Poetry and Paranoia: "Starlight Like Intuition Pierced the Twelve," by Delmore Schwartz

In this article I will discuss a harrowing, strangely beautiful poem by Delmore Schwartz.  Since this once very celebrated poet is all but forgotten now, I will begin with some biographical information, which is essential to the interpretation of the poem.

1. Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)

With the publication of his first book, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, Schwartz shot across the literary scene like a comet, outshining for a while most contemporary stars.  The story that gave the title to the book is indeed a classic, and deserves to be treated as such.  It is completely autobiographical, but told in such an objective way--for instance, no names are given--that it could have been a pure invention by a first-rate, less confessional artist. The protagonist of the story watches a movie of how his parents met.  The father, twenty-nine at the time, decides it is time to marry.  He proposes to his future bride at Coney Island; she cries.  There is no mention of love. When they are about to agree to marry, their future son jumps from his seat in the theater and shouts:  "Don't do it.  It's not too late to change your mind, both of you.  Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous." It would have been better not to have been born; it is the cri du coeur of a broken life.

Schwartz was as talented as he was precocious; In Dreams Begin Responsibilities was written when he was twenty-one. The memorable last sentence of the story gives a good indication of his talent: (The usher is ejecting him from the theater due to the disturbance caused by his outburst.)

"'You can't carry on like this, it is not right, you will find out soon enough, everything you do matters too much,' and as he said that, dragging me out through the lobby of the theater into the cold light, I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my twenty-first birthday, the windowsill shining with its lip of snow, and the morning already begun."

The lovely image of the "lip of snow" on the windowsill, instantly recognizable by anyone who has lived in a New York City tenement, has remained with me for nearly fifty years.

What was the source of Schwartz's despair?  Much of it could be traced to his horrible childhood.  Neither parent seemed to care much for the future poet.  The father was a philanderer, the mother wildly jealous. It was a very dysfunctional family. One day, with the young Delmore in hand, she discovered her husband in a restaurant with a person she referred to as a whore.  She proceeded to scream at her husband, as if Delmore wasn't there.  Recalling humiliations of my own childhood, I know exactly how Schwartz must have felt: lost, vulnerable, floating through space with the sign of Cain branded on his forehead.  The father abandoned the family when Delmore was ten; the increasingly reduced circumstances of the isolated family, now headed by an increasingly moody mother, must have weighed heavily on both children.

Things got much better before they got much worse.  As already mentioned, he had become quite famous at an early age.  Critics hailed him as a potentially great writer; one referred to him as the "new Chekhov."  He studied at various universities; he attended Harvard for several years, but never received a graduate degree.  Schwartz became the editor of the renowned Partisan Review.  He taught at many prestigious places, but never remained at one of them for long.  

Inner peace was elusive, however, as this excerpt from his poem, All Night, All Night, indicates:

"O your life, your lonely life,

What have you ever done with it,

And done with the great gift of consciousness

What will you ever do with your life before death's knife

Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?"

This excerpt gives another  good indication of Schwartz's talent; it evinces a perfect marriage of music and meaning, the mark of a true poet. The meaning, however, is hopelessly bleak, another version of "It would have been better if I hadn't been born."

Feeling worthless at his core, Schwartz sought fame at the surface. This is a common strategy of those who are both broken and ambitious; it doesn't work.  In 1943, Schwartz published what he thought would be his major work.  He expected it to rival Eliot's Wasteland as a modern classic.  He named the 261-page poem "Genesis, Book One." Was Schwartz playing God in order to silence his inner critic forever?  This is what he said of it, "I fear that it is so good, that I, mere I, am not the author, but rather a team of inspired poets."  Few agreed. One critic was downright hostile:"Who, except at gunpoint, would read Delmore Schwartz's autobiographical epic, Genesis, Book One--Book One!"

Schwartz's tragedy is that he became famous at an early age, and was never able to revisit his early success. 

After the failure of his second marriage, which, like his first one, ended in divorce, Schwartz deteriorated rapidly.  For the last nine years of his life, the once famous poet lived as a recluse.  He ended up in a seedy hotel near Times Square.  His addiction to alcohol and barbiturates, an attempt to relieve the symptoms of his mental illness,  was destroying him.  One day, after emptying garbage, he collapsed in the elevator of the hotel.  His body lay in the morgue for two days before it was identified.

2. Delmore Schwarz and José Garcia Villa

José Garcia Villa, (1908-1997), my mentor in poetry, was Schwartz's contemporary.  I think it appropriate here to contrast and compare their careers.  Villa's first book, a collection of stories entitled Footnote to Youth, was published in 1933, when Villa was twenty-four.  Sherwood Anderson praised the book highly.  Villa, however, soon realized that his gift was in poetry; his first book of poems, Have Come Am Here, which was published by Viking Press in 1942, received great critical acclaim.  He was awarded many prizes, including the prestigious Bollingen award--Schwartz, by the way, was the youngest person ever to receive a Bollingen award. He published two subsequent volumes of poetry, for which the critics as a whole were supportive but less enthusiastic.  In the 1950s he wrote a long poem, The Anchored Angel, which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement.  After this, he stopped writing poetry and turned to teaching.

Schwartz and Villa had very different styles.  Villa concentrated on language: his verse is tighter and more lyrical. His range, however, is more limited than Schwartz's.  Villa tried to write the best poetry he could, and seemed satisfied with the acclaim he received; he was much less hungry for approval.  Unlike Schwartz, Villa never considered himself to be a failure.

Both writers became very well known at the publication of an early work; neither was able to repeat their initial success. Each has fallen into obscurity.  (A few years ago, Penguin published Villa's collected works; it did not receive much interest.)

Schwartz and Villa were very similar in some ways, very different in others; the differences, perhaps, enabled Villa to live well into old age.  Both had difficult childhoods.  Villa's family, however, was wealthy.  His father was the personal physician of the president of the Philippines; his mother came from a family of landowners.  Villa had a terrible conflict with his father; he hated  him.  José told me on one occasion that his father threw him out of the house naked, at a time when the latter was just entering puberty.  José was almost in tears when he told me this.  This humiliation, I think, trumps Schwartz's, which I described earlier. When his father died, Villa was completely indifferent.  To say "my father died" was too kind; Villa referred to his death with the following words, "he finally dropped off."

The main difference in the personalities of the two poets was that Schwartz reacted to his difficulties with inward aggression, while Villa"s defense was aggression against others.  Villa could be wildly erratic, combative and cruel.  Like Schwartz, however, he was also a great teacher and conversationalist.  On the inside, he was isolated and conflicted; he remained social, however, to the end.  He had many devoted followers and acquaintances, if not friends.  Villa was also much less ambitious than Schwartz.  One day he told me that when he was young he wanted a lot; now, at the cusp of old age, he was content "with a few drops of syrup on (his) pancake."  Although writers and critics continued to contact him, he withdrew from the poetry scene and did not push his own poetry. He truly enjoyed teaching, however, especially during  the seminars he held in his home. He was a first-rate teacher. Villa's personality allowed him to survive, in contrast to Schwartz's.

The two poets knew each other.  Villa once poignantly recounted Schwartz's death to us, his circle of students in the early 70s,  They both were frequent attendees of the famed gatherings of poets at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village.

This is a famous group photo of poets gathered at the Gotham Book Mart in New York City to honor Edith Sitwell--a great admirer of Villa, by the way--on November 8, 1948:

Villa, the only non-European American of the entire group, is in the background; Schwartz is in the foreground to the right.  Villa looks serious and shy--he was indeed, despite his outbursts, shy when one was alone with him.  Schwartz is doing his best to look content; the puffiness of his face is perhaps an indication of the mental illness that would eventually consume him.

