Author: 658250543

By Ellisif Hannesson

In Middlemarch’s cosmos, thread-like social pressures dominate individuals and their actions. How each character responds to their environment differs, with some individuals motivated by egotistical desires, while others attempt to live virtuously through altruistic behaviour. Notably, George Eliot excels at creating nuanced psychological portraits, making it difficult to label any character as purely villainous. Rosamond Vincy is a complex character whose self-serving and sabotaging actions lead many readers to characterize her as a villain. Yet this characterization is overly simplistic, as it fails to contextualize Rosamond within Middlemarch’s social ecosystem. While Rosamond is ultimately morally accountable for her actions, it is necessary to recognize the constraints of Rosamond’s patriarchal upbringing to fully understand the limited agency that shaped her behaviour. Gender roles are one of the most pervasive pressures in Middlemarch, which remained firmly entrenched in the social fabric of Victorian England. The text serves as a narrative lens for examining gender roles, which were polemically challenged by figures like Mary Wollstonecraft. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft contends that the lack of rational education for women results in their deformation, a cycle sustained and reinforced by the suffocating structures of patriarchy. The uneducated and incompetent woman Wollstonecraft depicts is akin to Rosamond’s education at a finishing school, wherein she learns merely to perform gender roles. In this way, Wollstonecraft offers a framework for analyzing Rosamond’s character in a sympathetic light. Through this lens, Rosamond’s educational background and behaviour elucidate the tragedy of how gender roles deform women and take away their self-knowledge, ultimately making Rosamond more of a victim than a calculated villain.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft critiques the prevailing system of female education in 18th-century society, arguing that it is a mechanism designed to sustain women’s subordination. While male education fostered rational thought, intellectual autonomy, and moral agency, female schooling was misdirected, emphasizing superficial accomplishments—music, drawing, etiquette, and ornamental knowledge—over critical reasoning. Thus, Wollstonecraft argues that the issue is not the lack of education but its distortion; the education women receive actively hinders their ability to develop reason, a faculty inherently part of their nature as rational beings endowed with souls. She further criticizes marriage as a structural mechanism reinforcing female economic and intellectual dependency, reducing them to ornamental roles and ensuring that “[women’s] time [is] sacrificed and their persons often legally prostituted” (41). Alternatively, Wollstonecraft envisions an education where women receive the same rigorous intellectual training as men, emphasizing logic, philosophy, history, and moral reflection. Such an education, she argues, is essential for developing virtue, which cannot be attained through passive instruction but must be shaped through rational inquiry and lived experience. “Knowledge of mankind,” Wollstonecraft asserts, “can be slowly obtained through experience,” and without intellectual cultivation, women are denied the ability to engage in moral reasoning (67). As Wollstonecraft makes clear, “to describe as virtuous anyone whose virtues don’t result from the exercise of his or her own reason is a farce” (14). This critique is exemplified in Middlemarch, where gender and education are central themes and struggles, framed within a lattice of social expectations that shape women’s roles.

This deprivation of adequate education emerges as a central form of oppression for women in Middlemarch. In Victorian England, societal norms imposed strict limitations on women’s access to rational schooling, and Eliot’s narrative vividly captures this restriction. Through the struggles of her central female characters, Eliot underscores the necessity for women to have access to genuine educational opportunities. Dorothea, for instance, is distinguished by her yearning for wisdom. However, Dorothea is unable to pursue this desire through formal education and instead turns to marriage as the only available avenue. Her decision to marry Mr. Casaubon can thus be seen as an attempt to fulfill her intellectual aspirations—though misguided. Had Dorothea had access to formal education, she would not have needed Casaubon to “liberate” her intellectually. Wollstonecraft criticizes this imperative, writing, “I recollect many women who, not led by degrees to proper studies … have indeed been overgrown children” (12). As Wollstonecraft further asserts, “women’s virtue must be comparable with men’s,” arguing that the perceived differences in intellectual ability between men and women do not arise from any inherent deficiency in women’s reasoning but rather from the unequal structure of their education (17). Rosamond exemplifies this critique, as her education—rooted in the performance of gender roles rather than genuine intellectual engagement—reveals how stunting female intellect inevitably undermines moral development, leaving both incomplete.

Rosamond’s formative education depicts the flawed educational model criticized by Wollstonecraft, as it fails to foster introspection or critical thinking, instead prioritizing the performance of gender roles. What distinguishes Rosamond from the other central female characters is that her educational background is explicitly highlighted early in the narrative, clearly contrasting the other women’s, such as Dorothea’s, more implicit or varied educational experiences. In her adolescence, Rosamond was praised as the flower of Mrs. Lemon’s school, where “the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female” (Eliot 103). Rosamond’s education primarily consists of skills such as carriage etiquette, musical proficiency, and refined speech (Eliot 103). However, the practical utility of learning how to exit and enter carriages alone may be questioned in terms of its contribution to individual wisdom. Rosamond’s education fosters a myopic understanding of the world, training her to prioritize superficial charm over intellectual depth, thereby limiting her ability to navigate reality beyond societal expectations. This education mirrors Wollstonecraft’s critique on female education; when discussing men with her mother, Rosamond is told that “[a] woman must learn to put up with these things. You will be married someday” (Eliot 105). This instance illustrates not the moulding of Rosamond as an autonomous, critical-thinking individual, but rather the picture of a docile female whose life is centred around men. In absorbing this depiction of femininity, Rosamond adopts an inauthentic, performative persona that permeates her portrayal in Middlemarch, emphasized by the narrator’s recurring observation that she is “always having an audience in her own consciousness” (156).  Such language explicitly suggests that Rosamond constantly performs for an imagined gaze. Therefore, the contextualization of Rosamond’s education illustrates the general upbringing of women in Victorian England as they learned to perform femininity. 

