(no subject)
we gonna steal this from brian/josh...
EXPLOSIONE!
We're 2/3 on the events of the latin/classics extravaganza weekend, going on 2 hrs sleep in... 33 hours. Sorry to Ricky and Phil, to whom i pledged i would try to go until the fin of the latin final [i think we're all doing tomorrow. damn straight. one sitting. do it. you know you want to, boys. 3rd floor of the lib, noon sharp tomorrow!] sans sleepage -- i conked out for a 2 hour catnap, there was no one/nothing to keep me awake [i think we all know to read city of god was NOT going to do it...]! after all, as discussed on the car ride to the all night reading: after 72 hours you are no longer accountable for your actions if taken to court [you're like, considered insane or something].
Check out my submission for Reason & Respect, which i just sent in for consideration...:
Adrianne M. LaFrance
Department of Modern Languages and Classics: Classics/French
alafrance292@hawks.rwu.edu
860-912-6003 or RWU ext. 8877
Augustine of Hippo (known in contemporary times as Saint Augustine), one of the four founders of the Christian church, wrote of service in his Confessions: “Nemo enim invitus bene facit, etiamsi bonum est quod facit” (XII.XIX.109). Augustine says, “For indeed no one does well unwillingly, even if that which he does is good.” To be compelled begrudgingly towards service is to take from that act its goodness; a truth which a man expounding his love of his own service to God was able to discern. Service required is not service at all. This logic has lead me to the consideration that these our forefathers would hold debate against service requirements in higher education like those we have here at Roger Williams University.
Merriam-Webster dictionary offers as a definition of service: “contribution to the welfare of others.” Construed in this sense, service is simply an action and is devoid of any meaning there behind. As a primarily Christian society -- more specifically here in New England, a traditionally Puritanical society -- is there not a sense of something more behind the act of true service? Mustn’t we fulfill a service because to serve another is right? The question hearkens to Socrates’ arguments in Plato’s Euthyphro, widely read by our own Core Literature and Philosophy classes, in which Socrates asks unto the young Euthyphro, “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?” (Jowett). Do we do service because it is in fact good or because we are told it is good (and therefore may simply be compelled to perform such an action)? And if we do service because we are told it is good, and are compelled to do good only because someone else deems us good as a result and we selfishly seek only their praise, is that service still pious, holy, and purely good? If we seek secretly the praise of others in our good deeds then those deeds are no longer good and shall not be rewarded, for “we should conclude that except for such rewards we have no obligation to serve…and service of that kind would prove us…greedy and covetous” (McCracken, I.VIII.33-8).
Augustine writes of piety in his momentous and vast work, The City of God. On the topic of victims who are subject to the sins of others during the sack of Rome, Augustine notes that a sin committed in the presence of the pious, or even upon the pious as in the case of rape, the victim, if s/he always kept from his own mind irreverence and did not secretly enjoy the sin: s/he is still considered good and shameless (I.VIII). For we do not indeed think that the chaste woman, having been ravished, is any less chaste. We can turn this same argument around and say that if one, in place of shirking from the mind immoral as in Augustine’s example, keeps in mind the moral: that person is good and dutiful. Just as if one feels the slightest joy in some sin, so if one feels some selfish gain in a good act then that act is sullied and is no longer good. On this Augustine rightly suggests, “restrain us from too eager pursuit of goods such as we enjoyed also by the wicked” (I.VIII.18-22).
Service is not just helping another person in their hour of need but rather it is helping another in any hour, ignoring of our own selfish gains from taking up the act. In this sense, therefore, service cannot by meaning be compulsory. This is not to say that I denounce the university’s efforts towards service. It is commendable to inform students about opportunities to serve and to educate students about service, an instance seen weekly in school e-mail inboxes with the Feinstein Service Learning “Service Opps” newsletter. It is merely that obligatory service is not service at all. Socrates and Plato, who we employ here in our classes as models for an informed life - devoid even as they are from the religious aspects which I have otherwise employed here in order to demonstrate a universal, nondenominational point regarding service. For after all, Augustine was at one time a pagan but still writes, “They fear to jeopardize or lose…their own safety of reputation…because of the weakness that is pleased by a flattering tongue and the favor of men…they serve certain bonds of selfishness, not the ties of love” (I.IX.71-9)
Works Cited
Augustinus, Aurelius. Confessions. Eds. Campbell, James M. & McGuire, Martin R.P.
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. Wauconda, IL: 1984.
Augustinus, Aurelius. The City of God Against the Pagans. Trans. McCracken, George E.
Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA: 1957.
Plato. Euthyfro. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. 2000. Retrieved Online: 9 December 2006.
