Nick Jacobson’s blog

Et quomodo invocabo deum meum, deum et
dominum meum, quoniam utique in me ipsum eum
invocabo, cum invocabo eum?
et quis locus est in
me, quo veniat in me deus meus? quo deus veniat
in me, deus, qui fecit caelum et terram?
itane,
domine deus meus, est quicquam in me, quod capiat
te? an vero caelum et terra, quae fecisti et in
quibus me fecisti, capiunt te?
an quia sine te non
esset quidquid est, fit, ut quidquid capiat te?
quoniam itaque et ego sum, quid peto, ut venias in
me, qui non essem, nisi esses in me?
non enim ego
iam in inferis, et tamen etiam ibi es. nam etsi
descendero in infernum, ades. non ergo essem, deus
meus, non omnino essem, nisi esses in me.
an potius
non essem, nisi essem in te, ex quo omnia, per quem
omnia, in quo omnia? etiam sic, domine, etiam sic.
quo te invoco, cum in te sim?
aut unde venias in
me? quo enim recedam extra caelum et terram, ut
inde in me veniat deus meus, qui dixit: caelum et
terram ego impleo?

And how will I call on my God, my God and
my Lord, since I will call on he himself in me
when I call him?
And who has spoken in me,
from where does my God come into me? From where does God come
into me, O God, who has made heaven and earth?
O Lord my God, truly it is not something in me, for what holds
you? Heaven and earth which you made and by which things
you made me, do they truly contain you?
But, would anything that is arise without you
because without you it would not be, so would anything hold you?
Thus since I exist, what do I seek, that you come into
me, a person who would not be unless you were in me?
Not even were I
now in the infernal regions, but even there you are present. For even
if I should descend into hell, you are there. Therefore, I would not be, my God,
I would not exist in any way, unless you existed in me.
Or rather
I would cease to be, would I not, unless I were in you,
out of whom all things are, through whom all things are,
and in whom all things are? Even so, O Lord, this is true.
Where do I call for you, when I am in you?
Or from what place do you come into
me? Indeed where will I run to out of heaven and earth, so that
there my God, who said, 'I fill heaven and earth,'
should come into me?

Magnus es, domine, et laudabilis valde: magna
virtus tua, et sapientiae tuae non est numerus. et
laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et
homo circumferens mortalitatem suam, circumferens
testimonium peccati sui et testimonium, quia
superbis resistis: et tamen laudare te vult homo, aliqua
portio creaturae tuae.

tu excitas, ut laudare te
delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor
nostrum, donec requiescat in te. da mihi, domine,
scire et intellegere, utrum sit prius invocare te an
laudare te, et scire te prius sit an invocare te. sed
quis te invocat nesciens te?

aliud enim pro alio
potest invocare nesciens. an potius invocaris, ut
sciaris? quomodo autem invocabunt, in quem non
crediderunt? aut quomodo credent sine praedicante?

et laudabunt dominum qui requirunt eum.
quaerentes enim inveniunt eum et invenientes laudabunt
eum. quaeram te, domine, invocans te, et invocem
te credens in te: praedicatus enim es nobis.

invocat te, domine, fides mea, quam dedisti mihi,
quam inspirasti mihi per humanitatem filii tui, per
ministerium praedicatoris tui.

Great are you, O Lord, and greatly praiseworthy: great
is your virtue, and of your wisdom there is no number. and
humanity, a part of your creation, desires to praise you, and
humanity bearing round about its own mortality, bearing about a witness
of its own sin and a witness that you stand against the proud:
and even so humanity,
a part of you creation, desires to praise you,

You stir up so that
it is pleasing to praise you, because you made us for yourself, and
our heart is restless, until it rests in you. Allow me, O Lord,
to know and to understand whether it be first to call on you or
to praise you, and whether first it be to know you or to call on you. But
who calls on you not knowing you?

Indeed a person who is ignorant
can call on one instead of another. but rather are you not called in
order to be known? Even so, how will they call on one whom
they do not believe in? Or how do they believe without a person preaching the word?

And those who will praise the Lord are those who will seek him.
Those seeking, indeed, will find him, and so finding they will praise
him. I will seek you, O Lord, calling on you, and I will call on
you believing in you: for you have been declared to us.

I call on you, O Lord, my faith, which you have given to me,
which you have breathed into me through the humanity of your son, through
the ministry of your preacher.

As I am often saddened when I reflect on my untended blog, I have come up with a way to maybe keep my posts more regular. In fact, I am returning to the general purpose that had inspired a certain Tim Disney, a certain Matt Fletcher, and myself to set out on this blog in the first place.