Some time thereafter, the poet and anthologist Oscar Williams, (forgotten today as well), put together a paperback collection entitled, "Modern American Poetry,"  Villa told me that he had had a big row with Williams at a party--he probably told him what he thought of his poetry. (At one time, Alan Ginsburg bowed down before Villa, acknowledging him as the master.  Villa accepted his obeisance.) After the argument, which had disrupted the party, Williams told Villa that he no longer intended to publish Villa's poems in the anthology. He did, however, choose a few by Schwartz. The anthology includes his poem, "The Starlight's Intuitions Pierced the Twelve." This poem impressed me then and impresses me now.  The last section of this essay is an interpretation of this strange, haunting poem.

4.  Starlight Like Intuition Pierced the Twelve

The starlight's intuitions pierced the twelve,
The brittle night sky sparkled like a tune
Tinkled and tapped out on the xylophone.
Empty and vain, a glittering dune, the moon
Arose too big, and, in the mood which ruled,
Seemed like a useless beauty in a pit;
And then one said, after he carefully spat,
"No matter what we do, he looks at it!"

"I cannot see a child or find a girl
Beyond his smile which glows like that spring moon."
--"Nothing no more the same," the second said,
"Though all may be forgiven never quite healed
The wound I bear as witness, standing by,
No ceremony surely appropriate,
Nor secret love, escape or sleep because
No matter what I do, he looks at it--"

"Now," said the third, "no thing will be the same;
I am as one who never shuts his eyes,
The sea and sky no more are marvelous,
I know no more true freshness or surprise!"
"Now," said the fourth, "nothing will be enough,
--I heard his voice accompanying all wit;
No word can be unsaid, no deed withdrawn,
--No matter what is said he measures it!"

"Vision, imagination, hope or dream,
Believed, denied, the scene we wished to see?
It does not matter in the least; for what
Is altered, if it is not true?  That we saw
Goodness as it is, this is the awe
And the abyss which we will not forget,
His story now the sky which holds all thought:
No matter what I think, I think of it!"

"And I will never be what I once was,"
Said one for long as narrow as a knife,
"And we will never be what we once were;
We have died once; this is a second life."
"My mind is spilled in moral chaos," one
Righteous as Job exclaimed; "now infinite
Suspicion of my heart stems what I will
--No matter what I choose, he stares at it!"

'I am as one native in summer places
--Ten weeks' excitement paid for by the rich;
Debauched by that and then all winter bored,"
The sixth declared.  "His peak left us a ditch!"
"He came to make this life more difficult."
The seventh said, "No one will ever fit
His measure's heights; all is inadequate;
No matter what I do, what good is it?"

"He gave forgiveness to us--what a gift!"
The eighth chimed in. But now we know much
Must be forgiven. But if forgiven, what?
The crime that was will be; and the last touch
Revives the memory: what is forgiveness worth?"
The ninth spoke thus: "Who now will ever sit
At ease in Zion at the Easter feast?
No matter what the place, he touches it!"

"And I will always stammer, since he spoke,"
One who had been most eloquent said, stammering.
"I looked too much at the sun; like too much light,
So too much goodness is a boomerang,"
Laughed the eleventh of the troop.  "I must
Try what he tried: I saw the infinite
Who walked the lake and raised the hopeless dead:
No matter what the feat, he first accomplished it!"

So spoke the twelfth, and then the twelve in chorus:
"Unspeakable unnatural goodness is
Risen and shines, and never will ignore us;
He glows forever in all consciousness;
Forgiveness, love and hope possess the pit,
And bring our endless guilt, like shadow's bars;
No matter what we do he stares at it!
What pity then deny? what debt defer?
We know he looks at us like all the stars,
And we shall never be as we once were,
This life will never be as once it was."

This poem appeared in the Kenyon Review in 1944, a year after the unfavorably reviewed "Genesis: Book One," which Schwartz had believed to be his masterwork.  The poem is far from being technically perfect; it is, however, memorable--even haunting and powerful, when one considers the biographical aspects.  Schwartz usually wrote about himself, and this poem is no exception--it is a confessional poem without the "I"--the third person gives the poem as semblance of objectivity, but the poem is as autobiographical as anything that Plath ever wrote.

It should be clear to the reader, but in case it isn't: this poem, despite its Christian symbolism,  has nothing to do with Christianity. Schwartz was a secular Jew and, to my knowledge, was never tempted to turn to religion in his distress.  If he did, he would have very likely have become an observant Jew, since being Jewish was very much part of his identity.  If the poem merely utilizes Christian symbolism, what is its theme?

The poem takes place shortly after the Resurrection.  The poem turns the Easter message upside down: the twelve disciples, once content, are now miserable.  Christ has become the Eye of God, watching and judging their every move.  Only now do they realize: "No one will ever fit/His measure's heights; all is inadequate/No matter what (we) do, what good is it?"

If Christ isn't Christ in the poem, who is he?  He is Shakespeare, he is Eliot, he is Schwartz's ideal image of himself.  Schwartz felt he had to be great; this was the only way he knew to silence inner demons.  It didn't work.  It is no coincidence that this poem came after the failure of his epic, which he thought would rival Eliot's "Wasteland."

One can only imagine how Schwartz felt.  He obviously put tremendous effort into "Genesis."  He expected a glorious  "Ah!" from the world and received a  dismissive "what?" It had to be devastating for one so dependent on critical praise.

Shakespeare is great.  Schwartz isn't Shakespeare.  Therefore, Schwartz is an utter failure.  This marks another return to the outburst in his first short story--It would have been better not to have been born.

This poem can be viewed as the beginning of Schwartz's severe mental illness.  The Eye of God is here a very paranoid image; there is no escape from the gaze who watches and condemns every move he makes.  Schwartz's tragic illness is what gives this poem its power.  It is a classic poem of paranoia, just as Plath's "I Am Vertical" is a classic poem of depression.  Both poems elicit--or should elicit--great compassion in the reader for both (self?)- tortured poets. 

Villa once told me that it is the cumulative effect of Whitman's poetry that made it so great, not every line,  This is very true of this poem as well.  Schwartz often wrote long, sometimes very long poems.  He was almost always unable to sustain artistry throughout an entire poem; technical mastery is attained in lines scattered throughout a much weaker whole.  In this poem, for instance, the serious Greek chorus-type ending loses some of its effect when one recalls an earlier line, "...The eighth chimed in."  Can you imagine Aeschylus ever having written a Greek equivalent of "Then Orestes chimed in?"

Sometimes a bad line is especially revelatory of what a poet really feels or believes.  (A poet should never forget Dickinson's line: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant."  Sometimes, however, they do.) We have such an example of unslanted truth in this poem: "My mind is spilled in moral chaos"--undoubtedly a heart-felt self-assessment, part of Schwartz's ongoing, increasingly desperate monologue.

About fifteen years later, Schwartz was convinced that the Pope was plotting against him.  The early signs of his paranoia are clearly evident in this poem.  If one has some understanding of the devastation that mental illness often causes, or has witnessed a mind succumbing to paranoia, this poem is especially unforgettable.  Without this knowledge, the poem is weirdly beautiful; with it it is much more poignant, powerful, even haunting. 

Despite its defects, this is a great poem, a great poem with a warning.  A good life necessitates that everything in this upside-down poem be turned around again.  What is life without joy and love?  Schwartz's tragic life is an answer to that question.  

Nietzsche and Nuns

Admirers of Nietzsche and admirers of nuns--broadly speaking, atheists and believers--assert very different things.  Even if they both speak English, they speak opposing, often mutually incomprehensible languages.  Depending on one's stance, one usually dismisses one side with scorn.  But it is best to go deeper: once the words of one side and the words of the other are translated into the common speech of humanity, similarities often arise which are, each in its own way, helpful and wise.  That is the subject of this essay  We will first discuss a saying common to the religious, followed by one common to secularists.  We will conclude with an adumbration of similarities.

