Betrachtungen eines Unphilosophischen (quater)

I don’t like purely philosophical works.  I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art, by way of seasoning;  but to make it one’s specialty  seems to me  as strange as eating nothing but horseradish.

-- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (1957) (ch. XIII.16; Lara speaking)

Nicht vom Wetter spricht sie, nicht vom Schneider,

höchstens von den Grundproblemen  beider.

-- Christian Morgenstern

[I wrote the following around twenty years ago, before I was baptised.  Just stumbled on it while cleaning up some files. 

Since that time, I’ve read a fair amount of philosophy, often with pleasure, and dabbled in composing some.  But the treatment here of the cognitive problem does not need revision or retraction.]

I must conclude, reluctantly, that I am of a  not very philosophical cast of mind.  Intellectual, yes; thoughtful, I hope so; but philosophical, in the sense of spontaneously grappling with the questions that engage those denominated philosophers, alas not.

Had I never read a line of academic philosophy, I could contentedly have walked for seven decades down the lanes of life, kicking at stones and appreciating the trees, without once wondering, let alone worrying, whether a name denotes a universal, or rather a concept, rather than (snicker snicker) a thing. Left to my own devices, I would likely never have asked whether Being even had a nature. let alone what the bugger might be.

Such questions as these have never troubled my sleep; and it is only with the greatest difficulty than I can induce them to trouble my waking hours.  Yet we read, in the letters of our betters:

"What distinguishes a man from a word?  There is a distinction, doubtless."

--C.S. Pierce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities".

This I no more ponder than whether a hawk may be discerned from a handsaw -- indeed, it rather recalls the grotesque title of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.  Yet Peirce concludes, alarmingly, that "The word or sign which man uses  is the man himself."  Should we be troubled by this?

Doing philosophy – well, I seldom do.  But when reading philosophy – something never undertaken save after a sound night's sleep, in the company of pots of strong coffee – I have often had the horrible experience of carefully lucidly processing each phrase of a sentence as it comes along, then finding, when I reach the sentence end, that the meanings of the initial phrases have evaporated:  as were intelligence but a porthole on a passing landscape, seizing each piece clearly as it looms into view, but at the expense of losing the last.  (That was rather a long sentence itself; let us pause.)

            (Pause.)

            Herewith a specific instance, taken from a little work in paperback (Arthur Danto, What Philosophy Is) known for being a relatively clear and non-technical introduction for the layman:

            "It is demonstrable that, for any system of sentences – any theory, say – which satisfies exceedingly weak and undemanding formal criteria, just this alleged desideratum can be achieved."

            This is not a long sentence; and for the first two-thirds of it, it actually calls up to me very visual ideas.  "Any system of sentences – any theory, say": I picture these sentences as speech-balloons, dangling from a mobile, with little hand-icons pointing at other sentences which they imply or from which they derive.  "Which satisfies exceedingly weak and undemanding formal criteria":  here our hypothetical theory is embodied as a sort of Doctor Watson, waving his hand with bluff good humor, in dismissal of the trifling demands made upon him: "No trouble at all, sir!"  And as for that initial "It is demonstrable that", well, we all know that "It is demonstrable that P" means (for the plain man) just that "P", and moreover gives you license to swallow P without troubling yourself to prove it or make it plausible, or even to understand it very deeply:  just one of those solid facts that people our Watsonian society, which the tradespeople have somehow seen to.

            Then comes "just this alleged desideratum".  Alas: this sends you haring back to the previous paragraph, or previous page.  And the "alleged" is troubling:  do we desire this (whatever it is), or do we not?  This centrifugal tension makes subtly more difficult the task of going back and finding the antecedent for "this".  It's not like "she": hmm, hmm, complicated, this, -- aha, Natasha Nikolayevna.

            Now:  one fact about philosophy, which makes the subject hard to follow, is rather to its credit.  Namely:  we never know what might be called into question.  So we can't just sit back and nod  as bits of received opinion are spooned into our open mouths.

