To the Captain of the Jolly Roger:

Some of your words reminded me of some that I wrote when I was at Yale. Following are two essays I wrote in a column I called "The Consolation of Philosophy," in the _Yale_Free_Press_, the right-wing gadfly of the University. The first ("Our Exile") was the debut column, written in the fall of 1993; the second ("Corpus Yalensis") was my valedictory, or valescriptory, as it were, and appeared in the spring of 1994 (I believe the Free Press retains a copyright, but I assure you that you have their permission to post them if you like; you certainly have mine). This second one appeared, partly edited, in the _National_Review_ sometime in the spring of 1995 (through no effort of my own--so you see, conservatives can get published, but only by accident). I am happy to share them with the Captain and shipmates of the Jolly Roger.

--J.P.H. ("Proclus")

OUR EXILE

"I who once composed with eager zest Am driven by grief to shelter in sad songs...."

So lamented Boethius nearly a millennium and a half ago, waiting out his final days before a brutal torture and execution. Here was the depth of his sorrow, and upon these words, he turned to his nursemaid for solace; she drove away his pathetic poetic wailings, and led him from grief in the direction of light.

His nursemaid was Philosophy, the love of wisdom personified in a woman whose figure stretched toward the heights of divine thought. Only with her help could Boethius cease his painful mourning and find his way to the comfort of truth.

May we identify with the plight of Boethius? Today a cry rises up, deep out of the grieving throat of all truth-seekers. It is a cry, like Boethius', borne of the pain of exile. Our landscape has been overrun, sacked, and pillaged. Philistines have usurped control, and in their act have locked us away from our world. We are trapped, our surroundings nearly unrecognizable, our fate unfair, our enemies barbaric, clumsy, and ruthless.

The usurpers this time have not exercised their will with locks and chains, but with a more insidious and dangerous coercion. Not only have they seized a local government, but they have seized ideas, hijacked language, polluted literature, invented history.

Even in Boethius' time, Philosophy herself had been long abused by Philistines, Epicureans and Stoics, who ripped at her garments and carried off the fragments. But the Philistines gained little from the mere vestments of philosophy, and the light that shone in her could not be extinguished.

Today, the attempt to conquer her continues, and she is dishonored and banished. Those who have not abandoned her have misappropriated her, cloaking themselves in the mere appearance of reason, the vestments of Philosophy, but not the spirit of truth that once wore them; men sport fragments of Descartes as if he were a license to ignorance, Neitzsche as if he were a blank check of action.

Why might we cry with Boethius? Because today, the Philistines do not achieve isolated victories but nearly rule the world. They have infiltrated schools, governments, even churches. They claim with due self- righteousness the death of God, they assert with clenched jaw the value of tolerance, and they anxiously await the coming of their engineered utopia. The usurpers tell us there is not truth but oppression; they seek not righteousness but pleasure; they believe not in justice but in power.

Power, of course, is both their altar and their atom: all action can be justified with appeal to it, and all situations can be interpreted in terms of it. Under the new regime, all is confusion, and the cherished principles of long ago are dishonored. There can be no principles in the new regime, nor can there be guidance from gods or rituals. No heritage, no hero is worthy of attention. With all authority abandoned, the Philistines are unpredictable and finicky, steady only in their persistent exile of those who will not join in their new rule.

Thus, we are exiled like Boethius. But while today's usurpers are more ambitious than yesterday's, all is not lost. We may still appeal for help to our chief solace in life, she whose piercing vision gave strength to Boethius. She will be more than happy to oblige, for this time she shares in our exile.

Indeed, this time it is her exile, and it is we who share in it, only because we refuse to join those who exile her. The usurpers attempt to torture us for our allegiance; it looks, indeed, like we may face destruction at their hands. But Philosophy will not leave our side, and through her we can find the consolation, even the victory, that is the reward o those who stand by the power of a loving and earnest search for truth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Consolation of Philosophy by Joshua Hochschild

CORPUS YALENSIS

Yale, this second half of the twentieth century, is a corpse; which is to say, it resembles the real Yale in no more than accidental qualities, and even deserves the name "Yale" only analogically.

The destruction of the College in New Haven dedicated to the preparation of Christian men for ministry is in no way mitigated by the survival of its name. Nonetheless, that Yale is no more, and that what is called Yale merely inhabits the same buildings and takes the same symbols and trappings, has, to the extent that it has been recognized, been more celebrated than mourned. This itself is further tragedy.

But blindness to tragedy is to be expected from a population that has no sense for the reality of institution. Mourning requires recognition of tragedy, and recognition of tragedy requires apprehension of the real. Even Nietzsche, in his own peculiar way himself in touch with reality, saw that the force of tragedy was its horrible arresting insight into the essence of things. Those that lack such insight, or who, through unbelief in essences, deny that such insight is possible, cannot be expected to recognize even such a tremendous tragedy as the loss of a human monument to God.

That was, to be sure, the essence of Yale, an institution consecrated to divine service. It was because such an essence was signified by the name "Yale" that the utterance of the name alone could inspire a sort of awe. And it is little wonder that the power of the name fades with the aspirations which were its source.

The properly acculturated historian of ideas will explain the "evolution" of Yale by pointing out--quite believably--that the institution simply had to change when people stopped believing the old ideas, and started believing new ones. But such an interpretation implies that Yale is as much a real and unified institution under the new ideas as under the old. This it most manifestly is not; it seems that one of the disregarded and yet to be replaced old ideas included the very belief in the possibility of real and unified institutions. Institution requires purpose, discipline, and a source of authority. These things are not recognized by the new institution, which is as a result not any sort of institution at all, and cannot begin to educate its RstudentsS out of their ignorance of institution.

It seems this very ignorance at least explains why, for instance, the majority of women and men in the College today are so basically unfit for the institution of marriage. Fitness for marriage requires at the least a recognition of its significance, a recognition which must be supported by belief in the reality of moral institutions. But here, unchecked and untrained by the guidance of substantive institutions, moral weakness and ignorance are abundant to the point of celebration. Students attempt to dignify sexual degradation by organizing in its name; others, their moral convictions beaten out of them, stand by permissively. Is it any wonder that so many of the students courageous enough to recognize that something is wrong seek refuge in the relative strength of that most basic of children's institutions, the fraternity?

In the midst of this devastated landscape, the individual can only begin again and try to be a student. But for what could the student muster a student's enthusiasm? For God? Apparently we are supposed to believe that we have been persuaded of His death. For country? For our State it is difficult to pretend enthusiasm, and those few who manage border on the excess of fascism. For Yale? She is destroyed, her spirit separated from her body. Those who remember her life are left to wonder whether her spirit could survive the separation, and, if so immortal, whether the body will admit to resurrection.

Joshua Peter Hochschild
Department of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556