            As a result of Rosamond’s constructed character, she fails to achieve any self-knowledge and wisdom to guide her in behaving virtuously. The implication of performing gender roles indicates an underlying falsity—Rosamond’s character is not naturally submissive and ornate. Her character feels wildly inauthentic, which is exacerbated by depictions such as: “Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own” (Eliot 119). This evidence reveals why Rosamond is so unique in her struggle with gender roles compared to Mary or Dorothea; her intrinsic disposition is that of a performer. Yet Rosamond’s plight mirrors that of a method actor so consumed by her role that her true self fades, eclipsed entirely by the character she performs. Though Rosamond is hyper-aware of others and their perceptions of her, she was never taught the value of education insofar as it leads to wisdom and virtue. Consequently, Rosamond grapples with adopting this superimposed picture of femininity and dealing with her natural inclinations. Gender roles are depicted as the correct embodiment—seeing as Mrs. Lemmon taught her “all that as demanded in the accomplished female”—and Rosamond considers herself the perfect woman by these standards (Eliot 103). However, Rosamond’s tragedy is the underlying implication of her dissatisfaction. Though Rosamond had been conditioned to believe this was a fulfilling life for a woman, she ultimately ended up unhappy in her marriage by assuming these gender roles. The narrator notes Rosamond’s dissatisfaction: “Rosamond’s discontent in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance” (Eliot 581). Thus, by nature, Rosamond desires to express her will and have power over herself, yet does not possess the ability to truly know herself and cultivate virtue.

The characters’ reception of Rosamond’s actions highlights both her socioeconomic disenfranchisement and the extent to which patriarchal norms have profoundly shaped her. Wollstonecraft understands that knowledge is fundamental to character, and without adequate universal access, women will never meet their potential to be thoughtful, virtuous individuals: “[w]ithout knowledge, there can be no morality! Ignorance is a frail basis for virtue” (43). This reading explains Rosamond’s villainous actions by stressing that she was never given the opportunity to receive an education that nurtures her rational capacities. While it is crucial to recognize Rosamond’s accountability for her actions, it is pertinent to acknowledge the gendered dimensions inherent in her transgressions. Rosamond is undoubtedly responsible for her behaviour; however, her culpability is complicated by her ignorance and an apparent lack of moral grounding.

Rosamond’s actions demonstrate how her limited education shapes her behaviour. Take, for example, what could be considered her most reprehensible act: appealing to Lydgate’s uncle Godwin for financial assistance, a move that directly contravenes Lydgate’s wishes and provokes his intense anger at her subversive and self-serving behaviour. Rosamond’s decision is not merely an act of defiance but a manifestation of her deeply ingrained belief that personal charm and social maneuvering—not integrity, sacrifice, or hard work—are the proper means of securing stability. In doing so, she reduces marriage to a performance, in which material comfort and the avoidance of unpleasant realities take precedence over genuine commitment and shared responsibility. Godwin, too, is upset, yet notably, he addresses the letter back to Lydgate rather than Rosamond and instructs him not to “set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask” (Eliot 520). Although Rosamond’s actions stem from a genuine desire to alleviate Lydgate’s financial burdens to acquire material possessions, this incident underscores the inequitable treatment she endures due to her gender. The dynamic between Godwin, Lydgate, and Rosamond reveals a layered conflict, but the gendered dimension is key: Rosamond’s voice and agency are dismissed precisely because she is a woman, making her intentions invisible and her efforts meaningless. In a society that prizes female submission, the ideal woman possesses neither voice nor agency. While Rosamond may have undermined Lydgate’s prospects for securing a future loan, the adjudication of her actions must be considered in light of her upbringing and circumstances. Therefore, the portrayal of Rosamond as an unalloyed embodiment of cold, calculated villainy is overly simplistic and fails to account for the constellated social and personal factors that shape her behaviour.

Rosamond’s final interaction with Dorothea reinforces the argument that her patriarchal education has fundamentally distorted her character to be self-serving, while emphasizing the transformative potential of a more substantive, less superficial education. Interpreting Rosamond as a product of her upbringing, influenced by her mother’s gossipy demeanour and societal gender norms, elucidates her momentary transcendence in the novel’s conclusion. This episode occurs in the final chapters of Middlemarch when Rosamond and Dorothea have a brief but pivotal interaction that contrasts their differing experiences of womanhood. Dorothea is a woman who achieves virtue by striving for knowledge; despite her endeavours, she still feels “that there was always something better which she might have done if she had only been better and known better” (Eliot 575-576). In this way, even Dorothea is not adequately educated to feel fully virtuous. Rosamond’s previous education had merely taught her how to perform gender roles; therefore, she was missing an education that goes beyond appearances. At this poignant moment between the women, readers receive the first and only authentic picture of Rosamond, as the narrator notes: “Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own—hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect—could find no words, but involuntarily, she put her lips to Dorothea’s forehead” (Eliot 612). The climactic interaction between the women crystallizes the notion that had Rosamond been afforded a genuine education grounded in substantive knowledge rather than superficial accomplishments, she might have had the opportunity to cultivate virtue.

 A critic of Rosamond might counter this claim, suggesting that throughout the novel, she has consistently performed her actions with calculated intention, and this final scene is no exception—the narrator, too, subtly hints at such a reading. However, the previous portrayals of Rosamond’s actions were marked by a sense of performative artifice, suggesting that she is acutely conscious of her own manipulation. In stark contrast, the language in this pivotal scene evokes a sense of novelty and involuntariness, indicating a shift in Rosamond’s behaviour. Rosamond no longer calculates her appearance or outward conformity; rather, she appears to be focused on embodying virtue in a truer sense, learning empathy from Dorothea’s example in a manner that seems to transcend mere mimicry. Even if this moment is fleeting and does not fundamentally alter her character, it highlights the potential for moral growth within Rosamond—something that she has largely been unable to access due to her deformed education. This brief encounter suggests that, despite the limitations of her upbringing, Rosamond has a capacity for virtue, even if it cannot be sustained without a more substantial shift in her intellectual and moral development. While one moment of virtue does not equate to lasting change, the interaction underscores the possibility of empathy and moral transformation. Similarly, it is hardly surprising that Rosamond’s character arc remains stagnant: as Wollstonecraft argues, virtue demands ongoing engagement with knowledge and lived experience, and one brief albeit powerful instance cannot correct her deformities. Thus, while her character arc may not fully transcend her confines, this moment serves to illuminate the latent potential within Rosamond—a potential that her education has long suppressed.

