went. The master, he replied. Then said the Wolf: May no friend of mine ever be in such a plight; for the weight of this chain is enough to spoil the appetite.

Λύκος καὶ κύων.

Λύκος ἐν κλοιῷ δεδεμένον ὁρῶν μέγιστον κύνα ἤρετο· " Δήσας τίς ς' ἐξέθρεψε τοῦτον;" Ὁ δὲ ἐφη· "Κυνηγός. -- Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὴ πάθοι λύκος ἐμοὶ φίλος· λιμὸς γὰρ ἡ κλοιοῦ βαρύτης."
Ὁ λόγος δηλοῖ τὸ ἐν ταῖς συμφοραῖς οὐδὲ γαστρίζεσθαι.

Frankly, Townsend’s translation does not do much for meaning in the rendering of this fable; the Laura Gibbs (2002) translation for Oxford press is much more rich in texture and ideas. Gibbs translates the fable as ‘The Wolf, The Dog and the Collar’ [Perry 346 (Babrius 100)].
A comfortably plump dog happened to run into a wolf. The wolf asked the dog where he had been finding enough food to get so big and fat. 'It is a man,' said the dog, 'who gives me all this food to eat.' The wolf then asked him, 'And what about that bare spot there on your neck?' The dog replied, 'My skin has been rubbed bare by the iron collar which my master forged and placed upon my neck.' The wolf then jeered at the dog and said, 'Keep your luxury to yourself then! I don't want anything to do with it, if my neck will have to chafe against a chain of iron!'

Λύκῳ συνήντα πιμελὴς κύων λίην.
ὁ δ' αὐτὸν ἐξήταζε, ποῦ τραφεὶς οὕτως
μέγας κύων ἐγενετο καὶ λίπους πλήρης.
"ἄνθρωπος" εἶπε "δαψιλής με σιτεύει."
"ὁ δέ σοι τράχηλος" εἶπε "πῶς ἐλευκώθη;"
"κλοιῷ τέτριπται σάρκα τῷ σιδηρείῳ,
ὃν ὁ τροφεύς μοι περιτέθεικε χαλκεύσας."
λύκος δ' ἐπ' αὐτῷ καγχάσας "ἐγὼ τοίνυν
χαίρειν κελεύω" φησί "τῇ τρυφῇ ταύτῃ,

δι' ἣν σίδηρος τὸν ἐμὸν αὐχένα τρίψει."

Gibbs supplements her rendering of this longer Perry 346 version of Aesop’s fable with a further note, remarking that Caxton (Caxton 3.15) “adds this epimythium: 'Therfore there is no rychesse gretter than lyberte / For lyberte is better than alle the gold of the world.'” Now an epimythium is simply a moral that is appended to the end of a story, which means that Caxton was quite intent that we do not miss the moral of this particular moral tale. And correctly so.
            The translation of this fable for the Harvard Classics (1909–14) looks like this: The Dog and the Wolf.
A GAUNT Wolf was almost dead with hunger when he happened to meet a House-dog who was passing by. “Ah, Cousin,” said the Dog. “I knew how it would be; your irregular life will soon be the ruin of you. Why do you not work steadily as I do, and get your food regularly given to you?”
1 “I would have no objection,” said the Wolf, “if I could only get a place.”
2 “I will easily arrange that for you,” said the Dog; “come with me to my master and you shall share my work.”
3 So the Wolf and the Dog went towards the town together. On the way there the Wolf noticed that the hair on a certain part of the Dog’s neck was very much worn away, so he asked him how that had come about.
4 “Oh, it is nothing,” said the Dog. “That is only the place where the collar is put on at night to keep me chained up; it chafes a bit, but one soon gets used to it.”
5 “Is that all?” said the Wolf. “Then good-bye to you, Master Dog.”

“BETTER STARVE FREE THAN BE A FAT SLAVE.”

Jean de la Fontaine
§ Jean de La Fontaine.
In the meandering ebb and flow of history, Jean de la Fontaine, French fabulist extraordinaire, made his appearance from 1621–1695, and would go on to become one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. Showing their usual witty talent for catagorizing, scholars generally divide La Fontaine’s work into the Fables, the Tales, and Miscellanea; he would compose or reprise some 239 fables, with the Aesop adaptions occurring in the first collection of fables beginning in 1668.
An important part of a monumental work, La Fontaine’s moralizing fables in free verse, which comprise 12 books and 3 collections published over a space of some 25 years, are domiciled at the crossroads of literature and philosophy. According to the wiki sources:
When he first wrote his Fables, La Fontaine had a sophisticated audience in mind. Nevertheless, the Fables were regarded as providing an excellent education in morals for children, and the first edition was dedicated to the six-year-old Dauphin. Following La Fontaine's example, his translator Charles Denis dedicated his Select Fables (1754) to the sixteen-year-old heir to the English throne.

