"WHO STOLE THE TARTS?": Alice in Wonderland, Chap. 11
From Arthur Rackham's illustrations (1907) to Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", 1865
giovedì 8 aprile 2010
Why don't you write more?
As I've told you, it is absolutely important to read the readings and to write some of your thoughts and meanings about the lectures you are following in class. This is also important for your evaluation. So please, don't be shy and start writing interesting or stupid comments on this blog!
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I found very interesting today's lectures!!
RispondiEliminaMostly I do really agree with Forcadel's opinion , linked to Isidor of Seville's thought, who said that peace( pax ) precedes agreement ( pactum ), so peace is a condition for agreement.
Forcadel thinks , on this account ,that is perfectly possible to explain why love affairs fall apart so quickly.
" A love affair vanishes as soon as the peace on which it has been built is disrupted".
I think it's a simply brilliant remark!
Anna Leonetti
well,about the Pax-Pactum relation I found really interesting the fact it is still one of the main problems on our every day world-wide policy.Actually we still struggle in so many parts of the world with hard agreements and never ending wars just for human arrogance.We didnt solve the problem related to pax-pactum conception..which one comes first??Should we sign a gentlemen agreement to make peace or find peace to be able to sign the same agreement??Hopefully politicians know better than us the right thing to do..hopefully..
RispondiEliminaIt's absolutely true, Prof. Conte!
RispondiEliminaThis friday lesson has been very interesting.
I didn't know Lipsius before; while I was studying the readings for today lesson I found in Lipsius an author deep influenced by "The Prince", by Machiavelli (that I like so much!).
I appreciated a lot the lectures by Lipsius, but also Guicciardini, Cicero and Machiavelli, done in class, most the one about the metaphor of the lion and the fox, which shows in Lipsius' Politica the very typical language used by Machiavelli.
I think that probably Lipsius shares with Machiavelli the concept of "IL FINE GIUSTIFICA I MEZZI", and not only this concept, because it is very fundamental to link this way of thinking with the Plautus' phrase "HOMO HOMINI LUPUS".
Both express a pessimistic point of view about the life of human beings: they seem to be “animals”, they are selfish and at all available to the next…
The Plautus ‘ sentence was followed still in XVI century, by Thomas Hobbes.
In his “Leviatan”, published in 1651, he presents his theory of human nature, of the society, of the state.
He defines people as selfish, arrogant and power hungry, in the same way of Lipsius, and Machiavelli, too.
I think it could be interesting to do some readings about it, don’t you?
I’ll try, as soon as possible, to attach some passage from “Leviatan” on the blog about the human nature, the politics and the “homo homini lupus” way to be.
Best Regards,
Flavia Mancini
So... today in my opinion the lesson was very very interesting! There was a thing in particualr that I am sure I will remember for ever. A phrase of Machiavelli's Principe that is a very important political precept. A metaphor about Chirone centauro and Achille.
RispondiElimina"Pertanto, a uno principe è necessario sapere bene usare la bestia e l'uomo. Questa parte è suta insegnata a' principi copertamente dagli antiqui scrittori; li scrivono come Achille e molti altri di quelli principi antichi furono dati a nutrire a Chirone centauro, che sotto la sua disciplina li custodissi. Il che non vuol dire altro, avere per precettore uno mezzo bestia e mezzo uomo, se non che bisogna a uno principe sapere usare l'una e l'altra natura: e l'una sanza l'altra non è durabile."
I think that this is true. Only a man with an half animal heart could be a great leader.
It should be very long discussing about this point. I try to write some example.
As Achille many great militar and political leaders of the past were at the same time men and beasts: Alessandro Magno, Giulio Cesare, Napoleone, Garibaldi.
The final precept in my opinion is that only a brave man could be leader. Only a man ready to all could lead a Nation.
The fundamental point is the classic Machiavelli's point of view: it is important the ideal of the Principe... but to bring the ideal in the real world, sometime, it takes also the "animal half".
If I look our actual world I see some of this precept for example in the great President Obama.
His reform of Health's american system was possible only for Obama's courage! He didn't think about lower shares of consensus! He knew that Health's american reform should be made!
In Italy... too many politicians have fear to lose shares of consensus...they have fear to go against Vatican, or against the higher classes of people, or against the lower stupid convictions of ignorant people!
The next part of the Machiavelli's Principe explains all this:
"Sendo adunque uno principe necessitato sapere bene usare la bestia, debbe di quelle pigliare la volpe e il lione; perchè il lione non si difende da' lacci. la volpe non si difende da' lupi. Bisogna adunque essere volpe a conoscere i lacci, e lione a sbigottire e lupi."
A great leader should be also a beast, a fox and a lion!
Great Machiavelli!
