Abstract
Given Swift’s art of writing, his known practice of satire, and his love of jokes, it may be difficult to say with confidence what he expects the reader to learn from Gulliver’s Travels. While cautiously relying on the evidence of the text, I venture into two kinds of learning: what the Houyhnhnms learn, and what the Master Houyhnhnm learns. There are hints of a possible breeding program; horses breeding with asses or donkeys producing “mules.” Gulliver’s first name is Lemuel, and he may be a cross or mixture of various kinds: Yahoo and Houyhnhnm, English and Irish, ancient and modern. The comical or exaggerated story has some connection to high and serious themes, such as enlightenment and science. Liberal education, including considering physics in the proper way, may be the thing Gulliver most wishes to emulate, but he may not be as serious about it as his creator.
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Notes
- 1.
IV.9, 306–7. There has been no search for fossils (contrast II.7, 151). Gulliver is not present at the Assembly at which his fate is decided; the Master tells some of the story at the beginning of IV.9, but the bad news about Gulliver’s fate is postponed until about the middle of IV.10: “In the midst of all this happiness, my Master sent for me one morning...” 314.
- 2.
IV.9, 305. See Plato Menexenus 237b–238b (the first Athenians); Republic 415 d–e (the guardians, who probably did not come first).
- 3.
Nichols (1160–61): “In his desire to know different ways of life Gulliver is Swift’s presentation of a philosopher.” Gulliver of course is constantly searching for a good way of life, until he finds one. “Gulliver even brings Socrates to mind … a man who investigated different opinions and ways of life in order to free himself from the partial truths embodied in the laws and customs of a particular time and place.”
- 4.
Houyhnhnms have not recognized asses as “their own kind” any more than Gulliver initially recognizes wild Yahoos. The flesh of asses has previously been included in the diverse foods of Yahoos; IV.6, 257–8, IV.7, 295.
- 5.
Yahoos are said to be superior to Asses in only one feature, “agility.”
- 6.
The Houyhnhnms all have dexterous “feet” allowing them to perform manual labor; IV.2, 258, IV.9, 308–9. This reinforces their self-sufficiency.
- 7.
Since horses and asses eat at least some of the same foods, the new regime may make food seem scarcer, and make it more difficult for Houyhnhnms to maintain the belief that nature generously provides what is needed with little forcing or intervention. See Aristotle Politics I.2, 5, 6, 8.
- 8.
IV.8, 300. See IV.2, 257, IV.3, 264–5, IV.10, 317–18.
- 9.
The lady in question is the wife of Flimnap, the High Treasurer, who becomes one of the leading conspirators against Gulliver due to jealousy; once again, Gulliver has failed to anticipate, or protect himself against, the very real dangers that face him as he complacently concludes he is safe. The analogy does not work in every detail, but Swift probably underestimated the bias, the influence and the skill of Walpole.
- 10.
See I.6, 69–70; contrast I.7, 71; Asimov #32, p. 57. Bloom (1990) begins his essay by pointing out Gulliver’s lie—which clearly makes him a Yahoo.
- 11.
See II.5, 128–9; perhaps a reminder of Spartan women; see Aristotle Politics 1269b12–70a8.
- 12.
Asimov sees something disreputable in the second voyage, but not the first; #32, p. 57, #9, p. 108; #12, p. 109. See Glendinning 246, Damrosch 365.
- 13.
This is apparently Asimov’s view; #2, p. 255.
- 14.
Gulliver has no difficulties being comfortable with his wife on his return from the first and third voyages—the “modern” ones. The difficulties come at the end of the second and especially the fourth—the “ancient” ones. Gulliver and his wife seem to have two children before the first voyage begins (I.8, 86); the child with whom his wife is pregnant at the beginning of the fourth voyage is likely their third (IV.1, 247). At the end of the second voyage, during which Gulliver has become somewhat used to living with giants, he has difficulty in bed with his wife because he imagines himself much bigger than she is (II.8, 164). It is possible to overcome the “smell” issue even in the case of the giant women; II.5, 128.
- 15.
Lemuel Gulliver’s first name, apart from an obscure Bible reference, may indicate that he is to some extent a mule—part horse, part ass. Of course Psalms 32:9 warns that we should not imitate the horse or the mule, both of which lack understanding, and are spirited and difficult to control; see Gardiner 2004.
- 16.
Nichols (1160): “The parallel between the Trojan horse and the Houyhhnms suggests that it is wise to reject the Houyhnhnms.” Surely it makes a difference that the Trojan horse brought Greeks to a victory over the barbarians. To say that Greek rationalism, like modern science, can be taken too far, does not deal with bigger issues.