It was recognized very early on that the fabulist means of expression was a wonderful teaching device for the young and young at mind –(scholars never cease to stun and amaze with the acuity of their perception!)—so it should not surprise us to learn that French lycée students, who are preparing for the baccalaureate, are still regularly called upon to write a literary commentary (commentaire littéraire) on one or another of La Fontaine’s fables. This philosophical reflection will generally take the form of an initial statement about The Art of the Narrative (L’art du récit), which tends to be general; will then reasonably proceed to consider the question of animals and the world of men (Etude des animaux et du Monde humain); and will then conclude by a reflection about the moral lesson of the fable (L'enseignement moral de cette fable).
            With respect to the fable that has drawn our attention, Aesop’s A Wolf and Dog, although La Fontaine remains faithful to the message of the original Aesopian short text and that of the subsequent expanded textual tradition, he presents a significantly more amplified narrative in his rendition of Le Loup et le Chien, all the while telling us the same story of two very different lives—the Wolf’s, which, as we know by now, represents liberty, and that of the Dog who is bound by force to the service and use of his master.
            Now, to defer just a little to the French method of the literary commentary, or, if one prefers the philosopher’s method we can give the floor to Aristotle (Met I 981b27) and talk about Wisdom being concerned with first causes and principles—to the point: Let us ask first questions first. What is one to make of talking animals?

If one accepts the various religious traditions on this question, certainly the Jewish and Christian traditions have their share of chatty animals, from the eloquently philosophical Serpent of the Genesis narrative, to the visionary ass who complains clamorously to his master, Balaam, about the poor treatment he receives at his master’s hand (Numbers 22:30). Hindu tradition has monkey society in the Age of Legend as “beings endowed with extraordinary intelligence, speech, immeasurable strength and nobility, and were of godly parentage” (Ramayana 98), whose representative, godlike Hanuman, will prove immensely important to Rama and the success of his quest to find his lost Sita. Grendel and mom, of Beowulf fame, are of course both of a monstrously conversational bent. And then there are all the talking dragons of the old Norse myths, including Fáfnir (from the 13th century Volsunga Saga), who will likewise make an appearance in Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle, Der Ring der Nibelungen. Native American animal wisdom is populated with every sort of critter chitchat and animal animation, and full of stories of coyotes conversing with ducks, bears with chipmunks, buffalos and grizzly bears, men and horses, snakes and boys. On the other hand, although Auggie the
Auggie Communicating_2016
canine philosopher is extraordinarily communicative, including non-yarking, mouth related sounds, he has yet to break into utterance of any recognizably human sort.
A second element in this fable, obviously, has to do with collars. It is clear in our Aesopian fable tradition that the Dog is chained by a collar to the huntsman’s stake, and thus transformed into his property. There is a formulaic equation between collar and dominance or slavery, where the lack of collar corresponds to liberty and self-possession. The wiki definition of a dog collar is internet proof that some things just do not require much insight or original thinking:
A dog collar is a piece of material put around the neck of a dog. A collar may be used for control, identification, fashion, or other purposes. Identification tags and medical information are often placed on dog collars. Collars are also useful for controlling a dog manually, as they provide a handle for grabbing. Collars are often used in conjunction with a leash, and a common alternative to a dog collar is a dog harness. Dog collars are the most common form of directing and teaching dogs.

Slave Collar_Civil War
§ On Collars.
Convict Cast Iron Neck Ring
         By way of reviewing collars as cultural artifacts of dominance, there are slave collars as there are cast neck irons for convicted convicts. In a more symbolic vein, there are also any number of images of the starched collars worn by social dressers of by-gone eras;
Neck Collars
and a rather different sort of neck collar, which speaks to the relational human-animal sexual dynamic, and the collar as symbol of that dynamic.


 
Other Collars




§ Le Loup et le Chien, or The Wolf and Dog (French and English).
Le Loup et le Chien
Un Loup n'avait que les os et la peau,
Tant les chiens faisaient bonne garde.
Ce Loup rencontre un Dogue aussi puissant que beau,
Gras, poli, qui s'était fourvoyé par mégarde.

L'attaquer, le mettre en quartiers,

Sire Loup l'eût fait volontiers ;

Mais il fallait livrer bataille,

Et le Mâtin était de taille

A se défendre hardiment.

Le Loup donc l'aborde humblement,

Entre en propos, et lui fait compliment

Sur son embonpoint, qu'il admire.

"Il ne tiendra qu'à vous beau sire,

D'être aussi gras que moi, lui repartit le Chien.

Quittez les bois, vous ferez bien :
Vos pareils y sont misérables,

Cancres, haires, et pauvres diables,

Dont la condition est de mourir de faim.