Emanuele Vaccaro
well,so many thoughts came out during class today.Machiavelli's "Principe" is a masterpiece.Describing how a Prince should be,how a leader should act,Machiavelli creates relations between 16th century figures and mythological ones.Talking about Chiron and Achille the man Machiavelli explains his personal views about the leadership concept.No one can be a leader without being at the same time man and beast.Each part cannot exist without the other one,each part needs the other one thou.Clearly,he refers his speech to Achille that,as anyone of us knows,was a great warrior,half-god,able to kill hundreds of Trojans with his own hands so at the same time their worse nightmare.So Machiavelli shows how being a beast always helps on hard decisions.It is the main concept.Being a leader means to make hard choices,un-popular ones,always reminding what is better for kingdom and power.
RispondiEliminaAppreciating Wim Decock's classes,hope we'll have the chance to read some passages of Machiavelli's "Principe" in class and discuss about it.
The way in which Lipsius describes the qualities a leader should have reminded me of the film 'The Wizard of Oz' where a lion, a tin man and a scarecrow desire courage, a heart and a brain respectively. Along their journey to acquire these attributes, they discover they already possess them. I think a great leader should also possess these qualities; courage to be brave to choose the best way forward for the population, even if some may disagree (which is demonstrated by Emanuele's example of President Obama); a brain to have the sufficient intelligence to make these decisions and a heart to have compassion and to be able to understand the needs of the population.
RispondiEliminaI think these characters relate to the ones discussed today as it shows that a great leader must have many attributes to be successful, as in the film the characters were successful when working together with these qualities.
Sarah Harmsworth
I’ve have seen in Decock’s lectures an attempt to link law to life, to show how it is possible to humanize the law and to make law closer to people (and sure love is one of the best vehicles to achieve the target, from this point of view). All this is so “humanistic”, and the most remarkable thing is that there is nothing invented, we can find a lot already in the Renaissance!
RispondiEliminaI think that the perspectives underlined by Decock can help us to find new elements or links also in works that we already know.
For instance, the relationship between law and love is a little bit strange, but we may find a lot of examples of this particular connection in literature: Forcadel’s Cupido Iurisperitus is illuminating, but we could maybe refer to a work that we have analyzed some times ago, the Merchant of Venice, where we can find both law and love, though in a different way (because we don’t have a real “realm of love”, or at least the discussion of the various stages of love).
Maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me that love is connected to law and to the “contract”: in Shakespeare's Venice we may see the prevalence of commercial relationship between people, in a divided community, with no reference points, beyond the value of money and business, but exactly in this context there is the love of Antonio for Bassanio, that brings Antonio to take a sort of financial obligations with Shylock: we could say that love is almost the main cause of the contract in this case. Instead the love for Portia (with the guarantees that would result from the union with her) pushes Bassanio to make arrangements with Antonio, although in this case the more debt is a debt of gratitude.
So, thanks to Wim Decock for these interesting hints and ideas!
Alessia Guaitoli
Questo commento è stato eliminato dall'autore.
RispondiEliminaAbout the lessons of Wim Decock I really liked the reading and the analysing of the several texts he has talked about, and especially of the work of Lipsius “On Politics”. I think that it’s very interesting the literary form of this work, because Lipsius constructed his book from quotations of ancient writers and from a collection of proverbs and maxims, so in this way he could not be criticized about the principles and the ideas he set out. Reading some fragments we have seen that the work, which is focused on the figure of a good prince and on the best way to rule, has a wide range of classical sources, above all Tacito, Cicerone and Machiavelli.
RispondiEliminaFrom the “Politica” it clearly appears how the Lipsius’s vision is very close to the Machiavelli’s and Guicciardini’s ones, in fact such as Cicerone he talks about virtue, which requires piety and goodness , but he especially underlines the importance of the prudence of keeping the power over the just and the virtue. So according to his point of view the prince should be a skilled manipulator, who is not only virtues but also able just to appear honest and to put order and peace above civil liberties, personal freedom, and moral ideals, invoking in this way the reason of state.
From what I have understood, even if Lipsius looks back at the classical authors and time, his visual and works are also very influenced by the society and the time he lived in, characterize by the heated atmosphere of civil wars and by radical attempts at religious reform.
The subject I most appreciated in Wim Decock’s lessons is the work of Forcadell: Cupido Jurisperitus.
RispondiEliminaIn his work he analyzed the link between law and love and I think this is a very original thought also because he deal with many aspects of love: the passion, the real love, love as sickness, unhappy love, the marriage…
In the realm of love doesn’t seems there is a law imposed by a person but if we look carefully we can see that there is a law and there is a person who extablished it: he is Cupido himself; so Cupido as seen as a natural but powerful person and he is stronger than the Pope. Forcadell says that the idea of a jurisdiction of Cupido can be seen also in some previous works like Vergil’s story of Dido.
In Cupido Jurisperitus , as I said before, Forcadel analyzed the link between law and love and it is present in the daily life but also in life after the death and it is an aspect that Forcadel has taken from Roman law.