            Though Rosamond may present as villainous, her actions are deeply connected to her upbringing and education as a woman, which prioritized the performance of gender roles over imparting any substantive knowledge beyond superficial matters. In this way, Rosamond is the inevitable outcome of this patriarchal model of education that has eroded her potential. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman offers a lens for understanding Rosamond’s deformed character. Wollstonecraft’s polemic posits that limitations imposed on women’s education hinder their capacity to evolve into virtuous, independent individuals. Despite Rosamond’s compliance with the expectations of her education, which sought to mould her into the model of accomplished femininity, her innate strength of will could not be entirely concealed. Consequently, Rosamond finds herself grappling with an inner conflict, uncertain of how to reconcile the discord within her soul and lacking guidance on how to address it. Perhaps the most unsettling part of Rosamond’s story is not her flaws, but the silent system that forged them—forcing us to ask how many more like her are condemned before they even begin. While Rosamond’s actions are undeniably shaped by the rigid constraints of her upbringing, her accountability for her moral failings cannot be dismissed. Ultimately, in understanding the tragic limitations of her education, we are left not with a simple villain, but a victim of a system that deforms both self and virtue, caught between the performance of a role and the silent yearning for a self she was never allowed to find.

Works Consulted

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Edited by Gregory Maertz, Broadview Press, Ontario, 2018.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Edited by Johnathan Bennett, EarlyModernTexts, 2017, https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/wollstonecraft1792.pdf.

By Heather Sakaki

“Rather, nature rightly understood might turn out to be a suggestive teacher.”

– Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul

In The Hungry Soul, Dr. Leon Kass accentuates the neediness of the human form and portrays it as an empty chamber in need of filling. This vacancy, he says, is caused by the potential that exists within us, “including our capacity for self-development, growth, self-maintenance, self-healing, and reproduction” (Kass 60). In The Symposium, Socrates attempts to reconcile this need and views this capacity as more of a deficiency in need of completion. He believes that it is this sense of incompleteness that motivates our natural pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure and that deeper feelings such as love and desire are often intertwined with this pursuit. The reason for this is “desire and love are directed at what [we] don’t have, what isn’t there, and what we need” (Plato 35, 200e), which means that the loved (which in this context is referring to the one who is adored) embodies qualities that the lover (the one who adores the loved) longs to possess, such as goodness and wisdom. In Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, author Tullia d’Aragona refers to this type of connection as “honest love” because the transformation of oneself into the object of one’s love is the principal aim (90). However, she argues that this kind of love is generated by both reason and desire because although the transformation is taking place on a spiritual level, the lover will still yearn for a bodily union “in order to effect a total identification with [their] beloved” (d’Aragona 90). Not only does this suggest that desire does indeed play at least a secondary role in the merging of these two forms, but also that there is a transformation process within her theory that needs to be explained. The erotic-educational relationship outlined in The Symposium can lend support in this matter. Plato’s portrayal of the teacher/pupil alliance is generated by both hunger and reason, and, similarly, d’Aragona’s vision of love is moved by the pressure and intensity of two converging forms that are diametric in quality. By rooting d’Aragona’s dialogue in Plato’s theory of the erotic-educational relationship as well as Kass’s more contemporary explanation deepening the meaning of the educational relationship and that which propels it.   

In The Symposium, one of Plato’s main characters, Diotima, explores this transformation in her speech praising Eros and describes it as an ascension toward a higher understanding of beauty. For this process to be successful, however, the pupil in need of the knowledge of beauty must follow a logical path that requires the guidance of an educator who will assist them through successive stages of understanding. The pupil begins with a narrow conception of beauty based solely on what is visible. The guide then helps their pupil realize that “the beauty of any one body is closely related to that of another . . . and that it is very foolish not to regard the beauty of all bodies as one and the same” (Plato 48, 210a-210c). Once the pupil has grasped this rudimentary concept, they will be able to sense the shallowness of their former desire for one specific body type and learn to discern general examples of beauty from specific ones. Diotima says that since this lesson will lead the pupil to value minds more highly than bodies, they will be inspired to seek wise partners to mate with intellectually so that they may give birth to higher discourse. In the final stage, the guide must lead their pupil toward forms of knowledge and help them to see the beauty in these forms. If successful, this stage will instill a lifelong love of knowledge in the pupil, who will desire to give birth to many beautiful discussions, thoughts, and even “true virtue” (Plato 48, 210c-210d). Although Diotima’s theory is valuable insofar as it illustrates the role of reason in the pupil’s inner transformation, it does not explain the role that desire plays in this educational relationship or the more primal instincts powering it.

Socrates helps us to identify some of these urges through his examination of the nature of love in The Symposium, helping us to detect the eroticism fueling educational relationships. To do this, he focuses our attention, first, on the lover (pupil), emphasizing the levels of need at play, and argues that “desire is directed at something you need and that if you don’t need something you don’t desire it” (Plato 34, 200a-200b). By including the concept of “desire” in his premise, Socrates is acknowledging the bodily hunger that is also driving this quest for knowledge and the Good, which helps us to rationalize the “corporeal union” desired by lovers within d’Aragona’s theory. Given the fact that corporeal fusion is literally impossible, if the main goal of the pupil (the lover) is to transform themselves into one who has already experienced the ascent (the educator/loved one), then an unfulfilled craving to somehow ingest the loved one (metaphorically speaking) will persist in the lover. Since penetration, either physical or spiritual, is one way to merge two human bodies, the hungry/deficient soul will feel an intense need to engage in these kinds of intercourse with the soul that best embodies the things it senses it lacks. Within d’Aragona’s model, the object of one’s love is best understood as a sort of experienced educator who possesses truths the pupil is searching for. Christopher Gill, in his introductory notes on The Symposium, thinks that this type of intense, emotional partnership is most likely to charge the erotic drive that can keep the transformative quality alive in educational relationships (xxxv). Here, the “transformative quality” that Gill alludes to is the spiritual transformation of the lover (xxxv). Moreover, within these parameters, we can understand the lover’s journey as both a fall (into love) and an ascent (toward the truth), which may better communicate the diametric and often poetic nature of love.