1. God won't send you more than you can handle

One of the Christian bromides that has the opposite effect  on secularists--that is, it tends to wake them up and make them angry--is the saying that "God never gives you more than you can handle."  All of my friends and acquaintances who went to Catholic school--I'm not Catholic--attest that nuns, either lovingly or sternly, frequently told students in trouble that God will surely withhold the last straw that would break a burdened back. After all, God is omniscient and omnipotent and loves little Winston and Sally just the way they are.  When God wishes to test us, he only sends just enough fire to purify the soul; he'd never send calamities which could destroy the inner pearl, safe  within the vest of faith. If you believe as dogma that God has the whole world in his hands, there must be a reason when the gentle hand manifests itself more like  an implacable vice.

Not only secularists, but discriminating religious people as well bristle at this piety.  The Internet contains many arguments against God's love and its purported (nun)sequitor: What about children afflicted with cancer?  What about Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times, under the program of "enhanced interrogation," until he became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth?"  Even worse--What about the Jordanian pilot burned alive by ISIS?  And worst of all: the Holocaust.  If a fly on a cattle-car wall told someone on the way to Auschwitz that God would't send him more than he could handle, one would hope that someone in the car still had the strength to swat it.

The adage is absurd and non-biblical, some evangelicals argue.  They invariably quote 1 Corinthians in this regard: No temptation has seized you that isn't common for people.  But God is faithful.  He won't allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities.  Instead, God will also supply a way out so you will be able to endure it. The switch from trouble from without to trouble from within, over which one (supposedly) has more control, is an improvement, but only a slight one.  Paul here sounds like one of Job's busybody friends who simply doesn't get it.  If we follow Paul's argument, if we give into temptation from time to time, which we all do, it's always completely our fault.  If one falls down the rabbit hole and eats only the wafer labeled  mea culpa, one shrinks into unwonderland as a  hapless, helpless guilt-ridden dwarf. God gives us more than we can handle for a reason, these same evangelicals argue.  He does this so that we give up on ourselves and turn ourselves over to the mercy of Christ.  This might be an example of Grade A medieval reasoning, but, logically speaking, it deserves a resounding F. 

Yet are we to judge every (nun)sequitor as nonsense?  Not so fast.  Even these cons are cons that have pros.  Before we mention the positive side; before we turn the notorious adage into a noteworthy one, we will first  discuss a saying of Nietzsche, which has become almost as annoying to the religious as the (nun)sequitor is to their neighbors, the"secular humanists."

2. What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger

I recently read an article by a conservative Catholic political commentator, in which he excoriates this above-quoted saying of Nietzsche.  He could well have criticized this adage with the same words that a (once famous) contemporary critic said about the odes of John Keats, "Imperturbable driveling idiocy." His opposition reminds me of the philosophy  of Alcoholics Anonymous, namely, that it is hubris for a human being, drunk on his own sins and inanities, to imagine, having inevitably fallen into a ditch, that he can extricate himself from his selfdug pit without the helping hand of a Higher Power. No comment.

As a pithy saying with universal applicability, one can refute Nietzsche's maxim as easily as one can dismiss the (nun)sequitor.  It made me think of a young man I saw in a nursing home, while visiting an elderly friend.  He had been in a car accident and sustained serious brain damage. He was now a three year old in an adult body; pleasant, clingy and  and always asking for food, he had, once again, become a toddler.  What almost killed him certainly didn't make him stronger.  I can hear your objection: Nietzsche was referring to inner development, not to the overcoming of physical injury.  There are objections, however,  here as well.  Depression can admittedly make one stronger once it is overcome; it also can kill.  I leave it to the reader to think of other examples of the more usual outcome: what almost kills you makes you weaker.

We are, however, being unfair to Nietzsche, once the context of the quote is evident.  It comes from a hundred-page work of his entitled, "Götzendämmerung" (Twilight of the Idols) a wonderful wordplay on Götterdämmerung, the famous opera by Wagner, whom Nietzsche considered to be an idol in the pejorative sense of that word.  In the introduction, Nietzsche states his favorite motto: Increscunt animi, virescit  volnere  virtus, which I freely translate as follows: wisdom grows via wounds. He tells us that his intent is to smash all idols, even those considered to be sacred.  He is willing to accept the painful consequences of his work: isolation, misunderstanding, scorn.  This philosopher-iconoclast declares in the text that this work of his is nothing short of a declaration of war, a full-scale assault on ignorance.

The adage under discussion soon follows.  The text begins with a collection of forty-four terse sayings under the title: Sayings and Arrows.  The "Whatever doesn't kill me" assertion is number eight on the list.  Number 11 is crucial, however, to our understanding of what Nietzsche meant.  This is my translation: "Can a donkey be tragic?  That one is being destroyed under a burden that can neither be borne nor discarded...The case of the philosopher."  This is how Nietzsche saw himself.  He left us with a very impressive body of work; his life, however, was anything but easy.

The eighth adage is almost never quoted in its entirety.  Again, my translation: "From Life's school of war--what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger."  It reminds me of something I read long ago.  A very strict American Indian tribe trained potential warriors with a grueling task.  They had to fill their mouths with water and then proceed on a marathon of arduous physical activity which included running for miles over difficult terrain.  Once a brave completed this Herculean task, he had to spit out the water before an established warrior who acted as a judge.  If a brave had swallowed the water during the course, he failed.  The few that succeeded could now say of themselves; It almost killed me.  And then, with triumph, he could proclaim: it also made me stronger.  I am now a warrior. Once one translates this brave into a brave spiritual warrior, the sense of Nietzsche's adage becomes clear.

Nietzsche's dictum was not meant for universal application, which is the way it is most often used now.  However, the common usage has its place.  It conveys messages such as "Make the best of it,"  "Your'e going to you get through this", or "There is light at the end of the tunnel".  Rather humdrum expressions, but, if spoken with sincerity, not bad advice.

Time now to discuss the benefits and similarities of both stances, Nietzsche's and the nun's, something that probably would have made each furious for different reasons.  Nevertheless.

3. Conclusion

Both sayings are attempts to find solace despite adversity.  What the nun is trying to say is some version of "You're going to be able to get through this with God's help,"  What Nietzsche wrote is a version of this: Your path is indeed difficult, yet if you keep going on, you will be better for it."  Quite similar advice. 

Overuse of common adages turn them into clichés, no doubt about that.  But what exactly is a cliché?  My definition of this word is the following: a truth spoken by someone who doesn't practice it.  If either saying is spoken to someone suffering without much thought, or worse, with insincerity, either adage can be like throwing salt on a wound.  If the nun, however,  says hers with empathy, especially when combined with sincere willingness to help, the adage can indeed provide solace. Likewise with Nietzsche's statement.

Perhaps it would be better to avoid clichés altogether, and, after a period of empathetic silence, while holding the person's hand and/or giving that person a hug, to offer help.

The purpose of this essay, however, is to demonstrate that while  atheists and religious persons speak different languages, they are both human, and, with a little interpretation, sometimes what they say are rays of light from the same bright center.

Both sayings have a common thread: difficult times can anneal, suffering can make you better.  The ancients knew this well, as the following quote from Aeschylus's play, Agamemnon, written two and a half millennia ago, attests:

Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law--
Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favors come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones--
Such grace is harsh and violent.

Yes, getting crushed by adversity can turn the mind into a diamond.  Yet as anyone who has had a near-death experience knows, there can be light at the end of the tunnel.  Is this a cliché?  Yes; it is also (in most cases) true. 

Letters Home

                                                               Letters Home
                                                  Letters Written by a
                                                  Young Jewish-Austrian
                                                  Musician Killed in World War 1
                                                  Translated from the German
                                                  by Thomas Dorsett
                                                  Kavitha Press, Baltimore 2015                                                           50 pages   $10.00                                                    

This is what I wrote on the back cover of the book: "The letters reveal a man who, despite his many successes, remained down-to-earth and without a hint of snobbery.  After working on this project, I feel that I now have a friend who lived over a century ago; I am pleased to have that privilege."

