Catherine Morland: more interesting than I first thought

In Arts One this term we read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (we’re reading the “Oxford World’s Classics” edition, edited by James Kinsely and John Davie, so that’s what the page numbers below refer to). In class we discussed how the protagonist, Catherine Morland, seems not a terribly interesting character. She’s naive, simple-minded, easily swayed by what she reads in gothic novels, too ready to submit to the knowledge and judgment of Henry Tilney as superior to her own, and well, just rather dull.

But the more I thought about the text, the more I began to wonder if there’s a more positive way to view her character. Basically, I was wondering why in the world Austen would choose this type of girl to be a protagonist, especially when she’s written so many more interesting female protagonists in other novels (yes, this was a very early novel, but still…).

We discussed in class how Northanger Abbey can be read as a social commentary on the horrors of social life being just as bad or worse than those of gothic fiction. And I was thinking about how Catherine is really an outside to social customs and manners in much of the text. There is so much she doesn’t understand, that she misses. For example:

  • She is confused when John Thorpe says two contrary things on one of their carriage rides. This is because “she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead” to (46).
  • Similarly, she can’t understand it when General Tilney says he doesn’t care about the dinner that Henry will provide for them, while at the same time meaning exactly the opposite: “…why should he say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood?” (156).
  • At first when the flirtation between Isabella and Captain Tilney is starting, she seems very naive and thinks that Isabella must simply not understand what she is doing, and Catherine feels she ought to try to warn her of the fact that the Captain may be falling in love with her (106)
  • Catherine is entirely ignorant of John Thorpe’s affection towards her, and that she encouraged him in thinking she might be willing to marry him (90-91, 104-105).

All of these things and more suggest that Catherine is just socially ignorant, that she doesn’t understand the usual customs and what certain behaviours mean. We can look at her as just a simple-minded country girl who is being introduced to society and failing at it, but maybe there’s something else going on.

Perhaps we could look at Catherine as a lens through which to see the social norms and customs from the outside, as it were, so as to be able to see them as strange. I mean when you think about it, it is unaccountable that one should say one thing and mean entirely the opposite. How can people be understood that way? And why would someone who is seemingly happily engaged flirt with someone else in such a way as Isabella does? Why must being friendly and polite and entirely honest mean that someone else takes one’s words as meaning one is in love with that person? What the General did to Catherine really is entirely incomprehensible.

Catherine’s mother sums it up well when she says of the General’s actions in throwing Catherine out of the house: “it is something not at all worth understanding” (173).

Perhaps it takes an outsider’s viewpoint to make the insanity of what the social situation of marriage, especially for women, makes people do. In that sense, I wonder if we are to empathize with Catherine, and agree with Henry when he praises her because she is “open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise” (152).

Maybe she is not just simple-minded as I originally thought. Or maybe she is to some extent, but that this is not such a bad thing. She refuses to play the social games (or perhaps one should rather say that she can’t because she doesn’t know how and doesn’t see why one should), and yet she still “wins” (and Isabella loses–she gets neither James nor Captain Tilney).  

Now I kind of like Catherine. Well, at least more than I did.

 

 

Digital safety in student blogging (for #OOE13)

I’m participating in a course calledOpen Online Experience 2013″ (which actually goes until May 2014!), which is a professional development course for educators, focused on educational technology. This month we are focusing on digital literacy and digital citizenship, and earlier this week we had a Twitter chat about these topics that really got me thinking about my role in helping students think carefully about what and how they put online when I’m asking them to do blog posts and comments.

Because I’m so busy with so many things at the moment, all I could manage to do was make an audio recording of my thoughts (much faster than writing them out). I did it while driving, taking a cue from Scottlo at ds106 radio, who often does live broadcasts and recordings while driving to work.

I put my phone in my cup holder, shielded a bit so it wouldn’t move too much (a suggestion by Scottlo), and used the built-in mic to record the sound. It’s actually not too bad, considering. I had tried earlier with the microphone attached to my headphones, and the sound was much worse–the car noise really drowned out my voice. In this one, the main problem is the clicks and bonks you can hear from me switching gears, since the phone was right next to the gear box. But still, it’s not too bad.