            In many non-philosophical areas of life, we can count on so much that is unchallengeable, that their arguments are like sermons in a lazy church.  We can doze; we can idly watch the fly buzzing across the stained-glass windows; and miss nothing that is essential, for we have already all that is essential, the rest is embroidery.  As, in the radical Sixties, syllogism went rather like this.

Granted:
     (1) Amerikkka is a honkey-assed imperialist pig
     (2) The righteous Vietnamese people are righteous, popular, and Vietnamese.

From this it follows:
     (3) Blah de blah de blah de blah (rahht ohwn!) 

Everyone goes home satisfied.

What does it mean, to be "unphilosophical"?  It cannot spring simply from stupidity – which is a general term; too much counter-evidence in collateral fields.  Nor ignorance – not after having sat at the feet of the philosophical:  for, failure to absorb their wise lessons would have to be due either to stupidity (already ruled out of court) or "unphilosophicality" : quite possibly present, but this is the quality to be explained.  (I recall a case from some years ago, in which some Brazilian peasants, or Indians, were brought to trial for having killed quite a number of people: and were acquitted, on the grounds of "invincible ignorance".  A charming verdict; egomet etiam, nolo contendere; but again, this is the explicandum, not the explicans.)

            One possible partial explanation is that, apparently, despite gross this that and the other thing, I do actually, more or less, in some sense, believe in God.  This may even be largely unconscious, but it does determine things.  As:  Good heavens!  Here He went and made Eden for our grandsires to saunter in, and angels to attend our fallen birth – and you're worried about the existence of tables??!??!*  Get a life, man!  Get an afterlife!

[*On page 100 of Danto's booklet, we have an image of the philosophically inclined scientist  swallowing an atom  but straining at a table.]

It is a stylistic characteristic of the philosophic genre, that its reported combatants are generally abstract and shadowy, unnamed figures.  Not Gould vs Dawkins, or Quine vs Chomsky, but: the Realist; the Representationalist; the Phenomenalist, each with his separate agenda; curiously dispassionate partisans, like players in a masque. 

            In one sense, this should make for clarity.  As, I may know a whole bunch about Chomsky, or Chesterton, or Orwell, but it is different from the bunch of things known by disputant P., and different still from the sub-bunch of things that have caught P's attention in the present case.  Hence, when P. says: "….(Orwell)….", a million bells go off in my head, which may obscure his message.  Whereas, when the don refers to the Realist, there is no clanging, nothing to refer to but the Realist's résumé.

            And yet and yet… It is with this as with the medieval allegories, where ((Danger)) orates to ((Faithful)) anent ((Beauty)), and the eyes turn to glass.  These creatures have no form – no warts – no tits – it is difficult to attend, hard to become engaged.

            This lack of philosophical engagement has few consequences for the practical matters of life, such as renewing a driver's license.  Still, it bothers me.  For, philosophy is reputedly fundamental – indeed, is so virtually by definition.  Smart people are presumably interested in problems of ontology, while stupid people are interested in football scores.  [A surprisingly large number of smart people are interested in baseball.  This cannot, then, be an intellectual failing; but it may be a perversion.  The question remains open.]

*     *     *

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Yet I am troubled by questions of epistemology, for the good and simple reason that certain people whom I know  (those notorious Other Minds, in whose complete integrity I believe implicitly) seem to know (or say that they know) what I don't know; nor know I  how (or whether) they do know it.

As:

CEO (cigar clenched in right mouth-corner, speaking laconically out of the left):  Nyaahh… Dis noo magneddic-stawritch standid, it'll nevah catch on, da mahhkit'll riject it.

Me (thinks): How the F*** does he know that?!?!?

