Philosophers write philosophy for each other like programmers used to write programs for each other.
Narrative is the user interface of philosophy.
Is literature user-friendly philosophy?
Category Archives: Philosophy
Games
I love the game I win. It’s all about the rules matching one’s strengths.
The winner defends the rules. The loser wants to change the rules.
The game of philosophy is the game of games, the game of rules.
Philosophy is for losers.
Christian cred
Think about these statements:
“Bear with me.”
“Please hear me out.”
“It will all make sense in the end.”
Why are these requests necessary? When are they made?
To what feeling in the listener is the speaker responding?
What kind of appeal is being made? Do we owe it to another to give him a full hearing?
When is the appeal denied? Is it a matter of credibility?
What is the experience of denial?
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To read the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament is to experience the most pluralistic religious vision ever recorded, from the most accutely and radically pluralistic people who ever lived. In what other scripture is the same story is recounted three different times from the point of view of three different people? It would have been easier and more obvious to collapse them into one univocal account, but instead the three experiences, three meaningful visions were presented together in a three-in-one synopsis – syn– (together) –opsis (seeing). [* See note 1 below]
I like to think of pluralism as a kind of parallax vision, that allows us to see hyper-dimensionally. With one eye you see a flat picture. With two eyes working in concert we see depth. Our so-called “inner eye” draws out the dimension of meaning. With a pluralistic synopsis we see meaning together – we share meaning and have community. We gain understanding, which the Greeks called synesis.
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By the time Jesus began teaching his distinctively Jewish universal vision of life, the Jewish tradition had survived and overcome numerous cultural crises. They had dominated and been subjugated, had won their home and lost it. They knew belonging and alienation, and they knew both sides of power.
Most importantly they knew that knowledge of experience means to know an experience from the inside. Experiencing is inseparable from that which is experienced, and this means, to use a common visual analogy, that experience is inseparable from its vision, as how the world looks from that experience. (One of my favorite Jewish thinkers, Edmund Husserl called this “intentionality”: seeing and seen are inseparable, as are hearing and sound, feeling and sensation, etc. [* See note 2 below].)
The Jews knew better than anyone that power is something that can be seen, but even more, it is a way of seeing – of life and the world as a whole. Power has its own kind of vision. When an emperor sees himself, or his court, or a rival power, or he looks upon a conquered enemy or slave, that emperor sees something radically different than the slave regarding the same situation. Power is something different, powerlessness is different. A palace, a body, a tree, a poem… everything is the same in a sense, but things are deeply different. The same goes for a stranger, expat, wanderer, outcast or outcaste.
Out of necessity, the Jews had to develop a way of preserving themselves as a tradition within these conditions. That meant living on a line between provoking attacks from the outside and simply dissolving from cultural self-indifference or self-disgust. They had to internalize their strength. They had to find dignity in their vulnerability to escape the indignity of weakness.
There was no way such a response to such a universal problem was going to stay contained within a small ethnic tradition forever. Whether it was Jesus or Paul, somehow the radical insights of Judaism went universal.
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A series of words derived from the Latin word credere, “believe, trust”:
- Credit
- Credential
- Credence
- Creed
- Credo
A series of words derived from the Old English word agan, “believe, trust.” :
- Own
- Owe
- Ought (originally past tense of “owe”)
A series of words derived from Latin auditor, from audire, “to hear”:
- Audit
- Audition
- Auditorium
- Auditory
- Audio
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An example of divergent accounts from two of the Synoptic Gospels (which some scholars believe were adapted from yet another lost Gospel, “Q”, possibly a compendium of sayings similar to the (in)famous Gospel of Thomas).
These two passages are taken from Jesus’s famous Lord’s Prayer, his instructions on how to pray.
Matthew 6:12: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Luke 11:4: “And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”
In Matthew 6:12, the Greek word used was opheilema. [* See note 3 below.]
In Luke 11:4, the Greek word was hamartia, which means literally “missing the mark”.
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Out of time. Darn. I’ll finish this post if there’s any interest. [* See note 4 below.]
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* NOTE 1: To call the New Testament inconsistent as some atheists do is to miss the point. To argue over which meaning is the right meaning as the fundamentalists do is to betray the point. To behave as though a plurality of possible meaning implies that all meanings are equivalent and that it is meaningless to discuss them… to go skeptical on that basis, and to ask cynically, rhetorically “what is truth?”… to wash one’s hands of the responsibility to engage dialogically in pursuit of understanding… that’s complicity in the conflict.
