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Title Pages
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
Title Pages
(p.i) Pragmatist Egalitarianism (p.ii)
(p.iv)
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Dedication
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
Dedication
(p.v) For my children, Beatrice and Nathaniel
No man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which
created all things anew.
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Epigraph
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
Epigraph
(p.vi)
When castes disappear and classes are brought together, when men are
jumbled together and habits, customs, and laws are changing, when new
facts impinge and new truths are discovered, when old conceptions vanish
and new ones take their place, then the human mind imagines the
possibility of an ideal but always fugitive perfection.
The true meaning of equality . . . is the form of society in which every man
has a chance and knows that he has it—and we may add, a chance to which
no possible limits can be put, a chance which is truly infinite, the chance to
become a person. Equality, in short, is the ideal of humanity; an ideal in the
consciousness of which democracy lives and moves.
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Preface
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
(p.ix) Preface
David Rondel
There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say,
the Haves and the Have-nots.
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Preface
book is about some of these disagreements and more importantly about how
they might be resolved.
The core idea for this book first came into view for me during my time as a
graduate student at McMaster University. As I began to study political
philosophy in a serious way—and as my circle of philosophically and politically
sapient friends, professors, and fellow graduate students grew—I started to see
(only inchoately at the time) that differently positioned participants in academic
discussions about equality tended to have rather different things in mind in
thinking of themselves as “egalitarians.” Let me try to say how these differences
first appeared to me. This will be highly stylized and idiosyncratic, but I am
confident that readers who walk in contemporary political-philosophical circles
will be able to get the gist of what it was I was beginning to notice as a graduate
student.
For some, the ideal of equality in social and political affairs seemed to boil down
to a set of theses about what the state ought to do: about how resources should
be distributed, about formal rights and the limits of legitimate coercion.
Egalitarians of this stripe tended to regard equality as a value that speaks
fundamentally to questions of institutional design. But others in these
discussions seemed to be focusing on something different. Their main concern,
or so it seemed to me, was the nebulous, hard-to-pin-down ways in which certain
individuals and groups can be marginalized or repressed. Egalitarians of this
sort tended to regard equality as an issue, not about the formal institutions of
the state per se, but about an oppressive, inegalitarian culture.
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Preface
Although I had strong convictions about the value and importance of equality
(and still do), I was unsure about which of these two multifarious camps my own
views rightly belonged in. It seemed to me then (and still does) that both groups
were saying something important and correct about the egalitarian project, but
also that we needed to rethink the vocabulary within which the discussion has
tended to proceed in order to appreciate this truth. This book attempts such a
rethinking. It sets forth a reconceptualization of equality and inequality that
reconciles some of the long-standing divisions that continue to plague academic
egalitarianism. Expressed negatively, the argument is that many of the
assumptions and categories that undergird philosophical discussions of equality
are ill formed or unsound. Expressed affirmatively, the argument is that we
egalitarians should be “pluralists”—a claim I shall make precise and defend in
the chapters ahead.
American pragmatism does not receive a great deal of attention in the academic
literature on equality. This is not to say that meaningful affinities between
pragmatism and major strands of contemporary political philosophy cannot
sometimes be spotted. I believe they can. Yet very few seriously entertain the
possibility that American pragmatism (let alone the trio of James, Dewey, and
Rorty) holds the key to an attractive egalitarianism. I want to convince you that
this possibility is indeed worth seriously entertaining.
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Preface
Notes:
(1) We have known for a long time that encouraging equality in one domain will
mean neglecting it in others. Flat, indiscriminate equality—in every sphere, with
respect to every good, across every dimension—is an incomprehensible ideal.
Marx saw this clearly in the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). “Right, by its
very nature,” he said, “can consist only in the application of an equal standard;
but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were
not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are
brought under an equal point of view . . . . Further, one worker is married,
another not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus,
with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social
consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer
than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal,
would have to be unequal” (Marx 1978, 530–531). Because making people equal
in one way will invariably make them unequal in another, Marx apparently
concludes that a right social order ought not be built on equality. Many more
recent egalitarians have used Marx’s insight to reach a different conclusion.