It’s about seven minutes long, so it shouldn’t take too much time to listen to!

If you just click the link below, it should play…let me know if it doesn’t work.

digital literacy in philosophy blog posts

On cheating and philosophy (for #rhizo14)

I’m participating (as much as I have time for, which isn’t much) in a course on Peer 2 Peer University called Rhizomatic Learning, run by Dave Cormier. The first topic for this course is on “cheating as learning” (here’s an intro video about the topic).

My day job takes up all of my time and more, so when I kept finding myself unable to sit down and write a blog post, I took a cue from Scottlo over at ds106 radio, who often does live broadcasts or recordings while in transit–in the car, walking, etc.

The only problem with this one is that I was rushing to get to work, walking quickly, so I got pretty out of breath sometimes talking at the same time!

I realize that by recording rather than writing this I am limiting my audience to those who don’t mind taking 15 minutes to listen to something and try to remember enough to maybe comment. I’m also limiting my own future use of these thoughts, because it’s much easier to go back and skim something than to listen to it all the way through. It’s very hard to “skim” an audio recording! But it worked for the purposes of me not having much time to sit down and write. Hopefully I’ll be able to write posts for later on in this course.

For now, here are my thoughts on what “cheating” might mean in terms of questioning rules of traditional practice when teaching philosophy.

I hate it when spiders just sit there

[I usually do my ds106 stuff on Tumblr, but animated gifs over 1 MB become just gifs there, and I couldn’t make this one small enough without changing it substantially. Damn Tumblr.]

So there’s a new visual assignment for ds106 called “Illustrating odd autocompletes.” I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, especially with the example I’ve made here. I won’t comment on the last autocomplete above.

The idea of hating it when “spiders just sit there” struck me as very odd. I mean, what does one want them to do instead? Wave their legs and scream at you? I think I’d kinda rather they just sit there than, say, jump around wildly.

Of course, having a spider just sit there would be a plain static image. But I wanted to make it so the spider is sitting there doing something. I came up with the idea of having its eyes move, like it’s just waiting for you to do something, or for you to go away, and looking around in the meantime.

I wasn’t sure exactly which way to make the eyes move. At first I thought about making them move in different directions, but that seemed like it would just make the spider look like it had lost its mind, and that wasn’t really the effect I was going for. I thought about trying to make the eyes move back and forth sideways, but wasn’t sure how to do it. I could figure out how to rotate them (see below), but having the white part of the eyes move back and forth in the middle would have been trickier because I would have had to just move the white “glare”, and there is glare on the top of the eye as well as around the bottom. It just wouldn’t look right, I feared. So turning in the same direction it was. I was going to have the eyes go further around, but got tired of dealing with so many layers!

I made a version with just the two front eyes moving and was going to leave it at that, but then my 6-year-old son said: “Mommy, you should make the other eyes blink.” Sure, I thought, that’d be cool, but not gonna happen. But of course, once he planted the idea, I had to figure out how to do it. The blinking doesn’t look like real eyelids, but that wasn’t what I was going for. I just wanted to see if I could make it look like blinking at all! When I was done, my son said: “that’s pretty cool, but why doesn’t the blinking part go all the way down?” I had to tell him that I was just too lazy.

So I found a CC-licensed closeup of a spider (there are some really gorgeous ones on Flickr when you search for “spider close up”!): “Bearded Jumping Spider,” by Thomas Quine, licensed CC-BY. I then set to work on it in GIMP.

The process

I’m out of practice. I learned the first time I did ds106 that I should take screenshots during the process so I can explain what I mean in images rather than only in words. But now that I’ve merged most of the layers (steps 5-7, below), I can’t take any useful screen shots showing the various layers I made.

1. I made a duplicate or two of the original image, so that I could mess around with one and have at least one other one that was intact.

