Joseph Ransdell on Charles Sanders Peirce

"When the truth about Peirce's life and accomplishments becomes generally known, it will be perceived that he was not only the most omnicompetent scientific mind of his time, perhaps never subsequently to be equalled, but also a moral hero of the intellect, of the stature of Socrates: a veritable icon or paradigm of philosophia--which really means devotion to the search for truth . . . ." Joseph Ransdell, Semiotic Objectivity in Frontiers in Semiotics 240 (John Deely et al. eds., 1986).

The Inherent Inseparability of Doctrine & Skills

A quick screen shot of my brief bit in Linda Edwards' fantastic new book The Doctrine Skills Divide: Legal Education's Self-Inflicted Wound.  I think the title speaks for itself, and the book should be required reading for everyone interested in reforming legal education today.

Blake Within Blake Within Blake Without End

As I have written before, the great William Blake magnificently employed signs beyond mere words in his poetry.  His powerful illustrations of verse add much additional meaning to his work.  As I have noted before, his symbols such as words are greatly supplemented by other types of signs such as the iconic signs of his drawings.  He applied these same principles in reverse in his great illustrations of the verse of other poets such as Thomas Gray and Edward Young.  Such illustrated verse injects blocks of symbols within Blake's icons, and it can be fascinating to replace these blocks of others' symbols with additional iconic expressions by Blake himself.  Blake's illustrations repeat common themes and can build on each other in such fascinating exercises.  I think Blake would enjoy seeing others doing this with with his icons, and I would enjoy seeing how others might attempt the endless possibilities of such substitutions.  For example, in the illustration above I have replaced Gray's verses about the "Stern Rugged Nurse" with one of Blake's illustrations of Urizen, the severe god of reason who traps the imagination with his compasses and strict categories.  The compass in fact is an awful symbol for Blake.  It's no accident that the "Stern Rugged Nurse" has one in her hand just like Urizen.

Beyond Words Alone: Poets as Artists of the Intentional

 

In his wonderful The New Book of Forms, Lewis Turco tells us that poets “focus on mode, on language itself.”  Focusing on language, a poet in Turco’s view is therefore an “artist of language; his or her concentration is upon the language itself.”  Taken this way, “[p]oetry can thus be defined as the art of language.”

Though these definitions of poets and poetry are correct as far as they go, they do not go far enough. Poets are artists of the intentional; they are artists using signs that point to things beyond the signs themselves.  Since words are not the only signs, why should poets limit themselves to words?  Using C.S. Peirce’s terminology, there are in fact three kinds of signs: symbols (arbitrary signifiers such as words), icons (signifiers such as paintings that resemble what they signify), and indexes (signifiers like photographs or weathervanes that participate in what they signify).  In the realm of symbols, why should poets limit themselves to words?  In the broader realm of signs, why should poets ignore icons and indexes?  They should not of course, and William Blake gives us excellent proof.   

Abelard: The Peril & the Price of Careless Thought (Addition to the Apology Box)

                         Abelard’s Ballade

Thought is the cruelest place where charts mark no

Fixed latitude or constancy of shore

For shifting airy coasts and courses.  Though

Polaris holds without, within one's oar

Has no such brilliant constant marker for

Safe navigation.  Vague, obscure and fraught

With shifting inner shoals, one can’t ignore

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Did man precede the beasts?  Both “yes” and “no”

Say Testaments where just a pair yet more

Go in the ark, where Eve’s made second though

She’s simultaneous in lines before,

Where we’re commanded to love yet restore

Slaves to a master, where it’s said we ought

Not judge yet brook no sin.  We’re fodder for

The peril and the price of careless thought.

There’s such confusion--turn the cheek yet go

Acquire a sword as well?  Why wasn’t more

Care taken in the drafting?  All should know

That words have consequences.  Maimed, I bore

The scars of mixed-up syllables.  Before

More suffer needless butchery, one ought

To master language.  I explored, therefore,

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Lord, thus I did my volumes.  Since they store

All I discovered, I can rest.  Full taught

Below, no suffering here would teach me more

The peril and the price of careless thought. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Anselm's Short Ballade (An Addition to "The Apology Box")

              Anselm’s Short Ballade

I’m unsurprised that mind persists although

The body drops extinguished.  Nothing may

Be perfect but the Lord.  That being so,

Death must be flawed and therefore cannot stay

The intellect forever lest we say

Death is invincible and perfect, too.