Instead of abandoning equality, they have devoted enormous effort to answering
the question, “Equality of what?” They have sought to identify what G. A. Cohen
(1989) has called the “currency” of egalitarian justice. “What metric should
egalitarians use to establish the extent to which their ideal is realized in a given
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Preface
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Acknowledgments
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
(p.xiii) Acknowledgments
I have labored long and hard on this book, and there are many people I am
delighted to be able to thank for their help in bringing it into existence. My
earliest and deepest philosophical debt is to Kai Nielsen, from whom I first
learned about pragmatism and egalitarianism (and many more things besides).
Kai offered his barely legible handwritten thoughts on early drafts of several
chapters, proposing innumerable suggestions for improvement and saving me
from many mistakes. I am extremely grateful for his mentorship, generosity, and
friendship over the course of many years.
Much of this book builds upon themes developed in my doctoral thesis. I want to
thank Barry Allen, my brilliant and kind dissertation supervisor, for steady
guidance and support. Barry seemed determined to let me write the dissertation
I wanted to write, steering and correcting me only when absolutely necessary. I
am also grateful to the other members of my committee: Wil Waluchow, Omid
Payrow Shabani, and Michael Milde. I look back with great fondness at the years
I spent as a graduate student at McMaster University. I am thankful to all the
professors and fellow graduate students who helped make that time so
agreeable.
A good portion of the book was hatched while I held a limited-term appointment
in the philosophy department at Ryerson University. I am grateful to my former
colleagues there—John Caruana, David Ciavatta, David Checkland, Jim Dianda,
Thomas Hart, Andrew Hunter, David Hunter, Klaas Kraay, Jo Kornegay, Kym
Maclaren, Glenn Parsons, Betty Trott, and Alex Wellington—for being such
congenial people to work alongside. A special debt of gratitude is reserved for
Meredith Schwartz and Bob Murray, both of whom generously read portions of
the text in its early stages and provided perceptive feedback.
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Acknowledgments
Many people have helped me sharpen the arguments in this book, in one way or
another, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to mention their names here:
Hugh Alcock, Ermine Algaier, Mohammed Al-Hakim, Michael Bacon, Dave
Beisecker, Justin Bell, Nathan Brett, Kyle Bromhall, James Campbell, (p.xiv)
Jacoby Adeshei Carter, Clayton Chin, Vincent Colapietro, William Curtis, Liam
Dempsey, Willem DeVries, Alexis Dianda, Sue Dieleman, Michael Eldridge,
Matthias Fritsch, Pablo Gilabert, David Hildebrand, Charlie Hobbs, Henry
Jackman, John Kaag, Cherilyn Keal, Alexander Klein, Alistair MacLeod, Colin
Macleod, Aaron Massecar, Douglas McDermid, Sarin Marchetti, Inder Marwah,
Cheryl Misak, Jan Narveson, Gregory Fernando Pappas, Alfred E. Prettyman,
Shane Ralston, Marc Ramsey, Melvin Rogers, Alex Sager, Mark Sanders, Dan
Shahar, Roger Shiner, Rob Sternberg, Byron Stoyles, Robert Talisse, Tess Varner,
Chris Voparil, Mark Walker, Ian Weeks, Jennifer Welchman, and Mario Wenning.
I want to single out two individuals—Colin Koopman and Alex Livingston—for
their friendship and astute guidance at several stages of the writing process. I
regard Colin and Alex, in their different ways, as bright, shining stars in the
world of American pragmatism. This book is immeasurably better than it would
be otherwise thanks to their supererogatory help.
This book was made incalculably better as a result of the probing criticisms of
three anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press. I want to thank Lucy
Randall at OUP for her sturdy belief in this project and for her wonderful
professionalism and patience. Hannah Doyle at OUP was also a pleasure to work
with.
A huge debt of thanks is due to my parents (Benny and Naddi) and my sister
(Emily) for their love and support, and for innumerably many stimulating
conversations. I also want to acknowledge my late paternal grandparents—
Martin and Mally Rondel—who assisted with the costs of my undergraduate
tuition, as they did for their other grandchildren. Looking back, I believe that
assistance gave me the courage to pursue the endlessly fascinating but (or so I
thought at the time) hopelessly impractical study of philosophy. My two children,
Beatrice and Nathaniel, bring immense joy to my life. I dedicate this book to
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Acknowledgments
(p.xv) Parts of the book have appeared in print previously. I am grateful to the
following publishers for permission to make use of portions of the material
below.