For those of you who did not know, a few months before graduation, Tim, Matt, and I had resolved to stay in contact with one another by means of reading great books, and commenting on them to each other. Well, I being who I am (scatter-brained and often unreliable) failed to even begin the promised quest. So I have now come full circle to start anew as it were. I had wandered and erred in my ways, and now I have come back to find rest in the first book we had agreed to read together, namely Augustine's Confessions.

As it stands, I've just been translating a chapter a day from the Latin, but I hope to expand my scope as time permits. Before saying anything more, however, let me be perfectly clear that I am well aware of the general distaste most of my friends, and even my dear brother, hold for our North African Father.

In my brother Joel's case, Augustine represents all that is wrong with the Christian religion, and all that he would purge from it if he were somehow granted a pontificate in some hypothetical reality. It's bad enough, so saith my brother, that Augustinian doctrine mutated into the greatest cancer to yet befoul Western intellectual thought...yes...Calvinism (as a disclaimer, I don't hate Calvinism as much as my brother; these are his thoughts being mediated to you through my words, nothing more). In fact, I actually think my brother is willing to forgive him of that. The real grudge Joel still harbors deep in his anglophile soul against Augustine comes from our Bishop of Hippo's treatment of that fat, funny, freewheeling British monk Pelagius (once again, my brother's take on the matter, but I understand where Joel is coming from. I think I would have been on Pelagius' side too. Nevertheless, Pelagius almost certainly wasn't fat, I do not believe the caliber of his humor has survived in the historical record well enough to be appraised, and I think his stance against predestination is the only thing that can qualify him as freewheeling).

Yet, as we all probably know, poor Pelagius just wanted to be a human. He held onto to the Eastern teachings of Free Will and denied original sin while he ignored some of the more insidious things that Tertullian and other fatalistic, martyr-maniac Christians were peddling. And then, just because he ideas were getting a little popular, that grim-faced puritan Aurelius Augustine took it upon himself to play inquisitor. And the rest is history.

Well, all that just to say Augustine is not the most popular saint in the reliquary, but he probably is the most influential from the Latin-speaking West. Part of what is interesting about Augustine is his reliance on and reaction against Ancient Pagan authorities and traditions. Curiously, Pelagius also accused Augustine of heresy because he maintained the Stoic fatalism of Roman thought.

Anyway, I happen to like Augustine because of his mysticism and his Neoplatonism, but I guess I also choose to turn a blind eye to his whole "Unbaptized babies are going to hell" routine. It's hard to defend him at all points, but he's still an interesting character.

As always, my translations are not the most rigorous, so my apologies for their clumsiness or lack of precision.

One of the unintended uses of this my blog has been to direct you all to better contrived and more humorous sites on this vast interweb. And thus let me simply bid homage to this recent find:

Stuff White People Like

Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite posts from the above blog. It's on "Arts Degrees"

"When white people go away to college, they tend to study what are knowns as the Arts.  This includes actual Art, English, History, Classics, and Philosophy.  These can of course be broken down further into Film, Womyn’s Studies (yes the spelling is correct), Communications, Gender Studies, and so forth.  It is important to note that a high percentage of white people also get degrees in Political Science, which is pretty much like arts, and only seems to have the word “science” in it to make white people feel better about themselves.

These degrees enable white people to spend four yeas of their lives reading books, writing papers and feeling great about themselves.  It is a known fact that Arts students firmly believe that they are doing you/society a favor by not getting a job and reading Proust.  They use this to protest for reduced tuition, more money for the arts, and special reduced student rates on things like bus passes..."

They are all this funny. Check it out.

I had the good pleasure of returning to the SPU campus yesterday for a meeting with the eminent Dr. Hamilton (One can safely surmise that the level of eminence a historian has attained is directly proportional to the amount of facial hair he chooses to maintain. Incidentally, for this reason, and this reason alone, it is difficult to find a truly eminent female historian. Dorothy Kearns Goodwin and Barbara Tuchman are noted exceptions, but these anomalies are easily explained. Ms. Tuchman never went through formal PhD training, leaving her safely beardless, and Dr. Goodwin was formerly a circus performer.)

Perhaps the warmth of the day, a premature glimpse into the coming spring, put me in a better mood. Or maybe Dr. Hamilton's reassurances that I need not go straight into grad school relieved me of some stress. Maybe it was the sheer number of familiar faces I encountered on campus. I don't know the cause, but the result is a salutary return to optimism for me, and I like it.

