Andrew Meets Michael

I smiled when I read the following this morning in Jaffo's Journal: 

Andrew and I covered a lot of ground tonight -- so much that I can only remember a fraction of it. There was a tremendous amount of back and forth. He asked a lot of questions, and I was shocked by my own answers. Andrew dug out some passionate convictions that I had never really spoken out loud.

You'd think after all these journals, I have nothing left to say, but Andrew's questioning about my novel brought out some deep "artistic passion" I didn't know I had.

The reason I smiled is because this is simply what Andrew does.  He finds people of talent and passion, and he literally draws out both attributes, making them clear and distinct.  

* * * *

I thought of this quality of Andrew's a few nights ago, during my trip to Rudyard's, because I'm always wanting to draw the best out of people in a like manner.  At Rudz, we ran across this fellow with a Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt with a twist -- literally, it was a tshirt of Jean Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.  We struck up a bit of a conversation with the fellow, which quickly proved disappointing.  It was clear that he wanted to seem like a thoughtful philosophical type without having to bother actually learning any of the philosophers for which he expressed a preference.  So he quickly dismissed the possibility that Calvin and Hobbes might not be so far apart as he insisted they were on the question of religion (my own method of finding out if people are interesting is asking what I find to be very interesting questions and seeing where they go with them -- giving them a chance to excel, actually; I consider an excellent conversation to be one in which the other person goes away thinking I've not contributed much but questions, when in actuality through clever questioning I've managed to get them to think through points they've never considered before, without even really knowing it's happening).  At some point, he expressed great surprise that Hobbes had written anything but the Leviathan, and also seemed shocked that Mr. Hobbes had serious disagreements with some of our Founding Fathers (at least those in the Federalist) regarding the nature of sovereignty.  This was truly disappointing, as he had professed also to be a "student" of the American founding, and I was hoping to engage him in a discussion of the "problem" of sovereignty in the Federalist (since, being a good Hobbes fan, he should have seen the tension that Hobbes anticipated).  Ah well.  I should have known better.  

What is this "problem" of sovereignty in the Federalist, you may ask?!  If I told everyone who asked, then I couldn't pester my friends with questions about their reading of the Federalist, now could I?!  And that would be no fun.  But I will suggest that there is far more going on in the Federalist than simply an exposition of American government.  And one of these days, when I'm done writing this damn dissertation that's almost entirely unrelated, I'll write about some of it.

* * * *

That last bit reminded me of the advice of the Good Doctor (Ross Lence, that is!), especially in conjunction with something else I read on Jaffo's site today, and a newly posted paper on Hanah's site.  More on those things tomorrow, as I'm wiped out.

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