Car quoi ? rien d'assuré : point de franche lippée :

Tout à la pointe de l'épée.

Suivez-moi : vous aurez un bien meilleur destin. "
Le Loup reprit : "Que me faudra-t-il faire ?
- Presque rien, dit le Chien, donner la chasse aux gens
Portants bâtons, et mendiants ;

Flatter ceux du logis, à son Maître complaire :

Moyennant quoi votre salaire

Sera force reliefs de toutes les façons :

Os de poulets, os de pigeons,

Sans parler de mainte caresse. "

Le Loup déjà se forge une félicité

Qui le fait pleurer de tendresse.

Chemin faisant, il vit le col du Chien pelé.

"Qu'est-ce là ? lui dit-il. - Rien. - Quoi ? rien ? - Peu de chose.
- Mais encor ? - Le collier dont je suis attaché

De ce que vous voyez est peut-être la cause.

- Attaché ? dit le Loup : vous ne courez donc pas

Où vous voulez ? - Pas toujours ; mais qu'importe ?

- Il importe si bien, que de tous vos repas
Je ne veux en aucune sorte,
Et ne voudrais pas même à ce prix un trésor. "

Cela dit, maître Loup s'enfuit, et court encor.

The Wolf and The Dog
A prowling wolf, whose shaggy skin
(So strict the watch of dogs had been)
Hid little but his bones,
Once met a mastiff dog astray.
A prouder, fatter, sleeker Tray,
No human mortal owns.
Sir Wolf in famish'd plight,
Would fain have made a ration
Upon his fat relation;
But then he first must fight;
And well the dog seem'd able
To save from wolfish table
His carcass snug and tight.
So, then, in civil conversation
The wolf express'd his admiration
Of Tray's fine case. Said Tray, politely,
'Yourself, good sir, may be as sightly;
Quit but the woods, advised by me.
For all your fellows here, I see,
Are shabby wretches, lean and gaunt,
Belike to die of haggard want.
With such a pack, of course it follows,
One fights for every bit he swallows.
Come, then, with me, and share
On equal terms our princely fare.'
'But what with you
Has one to do?'
Inquires the wolf. 'Light work indeed,'
Replies the dog; 'you only need
To bark a little now and then,
To chase off duns and beggar men,
To fawn on friends that come or go forth,
Your master please, and so forth;
For which you have to eat
All sorts of well-cook'd meat--
Cold pullets, pigeons, savoury messes--
Besides unnumber'd fond caresses.'
The wolf, by force of appetite,
Accepts the terms outright,
Tears glistening in his eyes.
But faring on, he spies
A gall'd spot on the mastiff's neck.
'What's that?' he cries. 'O, nothing but a speck.'
'A speck?' 'Ay, ay; 'tis not enough to pain me;
Perhaps the collar's mark by which they chain me.'
'Chain! chain you! What! run you not, then,
Just where you please, and when?'
'Not always, sir; but what of that?'
'Enough for me, to spoil your fat!
It ought to be a precious price
Which could to servile chains entice;
For me, I'll shun them while I've wit.'
So ran Sir Wolf, and runneth yet.

Another English Translation
The wolf grew gaunt-his bones stuck out-
Because for once the watchdogs never shut their eyes.
At last he took a drowsy mastiff by surprise,
A gorgeous, glossy-coated, oxlike layabout.
Sir Wolf would happily have set upon this giant
And ripped him all to shreds, but seeing his huge size
And his stout means of self-defense,
To challenge him to combat simply made no sense
And so instead he groveled, winningly compliant,
And told him how he envied him his plump physique.
"Dear boy, if being fat as I is what you seek,
It is entirely up to you," the mastiff said.
"Just leave the woods and you'll improve your lot-
For there the only close associates you've got
Are stupid, ragged and ill-fed,
They live half-dead from hunger, just a bunch
Of desperate losers. Why? They've no free lunch,
No real security. There, all live by the knife.
But follow me and find the way to better life."
"What must I do?" the wolf replied.
"Not much at all," the mastiff said. "You wait outside
And chase off beggars from the door
And old lame types with walking sticks,
You lick your master's hand and fawn before
The family, and in return you get a mix
Of lovely leavings, bones of chicken or of squab,
And they will pat your head and scratch behind your ears."
Picturing all this, the wolf's delight was such
Emotion overwhelmed him, and he began to sob.
But as they walked along together, through his tears
He saw the mastiff's neck looked raw and bare.
The wolf inquired, "What happened there?"
"Oh, nothing." "That is nothing?" "Nothing much."
"But, what?" "The collar they attach me with may be
What caused the little spot of soreness that you see."
"Attach?" the wolf replied. "You mean you are not free
To go just where you want?" "Well, not always, no-
But does that matter?" "Matter! Yes, it matters so
That I refuse to touch one bite of your fine swill.
For even a treasure, that price would be too high for me!"
That said, the wolf ran off, and he is running still.