2. To make the eyes move, I needed to isolate them and put them on their own layers. I used the “lasso” or “free select” tool in GIMP to go around the spider’s right front eye, and then I went to Selection->Float, which made a floating layer with the selection. I then went to Layer->To New Layer, which put the floating layer onto a new transparent layer. I did the same thing with the front left eye, and made numerous copies of these (7 or 8, I think). That way I could do a gradual rotation with the layers.

3. But then I discovered a problem. When I floated the selections and put them on new transparent layers, what happened was that those portions of the original image were removed, leaving white space for the eyes. Not a problem if the layers above just cover over that space completely, but when you start to rotate them the white shows through (because they aren’t perfectly round. Given that the eyes are black, this was easily fixed. I just painted in the white areas on the original image with black, using first the “fuzzy select” tool to get most of the white area and then the bucket fill tool, and then, since there was a pixel or two still white around the edges, I used the paintbrush tool to cover over the rest of the white with black.

4. So now I had 7 or 8 each of the right eye and left eye layers, with the eyes surrounded by transparent areas, all stacked on top of the original image with the eye sockets now painted black. Time to rotate. I selected the first right eye layer and used the “rotate” tool to rotate it a certain number of degrees, and then did the same number with the left eye layer above it. Repeat, with the next right eye layer being a little more rotated, etc. Then, about halfway through I reduced the rotation of each eye so that the eyes would go back to their original position.

5. In GIMP, if you try Filters->Animation->Playback with things on different layers like they were, it will animate each layer separately, which means I’d get the right layer, then the left eye layer, then the right eye layer, etc., which doesn’t really show me what it looks like. So I merged the first right eye layer with the first left eye layer, the second right eye with the second left eye, etc. (by control-clicking on the one on top and choosing “merge down”). I also had to merge the first right eye/left eye layer (those two layers now merged) onto the original image, because the original had just black eye sockets and GIMP was animating that separately from the eye layers above it.

6. But there was a slight problem that I wanted to fix. The spider’s left eye isn’t as round as its right in this image, and when I rotated the left it covered over part of the hairy part around the eye, and then when it went back to the original this part showed through again. It was bugging me. So I used the paintbrush tool and painted some of that hairy part around the left eye black, where the eye rotated. Now you can’t see that happening at all.

7. So at this point is when my son said, hey, why don’t you make the eyes on the sides blink? To do this, I had to duplicate the original image that now had the black painted around the left eye as noted in #6, and with the first eye layers merged onto it. I made as many copies of this as I had eye layers. I then gradually painted brown onto the new spider image layers in a way that would look like the brown was going down, then up.

8. Last step was to merge the eye layers with the new spider layers that had brown eyelids painted on them. This was because the new spider layers had eyes rather than black eye sockets (given what I did in #5). And when I animated the layers I got the rotated eye layers interspersed with the original eye positions, so it was going back and forth strangely.

 

The ds106 daily create for today is to make the most boring video on YouTube. When I asked my son for what would make for a really boring video, he looked at this animated gif and said, “well, that’s pretty boring.”

 

Césaire, Walcott and Henri Christophe

File:Heinrich I - König von Haiti.jpg

Engraving of Henri Christophe, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons (public domain): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heinrich_I_-_K%C3%B6nig_von_Haiti.jpg

 

[In the Arts One group in which I’m teaching, this week we read two plays about King Henri Christophe of Haiti, one by Aimé Césaire called The Tragedy of King Christophe (mid 1960s) and one by Derek Walcott called King Christophe (1949)].

In class today I had planned to have us talk about the following in small groups after we did the larger group discussion, but when I looked at my watch I realized it was already too late! And since we only have one seminar discussion on these texts, I thought I’d use a blog post to make some observations/suggestions.

Endings

I’m on a bit of an “endings” kick the past couple of weeks. I was very intrigued by and somewhat puzzled by the ending of Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World, as I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Ti Nöel is never heard from again, after his seeming epiphany and transformation into someone who seems like he’s now going to take action. I’m still working on that one (does he become the vulture in the last paragraph, flying towards the Böis Caiman, which is where Bouckman ralllied the slaves for the first battle of the revolution?).