Chapter 9 uses bits and pieces from four different essays on Richard Rorty:
Finally, snippets of the conclusion come from the following pair of essays:
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Abbreviations
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
(p.xvii) Abbreviations
Citations to John Dewey’s writings will be keyed to the 37-volume Collected
Works of John Dewey (Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991). The
Collected Works is organized into three chronological periods, The Early Works,
The Middle Works, and The Later Works. Parenthetical citations will follow the
standard formula, according to which (EW 4:30) denotes page 30 of volume 4 of
The Early Works and (MW 6:100) designates page 100 of volume 6 of The Middle
Works.
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Introduction
Pragmatist Egalitarianism
David Rondel
Introduction
Egalitarianism and Pragmatism
David Rondel
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190680688.003.0001
Keywords: political realism, pragmatism, Rawlsian liberalism, epistemic democracy, John Dewey,
pluralism, pragmatist theories of truth
A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once and for all upon a lot of
inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from
abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori
reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes
and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts,
towards action, and towards power. That means . . . the open air and
possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of
finality in truth.
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Introduction
There will be plenty of time in what follows to bring the specific battle lines into
focus and to introduce the relevant arguments and protagonists. But very
roughly, the dispute is between those who regard equality as a fundamentally
distributive ideal and those who regard it as a “moral ideal governing the
relations in which people stand to one another” (Scheffler 2010, 191). Is the
equal distribution of something what matters at bottom? Or does egalitarianism
get (p.2) its purchase from a concern for how people stand to and interrelate
with one another?
Drawing principally from the trio of William James, John Dewey, and Richard
Rorty, I set forth a pragmatist egalitarianism that is uniquely equipped to
reconcile this and associated interegalitarian disputes. The reconciliation
involves reconceptualizing egalitarianism in terms of three irreducible and
mutually reinforcing variables, each of which is epitomized in one of our trio of
pragmatists. The variables are also triangulated, which means that the evocation
of one implies the evocation simultaneously of the other two. In brief, the
variables I propose are as follows:
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Introduction
Dewey, James, and Rorty were all egalitarians. Each of them endorsed and
promoted in his own way a vision of an egalitarian society. (In this respect the
contrast with C. S. Peirce, a self-declared “ultra-conservative” and “disbeliever
in democracy,” is striking.)1 Yet they worked in different keys, accentuated
different phenomena, and put emphasis in different places. The main argument
in this book, put extremely roughly, is that a viable egalitarianism must blend
elements of all three visions. Otherwise put, if the variables I call
“institutional” (Dewey), “personal” (James), and “cultural” (Rorty) are jointly
responsible for promoting and reinforcing inequality—something I aim to
demonstrate in what follows—an egalitarianism that takes this seriously will
treat all three as equally (albeit differently) important in making things better.
The quest for an egalitarian society is never merely or primarily an issue of
institutional design (as many liberals maintain). It is not solely an issue of
individual moral conduct (as many ethicists and “individualists” seem to think).2
Nor does it depend fundamentally on “cultural revolution” for its realization (as
some feminists and theorists of (p.3) recognition hold). My argument is that
institutions, individuals, and culture are all equally, irreducibly essential
elements in the quest for an egalitarian society.
Why Pragmatism?
My focus on the James-Dewey-Rorty trio in this book is justified by the deep
reconciliatory motif that ran through their work, and should not be read as
implying that others, both from within the pragmatist tradition and from
without, have nothing to contribute. James, Dewey, and Rorty were the best
practitioners of a brand of pragmatism which shifts focus away from truth and
certainty—away from what Dewey called “the epistemology industry” (MW
10:23)—and turns its attention instead to questions that arise about how to
responsibly inhabit and navigate a world in which uncertainty, contingency,
unpredictability, and sometimes vicious disagreement are the central features.