I can’t consistently speak such a way,

Lord.  Reason will not let me turn from you.

Nor could I doubt your being, Lord, although

You did not show your face.  God is, we say,

The greatest thing conceivable.  That so,

God must exist since absent things, we say,
Are less.  Should God not be, that opens way

To something greater:  God plus being, too.

But nothing’s greater.  Logic shows the way,

Lord.  Reason will not let me turn from you.

And thus I kneel in hopeful prayer you’ll say,

“Come follow me as well in heaven, too.”

I cannot rise until you’ve shown the way,

Lord. Reason will not let me turn from you. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

 

            

Five Warriors: Hannibal, Charlemagne, Roland, William the Conqueror, & Henry V (Additions to "The Apology Box)

                    Short Ballade of Henry V            
                             (esse quam videri)

Although my youth was rough, I may defend

It.  By its terms, one's immaturity

Is that imperfect era one must spend

Developing, that time when logically

The mind and morals both are raw and we

Are all inferior.  I would not scheme

Like lesser youths and falsely polish me--

Hypocrisy's a sin.  I'd be, not seem.

When I was crowned, my youth was at its end.

Therefore, I ended my frivolity

Lest I live on a lie, lest I pretend

I somehow kept that younger quality

That I had lost.  I acted honestly

Instead when grown.  I battled till supreme

At Agincourt without distorting me--

Hypocrisy's a sin. I'd be, not seem.

Lord, now I'm but a spirit, I should be

In Heaven with the bodiless.  I’d dream

Of nothing else.  I’d feign no firmer me--

Hypocrisy's a sin.  I'd be, not seem.

Three Religious Warriors: Richard I, Saladin, & Charles Martel (Additions to "The Apology Box")

              Richard I’s Sonnet

Christ is my only standard. As he drove

The money changers from the temple who

Profaned it, I in imitation strove

To save God's temples from blasphemers, too.

If smaller groups of money changers must

Be driven out, much more so should we drive

Out hordes of unbelievers.  I was just

Therefore in how I chose to reign and live.

Although great men have critics and I'm not

Immune, I'm confident the worst they’ve said

Of me is I craved men and therefore led

Men East.  If true, such charge condemns me not.

In judging right and wrong, Christ is the test.

I've read his words.  The topic's not addressed.

               Saladin's Round

            (By a Kurdish hero)

There is no God but God and he is Lord

Of every atom of creation.  He

Is thus by his own essence rightfully

The Lord of old Jerusalem and all

Her Asian territories rather than

Someone whose agent sits in far-off Rome.

Someone whose agent sits in far-off Rome

Abstractly drinking blood and eating flesh

With wine and broken bread in temples there

Has brokered more than mere abstractions here.

This broker's swords have broken men and spilled

Real blood and gore throughout God’s Holy Land.

Real blood and gore throughout God’s Holy Land

Required response and we have given aid.

We’ve had to use swords doing that though we

Preferred the use of reason.  Though we’ve won

Upon the field, our greater victory comes

Through favoring mercy over death instead.

Through favoring mercy over death instead

Of other attitudes, we’ve followed God

And done his work.  Though evil trembles at

Such simple logic, we find rest in it--

God favors mercy and believers know

There is no God but God and he is Lord.

                Charles Martel’s Sonnet

Though God is three in one, it’s blasphemy

To tolerate an earthly trinity

Of Christian, Jew, and Muslim. There can be

Just one true faith since Christianity

Alone is scriptural.  Of course God knew

Martel means “hammer” and called me to do

The labor.  Although just a bastard to

That beast Plectude, great battle plans I drew

For plated men and beasts.  At Poitiers,

Design met field.  There my troops held at bay

The foreign hordes our armor drove away

From Christendom forever.  Lord, I pray

For Heavenly inclusion having fought

For God and Christendom as scriptures taught.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Sonnets of Seven Greek Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, Diogenes of Sinope, Heraclitus, & Protagoras (Additions to "The Apology Box")

                   Plato’s Sonnet

            (A liberated caveman)

When I was tethered up inside the cave

Where I could see but shadows on the wall

I craved to see how Real Things would behave.

I plotted my escape through study:  all

Real Things should be discoverable in the end

Though first unseen directly.  I knew there

Must be Real Forms somewhere since shades depend

On Something Real to cast them.  With great care,

I studied every shadow so I might

Infer what cast the umbrage.  In that way

I burrowed backward out into the Light.