In The Hungry Soul, Kass examines the roots of this love and the tensions that have arisen as a result of our heightened powers as a species. He says that although our tremendous cognitive capacity is largely an outgrowth of our upright posture, it is still wise to regard ourselves as animals when making inquiries into our nature as a species (Kass 75). He says that by incorporating knowledge of our primitive form into our debates about human nature, we can more honestly consider the part that fear, hunger, thirst, and lust play in our actions and how these instincts impact our more “civilized” experiences and relationships (Kass 77). Kass believes that it is, above all, the self-awareness of our capacity for development that leads to our intrinsic yearning for “both need and independence, for mutuality and separation, for engagement and detachment, for commonality and distinctiveness, [and] for harmony and opposition” (77). Other animal species are not experiencing this tension because their desires are not accompanied by the same degree of self-awareness and thus awareness of what one lacks. Since human beings are aware of their capacity for intellectual growth, they are thus drawn to partners who present an intellectual challenge for them.

In Ficino’s commentary on The Symposium, love is described as a combination of a certain “poverty and plenty” because lovers “partly have and have not what they seek” (191). This definition of love supports d’Aragona’s theory because it reflects love’s overall goal of attaining the wholeness referenced in the conclusion of her dialogue while acknowledging the separate identity and configuration of each part. Moreover, since Ficino acknowledges what the lover “partly has,” he is recognizing a level of sameness often found in lovers that many theories neglect, mostly because it is too complicated to theorize. In The Symposium, Plato’s character, Aristophanes, also believes that many people have failed to explain the power of Love (Eros) and says:

Our human race can only achieve happiness if love reaches its conclusion and each of us finds [their] loved one and restores [their] original nature. If this is the ideal, under present circumstances what comes closest to it must be the best: that is to find a loved one who naturally fits your own character. If we want to praise the god who is responsible for this, we would rightly praise Love…he lead[s] us towards what is naturally close to us. (Plato 26, 193c-193d)

When Aristophanes refers to our “original nature” in this quote, he is referring to a conjoined condition that he believes our species originated from before we were “cut in half like flatfish” (Plato 24, 191d). Because of this, he says, human beings have within them an intrinsic desire for each other to “heal [this] wound in human nature” (Plato 24, 191d). Not only does this theory align with Ficino’s argument, but it also supports d’Aragona’s initial definition of love, which is “a desire to enjoy with union what is truly beautiful or what seems beautiful to the lover” (69). Her distinction between “what is truly beautiful” and “what seems to be beautiful” invites us to contemplate the relative quality of love and the question of whether “the Good” must remain, at least in part, subjective.

Inquiry into past theories about love reveals that the quest for wisdom remains an honourable and worthy pursuit. Rather than denying the carnal urges associated with teacher/pupil partnerships, Socrates instead celebrates the eroticism that is tangled up with the desire for learning and knowing and the positions he has enjoyed in educational bonding. For Socrates, logos (reasoned speech)between two healthy souls is a kind of spiritual penetration that can bring intellectual fulfillment during these sessions of intercourse and uses dialogue to demonstrate the role of rhetoric in reproduction. Ancient philosophical dialogues on love are important texts to remember because they contain forgotten knowledge of the forms that can help us develop more complete theories on the topics that enhance the experience of our academic ascension and move us closer toward the light. If “falling into” our loved one is the only thing that may hurt us in this pursuit, let us be courageous enough to embark on the educational journey anyway to see just how high it may take us.

Works Consulted

d’Aragona, Tullia. Dialogue on the Infinity of Love. Edited and Translated by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry. The University of Chicago Press, pp. 69-90.

Ficino, Marsillo. “Sixth Speech.” Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, translated by Sears Reynolds Jayne, University of Missouri, 1944, p. 191.

Kass, Leon. The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature. Toronto, Free Press, 1994.

Plato. The Symposium. Translated by Christopher Gill, Penguin Books, 1999.  

By Kush Sachdeva

In this essay, I aim to show that the mystical path is not a journey but a surrender to the present moment where one does not stray from the mystical. This union transcends thought and desire, revealing the boundless simplicity beyond all inquiry. James Atkinson’s work, The Mystical in Wittgenstein’s Early Writings, and his lectures, inspired this idea. Rather than building on Atkinson’s work, this essay provides a gateway to the simplicity of the mystical in Pseudo-Dionysius’s work, additionally showing the simplicity of the mystical found in Wittgenstein’s early works.

Cataphatic and Apophatic Approaches and Their Limits

            In theology, the cataphatic method of inquiry makes positive claims about God; meanwhile, the apophatic method is the negation of attributes of God. A positive claim is: “God is omniscient,” and a negation is “God is not limited by time or space.” These claims are about God, though the chasm of apophatic exhaustion does not convey what is beyond nullification. In other words, removing all that “God is not” does not tell us what God is. For instance, an eye does not describe the sound of a cloud bursting. Similarly, the experience of all other sounds does not explain the sound of a cloud bursting. Pseudo-Dionysius presents this idea in his conception of “God as every sensation, thought, and the maxim of reason” (1040D). God transcends sensation and reason, is beyond thought and sense, and yet embodies them. The idea here is the presence and attention of what happens to be; that is to say, God is not limited to intellectual activity like a cataphatic, apophatic, or any manner of inquiry but rather is present in both–intellectual and unmediated experience. Although the apophatic method aims to reveal aspects of God that exceed human conceptualization through negation, it reaffirms dualism by indicating that neither affirmation nor negation can wholly capture the mystical essence. Pseudo-Dionysius notes that God is not a being among beings but rather the source of being itself, affirming that God is not in a position in the space of empirical understanding but in the expanse of the undefiled now (1065).

