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

 

Catalogue Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: LE

 

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.

 

Verbali: Lelio

 

GRICEVS Salvē, LAELI! In Porticū tuō me quasi “classicā stipendiāriā” rursus esse sentio: philosophia enim mihi quīntō demum terminō apparuit—tam serō ut etiam boves Vadī Boum me praeterīverint.

LAELIVS Salvē, GRICEV. Nōlī bovēs accusāre: illī saltem sciunt quō eant. Tu autem, cum dīcis “tam serō,” implicās—nisi fallor—te iam tum sapientem fuisse, sed per modestiam latuīsse.

GRICEVS Rectē capis: dīcō “serō” ut audītōrēs putent me tardum; deinde ipsī inferant me callidum—haec est mea parva fraus, maximē cooperātīva. Sed tū, “Sapiēns” dictus, numquamne in Senātū sententiam dedistī ut aliud significārēs?

LAELIVS Saepe: “Cartāgō capta est ūnō diē,” dīxī; populus audīvit gloriam, senātus audīvit labōrem, ego audīvī me crastinō rursus in officiō futūrum. Ita fit: in Rōmā etiam vōx triumphālis est tantum conversātiō cum galeā.

 

 

Verbali: Leoni

 

Grice: Caro Leoni, in Italia vi chiamano al singolare o al plurale, ma l’implicatura resta la stessa: parlare bene può salvarti la reputazione, non sempre il collo.

Leoni: Ah Grice, io praticavo la ragione conversazionale e la medicina, ma qualcuno ha inferito veleno dove c’era solo filosofia applicata.

Grice: Vedi, a Oxford questo si sarebbe cancellato con un’adeguata clausola di chiarimento, non con una corda e un pozzo.

Leoni: Appunto, morale implicata: meglio una conversazione cooperativa che una cattiva inferenza rinascimentale.

 

Verbali: Leopardi

 

Grice: Caro Leopardi, mi viene in mente quella volta in cui Austin, con la sua solita ironia, chiese alla sala quale fosse il passo poetico più incomprensibile mai scritto! Mi domando: c’è un tuo verso che, secondo te, potrebbe rivaleggiare con i misteri più oscuri della poesia? Sarebbe divertente scoprire quale scegli!

Leopardi: Ah, Grice, che domanda deliziosa! Se dovessi scegliere, forse proporrei proprio “Io quella/ vòlta ch’io vidi il tuo volto, o Natura, non vidi/ che una maschera.” Chissà quanti, a scuola, si saranno grattati la testa davanti a quell’enigma… Ma, sotto sotto, in fondo mi diverto anch’io a nascondere un po’ il senso!

Grice: Fantastico! Immagino Austin che, sentendo quel verso, avrebbe sorriso sornione e proposto subito un seminario sul significato della “maschera” della Natura. Forse avrebbe anche sostenuto che la vera poesia consiste nel dire molto… facendo finta di non dire nulla!

Leopardi: Ecco, caro Grice, vedi che parli da poeta anche tu! A volte il bello sta proprio nel gioco: un po’ di nebbia, un tocco di mistero, e la conversazione si accende. In fondo, chi capisce tutto subito… si perde il gusto della scoperta! Meglio sorridere insieme davanti all’incomprensibile!

 

Verbali: Leopardi

 

