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

 M.: Very well, gentlemen, we begin with Laelius the elder, not because chronology is always wise, but because schoolmasters are sometimes forced to respect it. Gaius Laelius, friend of Scipio Africanus, soldier, envoy, political man, and therefore a standing affront to the notion that philosophy begins only when one has sat down. G.: Which is already Roman, sir. The Greek may begin by sitting under a tree. The Roman begins by being sent somewhere. Shropshire: Preferably where people are trying to kill him. It saves time. M.: Yes, Shropshire, Roman public life did have the advantage of discouraging abstraction by means of spears. Laelius the elder belongs to what later people will call the vita activa. He acts, commands, negotiates, carries news, serves the res publica. G.: And yet he is not merely a military clerk in a helmet. M.: Quite. He is a man in whom action is already judged, measured, and rendered intelligible by forms of reflection that are not yet called “academic philosophy” because the Romans had better things to do than invent departments. Shropshire: Oxford eventually solved that by inventing a sub-faculty and pretending philosophy had happened. M.: A very English triumph. Now then, the son, Laelius Sapiens, is another matter, though not an opposite one. He is remembered for wisdom, friendship, conversation, civic gravity, and association with the later Scipionic circle. There the vita speculativa comes nearer the surface, though never in the monastic sense that later ages would prefer. G.: That is the Roman peculiarity, sir. The speculative does not retire from the active but rides in the same carriage, looking faintly disapproving. Shropshire: And paying less for the horses. M.: Better than usual, Shropshire. The Roman gentleman is not invited to choose between action and thought as though selecting a pudding. He is expected to think in action and act under thought. The distinction is useful, but only if one does not turn it into a civil war. G.: So the elder Laelius represents action already under the pressure of judgment, while Sapiens represents judgment still answerable to public life. M.: Exactly. One might say that in Rome the vita activa and the vita speculativa are not enemies but badly behaved brothers. Shropshire: Which is why one of them ends in office and the other in a dialogue. M.: Let us not be glib too early. Consider this. If philosophy in the ancient Roman world is entwined with public life, that is not because Romans failed to think, but because they mistrusted thought that could not survive a senate, a camp, a lawsuit, or a dinner. G.: Which is almost Gricean, sir, if one permits the contamination. Meaning is tested in use, not merely stored in doctrine. M.: Yes, though one should avoid making every Roman into an honorary analyst. Still, the temptation is sound. Roman thought is deeply conversational in the broad sense. It is conducted through report, counsel, forensic speech, exemplum, recollection, and the management of what different hearers may properly gather. Shropshire: In short, through saying one thing and letting the audience do the dangerous part. M.: That is one way of putting it. Not the best way, but yours. Now I want a sentence. Here it is. Laelius says, or might have said, si recte sapis, in re publica etiam silentium genus sermonis est. G.: If you are wise in the right way, even silence in public life is a kind of speech. Shropshire: Which is Roman for “keep your mouth shut and they will call it statesmanship.” M.: A little coarser than the Latin deserves, but not wholly false. Translate it properly first. G.: If one has wisdom in the proper sense, even silence in public affairs is a form of discourse. M.: Good. And comment. G.: The sentence suits either Laelius, but in different registers. For the elder, silence is prudential action. Not speaking at the wrong moment is itself part of political conduct. For Sapiens, the sentence leans toward reflective discipline. Silence is not mere omission but a rationally governed contribution to the exchange. M.: Excellent. Shropshire. Shropshire: It also means the Romans had discovered that a man may say more by not saying it, provided he has enough standing for everyone else to do the work. If a fool is silent, nothing happens. If Laelius is silent, half the Senate develops an inference. M.: Very good, though one wishes you had not said “develops” as though implicature were a rash. Still, that is the essential point. Roman public language is thick with managed implication. G.: Which is why the vita activa cannot be intellectually thin. Action in Rome is soaked in interpretation. M.: Just so. And that brings us to the supposed opposition between active and speculative life. The contrast is too late if taken too cleanly. In the Roman case, the active life requires the speculative in the form of judgment, decorum, prudence, and the measured estimate of consequences. The speculative life, meanwhile, takes public character as one of its chief theatres. Shropshire: So the elder fights, the younger thinks, and both are still trying to avoid looking foolish in public. M.: That is the common human denominator, yes. But do not make avoidance of foolishness the whole of Roman philosophy, tempting though it is. G.: There is also the question, sir, whether Sapiens is really “of the Porch” in any strict doctrinal sense, or rather Romanised by the Porch. M.: Very good. One must be cautious. The Romans often borrow schools as one borrows furniture, not always to sit on it exactly as intended. Stoicism in Rome is less a syllabus than a manner of self-command, a vocabulary of duty, endurance, and reasoned posture under strain. Shropshire: Furniture from Greece, sat on by people in togas who then claim they made it themselves. M.: Precisely the sort of imperial summary I had hoped someone would not produce. Yet there it is. Let us use it carefully. The point is that Roman philosophy is entwined with Roman civic style. It is not reducible to borrowed doctrine, because its borrowed doctrine is forced to wear magistrate’s shoes. G.: So with Laelius the elder one can speak of active reason, and with Sapiens of public reflection. M.: Better still, one can say that the elder shows thought in deed, and Sapiens shows deed still visible in thought. That is why Cicero later prizes such figures. They allow philosophy to appear neither idle nor merely technical. Shropshire: Useful for us too, sir. At a public school one cannot survive on vita speculativa alone. One must occasionally run. M.: A fact of which your record in games has not