I've even started to read Marx in translation (despite my earlier vow), and I've chanced upon a lovely quote penned by this self-proclaimed secular Job. Here is some advice for the searching young woman or man:

"The career a young man should choose should be one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection. If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer, but never a
perfected, a truly great man." - Karl Marx

And now that I have invoked Marx, I must end with an update from my place of employment. As all who have read my previous posts must know, morale is low at the B&N. Subversive activities permeate the store. This morning someone had plastered a sticker that read "Managers' Ideas Go Here" onto one of the Receiving Department's huge garbage cans. In the mean time, managers demand more sales on books and memberships. At our weekly meetings they lecture us, and ask us to explain why we have not met our quotas.

Well today I decided to play my own little prank. Everyday we have a morning meeting to which all booksellers are asked to bring books that relate to a manager-mandated theme. Yesterday's theme was "France" (don't ask me why). I think last week we had a "Politics" theme. Today we had a "St Patrick's Day" theme. Which, now that I think of it, is a strange theme to have for February 21. Everyone brought some sort of Ireland-related book for show-and-tell. I, on the other hand, brought Karl Marx's Poverty of Philosophy that happened to have nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, but did have a lovely green cover.

I don't usually bring books to the meeting, and this unprecedented moment should have given our managers pause. Instead they enthusiastically asked me what I had brought to which I explained that I am developing a reading list for books on economics. I have begun Das Kapital, said I, and the Poverty of Philosophy was a direct predecessor to Marx's magnum opus. The PoP, moreover, advocates that works combine to form unions that will give workers greater power to demand increases in wages. Ultimately this power will allow workers to dismantle the old system of bourgeois dominion, and usher in a classless society. The feudal lord gives way to the bourgeois capitalist, and the capitalist gives way to the worker. By far one of my favorite meetings.

Al Gore is really starting to give off the Super Villain vibe. I'm just waiting for him to unleash some sort of environmentally friendly weapon of mass murder.

His personal narrative is a tragic tale of comic book proportions. The story of a young idealistic politician wanting to bring reason and order to a chaotic and uncertain world. After years of abuse and marginalization, he slowly grows disillusioned with the corruption of the government he serves. But he still perseveres, believing in himself even after he's lost faith in everyone else. Then the moment finally arrives when he can make a difference: the Presidential Race of 2000. He is intelligent, if not brilliant, and articulate, if not charismatic. Gore: the incarnation of prudence, caution, and reason. And then comes the political foment, the dirty campaign strategies, the controversial election.

Since that moment Al's life moves inexorably away from the light and into darkness. Convinced that humanity can never be cured of its unreason, he decides to rid the planet of this rash of a savage species once and for all. In the name of saving the earth, Mr Gore secretly funnels his vast wealth into a research project to build a device that, when detonated, will destroy humankind while leaving the rest of the natural world unharmed.

Or at least, I wouldn't be surprised if Gore were to do something like this. For the longest time I've suspected him. I mean he has the brains for it, he has the motive, he is a pillar in our community and thus able to use his connections to further his interests. But frankly he just didn't look the part. I simply wasn't willing to cast him as a real Super Villain. That is, I wasn't willing until I saw this...

There is no doubt that Al Gore has revamped his image, and I am impressed by this photo in particular. The man has got it: The poise of a cool, controlled villain. The hand gesture, the turn of the head, the black-on-black suit, and the salt-n-pepper slicked back hair. It's all very convincing. The man could be the next Lex Luther if he wants it.

If I could singularly blame anyone for my obsession with the structure of language (together with its effects on the culture and identity of the people who hold it in common), whether he likes it or not, that person would have to be Michael Seguin. If he had not revealed to me the utter insanity of studying medieval history without augmenting it with the study of Latin, I probably would not have been forced into grappling with a dead language's grammar and syntax. Only by learning a language like Latin - which, if it lives at all, does so in a sort of coma, lying inanimate on shelves far removed from the daily agitation of real life - can you truly embrace grammatical abstraction. I can't say that this new obsession with grammar has allowed me to complete my books in a timely manner. More often than not I find myself dissecting sentences rather than reading them. How strange to see my zeal for history force me to explore Latin, and now that transferred obsession for language has pushed me toward linguistics. And thus I probably would not be sitting here today reading Ferdinand de Saussure's General Course in Linguistics if it weren't for Michael.  For these reasons alone I must dedicate this post to my friend, the most erudite anti-intellectual I have ever encountered, because were it not for him, I would not be reflecting at this very moment on matters that he most certainly would scoff at, matters that would remain recondite even if I could somehow prove their utility. Allow me to share.

