Lease hopefully announces what is at stake. Hopefully, it is colorful and draws you in. I hope as nature as a saint, is nature as we know her is no saint is that kind of title. You may think because the lecture is about melville, that it is a melville quote, but it is a walt emerson quote. A contemporary of melville, someone who was in his intellectual orbit. Someone who was addressing some of the same kind of questions and concerns that melville was. So nature as we know it is drawn from Ralph Waldo Emersons essay called experience in 1884. He is trying to say what would our lives be like . How would we make sense of ourselves . How would we make sense of our moral world if we came into original relationship with the universe . That is to say, we did not have our inherited religion telling us to make sense of our world. We didnt have europe saying to the new world here is how to make sense of yourself and your new world. What would it be like if we took our experience as, in fact, the indication of what right and wrong is. Why cant experience me the fund of our meeting making . And then he goes on to show us why that is so hard to do. Yes, experience is a thorny thing. He wrestles with it in the piece. What i love about this piece is not only the title, which why ill explain in a little bit, but the way he opens up the essay. Call me ishmael is one of the great opening lines. Emerson gives us one of the great opening lines of a modern essay. He opens up asking where do we find ourselves . It is a very arresting and in it you hear emerson trying to question himself. Where is he morally speaking . The rest of the essay is trying to a right himself. I love that question, where we find ourselves . I think it is a nice way of taking stock of where we find ourselves in this class. We find ourselves in the educational science building, not the educational building where we started out. We find ourselves on october 5. We find ourselves on week six of the course, seven deadly sins of American History. You know what we are doing. We are using the seven deadly sins as a way of understanding American History on the early contact up to our own day. What are the seven deadly sins . We struggle with those a little on the first day. Wrath, envy, gluttony, lust, greed. Loth there is no sin without context. In a 2010 study of the seven deadly sins. You know theres another way like to put this. There is no sin without history. It does not make sense to talk about sins without talking about a historical moment in which it is articulated or expressed and punished. Another way of putting it is that sins have a history and that is what we are trying to figure out. What kind of history does pride, gluttony, wrath sloth , have in america . How do they open up something about a particular in life . We start with the colonial. And we go up to our own day and we are seeing how these sins get made and remade into American Intellectual and cultural life. One of the things we are seeing, even in the early weeks of our course, is that ideas about then have a racial component about sin have a result component racial component. One is not necessarily a sin for one race or ethnicity or religion is not necessarily considered a sin for another. Weve seen how notions of sin are gendered. Even the language that is used to describe certain types of sin , we discussed this last week with lust in colonial america, how it is gendered either as male or female. We have not yet done this, because we were only in week six. One of the things were going to do is look at inversions. Onceomething is considered to be a sin against go it gets made into a cultural virtue. One of those things is gluttony. In puritan america, and an absolute must of the turn of the last century with the rise of modern consumer culture. Only thatrning not good and evil have history, but we are also paying a lot of attention to how, as historians thats all of us in this class now, how we use sources to try and access those moral worlds. To whatry and listen in the motivations are different historical actors. So, for the last couple of weeks, we explored lust in colonial america. Now we are moving forward, in the early republic of to the eve of the civil war. We can call that antebellum america. The sin we are now exploring is wrath. We are exploring wrath. And we are using one particular primary source, because by added another one if i added another one, you would kill me. So, just one. It is a big one. What source are we using to listen in on concepts of wrath in the antebellum period . Moby dick. Wonderful, yes. Why moby dick . I have to say i told a colleague of mine who is an former professor at harvard, a melville and american renaissance expert. I told him that i was teaching a seven deadly sins class and i was teaching moby dick. And he said wonderful, pride. [laughter] lets just put it this way, i think there is some pride going on here. Some dangerous pride, some reckless pride. I dont want moby dick to be motto vocal. There are other sins going on here like lust. We have to think about it. I dont want to insist that is the only thing we are going to hear. But for now, im making you do the heavy lifting on wrath. I think im in good company for making a choice. Pulsar john paul rte thought it was an imposing monuments. Can i have someone read it . Bursts beneath the thrust of the cancer. There is an idea of hatred just as there is an idea of whiteness and of the whale hunt. It involves the whole man in the whole human conditions. This is a novel of hatred. It is many