So when thinking about these two plays together, I started thinking about comparing beginnings and endings. Comparing the beginnings didn’t get me that far (yes, of course, they’re very different, but I couldn’t really do much with that), but I found something interesting when I compared the endings. Both end the same place, with Henri’s death, which provides a nice even field for thinking about how they treat this event.

Ending of Césaire’s play

I’ll start with Scene five of the last Act (Act III), starting with p. 86. In this scene, several things struck me, including the discussion between Christophe and Hugonin at the beginning, when Christophe tells him, finally, that’s enough comic relief and Hugonin speaks about the reality as compared to Christophe’s hopes, thus leading Christophe to note that Hugonin’s words are “weighed down with the wreckage of my dreams” (87). I’m still working on what I think of Hugonin as a character, what his role in the play is, but here he is definitely able to use his position to speak the truth (or close to it) plainly to Christophe. I think he may do so in more veiled ways earlier in the play, but I haven’t looked all the way through yet to verify this.

But what I want to focus on in this scene is something else. Christophe, towards the end of the scene, tries to rally his troops, tries to follow the proverb that says “When you see an arrow that’s not going to miss you, throw out your chest and meet it head on” (88). He stands up and talks about how he can still fight, how they are all scared of him, how the enemy’s army is riffraff, etc. It seems like it’s going to be a kind of rousing, hero’s end … but then he falls just as he shouts for them to move forward… and blames someone else (“Who did that?”) (90). An unreal apparition of Boyer appears and describes how people are rightly deserting Christophe for his treatment of them, and the soldiers desert.

This, to me, is an image of Christophe in miniature, in a way, of him attempting to move boldly forward, to engage in heroic deeds for his people, but then failing because of the way he treats them in order to try to mould them, shape them into something great (a theme in Césaire’s play). They desert him, and he falls. His death, in this context, could be read as a lonely, cowardly one, hiding away. His last words: “I’ll attend to the rest alone” (90).

Then, of course, there’s the scene with Hugonin giving a “minute of silence” before we hear the shot. He announces at the end that he is “Sometimes addressed as Baron Saturday” (93), which I had to look up. Baron Samedi is a Voudou spirit, specifically the spirit of the dead. He is usually portrayed in a black tuxedo and top hat, and he has a fondness for tobacco and rum. He is, apparently, well known for bad behaviour including debauchery, swearing, making filthy jokes, and drinking too much. So that explains why he appears as he does in this scene. Whether we are to take Hugonin as an image of Baron Samedi throughout the play I don’t know.

Lastly, then, there is the burial of Christophe in mortar on a mountain, which I think we can take as the construction site of the citadel, but I’m not certain. Much is made of him being erect, standing up, not lying down–as he wanted Haiti to do. And he gets to continue to do for a very long time, becoming one with the stone, as Carpentier notes in his novel. He will eventually turn to dust, but he is more solid and enduring this way than he would be if just buried in the dirt.

Ending of Walcott’s play

This ending is much more focused on images of dust and ruin, of impermanence, weakness, oblivion than the one in Césaire’s play. The beginning of the end could be said to be after Christophe kills Brelle; right afterwards he begins to hear the drums, leading him to recognize his coming doom: “What drums are those?/ They are coming nearer./ Oh, Vastey, my dreams … / Ruin, ruin, O King, ruin and blood!” (95). And from there he quickly becomes paralyzed, cannot move his legs.

In Césaire’s play he’s paralyzed too, of course (and apparently Christophe did have a stroke that left him partially paralyzed), but he still seems to rally towards the end, to try to stand up resistant, rouse his troops, etc. Of course, it doesn’t work, but he tries. In Walcott’s play he seems weak, seems to have submitted to his fall without much of a fight. Unlike Vastey he doesn’t regret anything, but doesn’t really stand up, literally or figuratively. He gets “half upright” on p. 106, and then “sinks in the chair, beaten, but alert.”