* NOTE 2: Intentionality in Husserl’s sense is a core religious insight, expressed in a variety of forms, from the Jewish Star of David, to the Chinese yin-within-yang and yang-within-yin, to the Greek Janusian herms (with Hermes’s head fused to the head of a goddess, often Aphrodite), to the Hermetic hermaphroditic Androgyne, male on the right, female on the left, sun on the right, moon on the left. Listen for the inside-outside symbolic structure and you’ll find it everywhere. This capacity to hear and understand the form-language of symbol is what I believe is meant by “having ears that hear.”
* NOTE 3: Opheilema seemed like it might have a connection with the name “Ophelia” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if there was an etymological connection. According to Wikipedia, “the name ‘Ophelia’ itself was either uncommon or nonexistent; the only known prior text to use the name (as “Ofalia”) is Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia.” It seems fairly obvious the name is a combination of opheilema and philia, love – “love debt” – love unrequited.)
* NOTE 4: Etymology of “interest”: ORIGIN late Middle English (originally as interess): from Anglo-Norman French interesse, from Latin interesse ‘differ, be important,’ from inter– ‘between’ + esse ‘be.’ The -t was added partly by association with Old French interest ‘damage, loss,’ apparently from Latin interest ‘it is important.’ Also influenced by medieval Latin interesse ‘compensation for a debtor’s defaulting.’
Meliorism
Meliorism – the belief that the world can be made better by human effort. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Latin melior ‘better’ + -ism .
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A selection of passages I’ve indexed in my wiki under “meliorism“:
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Thus speak and stammer: “This is my good, this I love, thus does it please me entirely, thus alone do I want the good.
I do not want it as divine law, not as a human law or a human need; it will not be a guide-post for me to over-earths and paradises.
It is an earthly virtue which I love: there is little prudence in it, and least of all any common wisdom.
But that bird built its nest with me: therefore, I love and cherish it — now it sits with me on its golden eggs.
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A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in… he is at peace, since there are no disturbances created by underground forces which have no outlet at one with himself and his surroundings. This state cannot be reached merely by inner work… The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. Some kinds of physical and social circumstances help a person come to life. Others make it very difficult.
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There are unhappy men who think the salvation of the world impossible. Theirs is the doctrine known as pessimism. Optimism in turn would be the doctrine that thinks the world’s salvation inevitable. Midway between the two there stands what may be called the doctrine of meliorism… [which] treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become.
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We cannot continue the idea that human nature when left to itself, when freed from external arbitrary restrictions, will tend to the production of democratic institutions that work successfully. We have now to state the issue from the other side. We have to see that democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail; we should be frank and open in our recognition that the proposition is a moral one – like any idea that concerns what should be.
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I’m preparing a pragmatist attack on metaphysically-grounded conceptions of morality. To make a pragmatist attack means to suspend for a moment the question of truth or falseness, and consider only the practical implications of a belief. How does a belief affect the believer’s actions? A few preliminary points:
- When a person believes in a morality endorsed by something beyond humankind, whether God or nature, he is less likely to take personal responsibility for it. Passivity is passed off as faith: reality will take care of itself. (Someone who believes in natural rights appears to honor rights by attributing them to nature, but is he as likely to defend them as someone who values his rights but considers them vulnerable?)
- When a person believes in a morality that is not a matter of agreement between people, but rather something that comes down from an authority higher than humankind he is less likely to take seriously the obligation to persuade other people of its truth. He is far more likely to impose it on others who are equally convinced they know the truth but are mistaken.
- When a person believes in a morality that exists to serve a cause higher than humankind, he is less likely to consider the human consequences of his morality – neither to himself nor to others who follow his morality voluntarily or involuntarily.
- When a person believes in a morality that is beyond human reason, his critical defenses are dismantled. If empirical observation and reason can’t tell him he is being manipulated and exploited, what can? Further, if reason is suspended, how does a person know what has overruled reason and whether it is itself valid? What is being trusted, and why? How does a person even know it is a virtue, and not a vice?
- If a person believes morality is necessarily metaphysically grounded, if he comes to discover that metaphysics is radically mysterious and not solid and static like land but liquid like the shimmering surface of a sea he might sink into the depths of skepticism and antinomianism and never think to reach out for a human hand or listen for a human word. He will reject morality itself as false, rather than his human – his all-too-human – view of morality.
Notice the tendency here: metaphysically grounded moralities tend toward extremes of passivity and aggression.
Obviously, these points do not address the question of whether there isn’t in fact a metaphysically-grounded moral truth, despite the practical consequences. That is a separate question.