other things. It is not only that, but it is also that. So, what i why i chose moby dick. I just wanted to make sure you read moby dick. It will be a book that you take with you for the rest of your life. If not, you can come back and we can talk about it. At the very least, i want to make sure you have read it. Also because i think there is hatred, anger, what we call wrath just seething in particular characters, moments. That is why it i think it is a terrific source for the sin of wrath. Lets go back to emerson. Have any of you ever read any emerson . Next, a little bit . Is that the name thats familiar. Have you read thoreau . Thoreau tends to be read more. If youd know emerson, you probably think of him as an on person to becoming and talking to us about wrath because his reputation is of a sweetie pie. A positive thinker. A motivational speaker with the attitude of just go for it. This is the emerson we get, not the emerson who cuts with a knife. I want to introduce you to the emerson who topples our equilibrium. So why pick emerson here to help us listen into wrath at this moment . I think he is in conversation with melville. They are contemporaries. They are seeing the same moral worlds and problems of the mid19th century america. They are in conversation. But also, if for no other reason than to remind us what we already know, which is no one text is representative of any text. We saw that looking at different sources. Any source you are going to pick as a historical source is blinkered, is limited in some way. Just as we cant ask even though melville wrote this monuments, he is not a representative thinker. He is not speaking for the whole of america. He is speaking for himself. But he is a particularly perceptive observer. He is a particularly articulate commentator. The only way to make sense of melvilles to put him in the dialogue with other thinkers from his day. One of those is emerson. Right now, i want emerson to do a little work for us. And some of the issues that melville is wrestling with in moby dick. Im going to read this. I think that is the intensity of this quote. He writes, nature as we know her is no saint. The lights of the church, the shetics, the grand might , does not this and wish by any distinguish by any favor. She comes eating. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful or not the children of our loss, do not come out of the sunday school norway their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. Does anyone want to try to take that on . As one writer put it, emerson worked with lightning strikes that even at the level of singler singular, he is telling us something. Nature as we know her is no saint. The lights of the church, the aesthetics, the gin choose, the grahamites. She does not distinguish by any favor. Hes basically saying the nature has no moral code. We dont really view nature as people. Kyle, you had your hand up too . It doesnt have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. It will just come and destroy. Nature does not also have favorites. Get the christian, the aesthetics, the gentoos, none of them have a lock on knowing the truth. She does not have any favorites. She does not distinguish. ,his is a very pluralistic move saying no religion has a lock on the whole. He wants a firsthand relationship with the universe. He says guess what . Im not going to think that the or theor asceticism grahamight performers, any one of them will help me understand nature better. I dont want that relationship and that nature isnt a saint. She comes eating, and drinking, and sinning. Her darling, the great, the strong the beautiful, are not children of our law. What does that mean . It doesnt account for that. Commandments and and weighing your food are not weighing food. ,t the construct from humans not something animals think about. It is not something that nature thinks about. It does not respect our little codes of ethics. It does not respect our sense of propriety. Does not respect our ends of right and wrong. So if you want to come with a right relationship with the universe, at least forgetting, or criticizing these religions that think they have a lock on code that we think is going to help us, that is not put us into that delusional original relationship. I think we see an melville, is not always a happy one. Nature is no saint. I can hear melville getting upset. He does not need emerson. And yet we hear him saying something. Its not the exact same thing, but it is in conversation with emerson. This is a neck served an excerpt from a letter he writes to a your friend daniel hawthorne. Nathaniel hawthorne. A popular, very accomplished author and his own day. Herman melville was very good friends with him and in the letter of 1851, which is the year moby dick was published, melville was praising hawthorne or his literary field of genius. His ability to be unafraid of the darkness and the universe. What he is praising hawthorne for doing is saying this is an inscrutable universe, but you have the courage to say no. What we hear is him confessing about something and himself. And im going to have someone read this. Gwyneth, you want to do that . Perhaps, after all, there is no secret. We are inclined to think that god cannot explain his own secret. That he would like a Little Information about certain points himself. We mortals astonish him as much. It is this being of the matter, their lives, the knot with which we joke ourselves. As soon as you say me, a god, and nature, thats when you jump off from your stool. And hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take god out of the dictionary and you will have him in the street. I find that last line confusing so i had to read it and reread it and reread it. Lets just hold off on the last line, but is as important it is important. Can someone put this in terms that are more resonant in terms of how we talk in 2015. Take it line by line. So, he is talking here about the universe. The world. Life. When he says, perhaps there is no secret and then go on. Someone do a guess. There are many of you that i know are good at this. Kyle . Im not 100 sure. Of course youre not. It kind of sounds like leaving in god holds us back believing in god, we are holding ourselves to the truth. Thinking there is this other being, or us believing in something we already know is false. Like hes saying there is no secret. God cannot explain his own secrets. Because there is none, theres nothing that he has that we dont. Perfect. Think about the odd inversion. He says we are inclined that god cannot explain his secrets. And he would like a Little Information upon certain points himself. What . God needs a little points of help . We have an omission of an allknowing god. We mortals astonish him as he astonishes us. That is not saying there is a god. That is a saying if there is a god, we are mutually mystified in both directions. That gets in the way of a god that is allknowing. It goes on, but it is this being of the matter with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say me, god, nature, so soon you jump off the stool. What . So soon as you say the word me, god, nature, yourself, you die . What . Once you are so sure of the universal idea, putting something so far above you, you are so sure. Thats when you could just kill yourself. You kick the stool out from under you. You hang it, you joke, you die. You dont get from any closer to this question of being. Which is for him, the heart of the matter. He says that word is a hangman. Take god out of the dictionary and you would have him in the street. Im not going to subject the last line to exit jesus. Followup to say about that last line is keep it in mind as you read moby dick. Think about the people who populate that vote that boat. I dont want to insist on this because there are a million interpretations, but what if you think about that line take god out of the dictionary and think about god as the man in the street. I think that is a helpful way to at least listen into who are these characters that populate the pequot, and what is he trying to tell his about them . Dishonest for me to fidget with this quote, but if i could have, i would have snuck in another word here. , i thinkhave been sin thats true for melville. It would have been historically inaccurate, but also true. That he would say the same thing about the word sin. Sin is a hangman word. It doesnt get us any closer to or is emerson says, that original relationship to the universe. Next week, were going to bear down in the text. Were going to really work with this as a primary source for listening into mid19th century america. Were going to subject whole chapters to interpretation. Even the resonant phrase. Were going to see if we can hear what melville is trying to tell us across the expanse that separates him from the america of 1851 and our america of 2015. About what he means by god. What he thinks about individual sin, or in this case, social sin. Not just sin of the singular figure, but next week is about zooming in or bearing down, but for today, we are zooming out. Taking a panoramic view. We want to take a more broad look about america and the mid19th century to see what he is seeing. What moral problems does he think he is confronting in the text. We want to look a little bit at the context of moby dick and what it tells us about melvilles mind. His view of the world. So, remember, his mind and you of the world are a product of his own time and place. He is a commentator, but he is living it too. He does not have any special perch on which he can comment on what is right and wrong in america mid19th century. He, himself a shaped by those ideas. We dont want to just use his mind as a way of looking at america. By listing in or paying attention to the mind is itself an expression of the moral worlds in American Life at that time. If moby dick is a novel of hatred, let us not forget it is also a novel of lying. There is not just hating going on, there is desiring, and wanting. We want to listen for that too. Every sin has its counterpart. Every negative emotion has its positive side. So i want you to listen as this book is a confession. It is a confession, but also a commentary on social criticism. So what issues or at lease what issues are at least what issues are pressing on his moral imagination . Going to touch on at least three. Very speedy, not getting indeed, but just to alert you that might be sources of things being commented on any text. Once we do this, then come back in about 10 minutes the first context, if you will, of melvilles midcentury america is that he is writing this at a time of intense fervor and liberalization. We see staggering growth and diverse a vacation. Protestantism under growing staggering growth and diversification with the proliferation of different sects , the different profits and movements, all aimed at reforming American Society and bringing it closer in line with their interpretation of the bible and the word of god. It is a time of intense religious pluralism and fervor. Its also, interestingly, a time of intense liberalization. I