champerty and canescent and candidate and embracery

Let's focus in this essay on a few hold-over words from the preceding pages and then a few words that repay consideration from these pages. The next essay will go through "the list." As I write this, I am conscious of the way that the sound of the words strikes my ear. For example, I love the Latin-based words beginning with "can," such as candid and candidate (taken from the Latin candidus, meaning "white"). Something canescent grows white over time, and we can almost feel and see the beard gradually growing white or the leaves assuming a whitish hue over time. Canescent is a gentle-sounding word, a word worthy to describe the aging/maturing process. Then there is candescent and candle and chandler and a host of words suggesting either the CANDLE which glows or the result, which is the GLOWING. And then, candescent reminds me of another Latin prefix, lam, which creates lambent, a word wonderfully suggestive of an inviting, flickering, gently-radiating light. When I look at a Vermeer or a late Rembrandt, the word lambent washes over me.

In contrast, you have the Greek roots, and the words even sound rough. You have cathexis/cathectic, which I will presently define, and chiasm. The Greek "chi," written as an X, is a "hard" sound, which linguists call a palatal. Just try pronouncing cathexis, however. You will almost be spitting as you finish the word. Instead of something softly glowing or warming you, you have the powerful irruption of slashing "X's" across the page. Instead of gentle glows you have attachments, and grabbing and "x-like" literary constructions. Hm. Instead of the gentle "lamb" of God, you have the rough "Christ" (starts with "chi"), even though the roughness of the Christ is softened in some English words by the addition of mumbly letters, such as in chrism or chrisom.

Cathexis/Cathectic

Enough of this mysticism. Let's get to the words. As you might expect, this word originated in Freudian psychology. Well, to be more precise, Freud used the German word Besetzung, which may be translated "occupation" or "possession," originally (1895) to describe an almost mechanical process whereby the ID is "filled" with something to be discharged. Freud's significant English-language translator James Strachey, beginning in the 1920s, rendered Besetzung as "cathexis" (relying on the Greek verb katecho, which means, among other things, to occupy or hold back). By the 1920s, Freud's theories had developed to such an extent that cathexis became identified with the emotional attachment (i.e., "occupation") that a person develops early in life to its mother, to its own mouth, and to the inclination to suck. In the process of growth, we need to "separate" from our mother, and so we develop "anti-cathexes," which Freud posited were located in the superego and ego, to try to dislodge or weaken the hold that the cathexes have on us. It is here that Freud's pscyhology/philosophy becomes quite opaque to me. Geniuses invent language (such as Hegel did in his philosophy) and expect the rest of the world to come over to their language in order to share in the genius.*

[*One of the reasons geniuses invent language, in my judgment, is that the world as it is received by a genius is simply not big enough to contain the teeming throughts of the mind. Words are inadequate to capture this insight or that approach to a problem. Thus, a genius often needs to characterize the world that s/he sees so clearly and which others only dimly, if at all, perceive, and s/he finds that the language received does not "fit" with the experience of the mind. Sometimes you seek out words from other languages; sometimes you put new meaning into words in your own language; sometimes you rediscover the roots of familiar words and give them a new "twist." The real "risk" of genius, however, is whether others will ever consider that you have enough to say to take the trouble to learn your new language and thereby enter into your mental space. As for me, the current geniuses that "float my boat" are Shakespeare and the author of the Book of Job. I am still trying to exhaust them.]

Champerty

I wanted to dilate briefly on a term that was known to the common law but which has dropped out of our vocabulary. Very few lawyers even know it, even though it is in the Collegiate. Champerty is a species of the common law doctrine of maintenance and is defined as "a proceeding by which a person not a party in a suit bargains to aid in or carry on it prosecution or defense in consideration of a share of the matter in suit." In other words, it is "betting" on lawsuits, but this time the "bet" goes to plaintiff or defendant in order to enable them to keep the suit going.

But the word has a richer history to it than this definition. Its first attestation is in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, and it means "partnership" or "division of lordship or power" ["Ne may with Venus holde champartie"]. The OED indicates that Chaucer was misread by an early interpreter, so that for the next few hundred years champertie/champerty had the meaning of "holding rivalry against." However, in the legal sphere, the word was associated with its current meaning as early as the 15th century. If we look at champerty as a kind of partnership (in this case, collusion to prosecute a lawsuit), we understand the 1495 quotation: "Unalwfull reteynders [retainers], mayntenaunce [maintenance], embrasyng [embracery--the common law term for attempts to "buy off" the jury], champertie and corrupcion."

But, ultimately, when you think of it, isn't the whole legal system in some way a champertous system? People who are not the actual plaintiffs and defendants put up all kinds of money to keep litigation going in order to establish "rules of law" that will control subsequent cases that will be favorable to their interests. So, I have introduced a term that you probably didn't know, taken the time to show you how it is bad stuff, and then said it is characteristic of our own time.

But I am out of space and, once again, just beginning...

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