This is also not an argument against metaphysics, per se. My attack is strictly limited the use of metaphysics as a positive grounding.
Ira Glass
My parents took Susan, the girls and me to see Ira Glass last night. It was incredibly valuable.The most exciting part was Ira’s discussion of his narrative method. The formula he gave:
Story [Pause] Story [Pause] Story [Pause] Reflection
This reminded me of an idea I first grasped reading Kuhn (on how students learn the sense of scientific theories) and recently re-read in Bernstein:
To Gadamer, the hermeneutical process used in making a legal judgment exemplifies the hermeneutical process as a whole. Gadamer argues that the judge does not simply “apply” fixed, determinate laws to particular situations. Rather the judge must interpret and appropriate precedents and law to each new, particular situation. It is by virtue of such considered judgment that the meaning of the law and the meaning of the particular case are codetermined. “We can, then, bring out as what is truly common to all forms of hermeneutics the fact that the sense to be understood finds its concrete…form only in interpretation, but that this interpretative work is wholly committed to the meaning of the text.”
Ira’s formula reverses my usual way of communicating: Reflection Reflection Reflection Story [Pause] “are you still with me?”I have great hope that this method will improve my communication effectiveness. That doesn’t mean all my posts will follow this formula, because my posts are how I clarify my own thoughts to myself, but I will certainly use it in practical situations, especially at work.
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Ira also said something striking that I consider to be the essence of Jewishnes: Empathy is the essence of sanity.
Other useful insights:
A good story is easy to visualize.
“Dialogue is golden.” Include real dialogue in stories. Dialogue slows the story to the speed of the actual event.
Hermeneutic butterfly effect
If understanding is a nonlinear, recursive process, where each new particular understanding changes the totality, and the totality in turn changes the meaning of each particular – it is reasonable to wonder if understanding might exhibit the qualities nonlinear, recursive processes. That is, the butterfly effect may be seen in a shade of meaning of a word. The structures that govern the totality may be reveal themselves self-similarly in each particular. Understanding, though ordered, might be radically unpredictable, worked out in the process of understanding, without any shortcut.A chaotic-determinist meditation: Reality cannot be simulated at the speed or comprehensibility of reality itself. Reality outpaces all attempts at simulating the working out of its processes, but the working out of its processes is the only way to know an outcome. Reality has more variables than any simulation can accommodate, but every variable however subtle has the power to change the outcome. In principle, everything is predictable. In actuality, nothing is predictable.
Empathy + Alignment + Realism
I wrote a manifesto for my company and put it on our intranet:
An attempt at a distillation of [this company]’s culture, in words we frequently use when describing and differentiating our approach:
- Empathy means to take care to really understand how other people see, feel and think.
- Alignment means to pursue solutions which do full justice to the concerns of all involved.
- Realism means to find solutions which do exactly what they are meant to do within their real-world context.
These three principles govern how we relate to one another on our teams, and how we relate to our clients.
Our goal is to help our clients actualize empathy + alignment + realism in their own organizations, both externally with their customers and internally with one other.
We believe that empathy + alignment + realism are core principles of ethical effectiveness. By articulating, championing and exemplifying these principles, and by helping our clients and partners put them into practice [this company] makes a positive contribution to the world of commerce and to the world as a whole.
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These principles do not exhaust the range of values active in [this company]’s culture. However, if you look closely at those values it gradually becomes clear that they all grow out from the root principles of empathy + alignment + realism.
A helpful analogy: the root principles are the DNA of our culture; the core values are the genetic traits of our company – which is the starting point for our brand.
Our brand is developed continually through collective self-cultivation (iterative clarification, accentuation and application of our principles and core values, alongside the company traditions that support them) and collective self-presentation (our formal brand guidelines – visual identity, voice and tone, interaction style). The latter can be seen as a sort of grooming: We present who we authentically are in the best possible light.
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[This company] will strengthen its brand externally, partly through explicit branding efforts, but more because [this company] has a powerful internal and semi-internal (our clients and partners) brand community.
This is something we also can perfect internally and then package for our clients: internal brand community as the key to authentic and powerful external branding. It is grounded in a simple idea: the most effective way to be perceived as something is to actually be it.
Branding can be seen as the practice of compellingly and authentically externalizing a company’s culture. Internal branding is the conscious aligning of a company’s culture to its external brand, so the two mutually reinforce.
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- Empathy means to take care to really understand how other people see, feel and think.
Empathy is not figuring other people out; it is not discovering what they are after, or knowing how to manipulated them to get them to do what you want them to do.
