H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: ROSSI

 G.: I was reading Rossi della Marca in the SCR with the sort of comfort one ought probably to confess only under mild pressure. S.: A dangerous place for medieval commentary, since the armchairs already look as if they were glossing one another. G.: Quite. But what detained me was the title’s indecent honesty: Commentarius in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Facultas Theologiae Parisiensis, 1319. S.: Because it tells you at once that commentary was not a hobby but a rung. G.: Exactly. Rossi comments because the institution has decided that commentary is what one does before one may be licensed to do worse. S.: Baccalaureatus sententiarum first, magister later. G.: Yes. The title is not a flourish but a functional label. One comments in order to be licensed to comment. S.: Which made you think of Oxford, naturally. G.: It is our chief weakness. One sees a medieval institution and immediately recognises it in modern dress. S.: Austin and the joint seminar on the Categories and De Interpretatione. G.: Precisely. We do not call it a Commentarius because Oxford prefers Latin to remain an implicature rather than an inscription. S.: Yet a weekly line-by-line worrying of Aristotle is what, if not commentarius? G.: That is the nasty truth of it. We say, to ourselves and to one another, that we do it for fun. S.: And perhaps you do. G.: If one counts as fun a species of intellectual play in which mistakes are punished by embarrassment rather than expulsion from an order. S.: Oxford modernises sanctions by making them social. G.: Very efficiently. Medieval Paris could expel you from an order. Oxford merely makes you feel that you have dropped a fork in front of civilisation. S.: Which is often more durable. G.: Exactly. Rossi’s commenting is an official step toward being a magister; ours is a private rite in a place that pretends it has no rites beyond gowns and meals. S.: You make Oxford sound ecclesiastical. G.: It is ecclesiastical by denial, which is the purest form. S.: And reading Rossi made you think your own seminar is less free than advertised. G.: Quite. We have not abolished the requirement; we have merely learned to call it a seminar and to pretend it is leisure. S.: Which is a very English improvement on compulsion. G.: Better upholstery, same staircase. S.: Then what particularly struck you in the title? G.: Its crispness. Commentarius. Facultas. 1319. A whole educational economy in three pieces. S.: And then you had to leave the easier part, namely the reading. G.: Yes. That is the sharpest irony. One reads with pleasure and then must go and perform one’s own institution. S.: To meet the master-master. G.: Austin, yes. He begins one week; the following week I take up. S.: A pleasing alternation. G.: Pleasing in the abstract. In practice it means that if he keeps to the syllabus all is well, and if he departs it means that something has been said that cannot be allowed to stand. S.: Oxford likes to police thought without admitting that it is policing it. G.: Admirably put. S.: I learn from good company. G.: Use the gift sparingly. The irritant, of course, is the difference between disagreeing with Aristotle and disagreeing with Austin. S.: The latter being harder, because he is in the room and a good deal more manoeuvrable. G.: Exactly. If one challenges Austin on his own week, he has that characteristic move: you don’t like that argument, all right, I’ll give you another. S.: Which is not exactly a defence. G.: No, it is a substitution, performed with the air of someone tidying a room rather than being opposed. S.: So one goes away feeling not that one has refuted anything, but that one has caused the furniture to be rearranged. G.: That is precisely the sensation. S.: Still, something came of it. G.: Yes, and here fairness compels me. Ackrill attended, listened, learnt the rhythms of the text and the rhythms of our quarrels about it. S.: And later produced the Clarendon translations. G.: Of the Categories and De Interpretatione, yes, crediting the late Professor Austin and Mr H. P. Grice. S.: Generous enough, or mischievous enough. G.: Quite. There is a public gain in that. More people may now read Aristotle. S.: But there is also a private loss. G.: The one no decent Lit Hum man advertises. Translation is a species of ventriloquism. S.: It gives Aristotle an English voice. G.: And the voice is not Aristotle’s. S.: One may call the result good, or good, and mean both. G.: Exactly. Good in the civic sense, slightly corrupting in the classicist’s sense. S.: Because it makes it possible to read without the Greek. G.: And reading without the Greek is like listening to music through a wall: you get the tune and lose the pleasure. S.: You are very severe on the modern world. G.: Only when it earns it. S.: Then Rossi stayed with you not as a saint of commentary but as a reminder. G.: Yes, as a reminder that commentary was once openly a requirement for advancement. S.: Whereas Oxford hides the same requirement under conversational charm. G.: It prefers to disguise old necessities as modern amusements. S.: Which is perhaps why the seminar interests you so much. G.: It is one of the few places where Oxford accidentally tells the truth about itself. S.: By pretending not to. G.: Naturally. S.: Then Rossi’s world and Austin’s are not so far apart. G.: Structurally, no. One comments in order to advance; the other comments in order to remain intellectually visible, correct, and central. S.: Different forms of promotion. G.: Or of survival. One must not sentimentalise Oxford. The seminar is also a way of occupying ground. S.: Against Aristotle? G.: Against one’s rivals, chiefly. Aristotle is the pretext that confers dignity. S.: Whereas in 1319 Lombard is the pretext. G.: Exactly. Peter Lombard then, Aristotle now; institutions like canonical texts the way cats like warm radiators. S.: Comfortable and unavoidable. G.: Yes. And the young scholar learns that to handle the text well is to show oneself fit to handle the institution. S.: So commentary is both intellectual and social proof. G.: Precisely. S.: Then when you say Oxford calls it leisure, you mean that it denies the rung while climbing it. G.: That is beautifully put. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become pleased with yourself. Oxford punishes that more subtly than Paris ever did. S.: I shall remain only mildly advanced. But tell me: did Rossi himself matter beyond the institutional point? G.: Certainly. He is not merely an instance of the Commentarius. He is a sharp mind on will, judgment, temperance, free choice, and the deliciously awkward relation between willing with judgment and willing against judgment. S.: Very Gricean. G.: Disturbingly so. Universals, strength of will, practical syllogism, moral culpability, election, deliberation, the possibility of sin, all the proper furniture. S.: Then perhaps the medieval commentarial form is not merely a container. G.: Never merely. Forms train minds as much as they house them. S.: So if Rossi comments on Lombard and Aristotle lies behind the schools, then the content already slips beyond the title. G.: Exactly. The title says Commentarius; the mind inside it may already be conducting a quite independent quarrel. S.: Which is perhaps also true of your joint seminar. G.: Entirely. We say we are explaining Aristotle. What we are often doing is sneaking in our own distinctions under cover of fidelity. S.: That sounds almost dishonest. G.: It is the oldest honesty in academic life. S.: Then commentary is always a little parasitic. G.: And a little creative. That is why it survives. S.: Medieval Paris at least admitted the requirement. G.: Yes. That is what I found almost refreshing. Rossi comments because the institution says: comment, and through commentary become licensable. S.: Oxford says: do come and worry Aristotle with us; it is rather fun. G.: Precisely. The same ladder, better manners. S.: Which is more dangerous. G.: Usually. One notices coercion earlier when it wears a cowl. S.: While Oxford puts it into tweed and serves sherry. G.: That is the whole trick of the place. S.: Then perhaps the real difference is not between commentary and seminar, but between explicit and implicit institutional force. G.: Excellent. Paris says: this is a rung. Oxford says: this is a conversation. In both cases you had better do it well. S.: And if not? G.: In Paris, perhaps no licence. In Oxford, a certain expression in Hall and a slower invitation list. S.: I begin to think medieval severity had the merit of clarity. G.: Many severities do. S.: Yet you do like the seminar, despite all this. G.: I do, though with the caution due to attractive traps. S.: Because something real comes of it. G.: Yes. One learns the text, one learns the quarrels, one learns the habits of discrimination, and sometimes one even learns when a distinction is merely furniture pretending to be architecture. S.: That sounds like an Austin lesson. G.: It often was. S.: Even when he gave you another argument instead of defending the first. G.: Especially then. Austin’s substitutions were infuriating, but they also taught one that attachment to a particular argument may be a form of vanity. S.: Or of loyalty. G.: Vanity in academic dress. S.: Harsh. G.: Necessary. S.: Then Ackrill’s later translations become the public harvest of a private rite. G.: Exactly. Which is why I cannot wholly sneer. Something civic came from the exercise, even if the exercise itself often felt like being slowly corrected by weather. S.: That is very Oxford. G.: It ought to be. Oxford’s weather is largely pedagogical. S.: Then Rossi gives you a mirror. G.: Yes, but a mirror with less irony. The medieval title says openly what ours implies. That is why it does philosophical work at once. S.: Because the institution is visible in the title itself. G.: Precisely. Commentarius in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Facultas Theologiae Parisiensis, 1319. The whole educational ladder engraved in the heading. S.: While your seminar would never dare call itself Commentarius in Aristotelis Categorias et De Interpretatione, St John’s and elsewhere. G.: Never. Oxford would rather die than give itself away in so much Latin all at once. S.: It likes Latin as perfume, not as signage. G.: Splendidly put. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep that, but do not make me sound appreciative. S.: Never beyond the impersonal register. Then perhaps the old requirement has not vanished, only changed costume. G.: That is the whole point. We have not abolished the requirement; we have only learned to call it a seminar and pretend it is leisure. S.: So your walk to Austin is, in effect, a walk to your own weekly commentarius. G.: Exactly. And as I go, I wonder what precisely we have been sneaking in under the guise of explaining what Aristotle said. S.: Probably ourselves. G.: That is the most dangerous answer. S.: Also the truest. G.: Which is why one should never write it on the noticeboard. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Parisian, with an Oxford aftertaste. S.: And the punchline? G.: Rossi commented because the university required it; we comment because Oxford is too polite to confess that it requires the same thing.