dont like the other word that we tend to use, secularization. Seems to so massively overshoot the mark. Aboutridiculous to talk 19thcentury america is somehow becoming increasingly secular. If i secular, we mean not religious. Meanlar, m we worldly, then yes. That is people are not becoming less religious, they are just trying to bring their religious thoughts more line with the time. I think the better word is liberalization. That is religion as a gets press religious sensibility as a gets pressed through a gets press through enlightenment ideals of rationality and reason. The enlightenment doesnt get rid of religion, but it helps to reconstitute some forms of protestantism. That goes on to be what we call liberal protestantism. Verylles new england is much part of this liberalization of christianity. He is living in it. But i think he is critical of it. I think you can hear that in the text. Historian, anne douglas put it, moby dick was a article a critique of liberal protestantism. What we see in moby dick, is that melville craves some view of the world that is sublime. Not beautiful. That is mysterious, nonsensical. Not sensible. A god who is inscrutable and not what we would later here and the 19th century in the 19th century. A religion in which jesus is your friend. Ive got a friend in jesus. Melville doesnt want god to be his friend. If there is going to be a god, its going to be a god worthy of all and admiration and terror awe and admiration and terror. We see melville pushing back against this liberalizing tendency in product is schism in protestantism. It that melville needed calvinism for his moral imagination. He was an aesthetic calvinist. Does that make sense . So its like someone who is catholic, but does not actually believe in all the stuff. But loves the smells and bells, loves the liturgy. Theres a whole aesthetic to religion. You might not believe in you might not believe in the tenants, the worldview, but there may be something about it. The ritual, the architecture of the church, the smells of the church, the holidays. That one craves for his or her moral imagination. I think that is a good way of talking about melville. He did not believe it, but he needed it. For the stuff of his writing. And yet on the other hand, we also see in moby dick, and appreciation or differences and of religious difference and diversity. We see a longing for the returning of a more austere form of calvinism. At the same time, is very much in his day that he is looking around and sees at least somewhat open to and appreciative of diversity. Certainly to the idea that no one group has a lock on moral truth. So i think we can look at the novel and see he is wrestling with that. Melville is seen as being very apolitical. Or by this point in his career, very apolitical. I think it does not pick up to the degrees to which his interest in changes in american political life are right there on the page. Is america sees lots of changes. I say this is the period when we witnessed the democratization of democracy. Democracy became more inclusive, at least among white males. All white males. Egalitarianwing impulse captured by the rise of presidency of Andrew Jackson who served from 1829 1837. Billy comes to power with a very antielitist or the later be called a populist kind of everyman rhetoric, he goes on to be one of the great despots or dictators to come about in American History. So jacksons politics helped crystallize nagging doubts of the time and doubts that are still with us today. How easy is it to pull off democracy, equality . Or to put it in a more pointed way, concern of the day was does , democracy somehow create a craving for the strong leader . To counteract its leveling forces . These are the crucial questions of the day. What kind of leader does a democracy produce . What kind of leader is appropriate for democracy . And the question about in a Horizontal Society without we more prone to hear a worship . To heroip . Worship. Because human beings dont do well with a flattened moral landscape. We hear these questions answered and moby dick, as in the text. Like the writer margaret fuller. Many have argued persuasively that melville draws his inspiration from jackson. This figure with an iron will. He will let nothing stop him. Ahab said said he would strike the sun if it ever insulted him. I dont know if you got to that part yet. Orres an interesting play version of that, where an admirer of Andrew Jackson in 1840 doesnt just say you would strike the sun, but actually likens jackson to the sun. He says i have seen a light arise in the rest in the west that it diminished and obscured all the lights around it. That brilliant light was Andrew Jackson. So in addition to widespread political transformation, this d of economicio isnslation, which industrialization or the period of market revolution. It is a period where receded we see the transformation of the manufacturing industry. Where the family farm or household was once the center of economic production, thats now moving increasingly to shops and factories. What is aiding industrialization is technological develops. Part to explain some of the transformation. Thanks to industrialization and technological involvement, we developments, we get not only a greater distribution of goods, but we also get a Greater Division of labor among workers. Which means less independence and control over the labor process and its rewards. Moby dick is very much caught in this moment. It is very caught in the questions of labor and independence and a mass labor force. You