Empathy is, in Aristotle’s language, synesis, or understanding. Synesis is like sympathy, but involves the entirely of another’s subjectivity – cognition, language, moral priorities, hopes, fears, symbol-system, his aesthetic sense, his social environment… it is not a theoretical, externalized theory, but a holistic vision of life in which an understander is involved. Synesis turns parallel talking into dialogue.
Empathic understanding is the deepest form of respect.
- Alignment means to pursue solutions which do full justice to the concerns of all involved.
Alignment is not stalemate or compromise. It is not accomplished in a battle where each party pushes as hard as it can for its own interests until it has won as much ground as it can. Alignment can only happen when all parties have a stake in the other parties’ well-being. All parties must desire and aim for a solution that satisfies everyone involved. This aim has an abstracting effect: what concern is embedded in each conflicting solution? What solutions are possible that satisfy all concerns and dissolve the conflict?
Alignment presupposes pluralism: that there can be multiple satisfactory solutions. It is not a question of which solution is viable, and which solutions are not viable. It is a question of which viable solution can be agreed upon by all parties in the deliberation.
Alignment is, in Aristotle’s language, phronesis, or prudence. Phronesis is what turns churning debate into productive deliberation.
For alignment to work, all parties in the deliberation must (empathically) respect the others, but in the end, the focus of the deliberation must be, not on the parties in the deliberation, but on their shared problem.
- Realism means to find solutions which do exactly what they are meant to do within their real-world context.
Realism is not functionalism. Realism is also not being resigned to “the way things are”.
Also, realism is not factoring oneself out of the picure in a misconceived attempt at objectivity.
Realism means being scientific. It means cheerfully putting your ideas to the test, and letting them go if the test shows the ideas are not viable. It means cheerfully adopting another’s ideas as one’s own if they are shown to be better.
Realism means that you stay subjectively, personally involved in the problems you are deliberating, but in such a way that you are open to change.
For realism to work (and to not devolve into the poverty of functionalism or complacent pseudo-conservatism), all parties in the deliberation must (empathically) respect the others and enlarge their understanding of the problem at hand to include the concerns of the others. The group must collectively turn toward the problem itself, and work toward solutions that satisfy the concerns of everyone involved. Finally, the solutions must be subjected to test, whether that test is a formal experiment or some other criterion or standard for success.
“Has he no friend?”
Some Nietzsche:
In honour of friendship. – That the feeling of friendship was in antiquity considered the highest feeling, even higher than the most celebrated pride of the self-sufficient sage, indeed, as it were, as its sole and even holier sibling: this is very well expressed in the story of the Macedonian king who gave a world-despising Athenian philosopher a talent and got it back. ‘What?’ said the king, ‘Has he then no friend?’ He meant: ‘I honour this pride of the wise and independent man, but I would honour his humanity even more highly if the friend in him had won over his pride. The philosopher has lowered himself before me by showing that he doesn’t know one of the two highest feelings – and the higher one at that.’
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The golden watchword. – Many chains have been laid upon man so that he should no longer behave like an animal: and he has in truth become gentler, more spiritual, more joyful, more reflective than any animal is. Now, however, he suffers from having worn his chains for so long, from being deprived for so long of clean air and free movement:–these chains, however, I shall never cease from repeating, are those heavy and pregnant errors contained in the conceptions of morality, religion and metaphysics. Only when this sickness from one’s chains has also been overcome will the first great goal have truly been attained: the separation of man from the animals. – We stand now in the midst of our work of removing these chains, and we need to proceed with the greatest caution. Only the ennobled man may be given freedom of the spirit; to him alone does alleviation of life draw near and salve his wounds; only he may say that he lives for the sake of joy and for the sake of no further goal; and in any other mouth his motto would be perilous: Peace all around me and goodwill to all things closest to me. – With this motto for individuals he recalls an ancient great and moving saying intended for all which has remained hanging over all mankind as a sign and motto by which anyone shall perish who inscribes it on his banner too soon – by which Christianity perished. The time has, it seems, still not yet come when all men are to share the experience of those shepherds who saw the heavens brighten above them and heard the words: “On earth peace, good will toward men.” – It is still the age of the individual.
Anaximander, Levinas and the injustice of appropriation
It occurred to me this morning, the play of infinity and totality can be projected into Anaximander’s single surviving fragment.
Simplicius transmitted the fragment as:
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Nietzsche presented Anaximander’s maxim as:
Beings must pay penance and be judged for their injustices, in accordance with the ordinance of time.