furnished much proof. Shropshire: My activity has always been inward. G.: Very Roman of him. He practises the speculative life by letting others score. M.: Enough. Another sentence, then. Try this one. Non minus civitatem iuvat qui recte monet quam qui fortiter pugnat. G.: He benefits the state no less who gives sound counsel than he who fights bravely. M.: Good. Comment. G.: It is almost the formula of their conjunction. The active deed and the speculative judgment are not ranked as superior and inferior absolutely. Both are civic goods under different descriptions. Shropshire: Also very comforting for old men and schoolmasters. M.: A humane civilisation always finds uses for both. But the sentence also resists the vulgar heroics of action. The Roman world admires courage, yes, but not courage detached from counsel. G.: Which suggests that even the elder Laelius is already more than a soldier. He is intelligible as Roman precisely because action is judged by a prior measure of counsel. M.: Yes. And Sapiens, if he deserves the name, does not float above action in pure contemplation. His wisdom remains civic, forensic, advisory, social. He is not a hermit with a maxims-book. Shropshire: More like a senator with a good pause. M.: Better than you know. Roman wisdom often lies in the governed pause. That is one reason the comparison with modern conversational theory is not wholly absurd. A Roman public man speaks under pressure of uptake. He knows his words will be taken in layers. G.: Glory for the crowd, competence for the Senate, warning for himself. M.: Exactly. You have read ahead in spirit, which is the best way of reading ahead. The same utterance can perform several rational tasks because audiences are multiple and shared assumptions stratified. Shropshire: Which is why Roman speeches are so economical. One sentence, three constituencies, and a statue if one is lucky. M.: Or a prosecution if one is not. The danger sharpened the style. Now tell me, both of you, why this matters for the relation between vita activa and vita speculativa. G.: Because if public utterance itself requires reflective calibration, then the active life is never merely active. It is saturated with judgment about relevance, audience, timing, and implication. Shropshire: And because the speculative life, if it means anything Roman, cannot hide in a study and write little books against the weather. It must answer to public action, or at least advise it before it goes wrong. M.: Very good. Between you, a thought has occurred. That is the best one may hope for before lunch. Now another Latin line, and this time I want a sharper distinction. Sapientis est videre quid sit dicendum; politici, quando. G.: It is the part of the wise man to see what ought to be said; of the statesman, when. Shropshire: And of the schoolboy, to say neither. M.: A charming self-portrait. Now, who gets which half? G.: Sapiens receives the first naturally, but not exclusively. To see what ought to be said belongs to judgment, discrimination, conceptual grasp. The elder Laelius receives the second more naturally, because timing is the heart of political action. M.: And yet? G.: And yet each half implies the other. One cannot know what ought to be said without some sense of occasion, and one cannot know when to speak without some grasp of what the speech ought to do. M.: Excellent. Shropshire. Shropshire: The line also proves the Romans had no patience with pure speculation. A wise man who knows what to say but not when to say it becomes a nuisance. A politician who knows when to speak but not what to say becomes a minister. M.: Your cynicism remains under-educated, but occasionally serviceable. The line is useful because it shows the Roman instinct to split functions only in order to reunite them under practice. G.: Which is perhaps why the father and son are such a good pair. The elder embodies the pressure of deed, the younger the authority of reflective measure, but the Roman tradition refuses to let them drift apart as abstract types. M.: Yes. That is exactly the point. They become exemplary, not because one is merely active and the other merely speculative, but because each reveals what the other lacks if isolated. Shropshire: So the elder without Sapiens becomes a successful barbarian, and Sapiens without the elder becomes a Greek after dinner. M.: Brutal, but memorable. Keep it in your notebook and improve it before using it against civilisation. Now, one last matter. Why does philosophy in ancient Rome appear entwined with friendship? G.: Because much Roman reflection is mediated by counsel among equals, or near-equals. Friendship provides the conversational setting in which judgment can be both frank and decorous. M.: Good. Shropshire. Shropshire: Also because one can tell a friend things one would never risk in public unless one wished to be misquoted by descendants. M.: Very true. Roman philosophy is often social before it is scholastic. It arises in advice, recollection, mutual correction, and the management of public and private selves. Friendship is one of its chief institutions. G.: Which again joins the active and the speculative. Friends in Rome are not merely sentimental accessories. They are media of judgment. M.: Precisely. And that is why Laelius matters so much. Whether elder or Sapiens, he stands where thought becomes socially habitable and action intellectually answerable. He is not merely a name in a prosopography. He is a type of Roman reason. Shropshire: A type with friends, offices, campaigns, and pauses. Very inconvenient for later philosophers. M.: The ancients are often inconvenient because they had not yet learnt to specialise themselves into harmlessness. Very well. Write this down. Laelius, elder and Sapiens alike, teaches that in Rome the good life was not divided cleanly between deed and thought, because public action already required reflection and reflection remained answerable to public life. G.: Dry enough for the examination, sir. M.: Dry enough for Somerset, which is as much as one can decently ask. Shropshire: And if we forget it? M.: Then I shall remind you in Latin, which is the only civilised form of revenge. G.: Sir, may I add one gloss? M.: Briefly. Brevity is one of the few virtues left to schools. G.: Laelius also shows that Roman philosophy is not merely what Romans read, but how Romans speak under obligation. M.: Excellent. Add it. Shropshire, can you improve the sentence without ruining it? Shropshire: Only by saying that obligation is what stops conversation becoming English. M.: Go to the bottom of the class, which in your case is less a position than a habit.