§ A modern epimythium, or—a contemporary moral for this story.
            In a world of ideas, we are now at an historical crossroads where two roads are diverging in a Frostian fashion. The first road in this wood is well-worn and well-known to students of human history; it is the comfortable road of strong central leaders, of nationalisms, and of authority figures who promise to guide us safely through the obscurity and darkness, in exchange for a velvet collar around the neck. The other road, more solitary and less traveled by, and massively uncomfortable, has known the footfall of those who have resisted oppression with free hearts and free foreheads, who have sought enlightenment and accepted the burden of freedom and responsibility as the cost of democracy.
I do not know what kind of America I will wake up to November 9. But I know that the future of America does not hinge on Election Day. What happens to the U.S. will be the cumulative effect of a Trump campaign that has mainstreamed bigotry and is now mainstreaming – or at least severely playing down – white supremacist violence.

Continues the author, speaking about a journalist named Lovejoy who was murdered by a racist mob in 1837 in Missouri:
In October, I visited Lovejoy’s monument, contemplating the election. To Lovejoy, the greatest threat was not death, but the abdication of one’s principles – the selfishness of self-preservation in an era of mob rule. That is the clarity of conscience that bides your time to the grave.

Resources & Further Reading:

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

The Anhistorical Man_Pars Secunda. Will Democracy Survive in the Age of Aquarius?



§ Prologue
            In The Politics (1310a: 12-36), Aristotle reminds us that there are two fundamental ‘goods’ for preserving any system of government, which includes a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. One, is to educate The People into the ideas of that government; and two, is to teach The People that an appropriate education is not necessarily what The People wish for or what brings The People pleasure.
The greatest thing of everything that has been mentioned for preserving a system of government, although this is the thing everyone slights, is providing education in accordance with the system of government. For even the most beneficial and widely approved laws bring no benefit if they are not going to be inculcated through education and the habits of the citizens. Education appropriate for a democratic system of government is not to be guided by what brings enjoyment to the partisans of democracy but rather by what makes it possible to run a system of government democratically.

To summarize from Pars Prima: Act I. Humanities, Crisis, & Inhumanities
There is crisis in the Education of The People, which manifests itself in the study of Humanities, although this should not be the case if Americans are interested in the long-term success of the Enlightenment Project as America’s trade-mark mode of self-expression in the world.
Pars Prima: Act II. Plato's Euthyphro: An Ancient Drama of Religion and Politics
As an explanation and a metaphor for at least some elements linked to crisis in the Humanities, we can look to the various “FAILURES” that were experienced by the great philosopher Socrates, and especially his striking failure so dramatically represented by Plato in the Euthyphro dialogue.
[…] On this reading, does not Plato lead us to the conclusion that genuine “Socratic” dialogue, which should ideally lead us to convert intellectually to the ‘good life’ and thereby transform us into wise men, is in fact futile when confronted with an audience that is disposed neither to conversion nor to wisdom? And by metaphorical extension, are we not guided toward the same conclusion of futility when we consider that the same insurmountable obstacles that faced and finally crushed Socrates, continue to face those who engage in the modern humanistic pursuits?
[…] In Jefferson’s vision of American, however, the education of the people […] strives after the ongoing improvement of democracy’s gatekeepers, teachers of Humanities must continue to argue and to militate for the study of those subjects that keep our eyes riveted upon Power of all sorts, and, how much more, upon the subtle permutations of power into tyranny. We need to study history, and politics, civics and current events in order to keep before our eyes the political institutions whereby Men define and govern themselves; and we need to study foreign languages, philosophy, religions, mythologies and literatures, and all the sciences in order to understand that it is through various and diverse languages and “stories” that we as a people initially begin to frame, and then to flesh out, our political and social institutions, which in turn become reflections of the intellectual life of the American demos. Why do we do this? Because, "[i]f the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education" (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818. FE 10:99).

Will Democracy Survive in the Age of Aquarius_Pars Secunda Proper
But, then, do not these Socratic failures also dominate in our own moment in history? Because it certainly seems that, in a post-facto kind of way, we inhabit the antechambers of Enlightenment’s new-age inferno. Enlightenment Man is fundamentally anhistorical, in that he represents an attempt, fairly unique in human history, to create Man entirely and whole-clothe in the image of man. Along with the king’s Crown, the Enlightenment philosophes of the 18th century deposed the Christian God of Western History. But new intellectual battles lines are now arising whose forms are only starting to become clear. It is the dawning of a new age—the Age of Aquarius.