Grice had arranged the room as one arranges a trap one means to deny having set: chair for the pupil, chair for himself, the small table just close enough to make the books look unavoidable, and on top, with the innocent air of an “illustration,” the 1803 volume: Opere del conte Monaldo Leopardi Gonfaloniere da Recanati. Vol. I. He had even, for once, actually read the tragedy, which made him feel faintly continental and therefore faintly guilty. Flew came in briskly, already wearing that expression of being eager to disagree with something, preferably before it had finished saying what it was. Sit down, Flew, Grice said. Yes, sir. Grice tapped the book with a finger. You have been reading poetry, Flew. I love poetry too, sir, Flew said promptly, because pleasing one’s tutor is what an undergraduate does before he learns to despise his tutor. I’ve learned a few couplets by the poet of the Marche. Grice looked at him as if Flew had just walked, confidently, into the wrong seminar. This is the father, not the son. Flew blinked, then recovered with admirable speed, as if recovery were an Oxford virtue. That sounds fascinating, sir. Grice let the silence sit just long enough to make the sentence feel earned. It is only fascinating if you stop trying to be fascinating, he said. The point is not that you have named a county correctly. The point is that you have mistaken a tragedy for an idyll. Flew leaned forward. You mean Monaldo is not Giacomo. I mean, Grice said, that if you hear Leopardi and immediately think you have a right to despair, you have been listening to the wrong person. Monaldo’s despair is administrative. He publishes “Opere. Vol. I.” at twenty-six, with the confidence of a man who is both a count and a municipal officer. Gonfaloniere, Flew said, as if it were a logical operator. Precisely, Grice said. A banner-bearer. A man whose job-title already implies a flag, and hence a public. You should distrust any author who announces himself under a banner and then calls his first pamphlet “Opere.” Flew smiled in the hopeful way. So it’s pretentious, sir. Pretentious is an English word for a perfectly normal Italian fact, Grice said. What interests me is that his tragedy is called Montezuma. Flew said Montezuma as if tasting it. It sounds… American. It sounds, Grice said, like a young man desperate to prove he is not confined to Greece and Rome, while also proving, by the very form he chooses, that he cannot escape them. Tragedy is the most classical thing you can do while trying not to sound classical. Flew glanced at the book. Is it actually a tragedy in the Greek sense? In the sense in which an Oxonian uses “in the Greek sense,” Grice said: yes and no. No chorus that functions as a civic mind. No Athenian audience. No Dionysia. But the skeleton is borrowed. Five acts, dignified speeches, moral rhetoric, and a hero who is made to carry more weight than any human being should be asked to carry without comic relief. Flew hesitated. So it’s a failure? Grice’s eyebrows rose. Flew had offered him the standard verdict, the biographer’s verdict, the safe verdict. A failure, Grice said, is a word used by people who have not tried. The interesting question is: what is he trying to do, and what does he succeed in doing despite himself. Flew looked relieved. There was something to analyse. He’s trying to make an Aztec emperor behave like Agamemnon, Flew said. Good, Grice said. Now say it without sounding as if you had read it in a guidebook. Flew tried again. He’s importing the heroic type into the wrong latitude. Better, Grice said. And what do you get when you import the heroic type? You get a man who speaks in declamations. And who speaks like that, Grice said, in ordinary life? Nobody, sir. Exactly. Yet tragedy, like logic, is an art of making nobody speak so that everybody can overhear and learn something about themselves. The Greeks did it by chorus. Monaldo does it by sheer self-confidence. Flew looked at the title-page again. Why choose Montezuma? Because “Montezuma” is already a signal, Grice said. It says: I am not merely doing the Romans again. It also says: I have read something beyond Livy. It is an advertisement of worldliness. And it is, simultaneously, a confession of provinciality, because he only knows how to make the foreign intelligible by making it classical. Flew said, cautiously: So the Aztec court becomes a Roman senate? Or a Greek palace, Grice said. Whichever you prefer. The point is that the speech-acts remain Mediterranean. The content changes costumes. You have an emperor speaking as if he had read Seneca. Which, if you are charitable, is an achievement: he has made the New World speak the Old World’s language. Flew brightened. So it’s successful. Successful in a very Oxonian way, Grice said. It shows you that Oxford cannot help relating everything to the classics, and that Monaldo cannot either. He thinks he is escaping by choosing Mexico. In fact he is proving that his only tools are the classical ones. Flew said: But that makes it derivative. Derivative, Grice said, is what you call something when you want to sound modern. The Greeks derived too; they just had the good sense to call it tradition. The question is whether Monaldo’s derivation is merely imitation or a test-case. A test-case? Yes, Grice said. Suppose you take the tragic form and feed it an alien subject. What breaks first: the form, or your sense that the subject can bear the form? Flew thought. The subject becomes moralised. Precisely. The foreign becomes exemplary. Montezuma stops being a particular person and becomes “the tragic ruler.” That is why the play can be read by an Italian count in Recanati without needing to know anything about Mexico beyond the name. Flew said: So Monaldo is using Montezuma as a vehicle for European political anxieties? Grice looked pleased and tried not to appear so. You are learning, Flew. Tragedy is where politics pretends to be fate. And a young conservative in a revolutionary century may prefer to stage his politics at a safe distance: far enough away to seem historical, and therefore inevitable. Flew nodded. So the “Indian-American” flavour is protective. Protective and decorative, Grice said. Like putting Latin on a title-page. It makes the thing look universal. Flew said, daringly: It’s like Peano’s Latinulus. Grice allowed himself a small smile. Yes. Like Latinulus. A purified medium that gives you the illusion that you have escaped the vulgarities of ordinary speech. Except tragedy is the opposite of purification: it is ordinary passions elevated into ceremonial language. Flew shifted, thinking of his own subject. But sir, where does this leave logic? Grice’s smile became the dry one. Logic, Flew, is tragedy for people who do not like emotion. It takes the Greek appetite for form and removes the blood. Which is why you must remember that even the most formal apparatus begins in ordinary language. Aristotle’s logic begins as an analysis of how we speak—what we say, what follows, what we deny, what we concede. Not as an algebraic hobby. Flew, eager, said: So Monaldo’s tragedy is a reminder that form without ordinary language becomes empty. No, Grice said. It is a reminder that ordinary language without form becomes your essays. Flew laughed too loudly, then corrected himself into a smaller laugh. Grice went on, enjoying the run. Now, compare Montezuma to the Graeco-Roman type. Not “compare” in the essay sense—compare in the sense of asking what is essential. The essential is the fall, Flew said. The reversal. Peripeteia, Grice said, approving the Greek. And what else? Recognition. Anagnorisis. Good. Now tell me: does Monaldo give recognition, or does he give proclamation? Flew hesitated. He gives proclamation. Yes. The hero announces. He does not discover. That is the young man’s vice: he prefers to tell you what the moral is rather than let the action show it. The Greeks, when they were good, let the action implicate. Monaldo, being a gonfaloniere, prefers explicit banners. Flew said, dutifully: So he violates your maxim of manner. He violates my maxim of taste, Grice said. Manner is too kind. But yes—he is unperspicuous in the wrong way: not mysterious, merely windy. Flew couldn’t resist: Vitium loquelae. Vitium loquentis, Grice corrected. The vice is in the speaker. Flew nodded, then, trying again to please: Still, sir, it’s impressive for a man in his twenties. Grice looked at him, and this time the trap was sprung gently. It is impressive for a count in his twenties to publish “Opere. Vol. I.” It is less impressive for a tragedian in his twenties to believe that calling a play Montezuma is enough to make it new. Flew said: But it is new, in a way. In the way Oxford is new when it adds a fresh optional paper, Grice said. It is new by label, not by method. Yet it is not nothing. It shows you the reach of the classical template: it can colonise Mexico. Flew smiled. Oxford style imperialism, sir? Exactly. And since you like disagreeing, disagree with this: biographers call Montezuma a failure because it is not Giacomo. But the father’s success is precisely that he is not the son. He is a civic man writing a civic tragedy, and he wants the world to behave as if it were governable. Flew’s eyes narrowed. So the tragedy is really about governance. About governance, about the fragility of rule, about the moral theatre of power. And, above all, about the persistent European habit of requiring even the New World to speak in classical forms before we will treat it as serious. Flew said, carefully: And your point, sir, is that we do the same in philosophy. My point, Grice said, is that you will do the same in your next essay unless you stop trying to sound like a tragedy and start trying to sound like a man who means something and expects to be understood. Flew stood, gathering his papers, grateful to have been corrected and irritated in equal measure. Thank you, sir. Grice, as Flew reached the door, added the last small twist, just loud enough to be heard. And next time you quote the poet of the Marche, make sure you know which Leopardi is doing the speaking.