This is the side of pragmatism William James had in mind when he characterized
it as a “mediator and reconciler,” a philosophy without “rigid canons of what
shall count as proof,” without prejudices or “obstructive dogmas” of any sort
(WWJ 1:43–44). It is also what John Dewey was thinking of when he claimed that
pragmatism encourages a kind of “intellectual hospitality,” that it fosters “an
attitude of mind which actively welcomes suggestions and relevant information
from all sides” and “points of view hitherto alien” (MW 9:182).
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Introduction
(p.5) But I think that there is a better way to draw the lines Misak wants to
draw, a deeper and more instructive distinction within pragmatism from which
the quarrels about truth are largely derivative. It is certainly the case that
James, Dewey, and Rorty all wrote at length about truth throughout their
careers, saying many deflationary (and sometimes irresponsible) things about it
along the way. They did so, I want to claim, not because they believed other
philosophers were misunderstanding the deep nature of truth and needed
urgently to be corrected, but because they saw a certain way of conceiving of
truth and its role as the philosophical summum bonum—the purest and most
laudatory prize of reflection and inquiry—as impeding larger, more important
matters. This trio of pragmatists was not saying, “The great philosophers have
gotten truth wrong. We offer our correctives because it is very important to get
this concept right, to have the truth about truth, as it were.” Rather, they were
saying something like: “Philosophers since antiquity have obsessed over the
concept of truth. But this obsession has culminated in highly technical, recondite
adventures which obfuscate the proper business of philosophy as we understand
it.” Rather than proffering theories of truth in the conventional sense, then,
these pragmatists were more principally engaged in what Colin Koopman nicely
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Introduction
calls “a cultural critique of the role that truth plays in our lives”—a critique that
routinely set itself against the peculiar culture of professionalized philosophy
(Koopman 2009a, 43).
James, Dewey, and Rorty were no less cognizant of the importance of holding
true beliefs than any other intellectually responsible person. None of them
thought truth was dispensable or unimportant, and each of them knew perfectly
well that a world in which we lack any true beliefs is a world in which we are all
dead. They might well have also been persuaded that, absent a concept of
objective truth, we simply wouldn’t know how to think or converse with one
another.5 What they fundamentally opposed was the hypostatization of truth as
some (p.6) kind of nonhuman power to which our allegiance is owed. What they
rejected was the worship of truth: the kind of (Platonic) outlook which makes
truth divine, the paramount end at which humanity can take aim, and the
corresponding faith that grasping it will somehow make us free. Like Nietzsche
(albeit with radically different temperaments), James, Dewey, and Rorty all
sought to replace a philosophy of truth-worship with one that focuses on how, in
Rorty’s words, “the human future can be made different from the human past,
unaided by non-human powers” (Rorty 1999, 208). Someone might rejoin that
we cannot make sense of this thought without the belief, even if only implicit,
that some differences are better than others. True enough. But we should also
acknowledge that we are not always clear about what we are looking for. Nor
will criteria for having found it always be available.
It does not undermine the importance of truth in our practices and lives to be
reminded—as James, Dewey, and Rorty all regularly remind us—that there is
much more to our practices and lives than the quest for truth. “Getting things
right” is a critically important human aspiration but it is by no means the only
one. Dewey put the point powerfully in Experience and Nature (1925) when he
argued that the full range of what matters to us extends beyond “true and false
meanings.”
When the claim of meanings to truth enters in, then truth is indeed
preeminent. But this fact is often confused with the idea that truth has a
claim to enter everywhere; that is has monopolistic jurisdiction. Poetic
meanings, moral meanings, a large part of the goods of life are matters of
richness and freedom of meanings, rather than of truth; a large part of our
life is carried on in a realm of meanings to which truth and falsity as such
are irrelevant.
(LW 1:307)
A world in which truth is the only thing at stake would be a much poorer and
bleaker world. It also pays to remember that familiarly liberal virtues like
toleration and compromise are most germane where and when we concede that
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Introduction
truth is not the only good at which we may justifiably take aim. Like John Rawls,
who thought it was more important that principles of justice achieve an
“overlapping consensus” than be true, James, Dewey, and Rorty all downplayed
the centrality of truth while sketching and promoting a kind of future-oriented
melioristic humanism. Some commentators think this convicts them of a serious
philosophical crime. I think it reveals to us their importance as great and
original philosophical thinkers.