~

On a good day, then, and with a good book, I can – granted, not do, but at least – read philosophy, and engage with it:  an EKG would reveal busy little blips and bumps, I'm not just flatlining with the book open, the mental equivalent of an all-day sucker.  And admittedly, most of the enjoyment comes from the crackling style (as with Quine) or the apt examples (Strawson, Geach), rather than from any genuine penetration into the delicious mysteries of what it means, what it really means, to say that x equals (wait for it) x.  So the author of the book need not feel that his labor is wasted:  here is John Q. Public with his engine turning over and that author's very book in his hands (those hands which might equally as well have held a breast, or a beer).  And yet – the book once laid upon the night-table, all its arguments and all its concerns  go out like a light.

            It is not so with, say, poetry.  To read poetry before retiring is as dangerous as drinking espresso for a nightcap: I toss and turn, the lingering rhythms like a hot blanket, which cannot be cast off till I drag myself out of bed, snatch a bathrobe, and WRITE - WRITE - INDITE!  Whereas philosophical propositions  spark no further fever.  I lay down the volume, fall into a dreamless sleep, and perhaps the next day have some vague lingering recollection – "Yes, that 'x' thing, it was equal to, let me see, was it 'y'? -- no!  'x', that's it!  x = x.  My, the things one learns."  Or:  “Is it true, that snow is white?  Mmmm..mmyes!”

            Perhaps a policy of not asking overmany fundamental questions too often, is not so much intellectual laziness, as the better part of epistemological valor.  For, truly to nail down the simplest everyday phenomenon, is largely beyond the reach of science.
(Physics is really good at addressing problems that it invented itself, like muons;  not so much when it comes to snowflakes, or lightning, or wind.)

            In addition, when you go to the scientist, thou sluggard, you find him not exactly bent over the philosophy-of-science books either.   And this, not only among those sooty alley-dwellers the chemists, with their practical pots, but even those austere, unstained – theoretical physicists, nay, mathematicians.  Mathematics does not need metamathematics to go about its business, whether devising formulae that will predict the stresses of actual bridges, or proving theorems about ideal manifolds in n-space.  (We may define pure mathematics as the subject in which Bertrand Russell does not know what he is talking about, though what he says is none the less true.)

~     ~     ~

~  Posthumous Endorsement ~

"If I were alive today, and in the mood for a mystery,

this is what I'd be reading: "

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount.

(Ich bin Thomas Mann, and I approved this message.)

~        

Other  tragic examples:

Valéry était atteint  de cécité philosophique.

-- Etienne Gilson, Linguistique et philosophie (1969), p. 234

Freud himself  confessed to an insensitivity to philosophy -- or at any rate, to academic philosophizing -- after reading a book a colleague had recommended:

“You cannot imagine how alien all those philosophical convolutions  seem to me.   The only feeling of satisfaction they give me  is that I take no part in this pitiable waste of intellectual powers.  Philosophers no doubt believe that  in such studies  they are contributing to the development of human thought;  but every time, there is a psychological  or even a psychopathological problem  behind them.”

-- quoted in Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last Phase (1957), p. 140.

(Assignment:  How do these observations apply to the case of Wittgenstein?  Discuss)

Latest update:  
"Even when I have moved away from observation,  I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper.  This avoidance  has been greatly facilitated  by my constitutional incapacity."
--  quoted in Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last Phase (1957), p.335

Der Mann ohne Eigenschatten (weitergespiegelt)

In a lengthy novel, more admired than read, Robert Musil depicts the initially spring-fevered, ultimately autumnal society of Vienna under the Hapsburgs;  the novel opens in 1913.   Its title is the haunting Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (literally, a man without qualities or personal characteristics) -- haunting despite or rather because of the nagging fact that, like some paradox in a dream, it makes no sense.  The concept is looming and formless -- something best unmentioned, or to scare the children with.