EXPLOSIONE!
We're 2/3 on the events of the latin/classics extravaganza weekend, going on 2 hrs sleep in... 33 hours. Sorry to Ricky and Phil, to whom i pledged i would try to go until the fin of the latin final [i think we're all doing tomorrow. damn straight. one sitting. do it. you know you want to, boys. 3rd floor of the lib, noon sharp tomorrow!] sans sleepage -- i conked out for a 2 hour catnap, there was no one/nothing to keep me awake [i think we all know to read city of god was NOT going to do it...]! after all, as discussed on the car ride to the all night reading: after 72 hours you are no longer accountable for your actions if taken to court [you're like, considered insane or something].
Check out my submission for Reason & Respect, which i just sent in for consideration...:
Adrianne M. LaFrance
Department of Modern Languages and Classics: Classics/French
alafrance292@hawks.rwu.edu
860-912-6003 or RWU ext. 8877
Augustine of Hippo (known in contemporary times as Saint Augustine), one of the four founders of the Christian church, wrote of service in his Confessions: “Nemo enim invitus bene facit, etiamsi bonum est quod facit” (XII.XIX.109). Augustine says, “For indeed no one does well unwillingly, even if that which he does is good.” To be compelled begrudgingly towards service is to take from that act its goodness; a truth which a man expounding his love of his own service to God was able to discern. Service required is not service at all. This logic has lead me to the consideration that these our forefathers would hold debate against service requirements in higher education like those we have here at Roger Williams University.
Merriam-Webster dictionary offers as a definition of service: “contribution to the welfare of others.” Construed in this sense, service is simply an action and is devoid of any meaning there behind. As a primarily Christian society -- more specifically here in New England, a traditionally Puritanical society -- is there not a sense of something more behind the act of true service? Mustn’t we fulfill a service because to serve another is right? The question hearkens to Socrates’ arguments in Plato’s Euthyphro, widely read by our own Core Literature and Philosophy classes, in which Socrates asks unto the young Euthyphro, “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?” (Jowett). Do we do service because it is in fact good or because we are told it is good (and therefore may simply be compelled to perform such an action)? And if we do service because we are told it is good, and are compelled to do good only because someone else deems us good as a result and we selfishly seek only their praise, is that service still pious, holy, and purely good? If we seek secretly the praise of others in our good deeds then those deeds are no longer good and shall not be rewarded, for “we should conclude that except for such rewards we have no obligation to serve…and service of that kind would prove us…greedy and covetous” (McCracken, I.VIII.33-8).
Augustine writes of piety in his momentous and vast work, The City of God. On the topic of victims who are subject to the sins of others during the sack of Rome, Augustine notes that a sin committed in the presence of the pious, or even upon the pious as in the case of rape, the victim, if s/he always kept from his own mind irreverence and did not secretly enjoy the sin: s/he is still considered good and shameless (I.VIII). For we do not indeed think that the chaste woman, having been ravished, is any less chaste. We can turn this same argument around and say that if one, in place of shirking from the mind immoral as in Augustine’s example, keeps in mind the moral: that person is good and dutiful. Just as if one feels the slightest joy in some sin, so if one feels some selfish gain in a good act then that act is sullied and is no longer good. On this Augustine rightly suggests, “restrain us from too eager pursuit of goods such as we enjoyed also by the wicked” (I.VIII.18-22).
Service is not just helping another person in their hour of need but rather it is helping another in any hour, ignoring of our own selfish gains from taking up the act. In this sense, therefore, service cannot by meaning be compulsory. This is not to say that I denounce the university’s efforts towards service. It is commendable to inform students about opportunities to serve and to educate students about service, an instance seen weekly in school e-mail inboxes with the Feinstein Service Learning “Service Opps” newsletter. It is merely that obligatory service is not service at all. Socrates and Plato, who we employ here in our classes as models for an informed life - devoid even as they are from the religious aspects which I have otherwise employed here in order to demonstrate a universal, nondenominational point regarding service. For after all, Augustine was at one time a pagan but still writes, “They fear to jeopardize or lose…their own safety of reputation…because of the weakness that is pleased by a flattering tongue and the favor of men…they serve certain bonds of selfishness, not the ties of love” (I.IX.71-9)
Works Cited
Augustinus, Aurelius. Confessions. Eds. Campbell, James M. & McGuire, Martin R.P.
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc. Wauconda, IL: 1984.
Augustinus, Aurelius. The City of God Against the Pagans. Trans. McCracken, George E.
Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA: 1957.
Plato. Euthyfro. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. 2000. Retrieved Online: 9 December 2006.