Paradox of Apophatic Affirmation

            The apophatic method unintentionally affirms through negation, revealing the limitations of positional understanding. For instance, stating that God is not X still places God in relation to X, echoing Pseudo-Dionysius’s assertion that the supreme cause of every conceptual thing is not itself conceptual, suggesting that causes reveal aspects of the supreme cause, they never encapsulate it fully (1033D). The supreme cause is not merely the primary or final cause, nor is it an amalgamation of all causes, a negation of observable causes, or a sum of causal relations—though it is present in all these. If one attempts to grasp the supreme cause through a higher-order, meta-causal perspective, this understanding will reflect the supreme cause but fail to encompass it entirely. Even if a meta-meta-causal understanding emerged, it would again point to the supreme cause without capturing its essence. This recursive pursuit highlights that the supreme cause transcends while encompassing all causes, ultimately negation as a limited means of inquiry carries an implicit affirmation.

Resolution of Paradox

            Consider two definitions: (a) absence of a fourth boundary, negation of curves, denial of excess edges, does not conform to anything beyond its points, and (b) a triangle. The former (a) presents negative boundaries, and the latter (b) represents positive boundaries, raising a critical question: do different ways of inquiry provide a unique insight into the mystical? Pseudo-Dionysius would respond to this by mentioning that “all that is said of God is by necessity inadequate,” highlighting the challenge of understanding mystical attributes through language; this is further reflected in his contention that “It is in the abandonment of all that we find the path to the Divine” (553C, 593A). To look beyond both ways of thinking and approaching the mystical, one needs to tap into the heart of the hearts; in this moment of reaching the deepest, darkest part of experience, one recognizes the mystical as “preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation,” where every boundary falls short (1048B). The mystical moment transcends inquiry itself, making any method of approach a barrier rather than a guide. He goes as far as to claim that the intimate experience lies beyond all desire; desires are rooted in the expectation of a future, usually better than what happens to be now; by looking beyond desire, one is essentially forced to be fully present in the now (588A).

Mystical Surrender

            The mystical does not emerge through surrender to the ineffable—an encounter that abandons reason while remaining intimately present. This surrender unfolds in the simplicity of the infinite moment where known and not known coexist. All potential states exist simultaneously, where experiencer and experience are inseparable, undivided by thought or perception. This resonates with the idea that one is not merely in the universe but is the universe experiencing itself; in this immediate now, distinctions dissolve, an ineffable state of epistemic-ontological ambivalence reveals, where the thinking self and the flux of experience are no longer seen as separate. This surrender represents experience unfolding from the center to the edge and the edge enfolding to the center; ultimately, the center becomes the edge, and the edge disappears into its origin. By resonating with this, a new being emerges, seeking to be present in the fullness of God’s absence, embracing the present hitherto neglected, wandering in the new world that reveals itself in the infinite tapestry of the abyss of what happens to be, for him all things find their completion in the mystical, even as they seem to vanish into nothingness (1089A). This surrender reveals that one does not merely surrender to the now but abandons what is not present; here, the essence of the mystical is a negative effort, requiring one to stand still and not lean in.

Mystical Awareness

            From the standpoint of mystical surrender, a different realization of knowing emerges—expression. Wittgenstein remarks in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, proposition 6.44, “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.” Imagine analyzing the notes and the orchestra, but the true wonder of the symphony lies in the fact that it is mystical, realizing that the world exists, not necessarily why it works or what happens in it, but that it is. Mystical awareness eludes a concise description. For example, the question, “What is it about the symphony that you like?” cannot be answered without a form or manner of descriptions that reduce the experience to a concept that claims to express the symphony and what one likes about it. In proposition 6.522, Wittgenstein mentions, “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” This idea can be understood through a fishing metaphor.

            Imagine a fisher on a small boat on the ocean, fishing with a line. The boat represents the inquirer, the line represents intention, and the ocean is the vast unknown—the space of truth and understanding. As one casts the line into the water, it descends through layers of the ocean, metaphorically reaching toward the depths of knowledge, where the foundation of understanding lies hidden. The ocean is boundless, cradling mysteries that one can never fully comprehend, while the line, simple and linear, seeks to grasp what is unknowable in its limited capacity. As the line sinks deeper, it only experiences tension—the sense of movement, resistance, and occasional moments when something is caught, perhaps a brief glimpse of meaning or understanding. But the line, like the inquirer, cannot grasp the fullness of the ocean. It cannot understand the vastness of the waters nor the fullness of what is happening around it. In moments of doubt, the line wonders: What if there is nothing at the end of it? What if the waters are empty, and the boat drifts aimlessly? If there is no resistance or pull, what is its purpose? Can it continue fishing without a catch, or does it lose meaning? The line becomes a paradox—a simple thread stretching between the boat and the ocean, linking the finite with the infinite, the known with the unknown. It neither fully understands the ocean nor comprehends the depths it is connected to. Yet, it carries on, perhaps finding its truth not in control but in surrendering to the mystery of the unknown, acknowledging its limitations and continuing the search without ever fully grasping what it seeks.

Pathlessness

            Pseudo-Dionysius shows that in experiencing the mystical, one does not seek inquiry while immersed in the fullness of unmediated presence beyond sensory or intellectual apprehension. In surrendering to the mystical, what can be said and the ineffable converge in the now, not disappearing but simply being. In this subtle interplay of grasping abandonment and abandoning graspable, the mystical does not become clearer; it simply is. To say otherwise—to claim that one must do certain things or climb hierarchies to attain mystical experience—seems conventionally true. However, anything that is a complex conjunction of words points to the symbolism of the words, not the reality itself. Words create pictures and mental representations, while the mystical resonates in the simplicity of the now, beyond the formation of mental images. In this space where words say the most they can, Wittgenstein’s summation of Tractatus echoes: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (7.0). The mystical, ever-present, reveals itself not through knowing, but in the silent space where inquiry dissolves. The mystical, like the supreme cause, is absent only insofar as one ignores its presence, all the while one emerges in the present.