I have a theory, if not a theory then an impression, that grabbed hold of my mind last August after I read T.S. Eliot's What Makes a Classic? In this lecture, delivered to some pretentious consortium of neo-orthodox Oxford types no doubt, Eliot trots out his typical high praise of the poet Vergil, declaring him the most mature writer the world has ever known. (Leave it to Eliot to put forth a completely unverifiable claim in a tone so serious one hesitates to dismiss it as absurd.) Mr. Eliot could not be satisfied with Vergil as the world's most influential poet (as evidenced by sheer number of individuals who have imitated his work) or the most revered poet (as proven by the many artists who have praised him). No, an argument that can be proven empirically with actual concrete evidence would probably be too pedestrian for Eliot.

But, in spite of my impulsive disdain for the disdainful, Eliot's idea is still pretty interesting so I'll share it before sharing my own theory. According to our ex-patriotic critical poet, languages developed slowly and organically, beginning as the simplest expressions of thought, feeling, and observation. The rustic quality of life in early tribal societies is reflected in the rough speech of its members. But as a society becomes more complex, the need for new words increases. What is more the need for more involved sentence structures also grows. For instance, as Ancient Roman society became advanced enough to have laws that upheld property rights and regulated commerce, a society, what's more, that had developed to a point where an entire class of people could gain a livelihood in the study of this law, Eliot is fairly certain the time had also come for such grammatical constructions as the "ablative absolute" and the "passive periphrastic."

And so Eliot's story goes: Necessity is the mother of complex syntax. But what does this have to do with Vergil being the most mature poet the world ever bore witness to? Why, to Eliot it is simple. A supple and abundantly garnished language like 1st century BC Latin, after years of development, had reached a point where it had come of age. As hard-nosed lawyers, by their own cunning, had levelled new ground in language development for the sake material gain, artists and poets were close behind tilling these new fields of expression, and cultivating them to aesthetic perfection. Brilliant thesis, no? But wait, Eliot has not yet begun to dazzle us with his eruditon. The man managed to find the exact year in which Latin had reached the apex of linguistic perfection: 19 BC. And that just so happens to be the same year that Vergil wrote his Aeneid ! How convenient. 

Yes Eliot deems Vergil the most mature poet of all time because he spoke the most mature Latin of all time. The language was still young and pliable enough for the imagination of a brilliant innovator, but it was reasonably well-established having already witnessed for centuries many able literary masters who had set rules and standards on it for clarity's sake. So Vergil had access to the most classical kind of Latin he could have hoped for, and he was brilliant enough to put it to use.

As a side note, according to Eliot, every language, if given enough time, will go through this cycle of birth, growth, maturation, and decay. By his reckoning, the English language had not yet matured when its greatest mind, William Shakespeare, was writing. In fact, English did not reach a "classic" level until the 1700s, and tragically no great mind appeared to capitalize on this window of opportunity. Thus, Eliot concludes that Shakespeare had a mind like Vergil's, but lacked the means to express it. And when the language came of age, no one of Shakespeare's caliber was able to rise to the occasion.

Therefore, Vergil was the most mature poet living during the most mature era of Roman history, and he is better than any English writer because we English speakers missed our big chance in 1750 (curse you Swift, Pope, and Johnson for being such dullards! Now English is destined to molder away into decadence and obscurity). Eliot summarily rules out French, German, and Italian as he had done to English, and his happy conclusion must be that Vergil is the golden standard against which all other literary works must be measured. Case closed.

Ok, I have effectively established that T.S. Eliot is offensive in word and deed (in word because he wrote this down - in English no less! - and in deed because he delivered these words to a body comprised mainly of living, breathing human beings who, more likely than not, heard what he had to say...some may have applied his words to their life).  

So how does this tie into my theory? Well, for those two individuals still reading this post, I will tell you. You see, as much as I think Eliot is wrong in trying to prove the intrinsic aesthetic value of a poet's work, I do find his theory of language development compelling. He is probably right that Vergil owes a lot to those unlikely pioneers of Latin syntax: Roman lawyers. And so, like Thomas Aquinas plagiarizing Averroes, I am not above pilfering from the a wrong-headed academic in order to create my own theory.

Here it is quick and dirty: As we all know, Latin continued to be the language of academia all the way until the 19th century. Thus most great scholars, including scientists, wrote and probably thought in Latin. This included the great patron saint of modern objetive truth, Isaac Newton. If I had an unlimited source of revenue to fund my own research, I would conduct a study of the Principia to suggest that Newton's science (and hence all science after it) is caught in the cultural and linguistic limitations of the Latin in which it was written. It would become obvious that the words Newton chose to use - and indeed was constrained to use - are all holdovers from the juridical era of Republican Rome. Newton's notion of immutable laws guiding the universe is a prime example of his dependence on Roman thought and Latin vocabulary. I would tidy up my research into a three-part lecture series that I would co-deliver with Owen Ewald at one of the C. May Marston Classics Lecture Series at SPU, and my apotheosis into "pretentious uber-nerd of Eliot proportions" would be complete.

