ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates that the classical account of attentive cognition, in Mike Anderson's words, "is contemplative in character; such a mind—withdrawn, narcissistic, engaged only in its own productions—needs inner objects to behold, to alter". By inspiring sad passions, sovereign power diminished the capacity for deep reflective attention—that is, for both action and thought. A biological, transcendental attention became in both discourse and practice the guarantee of reason as reflective intelligence. The failure of the classical curriculum to secure attention comprised one side of the push to institutionalize writing instruction; on the other side, there was the question of modern distraction. The ongoing discipline of the subject is justified because attention always threatens to dissolve where it is overburdened, where demands are made upon it at a developmentally inappropriate level. Attention is neither the power of volitional reflection on sensory input nor a "bottom-up" assemblage.
