Shorter Kenneally

by Will Wilkinson on November 30, 2008

The greatest gift Culture 11 has given the world is the dazzling thought of RIT political theorist Ivan Kenneally. I think I’ll make Kenneally translation an occasional feature. On the subject of Thanksgiving: 

Thanksgiving is a holiday devoted to the virtue of gratitude which, one could argue, finds less than hospitable ground in the modern world. The Lockean position on nature, that it furnishes only worthless materials that gain value through an imposition of labor, could not be more inconsistent with gratitude; in fact, Locke specifically undermines any conception of nature that would inspire reverence for the evidence it gives us of God’s providence. Instead of gratitude for what nature provides Locke encourages pride in our mastery and possession of nature—we take pride in ourselves as the only part of nature that can refashion nature. It is hard for beings who fancy themselves as radically self-sufficient or autonomous to be grateful for anything.

Translation:

In the modern world, there is so much more to be grateful for. Therefore, we are less grateful.

Evaluate!

Viewing 3 Comments

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    I think, for your translation to be fair you would have had to clarify that we have more to be grateful to other people for, and therefore we are less grateful to nature.
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    Kenneally is expounding on a footnote to a passage in Strauss's Natural Right and History, quoting Locke like so:

    "nature and the earth furnish only the almost most worthless materials as in themselves"*

    * 124. "Locke's statements about the relative importance of the gifts of nature and human labor [are illustrated--sic] with a statement from Ambrose's Hexameron, translated by George Boas, in Essays on Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), p. 42."

    In the passage cited by Strauss, Boas quotes the Church father Ambrose in this way:

    "In the Hexameron he gives us a description of the world and of man as they came from the hands of their creator, before their nature had been changed by sin. This description combines themes from Genesis and pictures of the Golden Age from classical poetry. Its general tone is that of soft primitivism.

    Spontaneously earth bore all fruits; though it could not be plowed in the absence of a plowman--no farmer yet existed--nevertheless it abounded in the richest harvests, and, I do not doubt, with an even larger yield, since the slothfulness of the husbandman could not rob the soil of its richness . . . Thus, O Man, while you are asleep and unconscious, the earth still produces its fruits; you sleep and then you rise and marvel to see how the grain has grown through the night."
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    I had professor Kenneally in my undergraduate career at SUNY Geneseo. One of the greatest professors the school had (or will ever have).
 

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