Also on the back cover is the assessment of Dr. Ray Sprenkle, a composer and professor of musicology at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute: "This collection of letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general.  Walter Schwarz comes across as a splendid product of European culture prior to the Great War.  The translation is very good, and Dorsett's commentary provides excellent background information."

The back cover also includes the view of Dr. Armin Mruck, Professor Emeritus at Towson University: "The letters bring to life this very talented musician, his family, and the social and political milieu of Central Europe at that time.  It is well worth reading."

Walter Schwarz (1886-1914) comes across in these letters as an extraordinary human being, a gifted, successful musician, well liked by people from all classes. His death at twenty-seven during the battle of Grodek,  a few months after he received the post of first conductor at a major orchestra, is emblematic of the twentieth century carnage that began with the Great War.

Background

How did I get to translate the letters?  Walter was the oldest of ten children; after one of his sisters, Ida, died in a Jewish home for the aged, her son, Hans Heimer, came into possession of the letters as part of his inheritance.  She had never mentioned them to him or to anybody else during her lifetime. Hans and I wrote several articles for an English magazine, and eventually began to correspond with each other.  When he sent me a copy of the letters, I immediately realized their worth not only as a historic document but also as a portrait of a very winsome personality.

Walter knew how to put his life in order; I confess that I am rather disorganized.  The letters languished in my computer for a decade; now, a century after Word War I, I rediscovered them.  I always knew they had to appear in print.  If not now, when?

Walter Schwarz (1886-1914)

Walter Schwarz was the oldest of ten children.  His father, Viktor Schwarz, was a successful businessman; he eventually became the senior director of the largest department store in Innsbruck, Austria.  The family was thus upper middle-class. Walter's mother, Rosa, the "Mama," was a musically gifted woman and a dedicated mother to all of her children.  I suspect she was especially close to Walter; most of the letters were addressed to her.  Viktor died in 1909, when Walter was only 23.  Upon his father's death, Walter assumed a fatherly role for his siblings--mostly from afar by means of letters, since Walter was already a professional musician at this time, engaged as an assistant conductor at the municipal theater of Bonn, Germany.

Rosa was, I assume, a good amateur musician, but nothing more than that. Besides her, no one seemed to have musical talent in the family.  (The piano, however, had a central role in the Schwarz family. In those days, there were few bourgeois homes without a piano, just as there are virtually no homes without an electronic entertainment system today.) Walter took to the piano, and, during high school, practiced as much as he could.  He was soon able to play entire scores of operas; he loved Wagner, and would often entertain the family by playing a opera score on the piano, pausing here and there to explain the plot.

His father, as one might suspect, wanted him to be trained for the family business; Walter received a diploma from a business college in 1905.  He soon realized, however, that music was his true vocation.  He attended the Academy of Music in Munich; he must have done very well there, for upon graduation he found no difficulty in finding employment.  He started as a choir coach for the municipal  theater of Stuttgart, then at Karlsruhe.  (A municipal theater in Germany, called a Stadttheater, is where operas are performed.)  His career continued to advance.  He became a conductor at Düsseldorf and then at Bonn.  He mentions that the director beamed with joy after reading the reviews of one of his performances.  He also had a reputation as an accompanist; he, from time to time, accompanied first-rate singers during concerts in Berlin and elsewhere.

A fateful encounter occurred in 1905 during military training.  A soldier called him a "Jewish swine,"  after which Walter struck him. This incident resulted in a court marshal; Walter was demoted to  private without any prospect of advancement. That anti-Semitism was involved here is not to be doubted.  As a result of the court marshal, he entered World War 1, despite his great aversion to the military, as a private. although his younger brothers were already officers.  He died a few days after the war began during the horrible carnage of the Battle of Grodek.

A few months before his death, Walter secured a major position as first conductor at Bern, Switzerland.   Before he was able to fully assume that coveted role, he was dead.

The Letters

The book contains twenty-one letters, written from 1909 until 1914. I have annotated them all, explaining many of Walter's references to contemporary authors and to the music he performed.

What a winsome personality comes across in the letters!  A gifted musician, successful at an early age; independent and savvy in career development; loving, dedicated to his family; responsible; literary, well-read; confident, a born leader, able to adjust to his new social situation without any hesitation; gregarious, down=to-earth without a trace of snobbery-and yes, pedantic at times, and, artistically speaking, certainly not avant garde, Walter Schwarz deserves to be remembered, no doubt about that.

The letters, addressed mostly to his mother and sometimes to his siblings, were never meant to be read by anyone outside the family. They thus provide an important, intimate portrait of life in a well-to-do Jewish family in Austria (then Austria-Hungary) before the Great War.  There is also a disadvantage.  A large part of the letters deals with rather mundane issues of family life--Walter assumed the role of ersatz-father at age 23, when his father, Viktor Schwarz, died.  Walter, however, took care to write well, and even when he's exhorting a sibling to do better--sometimes sternly, but always lovingly--the letters are historically important. What did many families do at a time when there was no TV, mobile phones or computers?  (There is no evidence that the Schwarz family owned a car or a telephone.)  What did they do?  They read.  They conversed.  They wrote letters.  They made music.  They spent a good deal of time outdoors.  Few would like to return to those times, but in our age when technology is often used in a very unbalanced way, the letters reveal how much has been lost.  

Walter was the genius of the family.  This combined with the fact that his humility prevented him from boasting about his career even to his family limited the amount of discussion of his musical career in the letters.  We would have liked more details about his musical life, no doubt about that.  But many references to his career are present, such as this excerpt from letter 14, dated  March 13, 1910:

I turn to you now, full of joy and gratitude, after the most beautiful evening of my activity here.  The difficult work proceeded almost effortlessly.  All the many days and night that I dedicated to rehearsing Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio...all my efforts were amply rewarded....Nothing of this, however, can be compared to seeing my ability to conduct for the first time.  The orchestra is an infinitely more beautiful and colorful instrument than the one I've been used to till now, the piano.  To subordinate by my interpretation all the idiosyncrasies and views of the players, and yet to enable the musicians to forget that they are being led--this is my artistic ideal as a conductor.  What I achieved at the first performance you can ascertain from the reviews, which the director, beaming with joy, showed to me today.  The chorus that I directed was also quite proud.

Walter wasn't even twenty-four at the time!

Although we would have liked more, there are many such gems in the letters.  I especially like the recounting of Walter and a professor of music sight-reading a difficult piece by Schubert for piano, four hands, to the delight of the guests at a dinner party.

The letters contain important historical references and glimpses into how life was then as well.  With irony, he comments on an anti-Semitic boycott of the family store in a letter from 1909:

I am pleased to hear that those that oppose our business support us so well...It seems that these people are quite upright, because they treat us justly; perhaps they are not to blame that they have this spleen, since they have come into the world to be known as anti-Semites. They have to be something, since in Austria one isn't worth much unless one belongs to a party.

Prophetic words!  This appears to have been an isolated incident. Very important to note, however, is what the letters lack: any sense of political involvement.  Even as late as February 1914, the month of the last letter, Walter apparently was completely unaware of the gathering political storm that would soon sweep him from the earth. This lack of political engagement was typical of many educated persons of that time. 

The sections quoted here are only a small sample of the many interesting passages contained in this book.  Letters Home provides a fascinating portrait of a talented man thriving in the halcyon days of ante bellum Europe, immediately before its destruction in the Great War; they are a treasure.  As Dr.  Ray Sprenkle said, "These letters should interest not only musicians and historians, but readers in general."  Of this I have no doubt.

I will never forget Walter Schwarz.  He has become one of my best friends, even though he died more than a century ago.  I have no doubt that the world would have heard a lot more from Walter Schwarz if his life hadn't been cut short by a senseless war.  These letters are therefore also a warning. Walter's life was a blessing; his death was a crime. How many Walters are still being killed? 


The book is available for ten dollars postpaid.  Please let me know in the comment section if you're interested.

