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Re architectonic I'm reminded a bit of Alma's Castle in Spenser:
Of all Gods workes, which do this world adorne,
There is no one more faire and excellent,
Then is mans body both for powre and forme,
While it is kept in sober gouernment; (FQ II.ix.1)
The Castle's potentially Vitruvian proportions have been invoked to explain the famous stanza (II.ix.22) on its proportions ("The frame thereof ... partly circular ... the first and last proportions ... a quadrate was the base / Proportioned equally ... goodly diapase.").
And compare the ethical structure invoked after Arthur's successful defense of it, where "goodly" and "frame" of the stanza just cited recur:
Now gins this goodly frame of Temperance
Fairely to rise, and her adorned hed
To pricke of highest praise forth to aduance,
Formerly grounded, and fast setteled
On firme foundation of true bountihed. (FQ II.xii.1)
If Sidney's "well knowing" means one's acquaintance with one's ethical character (piety, self-control, chastity), then perhaps his "well doing" means taking right actions in friendship, justice, and courtesy.
In passing one can note that a body's physical and architectural integrity in space may be compared to its temporal counterpart, a life's maintenance of moral integrity over time:
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As subject to Time's love or Time's hate,
Weeds amoung weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th'inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with the showers.
To this I witness call the fools of Time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. (Shakespeare, Son. 124)After Rob's response, I'll dare to venture to mention his discussion(s) ofconcept to Melanchthon-Philippist piety, which would tie in with the
the concept architectonike in his wonderful book Philip Sidney and the
Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism. If memory serves, he relates theCenter for Digital Humanities <http://www.cdh.sc.edu/> Faculty Web Page <http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/people/pages/miller.html> Dreams of the Burning Child
biblical injunction you cite. I imagine you know the book, but it might be
worth another look if you read it some time ago, as did I.
Judith
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:SIDNEY-SPENSER@jiscmail.ac.uk]
On Behalf Of Stillman, Robert E
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 4:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sidney and architectonike
That is a terrific question, and and an important one for getting right
Sidney's notions about how and why poetry does its work. Answering it well
would mean looking hard at those contemporary sources through which
Aristotle's Ethics were mediated for him. You might want to have a look at
Joachim Camerarius the Elder's commentaries on the Ethics, posthumously
published by Andreas Wechel's press in Frankfurt after Sidney's request to
his sons for its publication. Sidney didn't read Aristotle as we do. He
read him through the specific lens of a particular brand of reformed
humanism that found one of its most learned expressions in Camerarius--also
the translator of the Cyropaedia, which is another of Wechel's publications.
The commentary has a useful, searchable index both for Greek terms and for
Latin. You might have a look there for architectonike and entelecheia, and
then compare notes on what Camerarius has to say about energeia--a good
Aristotelian term appearing some 600-plus times in the corpus, and of some
real interest to Camerarius and to Sidney where concepts of the self and
self -knowledge and the work (energon) of becoming or making or knowing a
self matter.
I hope the suggestion helps, and apologise for my short-hand notes, but I'm
traveling right now and away from my books.
Rob
I'm writing to ask whether anyone knows of a precedent for Sidney's gloss on
'architectonike' as self-knowledge.
It looks like he's putting together two classical passages: Aristotle on
the master-science, which he compares to architecture because other forms of
techne are controlled by it as workmen are controlled by the architect; and
Plato on the Delphic oracle's "know thyself."
What I'm wondering--if this interpretation passes muster--is whether Sidney
is making this leap himself, or repeating something fairly commonplace. It
doesn't look to me as if Aristotle's 'architectonike' is really about
self-knowledge in Aristotle; and Sidney's way of glossing the term ("which
stands as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self") seems to imply that
he's the one drawing this conclusion.
--
David Lee Miller
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803) 777-4256
FAX 777-9064
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