Conclusion

            Ultimately, the path to the mystical is no path. The mystical unfolds and enfolds in the idleness of what happens to be—where conceptual striving gives way to silent presence, and surrender opens the way to what is beyond thought and desire. The mystical moment is not an endpoint but an ongoing encounter with the infinite, where the seeker is not merely aware of the mystical but realizes the inseparable nature of the mystical’s unfolding presence. In this space, the mystical ceases to be a pursuit and becomes the fullness of being itself—an ever-deepening encounter with the boundless simplicity that rejects inquiry.

Works Cited

Atkinson, James. The Mystical in Wittgenstein’s Early Writings. Routledge, 2009.

Dionysius, Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. 2nd ed., Paulist Press, 1987.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1st ed., Routledge, 1922.

By Cala Annala

Boccaccio’s late-medieval masterpiece, The Decameron, presents one hundred stories that seem to reflect contradictory moral messages. The text, composed of ten stories told daily by ten narrators over ten days, includes tales depicting their characters engaging in depraved actions seemingly without consequences, while other stories present a clear moral message. This apparent contradiction prompts one to question whether the author is promoting an amoral approach to life in which morality is utterly subjective or is satirizing this approach with serious moral intent. This question may be answered through a close examination of the following: the framing of the setting in which the stories are told, the phrasing the author uses in both types of tales, and an analysis of the statements of intent in the text’s preface and conclusion. Such an analysis reveals that although Boccaccio’s satirical tales do seem to endorse a type of subjective morality, when examined closely, they reveal moral allegories that place them squarely within an ethical framework. Further, his emphasis on social order within the setting of the book can be interpreted as a testament to the importance of retaining a moral framework. As a result, one may conclude that although The Decameron is not intended to be a didactic work, it nonetheless retains a moral framework while satirizing the amoral lifestyle for entertainment.

How the text’s introduction frames the stories by describing the time, place, and circumstances of characters telling and listening to them suggests that it is not Boccaccio’s intent to promote an amoral lifestyle. The Decameron takes place in medieval Florence in 1348, the time of the Black Death, and centres around seven young ladies and three young men who decide to leave Florence and the chaos caused by the plague, escaping to a villa in the hills of Fiesole (6-7). The author emphasizes at length the calamitous and sordid state of Florence during the Black Death, stating that “the city was full of corpses,” and “people who died were cared for as we care for goats today” (12, 13). In particular, he underscores the breakdown of social order within the city at this time, where “out of sheer necessity, there arose among those who remained alive customs which were contrary to the established practices of the time,” such as “one citizen [avoiding] another” and “almost no one [caring] for his neighbor” (10-11). In travelling to the Fiesole countryside, the characters in this story are seeking respite from the chaos of Florence and attempting to rebuild a social structure within their small group. This interpretation is further evidenced by the group appointing a leader (a queen or a king) each day to rule them, stating that “when things lack order they cannot long endure” (21). Therefore, the fact that the characters seek to escape the breakdown of morals in Florence and create for themselves some semblance of a structured society suggests that the author is concerned with social order and morality, and his motive is not to promote a lifestyle lacking these vital components. 

In analyzing the stories within this frame narrative, the first story on the first day provides an excellent example of a tale that appears to promote amorality through its exaggerated portrayal of unscrupulous behaviour, but upon closer inspection, presents this behaviour only for entertainment purposes to shock and thrill readers while quietly condemning it. For example, one of the stories revolves around Ser Cepparello, a notary who committed nearly every imaginable evil during his lifetime, including legal fraud, giving false testimony and false oaths, stirring up scandal, sowing discord, murdering, thieving, blaspheming God and the Church, and being “the most irascible man alive” (27). At the end of his life, Ser Cepparello remains unrepentant of his sins, yet succeeds in deceiving a priest into believing that he is “a holy man” deserving of “the greatest reverence and devotion” from the Church, and is venerated as a saint after his death (36-37). While it appears that Boccaccio is promoting an amoral lifestyle since Ser Cepparello’s amorality seems to be rewarded in this story, the author makes the following key statement towards the end of this story:  

“[Ser Cepparello] may have been blessed in the presence of God, since although his life was evil and sinful, he could have become so truly sorry at his last breath that God might well have had pity on him and received him into His kingdom . . .  but . . . I believe that he is, instead, in the hands of the Devil in Hell rather than in Paradise” (37).  

This passage indicates that while the author and reader cannot rule out the possibility that Ser Cepparello might be in heaven, it is far more likely that he is “in the hands of the devil” instead (i.e., hell). Thus, Boccaccio portrays the significant negative consequences of an amoral life here, making it clear to the careful reader that he is not advocating such a lifestyle. 

Likewise, the first story on the third day also portrays a character engaging in exceptionally amoral actions while subtly indicating this lifestyle’s true consequences and undesirability. This story centres around a character named Masetto da Lamporecchio who pretends to be a dumb mute to gain a position as a gardener at an abbey, where the nuns compete to lie with him. Boccaccio brazenly states that Masetto’s “labours were shared in such a way that he was able to perform them. In performing them, he generated a large number of little monks and nuns” (200). This scandalous behaviour seems to be rewarded in this tale, with Masetto “easily” returning home with “the money he had made” at the end of the story (200). However, Boccaccio highlights the true undesirable consequences of Masetto’s behaviour in the final lines of the story, which state that “Masetto returned home old and rich and a father, without ever having to bear the expense of bringing up his children” (200). When The Decameron was written, being a father was an honourable role and raising one’s children was an esteemed duty. Having left all his children with the nuns in the convent, Masetto deprives himself of this esteem and is left with no one to carry his name and no legacy on earth. The ultimate undesirable consequences of the nuns’ transgression of their vows are also highlighted by the author in the final lines of the story, which imply that the nuns will have to bear the consequences and shame of raising these “little monks and nuns” alone (200). Thus, at the end of this story, he makes it clear to the reader that both the nuns and Masetto will face the unpleasant and dishonourable consequences of their actions.  

