1. Today’s Goals… Transition into the Final Unit
Professor V.d.A.’s Disciplinary Approach to War
Lecturing Style
Introduce and Lay Out Essay 3
Conceptual Analysis
Hermeneutic Circle Applied to Reading and Writing
Intertextuality/ Discussion of Translation and Witnessing / Group Share
Goericke Account of the Sack of Magdeburg
Visual Translation of the Sack of Magdeburg
Grimmelshausen
Gryphius
Theater of War

2. Iliad Essay and Midterm Results

3. Essay 1: Stylistic Observations
Attend to your Writing Voice
Respect your reader
avoid italicizing or using all caps for effect
Logical Fallacy of Intention:
Focus on literary analysis – fallacy to speak on behalf of the author, reader or character feelings, intentions, beliefs, etc.
When is it appropriate to quote yourself?
“Costs” of war – literal and figurative implications
“morality poem” – scare quotes
Dig in deeper conceptually - Where text shows claims
This was not a character analysis or psychoanalysis

4. Lecture Review
Ethos of Professor Van den Abele? Describe his lecturing style?
How did Professor V.d.A. transition from earlier units?
How will we think differently about war in this unit?
Explain what it means that Machiavelli lived in a “contradictory” world?
What is the difference between a principality and a republic?
Definition of virtue/fortune (according to Machiavelli’s time/usage)?
What is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning?
Deductive: Reasoning that moves from hypothesis/statement through premises to a logical conclusion (syllogism)
Inductive: Reasoning that takes specific information and makes a broader generalization considered probable, allowing for the fact that the conclusion may not be accurate (conclusions/abstract principles drawn/pulled from data inductively)

5. Essay 3 (adapting from the prompt)
Dr. Morse will choose a concept and a passage with an example from Machiavelli’s The Prince. (prudence/virtue/cruelty, etc.) You’ll begin by articulating/characterizing Machiavelli’s cursory definition of the concept.
Then, after carefully re-reading the passage, ARGUE HOW an example applied to the concept illustrates, complicates, delimits M’s preliminary understanding of the concept.
Discipline and Skill: The Prince is a Canonical text in the history of philosophy that employs “conceptual analysis”
Method: These texts propose a definition of a concept that is tested “against imagined, historical, or real-life” examples.
Conceptual/Methodological Goal: Through this method (conceptual analysis) – the author/philosopher arrives at a more comprehensive and adequate definition of that concept = informs our understanding of text.

6. We’re Following a Hermeneutic Cycle
Hermeneutics is the science or art of interpretation – the idea comes from “hermeneia” meaning interpretation
The hermeneutic circle refers to the circle of interpretation that is involved in the understanding of knowledge. It characterizes a relationship between the reader and a text.
The concept is a way of stating that understanding and knowledge is a cycle of exposure to information (definition), interpretation (application to examples), then re-exposure to texts (redefinition – deeper understanding).
To fully understand a text we must begin with an initial impression of meaning and then go back to the text to test and refine our understanding.
Subsequent exposure to a text is influenced by the interpretation of the previous text.
We’re Following a Hermeneutic Cycle

7. Essay 3 (adapting from the prompt)
Conceptual analysis and Finding Meaning in The Prince:
These concepts (power/virtue/fortune) represent specific characteristics and actions required of “the Prince” or political sovereign to acquire and to maintain power over a state or “dominion”
The Examples M offers are hypothetical and historical examples of rulers who exemplify or fail to exemplify these characteristics.
However, through this method – conceptual analysis – your goal will be to explain how M arrives at a more fully realized and “adequate” definition - one that characterizes the “essence” of that concept. That will be your challenge.

8. Conceptual Steps in Reading and Drafting Essay 3:
Step One: Outline Concept and Purpose in First Pass
Describe how Machiavelli initially defines the Concept (explicitly and implicitly and also according to the time period)
Note: You may look to any part of the text to support this initial definition
Note: Although you will focus attention on one specific concept, you necessarily must account for the relationship between multiple concepts working together with your assigned concept (power/virtue/fortune)
Identify the premises (stated & unstated) that reinforce basic definition
Express what M’s preliminary sense of the concept AND its purpose are
Assert what arguments about attaining/maintaining power lead M to define the concept in this way (“So What” – was he a cynical advocate or a republican critic?)

9. Conceptual Steps in Reading and Drafting Essay 3: Let’s follow the Hermeneutic Circle
Step Two: Testing That Definition Against Examples
Re-read the Passage (Returning to the Text)
Identify and Characterize what kind of example is provided in the passage
An analogy/metaphor/historical application – political, biblical, etc.?
How does the additional context provided by the example shape or alter or affect the meaning of the preliminary concept?
Explain how the example relates to components of the preliminary definition from part one? (Note: Example may contain multiple parts)
Examine how the example forces the reader to reconsider some aspect
Examine which parts of the example seem to reinforce, extend, revise, or challenge the initial definition and how? To what end?