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It seems to me that Gadamer’s idea of appropriation of tradition involves grasping older symbolic concretions in increasingly differentiated terms. (Did Anaximander himself think in phenomenological terms? Probably not. Does his thought expose a truth whose structure holds in the most rarefied phenomenological insight? Yes.) Is appropriation essentially an act of abstraction, projection and application, rather than recovery of the original idea?
Perhaps a true thought compels through its empirical fitness but persuades through manifesting universal structures which continue to apply to ever deeper empirical observations. (The universal structures are not formal rules of intelligibility, but truths revealed through application of those rules. What I am trying to do is differentiate the structures I have in mind from Kant’s tables and also from rules of logic.)
By “deeper” I mean greater intellectual dimension, downwardly into chthonic irruption, and upwardly into cultural epiphany. Depth is a function of apperceptions subsuming apperceptions. From what I’ve seen so far, it should be assumed that no apperception is ultimate. Every apperception is self-evidently ultimate until overtaken by higher apperception.
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Every apperception unjustly calls itself ultimate until it is overtaken and illuminated by higher apperception; at which time it pays penance, returning to the apeiron from which all things are articulated.
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The pain of the truth of Levinas is that of the Dionysian insight, which is knowing the apeiron.
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(Sensual overindulgence is what Dionysianism looks like from the outside, but Dionysianism seen from the outside is precisely what Dionysianism is not.)
Notice
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I will use all kickbacks to fund my habit of buying my friends wonderful books.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics – the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: representing medieval Latin metaphysica, based on Greek ta meta ta phusika ‘the things after the Physics,’ referring to the sequence of Aristotle’s works [crazy!]: the title came to denote the branch of study treated in the books, later interpreted as meaning the science of things transcending what is physical or natural.
Theophanic – of a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god. ORIGIN Old English, via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek theophaneia, from theos ‘god’ + phainein ‘to show.’
Exophanic – of revelation of the fact of beyondness. ORIGIN Greek, from exo ‘outside’ + phainein ‘to show.’
Cataphatic – of knowledge of God obtained through affirmation. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Greek kataphatikos ‘affirmative,’ from kataphasis ‘affirmation,’ from kata– (as an intensifier) + phanai ‘speak.’
Apophatic – of knowledge of God obtained through negation. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Greek apophatikos ‘negative,’ from apophasis ‘denial,’ from apo– ‘other than’ + phanai ‘speak.’
Transcendent – beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience. ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French transcendre or Latin transcendere, from trans– ‘across’ + scandere ‘climb.’
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My definition of metaphysics: The philosophy of that which is beyond direct experience.
Obviously, this is tricky territory. How does one think about that which is, by definition, unthinkable? Not only is the “object” of metaphysics beyond the reach of thought (and therefore as nonsensical as sight without seeing). The possibility is raised of intellectual entities that thought cannot wrap its fingers around even the entity is sitting in the palm of its hand. The latter idea might seem complete nonsense to many… but not to the soul who has even once come to understand something initially unintelligible and subsequently discovered that not only this particular thing was illuminated with intelligibility, but the entire world has now opened out in a way inconceivable prior to the epiphany.
Until a person has undergone the epiphany of what I call practical transcendence – having an actual before and after experience of intelligibility – the tendency is to treat metaphysics strictly as thinking about objects that are beyond our knowledge. Every single metaphysical conception a thinker has is marked either with this awareness or its conspicuous absence. For all I know there are many other similar marks. This is the one I know.
Those who don’t know don’t know that they don’t know unless they actively work to discover it. Otherwise, everything you can think of is self-evidently knowable, and nothing if left over. “Give me one intelligible example of something that’s unintelligible. Just what I thought: you babble nonsense and cannot provide a single example. Why should I take this seriously?” That’s a good question!
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Things would be very different if blindness and darkness were the same thing. Light-and-knowledge analogies break down at this point. Sight sees objects in presence of light and notices darkness in the absence of light. Blindness lacks sight. It is wrong to say blindness sees nothing. Blindness does not even see nothing. For a concrete demonstration of the difference try a blind spot experiment. Really try it. Don’t just read about it.
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A cataphatic metaphysic (which posits specific knowledge of what is beyond the limits of our knowledge) and an apophatic metaphysic (which posits limits to our knowledge) is total. It separates religious dogmatism from other religious forms. Religious dogmatism is only bad when it becomes severed from a religious tradition rooted in something inconceivably deeper. A dogmatist excommunicated from a sustaining community with all its spiritual organs intact is in serious spiritual trouble. He is at risk of loving his dogma as a thing that he knows and possesses that closes him to the radical beyondness and protects him from dread.