The moral thread within the satirical amoral content of these stories is reinforced through the last story of The Decameron, the tenth story on the tenth day, which focuses on depicting the moral theme of reward that results from enduring hardship righteously. This story centres around a man named Gualtieri, the Marquis of Sanluzzo, who marries an extremely poor woman named Griselda. The exceedingly virtuous Griselda was an ideal wife for Gualtieri, being “pleasing, attractive, and well mannered… obedient and indulgent… [and] so gracious and kind to her husband’s subjects that there was no one more beloved or gladly honoured than she was” (790). Despite this fact, “a new thought entered [Gualtieri’s] mind: he wished to test her patience with a long trial and intolerable proofs,” and thus began inflicting great hardships upon Griselda (791). Over several years, he imposes increasingly harsh trials to test the quality of her character. He subsequently “[offends] her with harsh words,” orders a servant to send her daughter and son away under the guise of having them murdered, pretends to obtain a divorce order and sends her destitute back to her father’s house, and finally calls her back to his own home under the pretense of having her plan the wedding for him and a new wife—the last of these being like “a dagger in Griselda’s heart” (791-795).  

After Griselda undergoes all these trials while retaining her humility, obedience, and patience, “suffering with brave spirit the savage assaults of a hostile Fortune,” Gualtieri then takes her again as his wife, reunites her with their children, and they live “a long and happy life” together (798). To the average reader of this tale during Boccaccio’s time, this storyline would have been highly reminiscent of the depiction of the life of Job within the Bible, who, like Griselda, was rewarded greatly at the end of his lifetime because he remained humble and righteous, though he experienced great loss and hardship. Thus, the conclusion of the stories within The Decameron with Griselda’s moral allegory reinforces the principle that, despite their frequently bawdy content, the author incorporates a moral framework within his stories. 

Therefore, it is clear that Boccaccio’s purpose in The Decameron is not to promote amorality. If this is so, then why does he portray such instances of amoral behaviour in these stories? The answer to this question may be found in the text’s preface and conclusion, in which he makes it apparent that his purpose in creating this work is to provide women with an amusing form of entertainment that will divert their attention from the dreadful consequences of the plague in their present life, as well as serve as a “support and diversion for those ladies in love” (5). In the conclusion to this work, he states that he is “offering this work of [his] to idle ladies and no others… to those who read it to pass the time of day” (805). Thus, the scandalous behaviour presented in these stories is intended by Boccaccio simply to provide women with entertainment that will divert their attention from the hardships of daily life, and not to promote the literal carrying out of this behaviour. He further states that “these tales… may be harmful or useful depending on who the listener is” (803), indicating that although these stories are not intended to encourage the lascivious behaviour present within them, they nonetheless may be interpreted this way if the reader lacks insight into their true purpose. 

In conclusion, while Boccaccio’s Decameron ostensibly appears to be an endorsement of the amoral life, upon closer analysis, it is revealed that he satirizes this life for amusement while also reinforcing moral principles. This reinforcement of moral principles is evidenced by his emphasis on the importance of social order when framing the setting of the work. Further, even within the tales that seemingly portray the desirability of an amoral lifestyle, there are statements toward the end of these stories that shift them back into a moral framework and suggest the true undesirable consequences of the depicted behaviour. Therefore, although Boccaccio’s preface and conclusion indicate that his purpose for this work is to entertain and not to advocate for the morality of the character’s actions, he nonetheless clearly incorporates moral principles into the tales of The Decameron, demonstrating his excellence in tactfully satirizing amorality for entertainment purposes while still preserving a strong moral framework within the stories. 

Works Cited 

Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella, Signet Classics, 2010. 

By Emma Wright

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Martin Heidegger claims that insofar as human beings make works like art, architectural structures (churches, temples, etc.), and tragedies, they allow for all things to be and to be meaningful. Humans are, therefore, an exclusive and fundamentally distinct group of beings. Heidegger says works have two essential features: “the setting up of a world and the setting forth of earth” (Heidegger 173). Works set up worlds because works are made to establish, enrich, or advance a way of life. This way of life is the world that any given group of historical people belong to, and this world is oriented around and consolidated by the works they make. Within the space that works make and worlds occupy, Heidegger thinks that all animals come alive for the first time. Animals belong to the earth, which “shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and unexplained” (Heidegger 172). This earthliness, or self-seclusion, of all animals is their essential feature, and it is only when animals are revealed by work within a world that they are noticed by humans and are, therefore, able to refuse to be known as any more than what they are immediately perceived to be. Without first being brought into the world, animals are merely unknown, and they flee from nothing. Yet—in CBC’s The Old Masters: Decoding Prehistoric Art with Jean Clottes, Clottes explains that the paintings in the Niaux Cave in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees and the Chauvet Cave in Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, Ardéche were made within a community that practiced shamanism (00:16:38-00:16:52). Because Clottes states that shamanism does not explain rock art directly, we cannot assume that cave painting was a shamanistic act. However, we can more broadly consider that the paintings were done by people who recognized the existence of non-anthropomorphic knowledge and power. While Heidegger thinks that works allow animals, and earthly beings more broadly (rocks, trees, etc.), to come alive and be what they are, in photos of prehistoric rock art like the Dabous Giraffes from 30,000 Years of Art, we see that animals and earth were first found meaningful and as a result, works were made. This means that work is not essential to set forth the earth, to make it manifest and meaningful, and thus that all things of the earth are not essentially self-secluding but exist objectively.

The first essential feature of the work is the setting up of a world. How does a work set up a world? Heidegger uses a Greek temple to illustrate his answer, “to erect means: to open the right in the sense of a guiding measure, a form in which what is essential gives guidance” (Heidegger, 169). But why is the setting up of a work an erecting that consecrates and praises? “Because the work, in its work-being, demands it” (Heidegger, 169). The ancient Greeks erected temples to harbour gods. These gods were essential to their culture. Hence, the temples were built piously, with devotion—what Heidegger calls a “consecrating-praising erection” (Heidegger, 171). Because of the temple’s importance, it “demands” to be built this way. The same piousness with which the temple is built is that which the temple consolidates in standing there: it is a place of great meaning for those whose world it belongs to, and they orient their way of life around it. It is because the temple is built for the sake of honouring the god who is essential to this particular world that the god can really exist within the temple. The temple itself “opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force” (Heidegger, 171). It is not merely, as Heidegger points out, one fine day “added to what is already there,” nor is it a representation of what is essential, but is itself essential—the reason that this particular world can be the world that it is (Heidegger, 168). Without the temple, the god is lost, and the people lose their purpose, their culture, and their identity. In other words, the temple is not superfluous but holds great power. It “fits together and . . . gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the world of this historical people” (Heidegger, 167).