Vastey speaks of the citadel as already falling into ruins, and of “dust on the mirrors, floors cracking” in his own rooms (99). And he speaks to Henri of how death erases the complexion, makes us the same: “In death, Henri, the bone is anonymous;/ Complexions only grin above the skeleton” (101). This reminds me of the gravediggers scene in Hamlet, in which Hamlet speaks of similar things. And of course, Henri himself addresses a skull at the end (like Hamlet does), pointing out that while alive, “Time like a pulse was knocking in the eyelid” — death is always there, waiting, decay and ruin (106).

Christophe wonders what he will leave behind besides an anonymous skull; “A king’s memory, or oblivion” (107). His last words suggest oblivion, perhaps, rather than a king’s memory: “And after that …/ Oblivion and silence” (107). (Hamlet’s last words: “The rest is silence.”)

And that’s it; no burial in stone, no memorial, no nothing. Just dust, ruin, oblivion and silence. This one seems to emphasize impermanence, decay, dust and ruin, at least in the ending, than Césaire’s does.

 

Well, I won’t go further in trying to make something of this, because to do so I’d have to do close readings of many more passages from each play, and this post is very long already. But I found this difference interesting, and it made me think further about the emphasis on time as an enemy in Walcott’s play (Sylla, p. 34; Christophe, p. 84), and the emphasis on history “burning biographies like rubbish,” which is said twice (100, 106).

 

Providing feedback to students for self-regulation

On Nov. 21, 2013, I did a workshop with graduate students in Philosophy at UBC on providing effective feedback on essays. I tried to ground as much as I could on work in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Here are the slides for the workshop (note, we did more than this…this is just all I have slides for):

 

Here is the works cited for the slides:

Carless, D. (2006). Differing perceptions in the feedback process. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 219-233.

 

Chanock, K. (2000). Comments on essays: Do students understand what tutors write? Teaching in Higher Education, 5(1), 95-105.

 

Lizzio, A. and Wilson, K. (2008). Feedback on assessment: Students’ perceptions of quality and effectiveness. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(3), 263-275.

 

Lunsford, R.F. (1997). When less is more: Principles for responding in the disciplines. New Directions For Teaching and Learning, 69, 91-104.

 

Nicol, D.J. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218.

 

Sadler, D.R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

 

Walker, M. (2009). An investigation into written comments on assignments: do students find them usable? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 34(1), 67-78.

 

Weaver, M.R. (2006). Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors’ written responses. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(3), 379-394.

Tweets about my OpenEd13 presentation

I gave a presentation at the Open Education Conference 2013 in Park City, Utah on Nov. 8, 2013. See my previous post for video, slides and bibliography.

I also wanted to see what people were saying about it during the presentation, in case there were some ideas there that are useful for my continuing research into this issue (and there were!). So I made a Storify story. Here’s the link to it on Storify if you’d rather see it there.

Open Education Conference 2013 Presentation

Difficulties Evaluating cMOOCs: Navigating Autonomy and Participation

 

Given Nov. 8, 2013, at the Open Education Conference 2013 at Park City, Utah.

Here is the video recording. I had only 25 minutes to present, and I was late starting because I was messing with my computer, trying to get it to show me “presenter mode” while it showed the slides on the screen so I could see my notes. Then I tried to see my notes on my phone. Then I gave up on my notes and just winged it! (I was using Keynote rather than PowerPoint, and I’ve never tried to use presenter mode before…the problem was that I couldn’t print out my notes because the printer in the “business centre” of the hotel was out of order!)


Here are the slides, which are licensed CC-BY so you can use any part of them if you want. Again, these were in Apple Keynote, and when I exported to PowerPoint some of the colours, fonts and alignments got messed up a bit.

 

When I get a free half a day (probably in December) I’ll write up a post in which I explain my argument in this presentation, including the slides at the end I didn’t get to!

Update Feb. 2015: Well, obviously I never wrote this up. Which is too bad, because now it’s been quite awhile and it would take me a long time to try to do so. I do plan to return to this research at some point (perhaps in the Summer of 2015), and see what else has been published in the meantime. And who knows what kind of open online course models there will be by then?!

 

 

Bibliography

Things either cited on the slides or quoted from in the presentation (at least, the original version as I wrote it, not the shortened one given in the video!)