§ In a galaxy a lot like our own...
Hamlet said a mouthful when he said to his friend Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” where ‘your philosophy’ really means ‘what you think you know by your empirical sciences’. According to western astrology there are 12 signs or houses of the zodiac, and therefore twelve astrological ages, each one lasting approximately 2155 years, for a total astrological cycle of 25,860 years. Our Wiki-source unravels the calculations for the cycle of the ages:
The approximate 2,160 years for each age corresponds to the average time it takes for the vernal equinox to move from one constellation of the zodiac into the next. This can be computed by dividing the earth's 25,800 year gyroscopic precession period by twelve, the number of Zodiac constellations used by astrologers. According to different astrologers' calculations, approximated dates for entering the Age of Aquarius range from 1447 AD (Terry MacKinnell) to 3597 (John Addey).

This source continues on to explain the whys and wherefores of these supposed ages, which are certainly based more on a mixture of speculative and historical evidence rather than any verifiable empirical science:
Astrological ages exist as a result of precession of the equinoxes. The slow wobble of the earth's spin axis on the celestial sphere is independent of the diurnal rotation of the Earth on its own axis and the annual revolution of the earth around the sun. Traditionally this 25,800-year-long cycle is calibrated for the purposes of determining astrological ages by the location of the sun in one of the twelve zodiac constellations at the vernal equinox, which corresponds to the moment the sun rises above the celestial equator, marking the start of spring in the Northern hemisphere each year. Roughly every 2,150 years the sun's position at the time of the vernal equinox will have moved into a new zodiacal constellation. However zodiacal constellations are not uniform in size, leading some astrologers to believe that the corresponding ages should also vary in duration. This however is a contentious issue amongst astrologers.

Zodiac Sign for Aquarius

§ The Age of Aquarius.
In the eyes of a whole generation a musical group named The 5th Dimension formally ushered in the "Age of Aquarius," early in 1969, with their eponymous platinum song, which was to go on to become one of the most popular songs of that year worldwide, winning Grammys in 1970 for Record of the Year and best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group. According to Wiki sources, the “Age of Aquarius” is listed at #66 on Billboard’s “Greatest Songs of All Time.”
In their song, The 5th Dimension celebrates a celestial transition that marks the end times of an astrological “age” –the world’s passage out of the Piscean Age, or Age of Pisces, and its entrance into a new age of the world: the Age of Aquarius. Now according to our Wiki-source, the Piscean Age, whose dust we are apparently in the process of collectively shaking off our sandals, is the “Age of Monotheism, deception, & fraud,” and
could be called the “Age of Deception.” Some of the keywords symbolizing Pisces are: deception, illusion, hidden, misled, confusion, fraudulent schemes, fantasy world, secrets, false, fake, mysteries, drugs/alcohol and on the positive side, kind, intuitive, and gentle. It rules the arts and humanities. You can see the “deception” and “illusion” in every aspect of your life; appearance, finances, communication, your home, entertainment, health, the foods you consume, drugs, government, and religion.
 
Zodiac Sign for Pisces
However, the new age of the world, the “Age of Aquarius,” will be marked by “love, light, and humanity.” Whence all the chitter-chatter about ‘new-age’ philosophy, religion, et al.
Traditionally, Aquarius is associated with electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, Idealism, modernization, astrology, nervous disorders, rebellion, nonconformity, philanthropy, veracity, perseverance, humanity, and irresolution.

All of this sounded delicious to a generation of young Americans in the 1960s and 70s, who were wandering lost through a wasteland war in southeast Asia, and who were being culturally drafted, through ideas, music, and drugs, into an infinitely more desirable vision of a new, peaceful age of the world. The end of an age, the Piscean age, marked by the ravages of war, supposedly had given way to peace on a cosmic level, although when this rather fluid event began to occur is not precisely agreed upon by those in the know.
In 1929 the International Astronomical Union defined the edges of the 88 official constellations. The edge established between Pisces and Aquarius technically locates the beginning of the Aquarian Age around 2600 AD. Many astrologers dispute this approach because of the varying sizes of the zodiacal constellations and overlap between the zodiacal constellations. […] Many astrologers consider the appearance of many of these Aquarian developments over the last few centuries indicative of the proximity of the Aquarian age. However, there is no agreement on the relationship of these recent Aquarian developments and the Age of Aquarius.

The changing of an age, when put to music, might well sound like the music and words of the The 5th Dimension. But in going the extra mile visually, Milos Forman’s cinematographic translation of Hair perfectly translates the cultural spirit of the times, rendering for us the day when America’s youth found itself awakening to a new dawning as the New Age of the World made its hippy-esque entrance into the world of men.