think a novel that takes place on the high seas would be a one of escape from industrialization. Ishmael certainly takes from the seas to get away, but then what does he do . Right in the first chapter he realizes that a whaling ship may be another exploited system. Exploitative system, where workers are trapped with a system that is just unjust and economically punishing is the one on land. What does he say . Im going to go ahead and read it because i can read fast. This is ishmael and he is making the decision if he should got to see. Im a slave so ill just go get battered and bruised and that awful economic system. In the 1840s and 1850s, a question like that, who aint a slave is not just a tossup question. It is the question of its day. What is free labor . What constitutes free labor . If what we receive what we are seeing is the emergence of wage slavery in the north, its slavery, but its not great. Who aint a slave is not just a castoff question, it is a question that announces a problem that he is going to try to figure out in the book. So it is a question of what is free labor and what is slave labor and is free labor really free . In the same time, the question of slavery and the persistent growth of slavery in his own time to think about it. In 1790, there were 690,000 slaves in america. Eventually there were 4 million. The whole story of early 19th century is about the northern states try to keep a check on slavery, and not have a move into the north. We are seeing the persistent growth in numbers of slaves, so slavery is the defining moral problem of melvilles day. I think this is a powerful quote from southern historian michael brian. He says it making an empire, making a republic, making a property, all these would have been hard enough to hold together. But to drive the project forward produced a cultural anxiety of start proportions. Anxiety and start proportions in things like these iron horns. Has anyone seen this before . Can someone read what that says here . That gives us an indication of what that artifact was. Horns on ton with keep her from running away. Remember when we look that runaway wife advertisements last week . We try to think what that told us about ideas of lust and love . Were just a small number of the kind of runaway ads that were typically posted, much more common was runaway slave advertisements. For people trying to retrieve their property. A good way of making sure that runaway slaves would not run away again, was using this device which is called iron horns. This is a document, a kind of artifact would look at to listen into the kind of things that he is talking to us about, the anxiety of start proportions. Stark proportions. Thats a document we listen in as we are trying to understand cultural like sin in a context. They see it as a virtue. We can look at things like slave pens. This is outside virginia which is outside the nations capital. We can see it in slave advertisements in 1865. Right around the time of moby dick a few years later. A couple of bucks, and a wench for sale. We see it in moby dick. Were going to move ahead to ideas about race. What other context or ideas do we see melville addressing in moby dick . Or what kind of context do we see pressing itself down into this text . That is the vibrant discussion about race. An different races. This goes handinhand with discussions about slavery. People use a certain racial theory to justify why slavery was ok. Or morally sanctioned. They use the bible as well. They use scientific ideas about race. Melville was appalled by slavery and yet, i think as you read moby dick, youll see that sometimes he is pushing against racial ideas, but on other times it is not so clear. That is just what i want to alert you to. The way hes i dressing addressing things about race. At some time, so this is a page out of a very famous book. From 1854. This is an example of one of the beforet racial theories he get darwins origin of species in 1859. I dont want overstated. Its not like we get darwin and the world breaks into and the a very developed concept of evolution. America,t happen in whether so much pushback in 1859 in our own day. Say darwins discovery or recognition of Natural Selection dramatically changes the way he will think about evolution. Prior to darwin, which is very racial hierarchies. Racist, gracious views about races. It is very categorical. We see sometimes melville a that ape that language and i think other times was very critical of it. Through ishmael, we have a little saying a man can be honest through any sort of skin. We see his friendship or what others have identified as love. Thateequeg as an example he practiced what he preached. Melville himself, before writing moby dick, actually wrote several popular novels on ships in the high seas. He himself had been a sailor and traveled around for three years. On different ships. At this time, many of the sailing ships, like the whaling ships of the greek on that over theare from all world and different backgrounds. We can see melville picks up that sensibility, a cosmopolitan sensibility of variety indifference. And difference. At the very least, i want to remind you, or alert you to the fact or to Pay Attention to who are the characters in this novel. When you start to Pay Attention to who the characters are, you realize race and racial difference is something that is interesting to him. There is a lot he is saying with the use of these different characters. You got queequeg, who is african and polynesian and has elements of islam and