 

Ahn, J., Weng, C., & Butler, B. S. (2013). The Dynamics of Open, Peer-to-Peer Learning: What Factors Influence Participation in the P2P University? (pp. 3098–3107). IEEE. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2013.515

 

Cormier, D. (2010a). Knowledge in a MOOC – YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWKdhzSAAG0

 

Cormier, D., & Siemens, G. (2010b). Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement. Educause Review, 45(4), 30–39. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/through-open-door-open-courses-research-learning-and-engagement

 

Downes, S. (2007, February 3). What Connectivism Is. Half an Hour. Retrieved from http://halfanhour.blogspot.com.au/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.html

 

Downes, S. (2009, February 24). Connectivist Dynamics in Communities. Half an Hour. Retrieved from http://halfanhour.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/connectivist-dynamics-in-communities.html

 

Downes, S. (2013a). Supporting a Distributed Online Course ~ Stephen’s Web. Presented at the Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training ITHET 2013, Antalya, Turkey. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/presentation/327

 

Downes, S. (2013b). The Quality of Massive Open Online Courses. MOOC Quality Project. Retrieved from http://mooc.efquel.org/week-2-the-quality-of-massive-open-online-courses-by-stephen-downes/  A longer version of this post can be found here: http://cdn.efquel.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2013/05/week2-The-quality-of-massive-open-online-courses-StephenDownes.pdf

 

Fournier, H., Kop, R., & Sitlia, H. (2011). The Value of Learning Analytics to Networked Learning on a Personal Learning Environment. Presented at the 1st International Conference Learning Analytics and Knowledge, Banff, Alberta. Retrieved from http://nparc.cisti.nrc.ca/npsi/ctrl?action=shwart&index=an&req=18150452&lang=en

 

Kop, R. (2011). The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences during a massive open online course. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3), 19–38. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/882

 

Kop, R., Fournier, H., & Mak, J. S. F. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(7), 74–93. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041

 

Lane, L. M. (2013). An Open, Online Class to Prepare Faculty to Teach Online. Journal of Educators Online10(1), n1. Retrieved from http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume10Number1/Lane.pdf

 

Mackness, J., Mak, S., & Williams, R. (2010). The ideals and reality of participating in a MOOC. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010 (pp. 266–275). University of Lancaster. Retrieved from http://eprints.port.ac.uk/5605/

 

McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., & Cormier, D. (2010). The MOOC model for digital practice. SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant on the Digital Economy. Retrieved from http://www.edukwest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/MOOC_Final.pdf

 

Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A., & Margaryan, A. (2013). Patterns of Engagement in Connectivist MOOCs. Journal of Online Teaching and Learning, 9(2). Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/milligan_0613.htm

 

Siemens, G. (2006, November 12). Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime for the Self-Amused? elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism_self-amused.htm

 

Siemens, G. (2008, August 6). What is the unique idea in Connectivism? « Connectivism. Connectivism. Retrieved from http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=116

 

Siemens, G. (2012, June 3). What is the theory that underpins our moocs? elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/06/03/what-is-the-theory-that-underpins-our-moocs/

 

Waite, M., Mackness, J., Roberts, G., & Lovegrove, E. (2013). Liminal Participants and Skilled Orienteers: Learner Participation in a MOOC for New Lecturers. Journal of Online Teaching and Learning, 9(2). Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/waite_0613.htm

 

Williams, R., Karousou, R., & Mackness, J. (2011). Emergent learning and learning ecologies in Web 2.0. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3), 39–59. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/883

 

Williams, R. T., Mackness, J., & Gumtau, S. (2012). Footprints of emergence. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4), 49–90. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1267

What the heck are the “laws of nature” for Hobbes?

Destruction of Leviathan, engraving by Gustav Doré (1865). In the public domain. Accessed from Wikimedia Commons.

 

No, I don’t mean which laws of nature does he list–that’s easy. The first two, in Chapter 14, state:

1. Everyone should “endeavour peace” when it is possible to attain; if not, we can engage in “war.”

2. We should be willing to transfer our natural right to all things in the state of nature to a sovereign power, when others are willing to do so too, for the sake of peace and defense of our security.