- 17.
IV.4, 270, 273.
- 18.
See Damrosch 374. Gulliver laughs among the big people when a “dim-sighted” old man uses spectacles to try to see Gulliver better; unfortunately, the old man gets angry and advises Gulliver’s “master” to put him on display for money; II.2, 103. Gulliver almost laughs at himself, and people his own size, after living with big people; II.3, 115–16, II.8, 162. There is laughter by superior beings at II.3, 115, II.6, 143, IV.8, 300, 301. The Master Houyhnhnm says “privately” to other Houyhnhnms (how does Gulliver find out?), that treating Gulliver with civility “would put me into good Humor, and make me more diverting”; IV.3. 266. Generally speaking, it seems Gulliver does not get Swift’s jokes.
- 19.
Burrow (1993, pp. 48–49), referring to IV.10 near the beginning.
- 20.
Intelligent speculation about the moon and the sun has a long history going back to ancient Babylon, Greece, and China. “By the fifth century B.C., [among the Greeks] it was widely accepted that the Earth is a sphere. This is a critical point, as there is a widespread misconception that ancient peoples thought the Earth was flat. This was simply not the case.” See ancient cosmology here: https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology.
- 21.
Plato Apology 21d.
- 22.
III.8, 222. See Asimov #11, p. 189. Without going into detail here, there is good reason to think Newton’s thinking has in fact proved to be conjectural rather than final, and Asimov departs at least somewhat from the strict truth in order to maintain his defense of Newton against Swift. The scholars who brief the King in the second voyage remind Gulliver of “the Modern Philosophy of Europe,” disdaining the evasions of the medieval followers of Aristotle, but practicing similar evasions of their own (II.3, 111–12). Patey suggests this is part of Swift’s critique of the moderns: “… with their own new entities and forces, the new scientists are as guilty as the old of using insignificant speech to frame explanations that do not explain” (Patey 1995, 221).
- 23.
Nichols (1168–9) says there is no room in the just city of Plato’s Republic for Socrates, and suggests that something similar must be true of the community of the Houyhnhnms. It is surely true of the former and may be true of the latter, that these communities would not have their specific shapes or landscapes without a Socratic hand at work.
- 24.
See Lucretius, On the Nature of Things II (elaborating the thought of Epicurus). According to one Internet source: “Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Diogenes and the Stoics appear to have believed in a continuous series of single worlds. Empedocles accepted a discontinuous series of single worlds with nothing—no kosmos—in the intervals between worlds.”
- 25.
See Bolotin. “The priority of the eternal celestial revolutions ... guarantees the causal finitude of the universe”; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy.” Aristotle’s approach seems to require a kind of ultimate certainty in order for our daily observations, “the phenomena,” to be “saved,” or to achieve some definite degree of plausibility.
- 26.
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates seems to claim he does not teach “physics” (19b–20c, 21d–22a); this allows him to avoid discussing what he believes about such matters. He challenges the Athenians who are present to say whether they have heard him teach about physics. The people who are present and might know what he teaches behind closed doors, including Plato, do not speak up. On the Socratic turn see Pangle (1983), pp. 13 ff.; Strauss (1953/1971), 120 ff. and generally chapters III and IV. Strauss has suggested that Aristophanes’ Clouds includes “the only available presentation of the ‘pre-Socratic’ Socrates”; Strauss (1966), p. 4. This seems to mean a Socrates dedicated to non-human or inhuman science, and one who is unerotic, somewhat like the flying islanders if not the Projectors. Nichols suggests that Gulliver’s excessive or mistaken liking for the Houyhnhnms indicates an attraction to moderns such as Descartes, but also to the young Socrates, before the ‘Socratic turn’, or to the pre-Socratics; Nichols (1981), pp. 1168–9.
- 27.
Aristotle suggests in the NE that mathematics and astronomy are among the “highest” studies, but the most urgent studies have to do with prudence and politics; training in the former is not likely in itself to help with the latter; VI.7, 1141a9 ff. See Politics I. 12–13, and the ambiguous “teleology” throughout Book I (barely referred to again in later books). One might expect Aristotle to refer to his properly “scientific” writings, such as Generation of Animals, or indeed to the Physics; he does not do so. Specifically, he never suggests the human family ought to be based literally on “the birds and the bees”; in a way the family is more natural than the city, and Aristotle is a bit evasive or “dialectical” as to whether the family is a reliable example or support for political life.
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Robertson, L.W. (2022). What We Can Learn. In: Political Philosophy in Gulliver’s Travels. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98853-1_8
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