Help Self, Help Others--A Reinterpretation of Leviticus 19:18

Part l  Science and Morality

A psychologist once told me that "psychology is everything."  I suspect the main reason for her saying this was to refute supernatural beliefs, specifically those of fundamentalist religions. I am in agreement;  as I have made clear in previous blogs, I am convinced  that no educated, twenty-first century mind can accept as fact any religious dogma, such as the belief that a man named Jesus literally rose from the dead or that a god that exists beyond human consciousness intervenes in history.  Wishful thinking is no substitute for evidence.  The psychologist, however, was, I am convinced,  implying something in addition.  She was using the word "psychology" to denote not only the scientific investigation of the human psyche, but as a synecdoche for science in the broadest sense of that word.  In other words, what she really was saying is "science is everything."  Since morality is definitely something, she implied that a scientific basis for morality is possible--in fact, science provides the sole possibility for determining the validity of moral norms.  This is a widespread belief, one that has been gaining traction.  But is this a fact?  The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that this is an unprovable assumption.  We all do need a vibrant sense of morality to live meaningful and useful lives; the content of morality, however, has, at best,  only a tangential relation to science.

The Dual System for Moral Decision Making--Can Morality be Reduced to Neuroscience?

In 2001, neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen discovered that moral decision making apparently involves two areas of the brain.  Functional MRIs, (fMRIs,) of the brain revealed that, when subjects were asked to work out a moral dilemma, the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex lit up very quickly.  This demonstrated two responses.  The first was a fast and presumably intuitive response; the second response was slower and involved areas of the brain involved with cognitive processing.  The first response was thought to have its evolutionary basis in the need for quick decision making in the face of peril.  Since little deliberation is involved, Cohen thought that this response is not to be trusted.  The second response, the slow and analytic response, was believed to be the true source of morality.  The graduate student involved with this project, Jonathan Greene, asserted that abstract reasoning is more or less impersonal and that personal factors are basically irrelevant when considering the second response.   This dual-theory of morality has gained widespread acceptance.  The second process supposedly  reveals a biological basis for abstract moral concepts, such as universal justice.  This, I am convinced, is untrue.  Personal factors are always present--One can use analysis to come up with a good plan to act according to a particular value, but that value must be assumed first.  For instance, if one's value system asserts that fulfilling personal desires is all that really matters, that person is going to use his analytical abilities in a very different way from a person who asserts that the common good is of primary importance.  A good example of demonstrating that morality does not have a neurologic basis is an episode in early American history.  The European settlers were convinced that "manifest destiny" meant that it was morally justifiable to displace native populations in order to achieve control over the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.  Rational analysis--today--exposes the dubious assertions underlying the carrying out of that ethnic cleansing--namely, that Europeans were superior and that manifest destiny was God's will--in this case, yesterday's rational analyses had very different assumptions from those of today.  It is indeed a fact: science can never demonstrate that even genocide is wrong.  If some scientists believe that science and ethnic cleansing are incompatible, it is due to moral axioms assumed at the very beginning, and not due to conclusions based on science.

A less strong scientific theory for the basis of morality has been proposed by evolutionary biologists, specifically, kin selection.  Some animals--soldier bees for instance--will sacrifice their own lives for the sake of the group.  But is this really altruism?  Honeybees give a good indication that this supposed altruism is merely the best way for  a worker ant to assure that its genes survive, albeit in their kin.  Due to their unique genetic make-up, workers are more genetically related to their sisters than they would be to their own children!  So it makes sense--in a gene-based selfish way, for these ants to sacrifice themselves when necessary for the sake of their sisters.  Kin selection is, certainly, a type of cooperation.  Unconscious altruism is, however, a contradiction in terms. The statement that cooperation is in our genes is, therefore, only partially, and thus only weakly, true.

Positive Psychology and the American Psychological Association

                             Martin Seligman

Martin Seligman invented Positive Psychology in 1998.  It is based on the dual origin theory of morality already discussed.  He believes  that depression is a state of "learned helplessness," a negative intuitive response to inner turmoil.  This could be overcome by supporting the analytic areas of the brain.  With the help of cognitive therapy, one can learn, well, to accentuate the positive and reduce, if not eliminate, the negative.  One of his main reasons for advocating this technique was to help people to stop considering themselves victims.  Like the learned helplessness of a depressed person, blacks, for instance, supposedly suffer from the learned helplessness of defeatism.  It is clear to me, however, that the belief that positive psychology can eliminate defeatism among the poor without any consideration of what brought about and is still causing that defeatism, rests on a very dubious moral assumption. Individual responsibility is emphasized; legislation aimed at helping those in need is not.  It is apparent that Seligman's view is basically a conservative view; this does not mean that it is wrong.   It does mean, however, that it is a moral view and as such is not based on science.

This is clear from the writing of a prominent member of the Positive Psychology school, Jonathan Haidt.  As Tamsin Shaw points out in an excellent article in the February 25, 2016 edition of The  New York Review of Books, "The Psychologists Take Power," Haidt gives a very biased prescription to advance much-needed  political cooperation in the United States.  He asserts that there are six essential pairs of morality: care vs. harm, fairness vs. cheating, loyalty vs. betrayal, authority vs. subversion, sanctity vs degradation and liberty vs. oppression.  He asserts that progressives, who are basically interested in care for those in need, have a narrow view, while conservatives, who are interested in all six moral virtues, have a wider moral perspective.  Political harmony can be reached if the liberals learn to appreciate the more broad-based perspective of conservatives.  Contrary to what Haidt might think, his is not an objective, science-based view of a biological imperative advocating increased cooperation;  his conclusions are based on conservative moral assumptions which came before, and thus only seemingly substantiate, his analysis.

    Bruce Jessen (l), James Mitchell, Psychologists and Torturers 

Were some members of The American Psychology Association, which actively supported Positive Psychology and the promotion of moral behavior, immune to corruption?  Tamsin Shaw's article provides a convincing summary of the American Psychological Association's capitulation--for money, what else?-- to the demands of the CIA and the DOD.  Seligman's learned helplessness could be induced, the military was told.  "Enhanced interrogation techniques," that is, torture, can induce a state in which the victim is no longer capable of any kind of resistance.  It was soon found out, however,  that torture didn't provide any useful information.  The tortured person eventually said what the torturer wanted him to say.  The A.P.A., after the 9/11 attacks, changed its guidelines and gave the green light to involvement with the CIA and DOD.  The association received millions of dollars; two notorious psychologist members, Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell were involved with torturing detainee--for which they apparently received 81 million dollars from the United States government!  One hapless victim who had nothing to confess, was waterboarded 83 times, in addition to other severe tortures such as being locked in a box full of insects, sexual humiliations, etc.  His left eye was destroyed during one of these torture sessions.  The Bush administration was told that further torture was of no avail; they were ordered to proceed until they got what they wanted.  The victim, Abu Zubaydah, eventually confessed to "knowledge" of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.  This was, of course, a false confession, but just what the Bush regime wanted to help justify its plans for an imminent invasion of Iraq.

The A.P.A. the guardian of the knowledge that a neurology-based system of morality had (supposedly) been found, failed to practice what it preached.  Psychology obviously isn't everything.  It can not be considered to be the source of morality; its norms are subject to manipulation and corruption.  

If not science, however, what is the source of morality?

The Golden Rule

                                    Tamsin Shaw 


The article by Tamsin Shaw. after coming to the conclusion that science is not the source of morality, concludes as follows:

No psychologist has yet developed a method that can be substituted for moral reflection and reasoning, for employing our own institutions and principles, weighing them against one another and judging as best we can.  This is necessary labor for all of us.  We cannot delegate it to higher authorities or replace it with handbooks.  Humanly created suffering will continue to demand of us not simply new "technologies of behavior" but genuine moral understanding.  We will certainly not find it in the recent books claiming the superior wisdom of psychology.