Then there are 17 more in Chapter 15, saying things such as: we should keep our covenants (so long as there is a common power to enforce them), we should pardon past offences by those who repent of them, acknowledge equality of persons, treat people impartially when judging disputes, and more.

My question is: What sort of things are these laws? What does it mean to say they are laws of nature?

Different ways of thinking about what “laws” are

One way to think about “laws of nature” is to imagine them like physical laws, like the laws of motion. If Hobbes’ laws of nature were like this then it would seem they would describe how people just naturally act; they would be laws in the sense of descriptions of universal regularities of human action.

But it’s pretty clear that Hobbes’ laws of nature are not simply descriptions of how humans always or usually act. What comes closer to that sort of thing are statements he says about our common desires and aversions, as discussed on Monday–things like desire for power (“one’s present means to obtain some future apparent good” (Chapter 1, Sect. 1, p. 50), or fear of death.

Another way of thinking of “laws” is as rules created by an authority, such as a governmental authority (civil laws) or the commandments of God. Are the laws of nature laws in that sense? Turns out Hobbes says yes, that we can think of them as “delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things” (Chapter 15, sect. 41, p. 100). So then, all these things we should do would be commandments given to us by God.

“general rule[s], found out by reason”

But Hobbes actually talks about laws of nature in quite a different way than this, most of the time. In his lecture on Hobbes, Robert Crawford pointed out that there is a difference between thinking of “natural law” (which can be considered as a commandment by God) and “laws of nature”–the latter being instead “precepts determined by reason” (from my notes on the lecture).

Here’s how Hobbes defines a law of nature: “a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved” (Chapter 14, sect. 3, p. 79). So here, it sounds like we can use our reason to determine that we ought to do whatever we can to preserve ourselves.

But that doesn’t sound all that different from thinking of laws of nature as what we naturally tend to do, because, as noted above, we already do tend to naturally seek to preserve ourselves. So what gives?

Articles of peace that protect people “in multitudes”

Hobbes also calls the laws of nature “articles of peace,” suggested by reason, by which people can live together well in groups without falling into a state of war (Chapter 13, sect. 14, p. 78): “These are the laws of nature dictating peace for a means of conservation of men in multitudes” (Chapter 15, sect. 34, p. 99).

Here is where things start to get clearer for me. For Hobbes, people naturally tend to seek their own preservation and the power to be able to attain that which they consider good, but when we live together with others (or even near them) our natural desires and aversions lead us into conflict (the “state of war”). We don’t naturally and automatically coordinate our efforts so as to achieve the best outcome for all of us. Hobbes says that we are not like bees or ants, who can live sociably together naturally (Chapter 17, sect. 6, p. 108).

We need to use our reason to determine what rules we should follow to make living with others in groups something that conduces to our own individual desires for self-preservation and the means to fulfill our desires now and in the future. So, for example, reason can tell us that the laws of nature numbers 2-19 should be followed in order to promote peaceful living in groups. The first law of nature is something we can determine by reason too–if we live in a group with others, what would really be best for us is to seek peace, because that’s going to allow us to achieve our natural desires best. But if it’s not possible, do the next best thing–whatever you need to to survive and defend what you have, namely war.

Best and worst outcomes

I had this on the board in seminar today, but we didn’t get a chance to talk about it.

This is meant to show that in the state of nature, even if we want to try to work together with others, come together in social groups to cooperate rather than engage in conflict and war, it doesn’t actually make rational sense to do so. We can try to work together in groups by coming up with rules that we should all follow, but it only makes sense to follow such rules if we can be reasonably assured others will too. That would be the state of “peace.” That, for Hobbes, is the best outcome.

The worst outcome is being “prey”–when I follow rules and most others don’t: “he that should be modest and tractable, and perform all he promises, in such a time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruin, contrary to the ground of all laws of nature, which tend to nature’s preservation” (Chapter 15, sect. 36, p. 99). In this quote Hobbes is saying it’s stupid to follow the laws of nature when there’s no assurance that others will too.