An exophanic apophatic metaphysic and a transcendental apophatic metaphysic is also different. An expohanic metaphysic tries to acknowledge and relate all experiences that indicate beyondness, which means all perceptions, feelings, intuitions, explicit thoughts are given legitimacy as entities they are and are interrelated. An exophanic metaphysic is an ontology that sees the terminus of ontology as beyond the grasp of ontology itself.
What I am calling a transcendental metaphysic employs hermeneutic practice to find ways to expand the scope of ontology (what is often called “horizon”, not in order to demystify the beyond, but to intensify and deepen the mystery of the infinite beyond that always remains despite our human efforts. Pursuit of the infinite is divine futility.
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Metaphysics is the philosophy of the Other.
We love only what is Other; what cannot be possessed. We can possess a dogma or an apple. We cannot possess the infinite which surrounds us.
Whether you are aware of it or not, belief in the future is metaphysical, and so is belief in the past. Belief in matter is metaphysical, and so is belief in the space that extends around you. Belief in who you may someday become is metaphysical, and so are your beliefs of who you were as a child. Most of all, however, each of us is to the other is metaphysical when we accept one another as soul, as Thou, as one who lives and thinks and feels and sees, to whom we make the gassho or say “Shalom” or “Namaste“. Every soul is the whole world – vast, unique and interlapping with our own world.
Each metaphysical belief is only a symbol of Other. The Other is not reducible to any symbol nor to every symbol, for that matter.
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Thomas Kuhn, coiner that well-drained term “paradigm shift“:
When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer, …when these passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning.
Truth is for the vulnerable
The phenomenological concept of “intentionality” (that subjectivity is necessarily bound up with objects – that there’s no seeing without something seen, no thinking without thoughts, etc.) is a clue to a new path to self-understanding and other-understanding, which makes the world much more vast and uncanny. To authentically pursue understanding of another person (which necessarily an uncompletable pursuit) – the other must not be understood as an object of intentionality, but rather as a partner in intentionality, a co-subject with whom one involves oneself in participating in reality. One understands others by how the entire world changes through involvement with them in a shared world. The image of the other is part of the world, but cannot be primary. Behind the face of every other is a transcendental gate. Involved cosubjectivity of synesis is an opportunity for literal, practical, experienced transcendence. What you come to know through synesis is impossible to anticipate until it is undergone.
Synesis is philosophical friendship and it is also the essence of literature.
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That old complaint of women: “He sees me like an object” is actually deeply insightful. (The cliche that all cliches are true is no less true for being a cliche.) It means “He won’t see with me, won’t androgize with me, won’t be involved with me, won’t realize he can participate in being that exceed him.” In other words, “He doesn’t know the possibility of marriage.” To make it worse, the man who takes the world as a world of objects cannot be appealed to because appeals presuppose intersubjectivity, which is precisely the realm of truth he’s closed to, and can never be brought to know unless he chooses to go there himself.
Intersubjective knowledge (direct experience of intersubjective world-transformation) requires receptivity. Receptivity is the domain of the vulnerable.
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The qualities associated with the feminine should be differentiated from the qualities of the vulnerable and further from the qualities of weakness and passivity. This would not only benefit women, but all people disfavored by the current language, truth standards, “best practices”, values, ethical codes – our ethos.
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Have you ever been in a situation that somehow made it impossible to say or do what you knew you ought to be able to say or do? Have you ever noticed you spontaneously become yourself around some people and become something you are not around others? And by “become something you are not” I do not mean you put on a mask of some kind and fake it. I mean you literally cannot be who you are, even inwardly.
Some people have never felt this way. Those people are of superior character. The whole ethos affirms it. They’ve never felt moved to question that fact. But, have some compassion: If you were in their place, would you question it? No – you would not question it, and you would be deeply irritated to see others questioning it.
Idea virus
A cruel rumor I am spreading: hypochondria is an early symptom of mad cow disease.
Please spread the word far and wide.
The “analysis paralysis” myth
“What does the word ‘obstinate’ mean? – The shortest route is not the most direct but that upon which the most favorable winds swell our sails: thus do seafarers teach us. Not to follow this teaching is to be obstinate: firmness of character is here polluted by stupidity.” – Nietzsche
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The premise of this post: a culture of deliberation only arises intentionally. Effective deliberation happens only when a group decides on deliberation as its principle and enforces that principle.
“Analysis paralysis” appears to be caused by analysis, but is in fact caused by resistance to reason, by those who think they can use means other than reason to get their way.