I now see plainly Forms have Forms, and they

Have culmination here in that one Form

Of Good that I predicted as the Norm.

Confucius and Lao Tzu (Additions to "The Apology Box")

            Confucius’s Sonnet

Mere force brings no true order since forced change

Warps from without and thus can never fit

An inner nature that’s rejecting it.

Without such fit, there’s but apparent change.

As mere force is deficient, sages thus

Discount it.  Righting wrong, they find a way

To change a man by his own choices. Thus,

They speak and do precisely. Sages sway

With virtue and right language of the kind

They’ve learned in studies of the old archives

Of ritual and common mythic mind.

Their teaching teaches them. Example drives

Without a whip. On earth, in heaven, too,

Truth bans all thrashings hells purport to do.

            Lao Tzu’s Sonnet

Would breath that loathed to make a sound in life

Somehow reverse itself in airless death?

Would it somehow convert itself at last

Into fools’ terms?  No--death is muter still.

I’ve neither arrogance nor wish to harm.

I’d not presume an ant cares how my mouth

Might label it.  I all the more of course

Would not presume that heaven gives a damn.

Man’s categories cause him needless ill—

A man can’t covet or despise a thing

Some category’s not disjoined from him.

Man's words spread categories' ills about.

Without air heaven must be wordless.  Hence,

I'm mute where no decrees expel me hence.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Boethius, St. Ambrose, and Marcion the Docetist (Additions to "The Apology Box")

               Boethius's Sonnet

Was Theodoric’s prison in the end

That proved the real academy.  Was there

They taught first hand true good cannot depend

Upon mere fortune.  There caged in despair

This humbled bureaucrat learned power flees

In but a moment and, too, learned, how fast

“Good” title both in name and properties

Is marred.  Yet, I found hope!  Though no things last

Below at length, that maid Philosophy

Took pity, visited dark dungeons and

Consoled me with her higher poetry

Of permanence.  Caressing that sweet hand,

I thought no more of nooses or of cells

But of divinity and where it dwells.

 

               Saint Ambrose's Sonnet

Before the awful bench where all will stand

We come in turn to plead and do admit

Our errors though in doing so submit

In mitigation it was not our hand

That sought the staff.  Instead, Milan asked.  We

Were acquiescent, humbly turned our backs

On Roman boons (yet kept her bones as racks

For Christian ornament--past lies would be

Upholders of the truth.)  Thus we transformed

Words, music, marbles, even living flesh--

Behold Augustine we baptized afresh.

Mere spirit now, our temporal see performed,

Pray let us see Rome’s church ascending now

Above Rome’s ruins we’ve refurbished now.

             

            Marcion The Docetist’s Sonnet

I’ve kneeled before the true God now revealed

Through that majestic phantasm called Christ

That clarified true faith and thus repealed

The older books.  Sweet ghost!  If sacrificed,

I knew it was not God.  Perfection by

Its very terms can never suffer.  For

To suffer is to lose, to be less than

Complete and thus prove imperfection.  Nor

Could it have been a man.  Though man could be

Sinless despite the lie of Eden, You

Could not allow a sinless man to be

Condemned and killed for sins he did not do.

Great ghostly messenger!  It had to be

Of course fantastic coming, Lord, from Thee!

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Cyrus and Esther (Additions to the Apology Box)

     Cyrus The Great’s Proof

It’s wrong to disown any family.

We must be fair in hospitality

To every member. We may not despise

Another made in Heaven’s image.  Wise

Ones know the converse would be blasphemy.

We had to unify.  No boundary

Is moral.  Even Hebrews now are free

To come back in the fold, to realize

It’s wrong to disown any family.

Death can’t destroy your Image. Unity

Has to survive the grave and cannot be

Extinguished.  Live and dead must still comprise

A common brood.  We specters therefore rise

To meet you knowing that you will agree

It’s wrong to disown any family.

 

                      Esther's Sonnet

There’s bravery that’s physical in bed,

That’s cousin to the field of battle’s.  I

Burned with such valor from the day I wed

Another by whose whim I’d live or die.

I passed, had spies, laid trenches in the sheet.

I suffered the assaults but never gave

A true surrender.  I held till defeat

Had closed the enemy within his grave

With my assistance.  There’s no felony

In war’s attack, in what I had to do.

There are no lies or whores in battle.  We

Have heroes or we’ve cowards--just the two.

This star of Esther stayed though others fell:

By name, the heavens are where Esthers dwell.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.