Age of Aquarius (1969)
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in
Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in
The sun shine in

The times were delicious, and heady, indeed. And then, as the urgency surrounding the war in southeast Asia faded, the peacenik Flower Child movement was slowly subsumed into the Jesus Revolution of the American 70s. It was a transvaluation of Nietzschean proportions, where a movement for political and military peace was co-opted by new leadership in the form of the sometime Son of the war-mongering God of the Jews. Jesus, the Palestinian Jew who had to remind his friends of his warrior status and attitude: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), which was clearly reminiscent of his claim to be El-Gadol, the Great Warrior God of Isaiah 9:14, was transformed by the new Jesus Revolution into Jesus, the Prince of Peace. 
            A peace movement morphed into a religious revolution, with all the pertinent military accoutrements of language, metaphor, and overtone.  Which brings us to the problem of the place of Religion in the Civil Society.

§ On Religion and the Enlightenment State: Homo Luminis & Homo Tenebrarum
The various pre-state territories of Europe were embroiled in religious wars from 1524 to 1648. This represents just about 80 continuous years of bloody conflict about Religion among the various European territories, before allowing that the “Holy Roman Empire” (which included the Kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, Burgundy, Italy, and a variety of other, smaller territorial players) would recognize three distinct Christian traditions: Roman Catholicism, and the two reformed traditions of Lutheranism and Calvinism.
History may well be repeating itself, perhaps just in order to test our collective memories. For Men of Light (Homo Luminis), those who favored the creation of a Civil Society where reason and education hold sway, continue to this very day to remain locked in a philosophical, and ultimately political struggle with Men of Obscurity (Homo Tenebrarum), those who defer to “Other” authorities beyond human ken. So the question for contemporary Civil Society is entirely philosophical in nature. The Enlightenment goal is not to invalidate the religious experience, such as do those who ask the idiotic question of whether, for example, “radicalized people are mentally ill,” and whether “religious conviction can be ‘treated’ by a pill?” Nor is Enlightenment’s philosophical goal, in the sense of this essay, to discern whether or not Religion makes legitimate claims to truth. Rather, it is to determine how men of differing convictions about reality, and knowledge, and truth, can live together meaningfully in Civil Society.

John Locke
For John Locke (1632-1704), the English Enlightenment philosopher who was born while the blood was yet flowing from the various European religious wars, the philosophical challenge confronting England during his life was not that of expunging religion from Civil Society, nor of invalidating or even challenging religious belief, nor, finally, that of denying the possibility of authentic religious experience. Rather, the philosophical experiment was to try first to determine and then to establish how various and conflicting religious traditions could successfully cohabit the public space together with civil and Enlightenment values. It would only be later, however, well after Locke’s time, that the American pragmatic philosopher, John Dewey (1859-1952), would confirm the importance of a Jeffersonian idea as an essential cornerstone for the completion of Locke’s initial philosophical direction, and which would lay a reasonably definitive philosophical foundation—public Education—for the possible coexistence of civil society and religion. Following Jefferson in this, Dewey contended that for democracy to continue existing, society must educate the successive generations of youth in the fundamental precepts of the democratic philosophy. The possibility and hope for democracy lays in public Education. From John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1958, 4):
If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery. In fact, the human young are so immature that if they were left to themselves without the guidance and succor of others, they could not even acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for physical existence. The young of human beings compare so poorly in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals, that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral achievements of humanity!

However, an additional ingredient must be added to Dewey’s witches’ brew of Human Civilized Society, which is an idea suggested by the study of both anthropology and sociology. And that is the ingredient of Religion. In Dewey’s phrasing: every barbarism on its journey toward civilization, ultimately grounds itself in some sort of a religion.

In his A (Very) Short Primer on Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Joshua Broggi reminds us that the question of religion also lies at the very heart of Immanuel Kant’s quintessentially Enlightenment thinking.
I take it that the question Kant is asking in the 1793 Religion is this: How much of
Christianity (or religion more generally) can we responsibly believe and practice, if our decision is grounded solely on some basic skills of reasoning? The answer is, ‘not very much’, and in arriving at that answer, Kant formulates arguments that would profoundly affect how subsequent philosophers and theologians thought about religion. Such a question about religion is not original to Kant, but was widely asked among the vanguard of Enlightenment intellectuals – and their answers covered a range of possibilities, some far more skeptical than Kant’s.