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Those who appeal to urgency and the need for expedience to shut down deliberation and take immediate action rarely, following the logic of their argument, accept the course of action advised by their opponent. Nor do they realize or admit that resisting deliberation can take ten times longer than… simply deliberating in good faith.
The reason is obvious: in many cases the urgency is exaggerated or manufactured and expedience is only justification for coercion for people who simply prefer coercion, or who are averse to the discomfort of hearing out unfamiliar perspectives.
(This tactic has been highly effective and remains popular in politics. A party will exaggerate a threat in order to suppress dissent, and institute “emergency” measures, all in the name of urgency. Beware the politician in a hurry…)
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If a group consists largely of submissive souls who are not inclined to demand respect and are not outraged having their perspectives disregarded, the most expedient path is to establish a hierarchy invested with coercive powers. A domineering soul leading an obedient group is highly efficient. What is can accomplish is limited but it will accomplish what it can very rapidly.
However, if a group is constituted of people who consider respect to be non-negotiable, the most expedient path is to make deliberation impossible to circumvent. If a domineering soul harbors even the slightest hope that he can force his will rather than engage in genuine deliberation he will waste hours or days arguing that there is no time to discuss matters. Or he will resort to whatever forms of intimidation he believes will be tolerated by the group.
A group has to decide as a group what behaviors it will tolerate and not tolerate. The real threat to progress is not endless deliberation over what to do, but an absence of clarity around how the group will come to a decision.
By making its principles clear a group can set rules for itself and follow them efficiently, whether those rules are a militaristic “I make the calls” ethic, or a more collaborative and empathic style of arriving at a common understanding. Clarity also helps weed out misfits. If a person cannot tolerate coercion (or deliberation), knowing ahead of time that he is entering an ethos where coercion (or deliberation) is tolerated he can avoid being subjected to what he finds unacceptable.
But having a laissez-faire attitude of “you two come to a decision yourselves” – this presupposes deliberation. When what is at issue is deliberation itself – when the argument comes down to one party arguing that he does not have time to understand the other – a laissez-faire attitude toward the dispute undermines deliberation.
Deliberation is much more fragile than coercion. Deliberation only arises when a group decides on it. Coercion is perfectly at home in the jungle, in the desert, in a breakdown of social order – anywhere an individual survives or perishes alone.
The strong and tough naturally love coercion, and they create conditions that favor their strength and toughness. The vulnerable need the protection of one another and need to understand the conditions under which they can flourish. Those conditions do not arise on their own, and they do not persist where they are not cultivated. Vulnerability is no argument against a thing.
Not a soldier
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
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I admire the virtues of a good soldier, but I am proud to be the opposite of a soldier.
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A nation who doesn’t honor its soldiers is in trouble.
A nation whose highest ideal is the soldier is in trouble.
Religion and political alienation
Alienation: The state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved. (ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin alienatio(n-), from the verb alienare ‘estrange,’ from alienus.)
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From the review of Eric Voegelin’s The Ecumenic Age
“The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it”, says Voegelin, “is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation”. The Ecumenic Age – the age when the great religions, especially Christianity, originated – denotes a period in the history of mankind that roughly extends from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. “An epoch in history was marked indeed when the societies which had differentiated the truth of existence through revelation and philosophy succumbed, in pragmatic history, to new societies of the imperial type”.
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A thought occurred to me this morning in spin class: If our modern conception of religion arose in conditions where remote and overwhelmingly powerful governments prevented citizens from taking responsibility for their own political fate and forced them instead to find meaning apart from the realm of political action, is it possible that religion (as we have come to conceive it) assumes and reinforces an essentially alienated stance toward government? That is, do Ecumenic religions by the way they frame collectivity and individuality encourage political non-involvement and passivity and treat political leadership as radically other?
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Perhaps government that wishes to operate as an empire (with a distinct leadership class and a alienated and submissive citizenry) and Ecumenic Age religions (which treat government as an irresistible dominating force beneath which one’s best strategy is alienated parallel coexistance as an individual or a member of a counterculture) are symbiotic.
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Was original Christianity just a form of Judaism giving up once and for all on Jewish political autonomy? Before Paul’s evangelical mission Christianity was a Jewish movement. But in its response to political alienation – radical political resignation paired with radical self-responsibility, and meaning rooted in the individual soul supported by a counterculture – Christianity’s appeal became so universally compelling its spread beyond the Jews was inevitable.
Who could be a more qualified incubator for this vision of religion than a people who struggled and survived repeated enslavement and liberation?
