[lit-ideas] A Fork in the Road

  • From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 25 May 2014 07:30:13 -0400 (EDT)

In a message dated 5/24/2014 9:16:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes in "The Missing Link": "I've often 
wondered  -- 
not enough to actually get up and research the topic, you understand, but  
wondered nonetheless, at folks like Pythagoras who shout out things at 
parties  like "Astonishing.  Everything is intelligent!"  I don't know much  
about 
the man and even less about his triangles, but I've often wondered if by  
"everything" he meant, not all the things individually reckoned, but 
existence  itself, that is that existence is so interrelated it is essentially 
a 
single  organism and "behaves" as such. -- But what does intelligence mean in 
such a  framework?  That it has a "kind of" consciousness?  Is that what some 
 would call God?  Just what the fuck is meant by intelligence in such  
instances?  I personally tend heavily (having gained a lot of weight  lately) 
towards a belief in Oneness -- but like Heinz, I'm of fifty-seven  varieties 
of mind when it comes to what the hell that means -- especially when  you 
throw in words like "intelligence". Any takers out there? 
Weary  Geary.
Memphis."
 
---- Well, Pythagoras would NOT have uttered 'intelligent', and it's very  
clever of Geary to write, "folks LIKE Pythagoras". I think intelligence is a 
 Ciceronianism. The Greeks were VERY CONFUSED as to the meaning (let alone  
concept or locution) for 'intelligence'. The Latin expression is clear  
enough:
 
Short/Lewis, "Latin Dictionary":
 
From "inter-lego", to see into, perceive, understand.
 
----
 
Etymology Online is clearer:
 
"intelligence"
 
"from "inter-" "between" (see inter-) + legere "choose, pick out, read"  
(see lecture (n.))."
 
-- The point made there that 'lego' is 'to choose' is an interesting one,  
used by Cicero in DE LEGIBUS when he notes that 'lex' in Latin, derives, as 
it  does, from 'choose' (whereas Greek 'nomos' derives from a different  
concept).
 
We have to give 'inter' the due importance: 'between'. So it's 'to choose  
between'.
 
Then 'intelligence' would be the abstract noun from the verb (vide Geary,  
Verbing). 
 
Now, 'Everything is intelligent' then translates as 'everything chooses  
between' (implicature: things).
 
This could possibly be formalised. For every thing, a thing chooses between 
 x and y. The implicature seems to be 'chooses right', because one should 
hardly  call 'intelligent' a thing that chooses the wrong option between x 
and y.
 
But I think this is perhaps just an implicature and it may be that  
'intelligence' is in the eye of the beholder, as it were. Provided a thing  
chooses 
between x and y, that thing IS intelligent (etymologically): the thing  has 
chosen between x and y; the thing has chosen _y_, for example.
 
There's the famous Buridan's ass:
 
Buridan's ass refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass that is  
equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay 
and  a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to 
whichever  is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot 
make any  rational decision to choose one over the other.
 
It is not clear if Buridan thought his friends were asses or that asses  
were his friends, but his choice of the ass is surely derogatory (towards  
asses).
 
My favourite 'intelligent' choice is by ERCOLE as Italians call him -- as  
illustrated, for example, in the painting (now in Naples) by Carraci.
 
The title of the painting is "The Choice of Hercules". Since Hercules  
chooses, he is intelligent. Whatever he chooses, he is intelligent, because he  
'chooses' (ligent) 'between' (inter) things, women in particular (even if  
allegorical).
 
Carraci's painting dates from 1596, and it may thus be called 'old'. 
 
It is housed in the beautiful Capodimonte Gallery of Naples. 
 
The subject is, as the title implicates, the Choice of Hercules.
 
Carracci, who was in Rome from the late 1595 or early 1596, was  commiss
ioned this work by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese for the ceiling of his  camerino in 
his family's palace. 
 
So, ultimately, the title of the painting should be Cardinal Farnese's  
Choice.
 
Note that all the Farnese palaces were in Rome, with all the good statues  
(my favourite the ERCOLE FARNESE -- now also in Naples). During the Grand 
Tour  days, to visit the Farnese palace and the Farnese villa in Rome was the 
thing to  do.
 
In 1662, however, the painting, "The choice of Hercules", was moved to the  
Farnese ducal seat in Parma. 
 
The work is considered one of Carracci's masterworks for its balanced  
rendering of a poetical ideal, graphically influenced by the artist's contact  
with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes and Rome's classical remains, 
such  as the Farnese Hercules or the Laocoon group.
 
A vigorous and plastic Hercules is depicted with two women flanking him,  
who represent the opposite destinies which the life could reserve him.
 
On Hercules's left is Virtue (which etymologically derives from VIR,  
virility --but the Romans were confused about this, and it's best to see  
'Virtue' here as a bad translation of Greek ARETE).
 
Virtue (qua woman) is calling Hercules to the hardest path leading to  
glory through hardship.
 
The second woman, on the other hand, is called, the Pleasure, the  easier 
path, is enticing him to the vice.
 
Again it's easy to see this as Greek in nature, "HEDONE" leading to  
'kakon'. Note that the contrast in Roman philosophy is 'virtue' and 'vice', but 
 
Cicero sometimes prefers, alla Greek, 'virtue' against 'malicia', translating 
 Greek 'kakon' -- the choice between good and evil (or bad) then. No minor  
choice.
 
Behind Hercules is a palm, which, through the leaves and the branches (a  
symbol of military victory and fame), hints to Hercules' future heroic  life.
 
The 'hints' is an implicature. Carraci's intelligent point is that Hercules 
 is free to choose as he 'pleases', and whatever he chooses, he should be  
etymologically called 'intelligent'.
 
Unless you are using words differently as you shouldn't.
 
The Greeks lacked the concept of intelligence, which is a shame. They did  
not lack the prefix for Latin 'inter'. 
 
It possibly was 'dia' (but cfr. 'meso' as in "Mesopotamia"). 
 
Vide Autenrieth:
 
διά (cf. δύο): between, through, originally denoting severance.
 
If 'dia-', then 'dianoia' translates 'intelligentia' pretty well -- and  
'intellect' for that matter.
 
"Everything is intelligent" using 'panta' and 'dianoetic' then perhaps was  
possibly an apt Pythagorean graffito. It implicates that there are choices  
everywhere, or in the words of Berra, now available in paperback:
 
When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It! Inspiration and Wisdom from  
One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes.
 
Cheers
 
Speranza
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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