But without a common power to enforce rules, we don’t have reasonable assurance that others will follow them. So to avoid the worst outcome (prey) it makes sense to engage in conflict, trying to take what others have, avoiding any rules except “do whatever is necessary for your own preservation” (not a quote from Hobbes). This means either being a predator or engaging in war, though since most other people will recognize that they too should do whatever is necessary to preserve themselves, the most likely outcome is war.

This diagram also explains the first law of nature: we should seek peace if we can (it’s the best outcome), but if we can’t, it makes the most sense for our own self-preservation to engage in war.

Back to just what the heck laws of nature are

Naturally, when we live with or near other people, we are going to end up in war. That’s the rational choice. But reason also gives us another option: it suggests “articles of peace,” rules we should follow to achieve peace. The first step is to set up a state with a sovereign (the second law of nature), and then to follow the 3rd through 19th laws of nature once in that state, since these will promote peace (according to Hobbes).

So the laws of nature are not just how we naturally always act. If we were bees or ants we would naturally work together in groups in a way that would promote peace. But we need reason to tell us a set of rules that we should follow in order to achieve this, because if left on our own we will end up in war.

But in what sense are they also commandments of God? Assuming for the moment that Hobbes isn’t an atheist, one can think of this in at least two ways: (1) God commands us to seek peace because it’s a good thing according to God, or (2) God created the earth and humans and therefore created the conditions required for promoting peace. He created us to desire to preserve ourselves, and doing so is good according to our desires.

Well, that’s certainly plenty and probably too much for one blog post! It’s as long as many of the Arts One essays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is Faustus such an unsympathetic character?

I am somewhat persuaded by the reading of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus that suggests Marlowe is providing an anti-Calvinist play rather than a morality play (but please don’t take that to mean I don’t want you all to argue otherwise in your essays if you wish!). In short, the play can be read as criticizing Calvinism insofar as it presents a character who, even though he may try to repent, cannot do so because his heart is too “hardened” (118 (sorry, don’t have the book with me at the moment, so Act, Scene, or line numbers!)). That a religious view would make it impossible for those who wish to repent to be able to do so, the thought goes, suggests that it’s a problematic view.  As soon as the lecture on this play for Arts One is posted (keep a watch here: http://artsone-digital.arts.ubc.ca/christopher-marlowe-doctor-faustus/) those who couldn’t be there can hear what Miranda Burgess had to say about this.

But I have been giving some thought to what one of you said in seminar on Wednesday, that if this reading is legitimate, then why would Marlowe have given us such an unsympathetic character in Dr. Faustus? He’s rather a fool, as some of you have noted in your blog posts, and he doesn’t do anything useful with the magic he obtains, beyond making a name for himself. If Marlowe had wanted to criticize Calvinism with this play, why do it with a character that most people are not going to empathize with, that most people will think deserves what he got in the end? Why not make your main character be someone about whom you could make what might seem more like a “tragedy,” as the official title of the play suggests? That would require, I think, a person who is flawed, but not quite so bad, someone the audience could empathize with, so they could see themselves possibly in that person’s position. Is that true of Faustus? Maybe for some, but for most of us in the class it seems that Faustus is someone we distance ourselves from.

So then we return to how having such a character could fit with a reading of the play that says Marlowe may have been criticizing Calvinism with it. Here’s one option, though I’m sure there are others! And, of course, on a different reading of the play having Dr. Faustus be unsympathetic is not a problem at all.

In order for Dr. Faustus’ fall to be believable under a Calvinist interpretation, he has to be someone who can’t repent, who is so corrupted that this is impossible. If he were a more sympathetic character then we might think he could repent, because we might not think he is one of those who are predestined to be damned. Then the fact that he does not might show that he has chosen not to, even though he could. But if he is pretty clearly a corrupted character, then it’s easier to recognize that he’s one of those who won’t be able to repent no matter if he seems to be trying.

This is just a draft of an idea, and I’m not yet sure it works, so am happy to hear comments!