Prison Break + Joinery = International Law

In keeping in the discussion of natural law, Hugo de Groot, or Grotius, as he was known, was the dude. Well, he and Selden, but we'll get to Selden later. Grotius was a fascinating figure of the seventeenth century; in addition to being a jurist, he was also a theologian, a playwright, and a poet. Where does the woodworking bit come in? Well, you can scroll down to the orange text-which is an account of Grotius's escape from jail-to find out. In the meantime, here's a brief sketch of the cultural climate and the circumstances under which Grotius was imprisoned.

Grotius had allied himself with Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, and with the Remonstrants. The Remonstrants were basically Protestants who took issue with some of the more uptight aspects of Calvinism (like the belief that if you're saved, no matter how horrible you are, you're in--the Remonstrants believed in Grace, but not as independent of a person's merit or actions--in other words, if you're naughty, you jeopardise your spiritual immunity), and who maintained the doctrines of Jakob Harmenszoon, better known as Jacob Arminius. In order to fill the picture in a bit more (because all of these strains of Protestantism are, well...a strain), John Wesley, the guy who started Methodism, was a huge fan of Arminianism. Now, the connection here between English and Dutch theology is not merely an aside--each had significant impact on the other. In fact, the Synod of Dordrecht (or Dort) was inspired by the Authorised Version of the Bible, and just as this was a landmark in the English language, the Statenvertaling was to deeply impact spoken Dutch, as well. And just to throw some modern references in, click here for Margaret Thatcher's thoughts on Methodism, Anglicanism, and society.

Grotius, whilst in jail, actually wrote a letter to the man responsible for Genesis--Kings I of the Authorised Version: Launcelot Andrewes. Four days after the synod, van Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded (13 May 1619). Finally, in 1621, Grotius made a move, recorded in Barbeyrac's short biography on Grotius:

[He was severely used for above 18 months; from whence,] by the Contrivance of Mary de Regelsberg his Wife, he made his Escape, who having observed that the Guards, being weary of searching a large Trunk full of Books and Linnen to be washed at Gorcum, a neighbouring Town, let it go without opening it as they used to do, advised her Husband to put himself into it, having made some Holes with a Wimble in the Place where the fore-part of his Head was, that he might not be stifled. He followed her Advice, and was in that manner carried to a Friend of his at Gorcum; from whence he went to Antwerp in the usual Waggon, after he had crossed the publick Place in the Disguise of a Joyner, with a Ruler in his Hand.
Barbeyrac's biography is included in the beginning of his edition of Grotius's De Jure Belli ac Pacis (The Rights of War and Peace)

John Milton had a total man-crush on 'the learned Hugo Grotius':

For a more extended treatment of Milton's usage of Grotius, click here.

As we saw in Sharkwater, the issues that Seashepherd attempts to deal with, namely the ownership of the seas (and legal jurisdiction), was actually at the root of a controversy in the seventeenth century that culminated in the first Anglo-Dutch War. Grotius's Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), published in 1609, argued that the sea was international territory, and was therefore open for all to trade. This was the perfect green light for the Dutch, who were a maritime powerhouse, to use their strengths in order to break up trade monopolies, and then establish their own. This infuriated the English, who were the other main contenders in maritime trade, eliciting, amongst other works, John Selden's Mare Clausum, in which Selden naturally argued that both land and sea could be appropriated by nations.

As we have seen, there seems to be a lot of intrigue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries surrounding hiding places, religious persecution, and joiners. Jason Rosenblatt notes:

There is something comic and unreal about the picture of Grotius conspicuously holding a tool to give himself an identity, the way a character in an allegorical painting might hold a compass or an anchor.
from Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden, p. 135

Cool. It seems like there are many permutations of the religion-and-carpentry motif beyond the classic:

Cartoon by Mike Stanfill

Falling Water; Frank Lloyd Wrong?

Today, my parents, my sister, and i went to see Falling Water. It was a remarkable experience. My mother and i had seen a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright in preparation for the trip (yes, the nerdy apple falls not far from the nerdy tree...). I am happy we did, as the tour was rather superficial. Two things, possibly connected, were not addressed and continue to gnaw at my mind:

1) Mr. Wright had virtually no professional training
2) Mr. Wright was a total d-bag

After reading a few of Simon Winchester's books, it struck me (as i am sure was the intention) that many of the greatest innovations were achievements of people who lacked formal education (Winchester has written two books about the Oxford English Dictionary, The Professor and the Madman, and The Meaning of Everything). James Murray, the son of a Scottish draper was an autodidact who taught himself numerous languages, archaeology, and who was making accurate astronomical predictions before the age of 12, was the primary editor of the OED. In The Map That Changed the World, Winchester tells the shocking story of William Smith, the canal digger who despite bitter class-wars, became the father of modern geology.

Leonardo da Vinci, whose bastard-status prevented him from receiving classical education (which was probably an advantage because it forced him to observe the world rather than be bound to the Greek mindset of conceiving the world according to models) also comes to mind. John Harrison, a carpenter who taught himself clock-making, invented the marine chronometer,(which established longitude), revolutionising navigation in the 18th century. All of these people, including Wright, were laypeople. All of these people worked with their hands.

Wright actually put a premium on manual labour and stressed its relation to one's development as a person or as an artist. In his apprenticeship programme at Taliesen, pupils learnt by doing--and this included working in the fields, preparing meals, and maintaining the property. Wright told his students that it was as important for them to work with their hands, read poetry, cook, and listen to music, as it was to study great architectural works. In a similar way, T. S. Eliot describes the 'heterogeneous ideas' that create the unified experience in the poetry of John Donne:

The ordinary man falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

Like Donne, Wright viewed his craft as a spiritual process, involving the cooperation of the natural with the supernatural. Donne often discusses the rectification of reason, the transformation or elevation of one's natural reason to a higher plane, contingent upon belief in God. In other words, belief in God is basically super-sizing your reason.

Conversely, Wright viewed nature as being rectified by humanity, or what he called organic architecture; 'a reinterpretation of nature’s principles as they had been filtered through the intelligent minds of men and women who could then build forms which are more natural than nature itself'.

Wright bucked the trend of industrial architecture, of modernism with all its machinery, dominating and subduing nature. He instead turned to craft; the spiritual space of a building, the craftsman's hands on the piece, the harmony between humanity and nature. Wright's philosophical commitment to architecture that is generated by its surroundings has made his horizontal planes practically iconic, and can be seen in his treatment of the boulders at Falling Water. Nature is not interrupted, nor is it displaced.

Lovely. It sounds like Wright had much in common with Donne. It also seems that his stint in Japan influenced him with a lot of Eastern thought about our place in nature, and body and mind and harmony stuff. So what's the problem? I guess i'm confused by a guy whose aesthetic is morally grounded but his actions were so scandalous and immoral.

The debate about morality's place in art, or as Benjamin Constant called it, l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) has been discussed by people such as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Mallarme, Wilde, Ruskin, Whistler, and loads of others. I've rattled them off like they're distant family members, but i've only read them superficially--click here for a more in-depth synopses. A few weeks ago, i attended a conference on early modern English thought, and was blown away by a paper about the impact of Paradise Lost on Kant's moral philosophy. It restored my faith in what initially drew me to literature, and though we (perhaps anachronistically) may disagree with much of what 17th century religious writers have to say, there is little doubt in my mind that they genuinely sought a moral life. As for Wright, i don't want to justify him. And only trite things come to mind about how someone with such a nice philosophy could be a total d-nozzle. Like the greater the person the greater temptations, so i suppose he just gave in to his. But that doesn't quite cut it. Thoughts, anyone? Bueller?