He see the marriage as a contract and as the perfect relationship; he tries to answer to some questions about love,people and love: for example, why woman are mature earlier than man, if it is possible for a lover to possess his partner.
I think this work is very original even because it is at the same time ironic and serious and deal with many aspects that can be link with love but that at the same time can be hidden if we look at love only superficially.
Best
I think it is interesting to see that we share a common fascination for Forcadel's 'Cupid the Jurist' and for the current interest of Renaissance political thinkers like Machiavelli and Lipsius.
RispondiEliminaLove is a universal feeling, of course, but Forcadel makes this experience more intelligible as he looks at love from the perspective of contract law. At the same time he puts the serious discussions about technical legal issues in a literary perspective. (see the comments by Anna, Alessia, Davide, and Federica).
Governing a state, on the other hand, often seems to be so complex for man that it urges him to get back to his 'animal spirits'. (see the comments by Eleonora, Emanuele, Davide, Flavia, Ivana, and Sarah)
In sum, there is a plethora of interesting humanist jurists out there who have handed down to us a stimulating example of how legal studies and humanities can mutually enrich each other.
After this short encounter with law & literature in the Renaissance we are now left with the pleasant task of trying to emulate the ideal of the 'giurista universale'!
In bocca al lupo per i vostri studi!
Wim Decock
Reading through the latest comments i've to say that i've really missed an interesting lesson on friday, what a pity! But thanks to the comments i can also have an opinion towards the main topics that you have discuss in class. Personally, i don't agree with Machiavelli's point of view, being 'half beast' is not the best way to be a great leader, a 'principe' has to have strong values, virtues, without having a personal interests on power; but on the other hand like someone was pointing out, remembering the phrase of Plautus "homo homini lupus", and the theory of Hobbes in the Leviatano, we can't repudiate the fact that we are "animals"..and that we have "animals spirits" such as: the love of power, arrogance between each other,ecc. that often seem unfortunately to be very much expressed in our life.
RispondiEliminaThen talking about the previous lessons, i found very interesting the work of Forcadel, in which he express this strange, unexpected, but beautiful relation between love and love.
I liked how he used the 'satire way' to focused on law and love problems, and how at the end he emphasize the 'disharmony' between them.
In summary i really appreciated Pontano's poem, it has been very nice and strange at the same time, to have had a chance to read a poem in class even if it had a legal topic in it.
Best Regards,
Valentina Di Pietrantonio
Dear all, these seminars were very interested, I loved to liste to Cicero's tought and I do agree with his theory. (If somebody has the part of "DE OFFICIS" that we read, I would like to copy it.)
RispondiEliminaA good chief should be honest, brave and full in virtues. Machiavelli's concept about the aim: "Il fine giustifica i mezzi" as Flavia Mancini remembered us, is very important, but in my opinion is quite dangerous and has been misinterpretate for years... could a good aim justify any means to achieve it?
Personally, I think that peace should precede agreement, unfortunately it seems that the Government of all the world do not agree with this ancient idea and prefer to fight bloody wars in order to establish peace... is it believeble? Obama is a hope, except of him if I look at the other politicians they seem far away both from Ciciro theroy and from Machiavelli's Prince.
In conclusion, I apologize with Professor Conte if I am not writing so much, but I am usually quite busy at work, hope to have more time to write.
See you tomorrow!
As I told you, here you are some passages from "The Leviatan" by Thomas Hobbes, that I think they are very interesting from the perspective I've already underlined in my last post:
RispondiElimina-"Auctoritas, non veritas facit legem"
L'autorità, non la verità fa la legge.
-"L'esaltazione degli antichi scrittori procede non dalla reverenza per i morti, ma dallo spirito di rivalità e dalla reciproca invidia dei vivi"
(see the use of the word "invidia", which we meet last week during the lectures done in class)
-"Senza spada i patti non sono che parole"
About the linking between "interest" and "fear":
- "L'interesse e la paura sono i principi della società"
-"Nella vita primitiva non vi è la presenza dell'arte; alcuna società costituita; e ciò che è peggio, la paura continua, il pericolo di una morte violenta; la vita dell'uomo è confinata nella solitudine, nella povertà, nella sporcizia, nella brutalità e infine la durata della vita è alquanto breve"
All the best,
Flavia Mancini
Finally I managed to read all your comments about Wim Decock's classes: it really seems that you enjoyed them very much and I am very sorry that I couldn't be there all the time. You made a lot of interesting links indeed! I wanted to reply to Davide Macelloni: I don't think that we will have the opportunity to read Machiavelli together, also because we have already analyzed a lot of texts written in Italian this year and I think we shouldn't exceede. Anyway, you can surely use the blog to underline some parts of works that you particularly enjoyed (like Flavia Mancini did).
RispondiElimina