I completely agree with Shaw's conclusion; however, it does not go far enough.  What criterion or criteria are we to use to guide us to the best moral judgment in any particular situation?  We have determined that abstract reasoning is not disinterested; it can be abused by conscious or unconscious desires that can be quite immoral.  (In fact, everyone making a moral decision needs to acknowledge that he or she can be misguided.  This is why the First Amendment is of vital importance.  One needs to make a decision and stand by it; one must realize however, that other views need to be heard as well.  Encountering others' opinions might reveal hidden biases of one's own. We must always admit the possibility that we can be wrong.   Self-righteousness is never good; listening to and weighing the opinions of others is an essential virtue in a vibrant democracy.)

We need a criterion to guide us in the right direction and by which we are to judge our decisions and the decisions of others.  The Golden Rule, that is, doing unto others what you would like them to do unto you, is one such criterion.  Since our moral touchstone cannot be derived from science, it must be accepted as an axiom.  I think Shaw might have been hesitant to assert this, since the Golden Rule and its cognate, Love your Neighbor as Yourself, are most often associated with religious faith, with the assumption the source of morality comes from a god outside nature.  Such belief is not necessary.  The Golden Rule applies to the religious and the secular alike.  Even the "love your neighbor" principle can be viewed as a secular criterion for moral judgment.

Every healthy human has access to an inner core that can provide one with a moral compass.  There is nothing wrong with deriving this moral guide from intuition alone.  We intuit many of the truths we live by. Science, for instance, teaches us that we are  material beings.  Insight, however, does not permit us from viewing ourselves and our neighbors as mere concatenations of atoms. Reflection on what direction our moral compass should point to always leads in a healthy mind to some form of the Golden Rule.


Part ll  Psychologists Respond

As we have discussed, research has determined, on the basis of functional MRIs,  (fMRIs,) that contemplation of a moral issue elicits a dual response in the brain.  The first, centered in the amygdala, is an immediate "gut" reaction, which is not to be trusted.  The second reaction, centered in the prefrontal cortex, involves abstract reasoning. and is considered to be a more reliable guide.  This, as we have asserted, is nonsense.  If one is convinced, for instance, that X is evil, one's abstract reasoning will readily find justification for this assertion, even though a thinker with a different belief system might be absolutely convinced that X is as innocent and intrinsically good as A.  What determines one's response is adherence to a particular belief system--an axiom such as a form of the Golden Rule-- which cannot be derived from science; it must be assumed.

Part 1 was written partially as a basic confirmation of Tasmin Shaw's article, The Psychologists Take Power, which appeared  in the February 25, 2016 edition of The New York Review of Books.   In that article, Shaw discussed five books by prominent psychologists, who at least seem to assert that experts know better.  They don't.  Shaw informs us that at least some  members of the American Psychological Association were rather easily seduced by the CIA  to assist in the torture of detainees in the wake of 9/11.  (Most of that assistance dealt with expert advice regarding how to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" effectively.  Only a few were involved in actually torturing detainees.  Money, of course, was involved, a lot of it.)  Supported by centuries of evidence, the assertion  that money and power often, quite often, corrupt experts and non-experts alike is undeniable.  If science, specifically, if psychological expertise, can't be relied on, what can?  We asserted in the first article that a form of the Golden Rule, specifically the "commandment" that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, can be relied on to judge the behavior of all human beings, whether they graduated from Harvard or not.   In this section, we will analyze the response of some of the authors Shaw criticized, which appeared, along with Shaw's comments, in the April 7, 2016 edition of The New York Review of Books, Moral Psychology: An Exchange.   

The authors of the response, Pinker and Haidt, are angry.  They state, "Shaw asserts that psychological and biological facts are 'morally irrelevant' and 'can tell us nothing' about moral propositions. She insinuates that psychologists lack 'a reliable moral compass' that would equip them to oppose torture."  They take this fact to be an attack against the discipline of psychology, and, especially, against adherents of Positive Psychology, developed by Martin Seligman, a system which has strongly influenced them. Feeling insulted and besmirched by Shaw's article, they respond with ad hominem insults of their own: "And she prosecutes her case by citation-free attribution, spurious dichotomies, and standards of guilt by association that make Joseph McCarthy look like Sherlock Holmes."

Ouch.

It turns out, however, that they are in basic agreement with Shaw's assertion, namely, that the discipline of psychology cannot be the source of morality. Consulting one of their colleagues, Peter Bloom, they quote him as follows: "'The fact that one cannot derive morality from psychological research is so screamingly obvious that I never thought to explicitly write it down.'"  Fair enough.  The authors, however, don't leave it at that.  They insist that, at the very least, psychological research can help invalidate a faulty moral assertion:  "Recent discoveries in moral psychology offer another point of contact.  Many ethical convictions are underpinned by strongly felt intuitions that some action is inherently good or bad. Sometimes those intuitions can be justified by philosophical reflection and analysis.  But sometimes they can be debunked and shown to be indefensible gut reactions, without moral warrant."  (That is, with help from fMRIs.) This is patently false.  Psychological research cannot determine whether a gut reaction is morally defensible or not; you need a moral philosophy to do that.  Sometimes, like the innate intuitive gut reaction against incest, the more reflexive moral response seems justified indeed.  One cannot imply, as the authors obviously do, that fMRIs can help determine the validity of a moral response.  As the authors have stated, it is "screamingly obvious" that psychology cannot produce a moral compass, and without one, morally speaking, humans don't know where they are and are thus unable to judge the validity of a specific fMRI response.

The authors, armed with the belief that psychological research can help determine whether a moral view is defensible or not, go even farther astray.  They provide historical examples of positions that psychology can help debunk by determining that they are "indefensible gut reactions."  These examples include "...outrage over heresy, blasphemy, and lèse-majesté, revulsion against homosexuality and racial mixing, callousness toward slaves and animals and indifference or hatred toward foreigners."

Are these merely gut reactions? Without a moral stance, none of these prejudices can be debunked. A simple thought experiment reveals the absurdity of the authors' claim.  If Dr. Pinker had been born in the nineteenth century, the analytical part of his brain would most likely be aglow with the production of many reasons why racial mixing is morally wrong.  If Dr. Haidt had been born in the eighteenth century, his prefrontal lobes would almost certainly have come to the conclusion that homosexuality is a crime against nature--perhaps even punishable by death.  (One can imagine, with horror, what the analytical part of their brains would have come up with if they had been alive when Leviticus was written, which among other things, prescribes the death penalty for violating Sabbath rules.)

The analytical part of the brain can be, as history has so readily proven, a "factory of idols," which Calvin correctly asserted while conveniently forgetting that his own brain was mass-producing them as well.

A good deal of the animus against Shaw contained in Haidt's and Pinker's response is the assumption that Shaw was singling out psychologists as being particularly prone to corruption.  It is indeed undeniable that some members of the A.P.A. were paid enormous sums by the CIA ($81,000,000.00 to be exact) to develop and participate in a program, informed by psychological research, of "enhanced interrogation techniques," the Bush regime's euphemism for torture.  Shaw makes a good case that Martin Seligman, a former president of the  A.P.A. whose system of Positive Psychology was widely influential, was not innocent regarding this collusion.  If some psychologists consider themselves moral experts and thus less easily corrupted by money and power, criticism, of course, is very much warranted.  Money and power, however, have a high potential to corrupt us all, rich and poor, the educated and the under-educated alike.  That it often takes a larger amount to bribe a professional than it takes to bribe a worker does not relativize the wrongdoings of either class.  Even those who are supposed to know better frequently don't.  Priests who are sexual predators; cardinals who protect them; members of the clergy who launder money for the Vatican-- these and others are notorious examples of those who preach the Golden Rule and flout it in practice.  It is safe to say that psychologists are no worse and no better than the rest of us.