christianity. Youve got dagu. The blackest coal, african carpenter. Harpooner. Youve got pip, the cabin boy. Youve got tashdego, the noble savage. Or the native american who is respectable and refined. We have the mysterious oriental. We have ishmael. This is a picture of ishmael from the hebrew bible or the new testament. I dont think that is what melvilles ishmael looks like. He was definitely older. Does anyone member who ishmael was from the bible . Or what the christians call the old testament, or what muslims call their koran . Son of abraham. And who was his mother . [no audio] that was isaacs mother. Hagar was the handmaiden, sarah wanted a child, and hagar got pregnant. The first son is ishmael, but then sarah gets jealous and so she makes abraham kick them out of the house. There we get the separation of the tribes. He and his mother go off into the desert. Newave the beginnings of a religious trajectory. As many, many, many years later mohammed would come to identify , himself and his followers as an line with ishmael. So ishmael is one of the fathers of islam. All the religions that go back to abraham, judaism, christianity, and then islam. They all have the same origin. They are all genetically linked, but they all have different paths. I think it is not insignificant that ishmael is called ishmael, i dont need to over pushed too hard. Thats alerting us to a different track as well. Last, but not least we cant talk about race without talking about the white whale. The imposing, formidable, inscrutable, allpowerful, or seemingly allpowerful, white whale. I dont want to insist that the whiteness of the whale means anything. We had 150 years that people thinking they knew what the whiteness of the whale meant. Perhaps it means nothing. I think it is worth being alerted to. That whiteness, just as oriental ness, or muslimmess, or es, thathe other ness we see with diversity. Moby dick is a commentary on racial difference. Melville i havent give you any sort of this is what this means. Thats never fun. I want to give you an alert to the kind of context that melville is working within, and the kind of things i can see him working through the text, among others. Aboutous belief, issues political and economic transformation, democratization, the rise of market capitalism and industrialization. As well as slavery, the institution of slavery and ideas of race. This should be an ideal primary source. This is like, perfect. There is a tricky part with that and that is moby dick was a , commercial flop. It was a disaster. Readers were very disappointed because he had written these wonderful stories of the high seas and they were expecting more of that and instead what they got, was an imposing monument. They did not want an imposing monument. When we think of melville as is great, towering, novelist for the ages, well he wasnt. This brought him near financial ruin. It brought him to psychic ruin. The rest of his intellectual, or his career, is a very sad one. Though, he does manage to push out a few more books. This was not the consummation, at least in his own lifetime. And yet, Melvilles Moby Dick picks up many years later. Actually in the 1920s and americans rediscover this book. It is in the 1940s that one of the great commentators, madison, he was an enduring nature of our age. Some moby dick, as a primary source, is a little tricky. If sales are any indication of how much it spoke to readers of his day, it didnt. So we need to both listen and pushback from the text. At the very least, we need to be very cautious in the same way we should be cautious with any primary source. Every primary source is blinkered, partial, gives us one perspective. Again, to make moby dick as big as it is do all the heavy lifting for the ideas of sin for or wrath in general, is not a good idea. Its worth paying attention, release being mindful that in his own time or place, this was something he out of step with what american leaders wanted are. Wanted to pick up on this. Melville gets rediscovered in the 1920s and its from that, it is a pretty Straight Line for melville as one of the major authors of our american past. It goes from the 1920s until today. An early literary commentator who picks up on melville and sees them as a great critic of , made hisemocracy gorge rise. Im going to show you some of the illustrations next week. It might be the best moby dick illustration from the 1930s. We look at them not only a comment of moby dick, but also america and the 1930s. Right after the crash, america entering the great depression. Hes reading moby dick in a particular way, because of the demands of his time. I think we can see some of that in the art. I wanted to remind you that there are other things going on in moby dick. It is not just wrath. Where do we see the wrath . Different critics saw different subjects. A magnificent literary critic from midcentury thought that the story of melville was a story of lost lust and homoerotic lust. The vital injuries symbolized by the loss of ahabs leg and injury to the capacity for heterosexual love. Where going to pull up we are going to pull up these quotes next week. A ends on he sits before tab of cooling sperm ascetic. He thinks what this story is about is lust. Being choked down by eight its by senses of propriety of his day. She thinks it is a beautiful meditation on lust. Matheson, who i quoted earlier, thinks that it is pride. He says in moby dick, melville branded it is the agony of that imperial self. Itself,anic aggrandized so walled within itself and its hubris that is toxic. That