What Misak and others see as a lack of appreciation for the objectivity of truth in
James, Dewey, and Rorty can thus be read, I am suggesting, through a more
affirmative metaphilosophical lens.7 In their different ways, James, Dewey, and
Rorty offer a melioristic vision of what philosophy is, what it is good for, and the
direction it would ideally take in the future. Put positively, the imperative at the
center of this vision is that philosophy concern itself with issues that matter to
people, that it bear on what Dewey memorably called “the social and moral
strifes” of the day (MW 12:94). Put negatively, the vision discourages a
philosophical practice that is overly technical, needlessly hairsplitting,
scientistic to the core, priggish, sanctimonious, and “Blimpish” (Rorty 2000i).
Whatever else they may have had in common, James, Dewey, and Rorty were
united, as Phillip Kitcher rightly says, in “protesting the retreat of philosophy
into academic fora where increasingly smaller questions are debated with
increasingly more technical distinctions.” In their different ways, Kitcher
continues, “James and Dewey [and Rorty too, I contend] wanted to return the
subject to larger issues and concerns, and they saw the topics that occupied the
most prominent philosophers of their day (and some of these topics have still not
gone away!) as relevant (p.8) only insofar as they contributed to the study of
those larger questions” (Kitcher 2012, 193).
There is much more to be said about this reconciliatory brand of pragmatism, all
of which will be clarified as we proceed. But there is an important respect in
which the pragmatist egalitarianism I defend is at odds with the now dominant
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Introduction
Second (though this connects to the first point), a “realist” approach to the study
of equality and inequality will eschew “ideal-theoretical” first principles, placing
a certain emphasis instead on real-world egalitarian struggles. It will resist what
Bernard Williams has called the “priority of the moral over the political”
according to which one first discovers the correct moral principles (a purely
“normative” enterprise) and then one asks how they may be applied in this or
that context. Understanding equality and inequality on a realist approach is not
the fruit of disinterested contemplation, and it is never simply a matter of
bringing about in practice the idealized egalitarianism that has been
antecedently discovered in theory—of merely “applying morality.” Rather, it
requires giving a measure of autonomy to what Williams has called “distinctively
political thought” which involves historical understanding, observation,
contextual awareness, and empirical responsibility (Williams 2005, 2–3). Political
realists do not forbid assertions about values or ideals. Nor do they deny that
morals can and do bear on politics. What they principally reject is the (Kantian)
obsession with normative purity, according to which “All politics must bend its
knee before (p.9) the right” (Kant 1991, 125). In short, political realists and
pragmatists agree that we need to begin where we find ourselves, with the
actual problems we find ourselves having to grapple with, and this requires
taking the messy, manifold world of real politics seriously.9
Nor, third, does a realist approach put much stock in “conceptual analysis.” We
learn little about the value of equality in social and political affairs by reflecting
upon its literal meaning alone. One need only consider the monstrous
egalitarianism described by Kurt Vonnegut in Harrison Bergeron—the kind of
egalitarianism in which the strong are forced to carry weights so as to be made
equal in strength with everyone else—to see why (Vonnegut 1968). “One might
as well say that the Grim Reaper is an egalitarian on the ground that once we
die, we are all equally dead” (Wood 1986, 296). Many prominent philosophers
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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
»Hyvin, hyvinpä tietenkin. Poika kasvaa ja varttuu. On kohta
Väylänpään
Eemelin kokoinen, vaikka on kolme vuotta nuorempi.»
»Ei sillä ole aavistustakaan, kuinka asia on… Ettei se itse hoksaa
ja näe…»
»Hyvä on, ettei näe… Taitaisi siinä tulla ikävä elämä Karoliinalle,
jos Aapeli asian perille pääsisi.»
»Oli miten oli, mutta hyvä olisi, että rauha säilyisi… Äläkä
sinäkään viittaa sinnepäin… Mitä se sinuun kuuluu.»
»Ole siinä!»
»Ja kun se tihrusilmä ja räkänokka vielä kuvittelee poikaa
näköisekseen! Varmaan sitä ihmiset miehissä valehtelevat…»
»Siihen se unehtuu koko asia, kun vain sinä osaat pitää suusi
kiinni.»