10. Conceptual Steps in Reading and Drafting Essay 3:
Step Three: Characterizing the “Essence” of the Concept (Thesis)
By now you will have a much better grasp of Machiavelli’s concept and its purpose, so RETURN to the TEXT and RE-READ
Explain HOW the example complicates or confirms/validates or reinforces, supplements, etc. the initial definition.
Identify the extent to which the example alters the initial definition, and then use your deeper understanding of the text to explain
In doing this explain how this newly refined or contextualized definition of the concept reveals about Machiavelli’s text about the specific characteristics and actions required of a political sovereign to attain and retain power.
In other words, how does your conceptual analysis lead you to the “essence” of that concept and “so what” (was he a cynical advocate or a republican critic?)?

11. Essay 3 Reminders
Your drafting process will also be modeled on the Hermeneutic Circle
To accomplish the drafting steps your rough draft must be between 5-6 pages
However, your final draft will be refined to between 3-4 pages
As part of the discipline of philosophical writing, this decrease in page length will require you to reduce as you refine (your writing AND your understanding)
Your final paper (3-4 pp.) should include only your most persuasive evidence and your most concise, logical prose.
This paper will be worth 35% of your writing grade.

12. Rhetorical Argumentative Structure
General Assertion (definition of concept, quality of a leader, how a principality works)
Logical discussion of implied premises and presuppositions, as well as potential consequences and qualifications (deductive reasoning)
Specific historical examples, adduced to test the validity of the assertion
These examples serve as tools to deepen and complicate our analysis of the political situation in question or to find an exception

13. Translation
According to the Writer’s Handbook, translation means to “carry something across different languages” (21). It is an interpretive process that must account for (in part):
Language in a specific context, choosing between synonyms and idiomatic expressions
Understanding cultural context is vital
We also know that sometimes a translator makes a choice
to omit details from or to make additions to the original
to remain true to form OR content but not always both
These choices lead to changes to or differences in meaning or might be driven by a particular agenda

14. Intertextuality
(from latin intertexto) means to intermingle or to weave together.
We can understand intertextuality as occurring when one text references another text or genre or tradition.
It also occurs when two or more texts are in dialogue with one another so that one text’s meaning is shaped or challenged or problematized by another.

15. The first publication of von Guericke's account ("from the manuscript") in 1860 contained the following introduction by the editor. What impact does this endorsement have? Can this short text be understood as an intertext?
I want to give the reader, at the close of this preface, still another word of recommendation for this little book which I hereby place in his hands, I consider thoroughly unnecessary. Guericke was an eyewitness of the events that he depicts; he was, by virtue of his official position as councilor and Bauherr of the city, very precisely informed about the events and, moreover, a man of such acknowledged honorableness that any intentional distortion of the truth in his story in the slightest is out of the question.

16. Group Discussion and Presentation
Group 1: Look at the two translations of the Gryphius Sonnet in the CR.
Group 2: Look at the two translations of the Goericke witness account. In your discussion be sure to think about what some of his contexts are for offering this witness account (What is at stake for him economically, for his position in society? What role might self-interest play?)
Group 3: Look at the“Sack of Magdeburg 1631” by Johann Phillip Abelin, How does this visual text enter into a dialogue with or invoke Goericke’s witness account?
Group 4: Given the “witness” account of a specific event, how does Simplicius Simplicissimus “perform” or “mediate” a similar or different story of war? In what ways do these texts enter into a dialogue with one another?
Group 5: Given the “witness” account of a specific event, how does the poetry by Andreas Gryphius “perform” or “mediate” a similar or different story of war?

18. Machiavelli’s Ethos
Let’s take a look at the “Dedication” on pp and fill in with lecture materials…
What do we know about Machiavelli’s life and work?
How does the dedication set up his “ethos”?
To whom is it written?
What is the purpose of the dedication?

19. Group Exercise
1) In lecture, Professor Van Den Abeele discussed the concepts of “virtue” and “fortune,” as they are discussed in Machiavelli’s The Prince. He noted that these concepts implicitly reveal M’s position on the quality and scope of human agency.
How does Machiavelli define “virtue” and “fortune”?
How do these concepts connect to human agency?
2) How does M define the below concepts (implicitly or explicitly)? What conclusions can you make about human agency or about the nature of power or authority?
Prudence (47)
Enemy (50, 64, 69, 70)

20. Rhetorical Argumentative Structure
General Assertion (definition of concept, quality of a leader, how a principality works)
Logical discussion of implied premises and presuppositions, as well as potential consequences and qualifications (deductive reasoning)
Specific historical examples, adduced to test the validity of the assertion
These examples serve as tools to deepen and complicate our analysis of the political situation in question or to find an exception