is damaging. That is what this is a study of. It is a study pride. Sartre things the same things. I wont read the quote, but the quote is the indication that startre would have said it is not only a novel of hate, but also of pride. , a wonderful james and atury activist political thinker, writer, forgetan says basically all that. The intellectuals of our time, and by that, hes talking about sartre, hes talking about placed theire disease to stamp upon the literature of our age. As they are placed their disease staff upon his psychology. Hes talking more generally about existentialism right now. Some of them are men of very for all of, but them, human beings are the naked and the dead, for whom there is nothing between here and eternity. Life is a journey between the end of the night, where the neurotic freedom escapes into hopelessness. He says these writers are putting their own interpretation on melville and saying this disease, hes well within his own aggrandized itself. He goes on to say sick to the heart with a modern sickness, yet how is then the scales contemporary mountain of selfexamination and selfpity against the warmth, the humor, the insanity, the anonymous but in theg insanity, rooted whole historical past, man doing what they have to do, facing what they have to face. Do you hear the pivot . All of you are caught up. Why dont we look at the humble of those colored folk . Forget the sin, forget the alienation, forget the despair. Grandeur. E beauty and look at the humble virtue of those workers on this ship. He sees it as an argument for the very marxist perspective he himself has. The grandeur and beauty of labor, of diversity. This back next week so we can work with it. There is Something Else going on here. It is also the humble virtues. I think if we are going to talk about 19thcentury america, if we are going to talk about sin. Well to let him get the last word. Here i did sneak in other words. What is he doing in this book . Well to hear he wants to tell us something about sin, whether it is individual or social sin. I think he wants to tell us something about the word sin itself. Its a word that punishes, that cuts off, that alienates, that , what might the being of the matter just be . Any questions . I know some of you are different places in the book. How is it going . Can i get another thumbsup . The you gotten past categorization of the wales . I will obviously talk and much more detail next week and carry on the conversation as we move forward, but are you hearing echoes of anything about the classes before . It is interesting to read it from the perspective of the psychology class. It is interesting. She reminds me this is part of a Freshman Interest Group. With lyndang this barry. How would you describe that class . How do you communicate information and a graphic form . Wonderful psychology class with the psychology of emotion. The idea of your Freshman Interest Group is to bring these things together. A history class that looks at sin and a motion. Looking toward a scientific and ecological perspective. I am glad you said that. I didnt think that is being so obvious. It is a work of art. She works at the level of illustrations. Bothare both artists and trying to do something with their art. And together on the psychology could put up many more quotes about melville as the great psychologist of his day. Freud whounner of understood the deep subconscious. You will be bombarded. In a certain sense we could psychologistsarly , the field doesnt yet exist. Understand the inner workings of peoples minds. Im glad that you mentioned that. A question that helps clarify something . [indiscernible] wonderful question. It depends on what interpreter you ask. Do not mistake ishmael for melville. Articulate things he wants to articulate. One of the more common readings i try to identify them. That is worth asking. Is it distributed . Or is it none of them . It is not a code to crack moby dick. It is an imposing monument. What does this mean and their number . You can read it for all its symbolism. There is no code cracking. We are source whisperers. We are trying to use this source to listen to what we can possibly tell us about the ways that some americans, and at least melville, made good sense of himself in a small world. Thank you all. You are watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Des moines iowa, simulcasting with cspan. Here in iowa. God bless the great state of iowa. The Republican Party of iowa. In iowa. In iowa. If you would have told us we were going to come in third in iowa, we would have given anything for that. We dont know much about the iowa caucuses. Thank you for the great sendoff you are giving us. I want to thank the people of iowa. I want to thank all the people of iowa. Iowa is the first. I love you all, if i lose iowa i will never speak to you again. Historians and legals legal scholars discuss the original intent of the scope of the 13th and 14th amendment. They dealt with rights for freed slaves and African Americans in general. The Panel Debates whether these amendments were meant to protect just civil rights such as owning property and making contracts or whether they also protected rights such as voting. The 15th amendment would eventually solidify that the right to vote could not be denied by race. The National Constitution Center Hosted this 45 minute event. [applause] ladies and gentle them, welcome to the National Constitution center. I am jeffrey rosen, president of this wonderfulti
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