If morality cannot be derived from science, are human beings, who need moral principles in order to live well, lost in the wilderness without a compass?  I think not.  Pinker and Haidt imply--falsely, I believe--that psychology is superior to philosophy since the former prefers reality over imagination.  Shaw correctly counters that "...imagination is the capacity that allows us to take responsibility, insofar as it is ever possible, for the ends for which our work will be used."  This is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  Shaw, as a scholar of Nietzschean philosophy, knows that human beings are free to devise moral principles to live by.  Nietzsche believed that the morality of Christianity was the morality of slaves; their 'superiors' could and should follow their will to power without being bound to a form of the Golden Rule.  This may be true, but the history of the last century readily illustrates where this truth can lead.

I assert that that some form of the Golden Rule must be assumed as an axiom--an axiom, of course, by definition cannot be proved. More than assumed, the validity of "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself" can be intuited.  Two roads lead to the highest morality, one paved with the silver of wisdom, the other paved the gold of love.  As Aristotle taught in his Nicomachean Ethics, all one needs to do is to follow the examples of those who are intuitively and widely acknowledged to moral leaders.  (Al-Ghazali, the great Sufi leader of eleventh century Baghdad, famously put this principle into action.)

No, one can't prove that, say, Leviticus 19:18, is the best moral guide.  Similarly, as deconstructionists would have it, one can't prove that Shakespeare is superior to Alice Walker or that Bach is superior to Burt Bacharach.  Intuition and experience, however, can convince us that some moral compasses are indeed better guides than others.


Part lll  Problems with Leviticus 19:18

We have determined that science cannot provide us with a moral compass.  Humankind is the source of morality.  We are free to devise the moral code we live by; the best of these systems builds on cooperation, which is, at least to some degree, innate.  Some form of the Golden Rule has been viewed as the best guide we have. However, we are free to disregard it, just as one can override the drive to procreate by a religious meme that requires celibacy under certain conditions. If such a meme is enthusiastically accepted or strictly enjoined, it can be successfully adopted by many, although nature will have her way among those who are conflicted or have less will power.

Who is to judge if one moral system is better than another?  We are, and we must.  I strongly believe that Leviticus 19:18, which commands that we love our neighbors as ourselves, is the best maxim possible.  This commandment is our best guide since, as we shall see, it most readily leads to peace and happiness, not only for the individual, but for one's neighbors as well.  

I am, of course, not alone in this assertion; there is a danger, however: the commandment can and often has become a cliché.  (A great moral axiom becomes a cliché in the mouth of those who praise it with words while flouting it with deeds.)  Written centuries ago, Leviticus 19:18 needs a new interpretation; it is the intent of this series to provide it. 

1. A Brief History of Leviticus

Leviticus is the third book of the Old Testament and the third book of the Torah as well.  It is concerned more with ritual and morality, rather than with belief; God's authority, however explicitly or implicitly, is present on every page.  The book as a whole is not easily dated; the text apparently expanded over time.  Some of the oldest sections are thought to have been written in the late seventh century, BCE; it did not reach it's final form until about 300 BCE.  Chapter 17 through 27 are the so-called "Holiness Code," sections. God wants his people to be holy and outlines the ways in which this can be accomplished. Chapter 19 contains some wise advice, such as one should not steal or cheat. Chapter  20, which deals with punishment of sins, contains a slew of barbaric injunctions, e.g., homosexuals are to be put to death, he who curses his father is to be put to death, in cases of adultery, both the man and woman involved are to be put to death, a spiritual medium must also die, if a man marries a woman and her mother, all must be burnt to death, etc. These primitive punishments have been used as ammunition by atheists, claiming that the Old Testament is rife with barbarity and therefore should be repudiated in toto.  This is an unfair criticism. The texts were written centuries before the scientific method was established; they are a reflection of their times.  In addition, Christianity asserts that Christ established a New Covenant that obviated many of the laws and customs of the Old Testament.  Rabbinical Judaism, which has a tradition of oral Torah as well as the written one, rejected these harsh laws as well.  ("What is the Torah," is a question from the Talmud.  The answer: "It is the interpretation of the Torah.")  Each generation is enjoined to interpret according to the highest moral principles of the time.  (The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who believed that the Constitution, our secular scripture,  should be rigidly followed and not interpreted, would have made a lousy Talmudic rabbi.)
How is one to decide whether a given (im)moral stance is to be superseded?  By Leviticus 19:18!   Whether a view can be burnished and supported by the fire of "Love Thy Neighbor," or whether it goes up in smoke like a paper idol, is the best way we have to judge its validity.  As an example, let us consider the injunction against homosexuality.  Leviticus 19:18 is merely a tribal prejudice if one doesn't include all human beings as the object of one's love.  Yes, love the sinner and hate the sin, but is homosexuality a sin?  It is obvious that gay people are capable of love as much as heterosexuals.  They are, therefore, morally equivalent; if one doesn't extend Lev 19:18 to those who are different from us (however "us" is defined) but are as good as us, one is worshiping an idol.  No one is justified in judging a group the members of which are equally capable of love.  A rabbi once told me that eighty-five percent of his congregation supports gay marriage.  Why?  Because we are enjoined, he told me, to love one's neighbor as oneself.  Lev 19:18 thus becomes the criterion by which we judge any moral position, whether that particular view has the support of tradition or not.

2. Lev 19:18 as a Commandment

In a modern translation, the text of Lev 19:18 is as follows: "You shall neither take revenge nor bear a grudge against members of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the Lord."

It's important to note that commentary needed to improve even this sublime command.  Originally, "your neighbor" meant "your fellow Jew."  The oral Torah, the Talmud, has long since extended this to mean everyone, including the hapless stranger.

I must make clear my position at this point.  I find no evidence for a God that exists beyond human consciousness.  For me, God refers to transcendence within.  The way I see it, the use of the term is not obligatory; sometimes it's best to remain silent.  Supplying a voice to the voiceless is nothing more than ventriloquism.  Having written that, I respect those who literally believe that the commandment is of divine origin--What is most important, however, for the secular and the religious alike, is whether one's actions are in accord with the commandment or not.

I also do not believe that Lev 19:18 works very well as a commandment.  An absent father--and God is certainly silent--who swoops down and tells humans to be good and then disappears, isn't a very good parent.  A human parent who duns Lev. 19:18 into the heads of his children without setting an example of living in accord with it, might as well tell them to be selfish as he is, because that in most cases will be the inevitable result. As Aristotle has written in his Nicomachean Ethics, if you want to do good, follow the example of one who is both wise and loving.  Otherwise, Lev19:18 is reduced to a harmful cliché--which, alas! often is the case.

Lev. 19:18 as a commandment can sometimes be quite harmful,  It can lead to self-righteousness when one is convinced that one obeys the injunction and that others do not.  "Those people disregard the commandment; we obey it.  We are therefore good and they are therefore evil." This view has significantly contributed to and is very much still contributing to many of the problems of society. (I will deal with this in my next essay.)  The commandment can be just as harmful by inducing guilt in people who feel inferior or who are pathologically self-critical.  "I am unable to do what I should; I am therefore no good."  I will give an example of this self-destructive tendency with the analysis of a (once?) prominent poet who suffered from this problem which significantly contributed to his death at an early age.

Lev 19:18, therefore,  doesn't work as a commandment for two reasons: 1. Many educated people today, (I am one of them,) are quite convinced that morality can not be derived from science or from commandments from a God beyond consciousness, since there is absolutely no proof that the latter exists. 2: It can sometimes make things worse.

Lev. 19:18 needs a revision that neither depends on God or on science.  We will provide a new interpretation in Part lV, the last section of this four-part essay.  (The other three, including this one, are already posted.)  The final part will consist of two sections, in continuation of the sections of part lll: 3. Lev. 19:18 as a declarative sentence, and 4. Lev. 19:18,  The Ultimate Win-Win Equation.

