Volume 1: Man

Proemea

They say that God created him in His own image. They say he is a beast to his brother. They say he stole fire from his gods. They say the sea yielded to his prows. They tell you he is a political beast. They tell you he was not born to live as a beast, but to pursue virtue and knowledge. They tell you he was born unarmed and naked so that reason might shine more brightly in invention. They tell you his hand is the tool of tools. They say he was born free and equal to his brother. They say his dignity is beyond all price. They say he has rights, including the right to have rights. They say he was born free—and that everywhere he is in chains. Then they tell you he is a tool-using beast. That his tools are extensions of himself. That he will live in symbiosis with his machines. That his machines are destined to supplant him. They tell you that he is exhausted. They say he can be overcome. No man, they say, hath seen God at any time.

It should be possible to put these sentences in order. We have tried. One might begin with the creature, proceed to the citizen, and end with the machines that build up his city. Or begin with God, tracing Man’s ascent from his natural nakedness toward the mighty works that make him resemble his Creator. Or begin with chains and tell the history of their breaking through political and technical power. But the sentences resist such histories. The creature made in God’s image is also a beast. The animal distinguished by his tools fashions his possible successor. The subject born free remains in chains.

Even his name is unstable. Before the law he is a person; before the market, a consumer; before the machine, a user. Before God, he is Man. From the moon, one man takes a step for mankind. Humanity names both his population and his virtue, not to mention the victim of certain terrible crimes. Facing catastrophe, he becomes the human race. These words usually point toward the same beings, but they do not teach us to expect the same creature. This indeterminacy, this constant proliferation of contradiction and confusion in our understanding of Man, is our business. The Avalon Quarterly is a magazine of philanthropy; our task is the love of Man. But lovers ought to learn about each other.

Hidden in the actions of any person, corporation, culture, state, or religion is a working model of what Man is, and what he is for. These are only sometimes made explicit. This is the assignment our writers will take up: through essay, fiction, and poetry, to find and make visible to readers what these hidden and half-hidden anthropologies are. These works can take as their subjects any of the works of Man across time and place, and approach their subjects through philosophy, ethnography, material development, or art, but must always be focused on his discovery: what is Man in this context? How is he revealed? What aspects of humanity are excluded? When do we observe that a person or group of people are unmanly, inhuman, inhumane, or otherwise animal?

We must face these questions if we love Man. This is what the essays, poetry, and fiction published in the Avalon Quarterly will do. Writers will take up either their own perspective as one person in relationship to Man, or else present and interrogate the answers of other people and groups. They will never take for granted the hermeneutic through which they approach Man, mankind, humanity, or the human race. We can observe many different particular men and women—holy ones; great ones and terrible; homines sapientes, economici, ludentes and sacri. Hath anyone seen Man at any time?