§ Homo Luminis Versus Homo Tenebrarum: The Conflict.
In the New Testament (Romans 13), the apostle Paul makes the case that all authority, political and other, is given by God and that men must submit to that authority as unto God Himself. Christianity, which is inherently theocratic, stands in opposition to the wider conception of the liberal democracy. To extrapolate a more general Enlightenment principle—authoritarianism exists wherever there is an appeal made to any authority whatsoever other than to that of human reason alone. The philosophical challenge that any and all Religion opposes to the Civil Society is therefore obvious.
In media there are an almost infinite number of examples of the multifaceted conflict between Homo Luminis and Homo Tenebrarum.
My argument in a nutshell is that the apocalyptic theology that developed in the 1880s and 1890s led radical evangelicals to the conclusion that all nations are going to concede their power in the End Times to a totalitarian political leader who is going to be the Antichrist. If you believe you’re living in the last days and you believe you’re moving towards that event, you’re going to be very suspicious and skeptical of anything that seems to undermine individual rights and individual liberties, and anything that is going to give more power to the state. [insufficient, given Biblical statements]
But their conclusions, broken down to their simplest form are these: We’re living in the church age and we’re moving towards the Rapture. Jesus will Rapture all true believers out of this world, they’ll just disappear, they’ll go up to heaven with Jesus, and then with the loss of Christian influence in the world, Satan will have free rein to take power through a political leader, called the Antichrist, who is then going to rule over the world for seven years. This period is called the Tribulation.
Religion, it would seem, breeds violence. Far from being great, God might be thought terrible.
                  In a globalized world, the terror of God’s crazy-eyed followers is threatening lives, peace and prosperity of everyone on the planet. We are tempted to conclude: The sooner that humanity either eradicates or quarantines off religion, the better our world will be. This conclusion would be too hasty, however.
                  First, if the hope for the world depends on eradication of religion, we should all despair. Religions are in fact growing in absolute and relative terms. In 1970, there were 0.71 billion unaffiliated or non-religious people, while in 2050, there will be 1.2 billion. That’s impressive growth, until you compare it with the projected growth of religions.
                  Between 1970 and 2050, the number of Hindus is projected to grow from 0.43 to nearly 1.4 billion, the number of Muslims from 0.55 billion to 2.7 billion and the number of Christians from 1.25 billion to 2.9 billion. And due to the immense popularity of the democratic ideal, religious adherents are becoming increasingly politically assertive.
But if the goal is to understand ISIS, then I, and other analysts who happen to be Muslim, would be better served by cordoning off our personal assumptions and preferences. What Islam should be and what Islam is actually understood to be by Muslims (including extremist Muslims) are very different things.
Those commentators that seek to distinguish among sorts of Muslim communities and political views are considered to be guilty of pursuing "nuances." Apparently, the enemy has to be comprehensive and singular to be vanquished, and the difference between muslim and jihadist and ISIL becomes more difficult to discern in public discourse. The pundits were sure who the enemy was before ISIL took responsibility for the attacks. (Judith Butler)
Religious Pluralism. This brings us to the very core of the problem: Religious freedom is not about religion vs. irreligion, but about individual freedom vs. institutional coercion.
Lane and his network of pastors say they are well within their rights to bring politics into the church. “The founding fathers never meant for the church not to participate in government,” said Lane. “They meant for the government not to interfere with the church.
 But Levy … deliberately wades into the conflict taking place within Islam itself, a clash within a civilization, between what he identifies as the good guys, the “Islam of the enlightenment,” and the bad guys, the Islamofascists.”
                  […] “Which brings us back to this question of a civilizational conflict. To repeat, there is no clash between Islam and the West, except in the minds of the Islamic State and the ideologues of the “free world” who believe that inside every Muslim is an Islamofascist dying to get out. The real clash is taking place within a civilization, within Islam, over doctrinal issues, the nature of the state, the relationship with the market, and so on — and the Islamic State is largely peripheral to this ideological clash.
                  More fundamentally, an equally contentious struggle is going on within the so-called free world. Here is where the civilizational rubber really hits the road. Will enough good people of conscience — enough moderate Christians and moderate Jews and moderate whatevers in the United States — stand up to the intolerance of our native extremism?
                  As an unknown French wit once said in the 1930s, America is the only society to go from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilization. Bernard-Henri Levy is free to take potshots at Islam. But, honestly, we here on this side of the Atlantic, in the throes of Trumpian decadence, are in desperate need of an Enlightenment of our own.
The role of religion in the civil society