*****
Ei kertaakaan ollut hän sitä tullut ajatelleeksi, ja poikaa oli hän niin
rakastanut…
Mutta kun hän pääsi rannalle, oli hänen vihansa taas lauhtunut ja
hän käsitti, että kiusasi itseään turhaan. Taikka piru kiusasi häntä,
juuri niinkuin Jumalan sanassa sanottiin…
Kaikki olisi ollut hyvin, mutta Karoliina ei ottanut osaa hänen eikä
piispan iloon.
»Vai tapasit…»
»Pilkkasi se muutenkin…»
Silloin hän kuuli jonkun pihalla hakkaavan, ja kun silmäsi ulos, näki
hän Aapelin veistämässä patovaajaa.
Kun pato saatiin kuntoon ja lohia alkoi tulla, näytti Aapelilta kaikki
unohtuneen.
Hän oli koko ajan aavistanut, että kerran se saa siitä tiedon, ja
silloin… Sitä hän oli miettinyt kesät talvet, yöt päivät, ja miettinyt
pojan pelastusta. Sillä hän aavisti, oli varmakin siitä, että poikaan se
ensimmäisen vihansa kohdistaisi, poikaan, jota oli omakseen
uskonut ja vaalinut ja rakastanut… Jahka se varmasti uskoo, ettei
poika olekaan hänen — vaan kenties kenen kulkurin — silloin sen
viha ei rajoja tunne, ja murskaksi se pojan lyö…
Nyt hän oli punninnut asiaa sinne tänne ja päätös oli kasvanut
lujaksi.
Oskarin oli saatava tietää, kuka hänen isänsä oli, ja sitten salaa
poistuttava, ensin Suomen puolelle, sitten pois — oikeaa isäänsä
hakemaan…
Nyt oli kuitenkin lisäksi tullut pelko siitä, että Aapeli voisi minä
hetkenä hyvänsä kiljaista: Eihän Oskari olekaan minun poikani!
Kun ei nyt kukaan sitä ärsyttäisi. Kun ei kukaan sitä herjaisi siitä.
Kun se ei menisi Suomen puolelle eikä jätkien kanssa riitelemään.
Hän istui kivelle lähelle kesänavetan ovea. Siitä hän näki suoraan
eteensä koskelle ja taakseen hymyilevään koivikkoon, jonka läpi
karjapolku toi navetalle. Mutta talosta ei näkynyt mitään. Korea
männikkö ja koivikko olivat siinä talon ja navetan välissä.
Hän oli siinä istunut pitkän aikaa. Kuunteli ensin, kuuluiko kelloja
metsästä, ja unohtui sitten mietteisiinsä. Merkillistä oli hänestä, että
sittenkun hän oli saanut päätöksensä valmiiksi, hänestä tuntui
niinkuin kosken ääni olisi muuttunut. Ei siinä enää erottanut
semmoista valittavaa uikutusta kuin ennen, se tohisi ja huusi nytkin,
mutta sen äänessä oli varmuutta ja itseluottamusta, niinkuin se olisi
tiennyt, mistä tullaan ja mihin ollaan menossa. Ah! Se oli aivan
hänen oman sydämensä ääni nyt! Se ei itkenyt puristettuna jään
alle… eivätkä hänenkään sydämensä tunteet nyt sulloutuneet yhteen
sopukkaan, vaan ajatukset risteilivät ja lensivät ympäri maailmaa.
Hänenkin oli sitten helpompi elää, kun tiesi pojan olevan turvassa.
Ja hän syventyi miettimään Oskarin pakomatkan yksityisseikkoja.
Kaiken täytyi olla edeltäpäin harkittua ja valmiina, kaiken tuli
tapahtua kuin unessa…
»Isä käski äidin tulla kotia… on saatu monta suurta lohta… että
Manta jääpi navetalle», sanoi Oskari.
Näinä päivinä oli isäntä ollut vallan hyvällä tuulella. Emäntä käytti
kerran tilaisuutta hyväkseen ja otti puheeksi Suomen puolella
pidettävän kesäjuhlan. Sinne hänkin tahtoisi mennä ja viedä
Oskarinkin…
»Sano sinä sille veljesi pojalle, Juhanille, että ylioppilas siitä tulee
meidän Oskaristakin, mutta tälle puolen rajaa…»
*****