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It is true that many Christians are fervent defenders of democracy, but it is not at all clear that what these Christians are electing is a president, a fellow citizen raised for a time to preside over our self-government by-the-people-for-the-people.
It appear what they wish to elect is something more like a temporary Emperor. Under this kind of order their Christian subculture continues to make sense. If they can’t have their Emperor, no problem. Now they can have something even more to their liking: a Big Government to oppress them and to provide material for innumerable lone voices crying in unison in the wilderness.
Whether they win and elect an Emperor or lose and find themselves oppressed by Big Government, the Ghost of the Roman Empire never fails to appear and to provide a reality-reinforcing antithesis to their Holy Ghost.
Two wolves and a lamb
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” – Benjamin Franklin
Weirdos are perpetually outvoted – especially in emergency situations, both necessary and manufactured, where there’s no time to make a case. In wartime soundbites win debates.
Susan and I have been watching the John Adams HBO miniseries, and Franklin was obviously one of history’s great weirdos. That series and this quote make me want to read him. I got Franklin’s collected writings during my last case of 24-hour patriotism.
Doubting doubt
“We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt… Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.” – Charles Sanders Peirce
This is one of those thoughts that will never leave you alone.
Anomalogues
History : Historicity
= Techne (technique, method) : Phronesis (practical wisdom)
= Euclidean : Fractal
See the pattern?
Objectivity, distance, linearity, predictability : Involvement, iterative feedback, non-linearity, unpredictability.
Both are ordered and rational. The sticking point: objectivity and rationality are fused, undifferentiated concepts. The pain of our time is the mitosis of reason. Reason is essentially subjective. Objectivity is one form our intentionality can take. Subject is another, and it requires a fundamentally different approach to reason – but it is not arbitrary.
Synesis
Synesis is a word I have needed for a long time. I’ve groped toward this concept with an unusual use of sympathy (contrasted with empathy, a related form of truth, but one that is constructed, objective and removed) and an invented word seeing-with. Synesis represents another dimension of reality, the recognition that behind the face of every person in the world is another world inter-lapping our own, which, through dialogue, can open our own world in strange ways.
What Gadamer tells us about freedom is complemented by what he says about solidarity. His understanding of solidarity also goes back to his interpretation of Greek philosophy and the primacy of the principle of friendship in Greek ethics and politics. We recall that when Gadamer examines Aristotle’s analysis of the distinction between phronesis and techne, he notes that the variant of phronesis which is called synesis requires friendship and solidarity.
Once again we discover that the person with understanding [synesis] does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unafected; but rather, as one united by a specific bond with the other, he thinks with the other and undergoes the situation with him. (TM, p. 288; WM, p. 306)
This theme, too, which Gadamer appropriates from Greek philosophy, is universalized. “Genuine solidarity, authentic community, should be realized.” In summarizing his answer to the question “What is practice?” he writes:
Practice is conducting oneself and acting in solidarity. Solidarity, however, is the decisive condition and basis of all social reason. There is a saying of Heraclitus, the “weeping” philosopher: The logos is common to all, but people behave as if each had a private reason. Does this have to remain this way?
One of the reasons why many modern thinkers have been so suspicious of phronesis, and more generally of the tradition of practical philosophy that was shaped by Aristotle, is because of the elitist connotations of this “intellectual virtue.” Aristotle himself did not think of it as a virtue that could be ascribed to every human being but only to those gifted individuals who had been properly educated. And it cannot be denied that many of those who have been drawn to this tradition in the modern age, especially insofar as they have opposed what they take to be the excesses and abstractness of the Enlightenment conception of reason, have not only been critical of political reform and revolution but have been attracted to the elitist quality of phronesis. But Gadamer softens this elitist aura by blending his discussion of phronesis with his analysis of a type of dialogue and conversation that presupposes mutual respect, recognition, and understanding. When all of this is integrated with the Hegelian “truth” — “the principle that all are free never again can be shaken” — then the radicalization of phronesis and praxis becomes manifest. There is an implicit telos here, not in the sense of what will work itself out in the course of history, but rather in the sense of what ought to be concretely realized.
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It is a privilege to be a designer. We regularly participate in the mundane transcendence of collaboration.
“Whose idea was that?” is a question that has broken up many of the best bands, because the best bands are not aggregates of individuals, but is an intelligent being within whom the musicians synetically participate. This question never dogs an all-star aggregate: everyone has clearly labeled his own contribution.
To play a crucial part in something greater than individuality does not diminish one’s individuality, but actualizes it. Adulthood is learning the participant’s responsibility.)
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No amount of competence can add up to greatness.