François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire
§ I Spy in My Mind’s Eye… what does Voltaire see?
So there was the Prontisterion Puppenmeister, reading along in the Oeuvres of Voltaire (volume 8, “Philosophy,” § 1, Paris: 1847) in the quiet of a fine summer morning, enjoying an early cup of coffee and minding one’s own business in a polite, philosophical kind of way, when, in a very impolite way indeed, Voltaire pricked one’s early-morning, still semi-slumbering wits.
One becomes accustomed to Voltaire’s uncompromising tones when he is speaking about the barbarism of the fanatical mind. He is of course wholly inclusive and non-discriminating on the question of fanaticism, including All & Sundry – the religious, the political, and the romantic barbarisms, and V insists that the barbarically minded, like rabid dogs driven to attack some new victim, will always and inevitably persecute the philosophically minded. Sigh….
In this particular section of Voltaire’s text (p. 126), he takes to task the Welch for rabidly attacking the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, and who were entirely focusing their attention on L’s contention that, while it is impossible to make any final philosophical determinations concerning the immateriality of the soul, it is obvious that the soul must be immortal, because God, etc.  Apparently, the Welch were of the mind that philosophers, at least in Wales and for the Welch, ought not, and are not even permitted to, weigh in on such matters, to which Voltaire (p. 127) responds that, O contraire, mes amis: “this is indeed quite permissible and quite useful for the French, and that nothing does more good for the English, and that it is high time to exterminate this barbarousness” (“cela est très permis et très utile chez les Français ; que rien n’a fait plus de bien aux Anglais, et qu’il est temps d’exterminer la barbarie.”)
            Then comes the less than politically correct rub, when Voltaire addresses the reader in an exergue (p. 128): “You reply to me that we shall never be able to complete this task. No, perhaps not among the people and the imbeciles; but among those who are honest you will win the day” (“Vous me répliquez qu’on n’en viendra pas à bout. Non, chez le peuple et chez les imbéciles ; mais chez tous les honnêtes gens votre affaire est faite.”)

There is a disturbing idea suggested in this Voltairean conclusion, which does not bode well for the long-term future of democracy as a political and social philosophy. And it is the intimation that the philosophy of democracy is doomed to failure to whatever degree it depends upon the good graces of either ‘The People’ or ‘Imbeciles’, terms which, frankly, might well be interchangeable in Voltaire’s context. And to add the final bit of bitterness to the Prontisterion Puppenmeister’s early summer-morning coffee, there is then Voltaire’s concluding idea, that the distribution of power among individuals, which is after all the anchoring philosophical principle of democracy, will work, will be effective and therefore fruitful, if and only if we use the tools of thought and persuasion on those who are already in and of themselves ‘honest’. However, because honesty is not necessarily an intrinsic characteristic of the Human Animal, there is cause for fear & trembling among the enlightened.
CH_140916_No 1260/9

§ A Media Muddle Surrounding the Survival Potential of Democracy as a Participatory Political Philosophy
There is however an excellent argument that it is not possible to prevent politicians in a democracy from endorsing antidemocratic attitudes. A chief value of democracy is liberty. Liberty is the freedom for all to pursue their own paths; the common interests are to be found where these diverse paths intersect. But liberty centrally includes freedom of political speech. One might legitimately wonder whether a society that bans antidemocratic speech in the political realm is genuinely a democracy. We cannot force politicians to commit to protecting democratic values by restricting their democratic freedoms, chief among them the freedom of speech.
                  In Book VIII of “The Republic,” Plato is clear-eyed about these perils for democracy. He worries that a “towering despot” will inevitably rise in any democracy to exploit its freedoms and seize power by fomenting fear of some group and representing himself as the protector of the people against that fear. It is for this reason that Plato declares democracy the most likely system to end in tyranny. Plato’s prediction is most dramatically exhibited by Weimar Germany. But more mundane recent examples of his description of democracy’s breakdown and descent into tyranny exist to varying degrees in the cases of Hungary and Russia. The fragmentation of equal respect is a clear alarm for the United States. We must heed it by categorically rejecting politicians who seek to gain office by exploiting the mistaken belief that democratic values are weaknesses.
Source: In this article from The Huffington Post.fr, the remedy for democracy, and the unique intrinsic value that, according to this article’s author, we need to transmit to our upcoming generations for democracy to survive, is a critical spirit.
Esprit critique as the cornerstone of democracy? This is equivalent to, as the foundation for philosophical thought, the Socratic elenchus, which only demonstrates a negative truth, i.e., that your interlocutor is ignorant, but it does not necessarily yield up positive or true knowledge. It is for this reason that the reader walks away from the majority of the Socratic dialogues thoroughly persuaded that the non-Socratic speaker is ignorant: per Euthyphro, Cratylus, Glaucon (Resp.), Meletus and the jury of judges (Apology), but neither is the reader any further enlightened as to the true nature of the question debated—piety, language, justice. The critical spirit does not bring us any true or positive insight on the questions we ask, but only shows us that we do not necessarily have or know a right answer to our questions. When we have only a critical spirit to transmit as the summation of our culture, then it is no wonder that terrain is lost in the struggle for Democracy. We are interested in transmitting skills as the framework for Democracy, instead of some kind of real, arguable knowledge. But as a framework, skill-sets are empty of ideas.

Further Readings:
From Phrontisterion:
From Media Sources:
·      http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ties-That-Bind-Jihadists/234161. Scholars explore the “culture” that surrounds radical Islam.