Last Spring I recall a conversation that took place between the Venerable Pierce Wade, the ever Idealistic Alissa Walter, and myself. All three of us had frequently discussed such contentious subjects as government mandated torture and the dire economic circumstances in our nation before. Then, with these thoughts fresh in our mind, we stood at Martin Square in the warm glow of a late Spring afternoon -- you know, the quintessence of ivory tower isolation -- and we mused once more over the problems of this world.

"Why don't we get organized, get angry, and protest in the streets like they did in the 60s?" This notion put forth by Alissa was heart felt, but all three of us knew that this wasn't going to happen. So we probably moved on to other topics that were equally borne from the milieu of our snug SPU existence (probably theologically related =).

Well now let's make those words a reality my friends. It is time to act! We need not go out and riot and protest. Instead, let's all go to the Washington State Caucus. You can find your  precinct here: Washington State Caucus. Remember the Caucus is all that matters for the Democratic Party in Washington. The Primary will not count in the race for delegates.

We have nothing to lose but the chains of twenty four years of aristocracy. That's right, either a member of the Bush Family or a member of the Clinton Family have been in the White House longer than I have been in existence. What sort of democracy does the United States embody? Will we stand for a stratified, monolithic government any longer?

I know that optimism is in short supply today, and I have my own healthy store of cynicism that I often share with all of you in one way or another, but I still believe ideas can effect change. Barack Obama symbolizes the idea of a unified, revitalized America in a way that no other present candidate can. Most of all, Barack Obama may be able to reorient American foreign policy. He might even succeed in restoring American credibility in the eyes of the world.

I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, but again: Don't forget to go to the Caucus. Spread the word!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QusupSoInQQ <= Barack Obama has championed the youth, and we're noticing.

Normally the words "end of the fiscal year" summon up congenial feelings in my free market soul. What could be better than a time to look back on a year of consumerism, and mull over the inherently interesting stats and figures delineating profit margins or economic growth? Of course, in reality, I'm tempted to say that bookkeeping and statistical analysis sound like they're about as much fun as a salt bath after being skinned alive with dull razors, but I think that such an analogy might miss the mark by evoking imagery far too lurid. The pain inflicted by the world of finance is just too trite to merit such a lively simile.

But why this talk of business? As you all know, it is a subject I deplore on principle. Well, as my beloved nourishing mother Barnes & Noble approaches the end of her fiscal year (why B&N's fiscal year ends in January is beyond me), I'm really getting to soak in the realities of corporate economics first hand. And I've got to tell you, it's a real treat. Now I don't claim to know much of anything about economics, and, although I had vowed to make it a priority to become more business savvy this past year, I quickly shelved the whole endeavor when I realized that my idea of becoming acquainted with the business world was to prepare a compare-contrast analysis of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx's Das Kapital with a quick postlude study on John Maynard Keynes. The project was going to be a pleasing test of my thesis that our economic system as represented by Keynes is a sort of Hegelian synthesis of Smith's capitalist and Marx's communist notions of just and efficient commerce, but somehow I don't think that this line of research will ultimately translate into  the on-the-ground business acumen I was searching for. My research plans were not abandoned for base reasons of utility, however. It's just that I can't allow myself to read translations anymore if I can avoid it. I'm really going to have to tackle German before I can get this study off the ground with a clean conscience.

Ah but let us to return to our sheep for a moment. Barnes & Noble has recently gotten off the holiday hype of Sell, sell, sell! and now it's time for my managers to send their annual report to the Corporate Office in New York. As one might expect, the fact that Christmas sales have ended, together with the looming forecasts of a long-term recession, have compelled my eight managers to remind their employees of the prudence of thrift, especially thrift in hourly wages. So I write to you today in the late morning because I have been given "that vacation I didn't get to have during the Christmas season."

Such a thoughtful gesture has afforded me free time to languish in front of a computer screen, and while languishing (and browsing), I happened upon this hilarious blog: The Awful Guide to Grad School
For all who have applied, are applying, or are considering applying to grad school, I think you will find it particularly hilarious. The man's bitterness can perhaps rival even mine, but it's his humorous style that makes his blog post a must read.

Fie upon New Hampshire and it's population of crazy, Hillary-loving, bleeding heart, stodgy old dems! If she hadn't stress cried in front of those women maybe she wouldn't have won. Oh well, I haven't given up hope yet on Obama. In a month we'll know if he gets the nomination or if our nation gets another 4 years of despondence.