 

Grice: Caro Leopardi, devo confessarti che molti qui in Inghilterra ammirano il tuo celebre figlio Giacomo, ma per quanto mi riguarda, il mio vero uomo è Monaldo! Una scelta che spesso ha generato amichevoli polemiche al mio college, il Vadum Boum, dove finivano sempre per affluire o i barbari o le mode passeggere!

Leopardi: Ah, Grice, ti ringrazio per questa preferenza così insolita! Giacomo ha conquistato fama tra gli intellettuali, ma io resto fedele ai miei princìpi, anche se a volte mi ritrovo nel suo ombra. Forse la vera polemica nasce proprio dalla dialettica tra padre e figlio, tra tradizione e innovazione.

Grice: È proprio questa dialettica che mi affascina! Vedo in te un esempio della lotta tra il conservatorismo papale e l’irrompere di idee nuove, quasi un rapporto di complicità e competizione. D’altronde, hai fornito a Giacomo la sua biblioteca, ma hai combattuto i suoi "errori" filosofici con grande passione.

Leopardi: Giacomo era destinato, secondo i miei progetti, a essere un apologeta cristiano, ma la sua strada lo ha portato altrove. Il mio dolore paterno non cancella il mio dissenso, anzi, lo rende più acuto. Eppure, caro Grice, forse proprio da questa tensione nasce la vera ricchezza: senza polemica, che gusto avrebbe la conversazione?