Part lV  Leviticus 19:18, The Ultimate Win-Win Equation

This is the final section of a four-part essay dealing with issues of morality.  We have established that humans are free, but not entirely free, to devise their own systems of morality.  We have also suggested that the best moral systems emphasize both love and wisdom, which are universally acknowledged to be essential human virtues. Therefore, some form of the Golden Rule is the best moral maxim.  Our choice is Lev 19:18, "Thous shall love thy neighbor as thyself," a principle by which all actions, collective or individual, can be adequately judged.  In the last section, we have presented a brief history of Lev 19:18, followed by a section which asserts that the commandment need not be viewed as a commandment at all.  We will conclude with Lev 19:18 as a declarative sentence and with Lev 19:18 as the ultimate win-win equation.

3. Lev 19:18 as a Declarative Sentence

There is another way to look at Lev 19:18, without reference to a commanding deity.  If we change the sentence from imperative to declarative, we have: "You love your neighbor as yourself." The command thus becomes a general truth.  It implies no criticism; it simply states a fact. There is much truth to this formulation.  Those who love themselves tend to love others and vice versa.  Although this is quite obvious,  I will provide some examples in order to clear up any misunderstandings from the outset.  First of all, loving oneself has nothing to do with selfishness or vanity.  Vanity and selfishness are (ultimately) self-defeating ways to gain respect and love; those who resort to these self-defeating defenses lack a center--that is, they don't love themselves.  A felicitous combination of environment and genetics results in self-love, the former including a happy childhood, meaningful work, positive relations with friends and family.  Those lucky enough to be in this category love others as inevitably as spring follows winter.

The declarative sentence, as we have stated, is neutral; it simply assesses one's state of mind, no matter if one is loving or not.  Therefore, if you hate yourself, you tend to hate others.  If you love others only a little bit, you don't love yourself much either.  If you are indifferent to others, you are indifferent to yourself.  To the degree that you are selfish is the degree to which you do not love yourself, etc.

Lev 19:18 as a declarative sentence is nothing more than a psychological truth.  But it is a quite useful one, since it not only assesses the degree to which one is living a full life, but also indicates, albeit indirectly, a way to lead a fuller life, no matter what one's initial situation is.  It is time in our discussion to make what's implicit explicit: Lev 19:18 as a win-win equation.

4. Lev 19:18, the Ultimate Win-Win Equation

We will now discuss how Lev 19:18 can become a principle to live by, no matter what one's religious affiliation or lack thereof.  This form of the command is of great practical significance; it can be put to immediate use no matter what one's psychological state (excluding psychoses) and one's station in life are.  Since it is a formulation that must be practiced, there is no way that it can be used by the self-righteous as a means to browbeat alleged wrongdoers.  

Lev 19:18 becomes the ultimate win-win equation with a grammatical transformation that preserves the spirit of the original.  Here it is:

Loving your neighbors = loving yourself

This requires some  explanation.

In Hinduism good behavior is divided into two components. Bhakti (love or selfless devotion) and jnana (wisdom).  Wisdom is the realization that everything is interconnected; love entails dedication to others as well as to oneself. These two aspects reinforce and complement each other: through love we learn that everything is connected; through wisdom we learn love.  Notice that both wisdom and love severely limit egotism.  We do have to give the ego its due--it is a necessary survival tool.  Balanced "egotism" is a necessity. Unbalanced egotism --selfishness, spite, lack of empathy, etc. is, of course, another matter.  Lev 19:18 is also an excellent way to keep the ego in balance. (I have used "jnana", somewhat arbitrarily, to designate the wisdom side, since loving's oneself  necessarily includes perspective and the knowledge that everything is  interconnected.) 

Many sages of India have asserted that bhakti and jnana are, fundamentally, one and the same thing, just as the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces were equivalent at the outset of the big bang.  (Gravity, probably, as well, but this hasn't been demonstrated yet.)  This is why there is an equal sign between the two sides of the equation: Loving your neighbors (bhakti) equals love for yourself (jnana)  One side leads to the other. 


Why is Lev 19:18 a win-win equation?  I will explain.

There are, schematically, four types of persons

1, One who likes himself/herself and likes others.
2. One who dislikes himself/herself and likes others.
3. One who likes himself/herself and dislikes others
4. One who dislikes himself/herself and dislikes others.

These are merely personality types.  I did not use "love" in the above examples because, at a fundamental level, it is impossible to love oneself and to hate others.  (Note: I am using "love" in its deepest meaning.)

Everyone, no matter the age, is at the level of one of these equations.  Let's say, one is in the first category.  Let's imagine that one is rather lukewarm on both sides of the equation.  Let us assign a person, arbitrarily, with a value of one on each side.  We have therefore:

1 (bhakti side) equals 1 (jnana side.)  

This describes rather a disengaged life.  Let's say that this individual wants to improve things, which can be done in many ways.  Let's give an example: the person decides to work several hours a week serving food to the poor.  Let's assign this, arbitrarily once more, with a value of 5.  Now the win-win side of the equation becomes manifest:

The result is not the inequality of one on six side of the equation and one on the other.  Unexpectedly, the five appears on the jnana side as well, and the person becomes the equation 6 (bhakti) equals 6 (jnana.)  There is nothing supernatural about the emergence of the balancing number.  By doing good deeds it is inevitable that one begins to feel good as well.  This is rather obvious; it has also been substantiated by research. Love for others diminishes egotism; the resultant decrease in egotism helps one to feel the interconnection of all things, which is wisdom.

Let us now proceed to the second category, namely a person who dislikes herself and likes others.  This equation is unbalanced.  Let us assign a value of -5 for the dislike, and a value of +1 for the like.  Just as we have seen in the first example, doing good for others will increase the positive side and the negative side as well.  Since one has started with a larger negative number, it will take some serious work and persistence to reach unity, not to mention increasing the numerical value on each side.  It is important to note that one also can work from the RHS (right-hand side) of the equation, the love-yourself side.  One can increase one's score here in many ways: performing meaningful work, learning a new skill, meditating, exercising, etc.  With hard work, let's say 6 is added to the RHS resulting in 7 on the LHS.  Although the equation is still unbalanced, this is not a bad place to be.  With more effort, on either side, the equation becomes more and more balanced. It is recommended to work on both sides of the equation simultaneously, that is, helping others interspersed with helping oneself.

The third category is more difficult.  Let's assume that a person is at -5 (LHS) and at a +1  on the other side (RHS) Since this person feels superior and condescends, he/she will probably be reluctant to do good in the community.  He/she must learn through study, friends, family, contemplation, that he/she is not the center of the universe, but, like everyone and everything else, a part of it.  This will change the equation, say, to +1 LHS with a minus +4 RHS,. Much better!  The individual is now more likely to work on the left side of the equation.

The fourth category is the most difficult of all.  High numbers of dislike on either side indicate severe pathology.  The situation reminds me of something the metaphysical poet George Herbert wrote.  According to his analysis, sin had caused him to fall into a ditch; he believed he was pulled out of it by the hand of God.  Secularizing this, a person might be need to be pulled out by a combination of medical help and support from family and friends.  Some, unfortunately, will remain trapped in the ditch.

One, of course, can always make the situation worse by reducing the numbers through selfish actions.  Whoever you are, however, the win-win equation describes the moral state of your life.  If you don't do anything, the numbers are likely to deteriorate, just as unused muscles become weak.

By the way, Lev 19:18 is not simply a way to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  Kindness to another will almost always raise that person's bhakti and jnana scores.

The Lev 19:18 equation is a psychological law.  We have no choice but to practice it, either by increasing numbers or by decreasing them.  The numerical designations in this essay are arbitrary--What is important to realize is that if you work on one side, the other side increases accordingly.  I'm not saying that the other side increases at exactly the same rate; I am saying, however, that's it's impossible to improve the score on one side without the other side increasing reciprocally.

You want to live a good life?  Now you know the win-win equation that will help you do just that.  Work on your moral math! You are free to choose how to increase your numbers, starting with your present situation.  As you work to improve your score, you will become a better person.  So will everyone else.

Comments welcome!