What does it mean for the earth to be an earth? Heidegger writes, “Earth is that which comes forth and shelters. Earth, irreducibly spontaneous, is effortless and untiring. Upon the earth and in it, historical man grounds his dwelling in the world . . . The work moves the earth itself into the open region of a world and keeps it there. The work lets the earth be an earth” (Heidegger, 171-172). The earth can only be an earth when it is brought forth into the space that a world occupies: the bulky, spontaneous support of the rock is brought forth, first showing itself to be bulky and spontaneous as it lies underneath the surface area of the temple (Heidegger, 167). Importantly, Heidegger says that the earth must be brought forth without attempt to penetrate, calculate, or analyze it: “The earth appears openly cleared as itself only when it is perceived and preserved as that which is essentially undisclosable, that which shrinks from every disclosure and constantly keeps itself closed up” (Heidegger, 172). All earthly things are essentially self-secluding. That is to say that even if a rock can be weighed, it is not this number which is at all part of its essential nature. Indeed, the obscurity of its spontaneous support is its essential nature. Heidegger thinks that all animals and other earthly things are metaphysically different from humans and are, therefore, always fleeing from human understanding. They do this in two ways: “a refusal or merely a dissembling” (Heidegger, 179). For example, the backdoor opens, and the deer who stand in the snowy clearing of the yard eating the winterberries freeze, perk their ears, and dash into the forest beyond. They refuse to be seen and, at the same time, identify “the beginning of the clearing of what is cleared” (Heidegger, 179). Dissemblance, on the other hand, is the thin layer of ice upon a pond in late December. The pond presents itself as a place for solid footing until an unlucky step submerges one’s leg in frigid waters. However, it is only when these beings are first brought into a human-occupied space that they can self-seclude since their existence relies on human perception: if no one steps upon the seemingly solid surface of the pond, then the pond does not dissemble. If the deer do not first stand within the clearing of the backyard, they cannot flee from it. The space in which the human encounters the pond and from which the deer flee is the world, and it is set up by the work which humans make.

The artworks of one group of historical people—the prehistoric humans—show that Heidegger is wrong to claim that the earth requires a world to be what it is. While these artworks might have set up the world of these historical people, the earth did not become only in relation to this world because the artworks themselves were inspired by the earth. How could the work have set forth earth if earth inspired the setting up of work? Additionally, even if Heidegger thinks that “Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are” when work thrusts them into the world, because prehistoric humans noticed these beings prior to work and the world, it follows that “what they are” essentially is not self-secluding (Heidegger, 168). Heidegger writes, “Beings can be as beings only if they stand within and stand out within what is cleared in this clearing. Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are” (Heidegger, 178). But because animals appeared to prehistoric people before work was made, they appeared outside of any clearing. Since these beings appeared as themselves to humans without fleeing from any world, then their nature is not self-secluding. They are objectively meaningful rather than made meaningful by human-made work. For example, the stone is not merely meaningful because it constitutes the columns of the temple but is wholly meaningful in being stone, long before it is brought into the world and seen. And evidently, prehistoric artworks show that the natural reliefs of cave walls were found meaningful as they were, without human intervention.

One way in which these artworks show the objective being of earth is via their use of metaphor. In “Music,” Jan Zwicky writes, “Metaphors are rhetorical strategies in the service of ontological truth. A metaphor points to resonance among the internal structural relations that make one thing what it is and those that make another thing what it is” (Zwicky, 119). While Heidegger’s ontological theory posits that all beings are only in relation to human perception, Zwicky suggests that metaphors point to relationships which are mind-independent and so, by consequence, being that is mind-independent. Making metaphors requires being attentive to a given thing so that one may come to know what makes it what it is. Then, one can express the resonances one perceives among different things, among the “internal structural relations” of those things (Zwicky, 119). When a metaphor succeeds in “heightening our awareness of the echoes between things [and] our awareness of the things themselves,” it is because it says something true about the way that a thing is; for example, meeting Marea was catching a throw rope seconds before the waterfall or, the moss is a pillow wrapped in fresh linen (Zwicky, 119). Without meeting this dog, Marea, or myself, one knows a reality of our relationship. Without ever laying upon this bed of moss, one has. While Zwicky writes of metaphors as linguistic expressions, I do not think she would disagree that using natural reliefs on cave walls to create animals suggests resonance perception: a bison licking its flank is attended to; the peculiar form of the wall is attended to; and their structures resonate. In Dabous Giraffes, the narrowing surface of the rock face resonates with the giraffe’s elongated neck. When two converging lines painted on the cave wall are illuminated at a certain angle, and an ibex comes to life, we today stand before the wall and exclaim, “It’s an ibex!” by virtue of those two lines because prehistoric artists successfully perceived and expressed resonances among earthly things. If Zwicky is right, then this perception and expression depend on the intrinsic, mind-independent truth about the way that beings are, and here, again, earth is shown to be independent of a human world. These metaphors are expressed through images rather than utterances; nonetheless, making them requires great attention and imagination.

Works Cited

Altamira Bison. Phaidon Editors, eds. 30,000 Years of Art, Phaidon Press, 2019, p. 15.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art” (selection). Translated by Albert Hofstadter.

“The Old Masters: Decoding Prehistoric Art with Jean Clottes.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15772888-the-old l.12-masters-decoding-pre-historic-art-with-jean-clottes.

Zwicky, Jan. “Music.” Aesthetics. Edited by Warren Heiti. Vancouver Island University, 2021, pp. 118-119.