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A Talk by George James On April 29, 1993 the Philosophy Department at the University of North Texas had a memorial service for my brother, John, so that faculty and students who had been away on Spring break when he died could join together in a time of remembering him. One of the speakers that day was a colleague, Prof. George James, who understands that laughter is as necessary to healing as are tears. --The Rev'd Canon Jimmye Elizabeth Kimmey |
When I came here in 1983, John Kimmey was the first friend I made. During the first years I was here we spent considerable time together, usually over lunch, and usually at the International House of Pancakes. In the course of our conversations it quickly became clear that we had two passions in common, and they were frequent topics of discussion.
The first passion was cats. John had cats and I had a cat. And some of the stories of cat behavior with which we entertained each other over lunch would press the limits of credibility for almost anyone who was not himself a lover of cats.
Our conversations also occurred after an exhausting morning of teaching, to recover from which we sometimes permitted ourselves speculations we could hardly sanction in the company of our students.
Over the daily special John observed one day that, to the best of his knowledge, cats were mentioned nowhere in the Bible. We had difficulty understanding why, and began to indulge the possibility that given the similarity of the Hebrew word for sheep, it's possible proto-semitic root, and the Egyptian word for cat, whether the ancient masoretic rabbis were a little hasty in rendering the word as sheep that might have been intended as cat by the original authors. We had to admit that in some passages it would have been unlikely. Otherwise we would have to read, in Genesis, that when Abraham departed from Egypt with Lot his nephew he was rich in herds of cattle and flocks of cats. Yet other passages seemed singularly accurate: "All we like cats have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way." Or, as John pointed out, "his cats know his voice, and he calls his cats by name; a stranger they will not follow for they know not the voice of a stranger." We ended that conversation with a reflection on the passage in which the Lord Jesus is walking with Peter by the shores of the sea of Galilee, in which Jesus must have said to Peter, "Feed my cats!"
The other passion we shared was for Plato.
And there is, to my mind, no one who had more embodied the Socratic
method than John, not only in his teaching but in his daily way
of life. Dialogue after the manner of Socrates was, for him, the
method through which ordinary thought was elevated to the level
of the love of wisdom, and ordinary intellectual ability was elevated
to a plane where it was capable of apprehending the true, the
beautiful, and the good.
But of all the features of Plato's thought there was none more dear to John than his doctrine of the soul. I still remember discussing with John the question of the Meno, where Socrates opens, with a self-assured young student, the question whether man can ever learn by inquiry. For if he knows, he has no need to inquire; and if he does not know he does not even know the thing into which he inquires. Socrates was dissatisfied with this answer, and John was dissatisfied as well. And I still remember the light in his eyes as he put to me the words of Socrates that expressed the reason why: "I have heard from certain wise men and women who spoke of things divine... They spoke a glorious truth as I conceive ... Some of them were priests and priestesses, who had studied how they might be able to give a reason of their profession ... And they say -- mark now, and see whether their words are true -- they say that the soul of man is immortal, and that at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is never destroyed."