Yet now it occurs to us (and we seem to have been the first to notice this), that the familiar “plain-text” title with Eigenschaften   is a Deckname, a cryptonym for something … darker, yet lying phonetically  just beneath the surface.  And so exactly does this key  fit that lock, that the hidden mechanism  springs open at a touch:

~  Der Mann ohne Eigenschatten ~

So what would be this “Eigenschatten”?   

There is a technical meaning of the term, defined in Wikipedia:

Der Eigenschatten (auch: Körperschatten) eines Körpers  ist der Schatten, den der Körper auf sich selbst  durch sich selbst  verursacht. Dabei sind aber nur Schattenflächen gemeint, die auf den jeweiligen schattenverursachenden Flächen liegen. Anders formuliert ist der Eigenschatten die Menge der nicht beleuchteten also die der Lichtquelle abgewandten Seiten.

But that is not the meaning that concerns us here.  We allude rather to one who, for grievous diabolical reasons, can cast no shadow -- who has no shadow to call his own.

I'll just take this, now ... you won't feel a thing ...

The notion is familiar to students of German literature:  it is the central plot-device of Chamisso’s celebrated  novella Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, in which the hapless title character (a Pechvogel, and eponym of all later schlemiels and schlemazels) sells his shadow to the Devil -- a bad bargain.

(Cf. additionally  the opera by Richard Strauss, “Frau ohne Schatten” (1919).)

~

~  Posthumous Endorsement ~

"If I were alive today, and in the mood for a mystery,

this is what I'd be reading: "

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount.

(Ich bin Adelbert von Chamisso, and I approved this message.)

~        

The eerie image of the man-without-a-shadow -- penumbrous dual of the shadow-without-a-man --  yet came to our author  innocently enough.   From Karl Ude’s introduction to the Goldmanns Gelbe Taschenbücher  edition of the work:

Die Erzählung ist entstanden aus einer zufälligen Frage an Chamisso, der sein Reisegepäck verloren hatte,  ob er nicht auch seinen Schatten verloren habe?

 

[Note:  I use the term “dual” here  in its mathematical sense;  yet the kindred notion of Doppelgänger  is here curiously appropriate.]

*

For another, exceedingly strange story,

and not unrelated in theme,

try this:

A Case of Possession

*

~

Orthoëpic interlude

So -- how do you pronounce the guy’s name -- Chamisso?

The man was French in origin;  and the worthy Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary, to which I myself, as editor, contributed not a few pronunciations (though not this one), gives -- for its pronunciation in English -- a value of orthographic “ch” which derives from French (here I translate into “newspaper-style” transcription):  sha-MISS-oh.   But the name is quite odd, for French or for German;  I do not know how his drinking-buddies called him.

An idiotic stab at the pronunciation is offered here for internauts:

http://www.pronouncehow.com/english/chamisso_pronunciation

Ignore it.

 

~

To resume.  

The man was, as we say, French, of noble origin (whence the “von”) and had to flee the overexuberant antics of the French revolution.  He spent the rest of his life dedicated to German life and letters.   With what results, we mention here.

And yes, I am aware, there is a parallel, between his Lebensbahn and mine -- ich, der ich Fremdling und Flüchtling bin,  nun jetzt in Herbstesalter,  in deutschem Kulturgut  fummelnd…

Yet there is a more deep-cutting parallel:  and this, between Chamisso and Schlemihl.   For Chamisso himself was a Mann ohne Eigenschatten -- living in dreadful exile, his roots quite sliced, condemned to stammer in an alien tongue.

*

Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,

in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,

und christlich gesinnt,

klicken Sie bitte hier:

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*

[Update 6 Aug 2013]  An interesting article by Costica Bradatan  explores the writerly bilingual dilemma here:

In her exploration of the Catholic religion, “Letter to a Priest,” written the year before her death in 1943, Simone Weil noticed at some point that “for any man a change of religion is as dangerous a thing as a change of language is for a writer. It may turn out a success, but it can also have disastrous consequences.” The Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, who was one such writer, talks of the change of language as a catastrophic event in any author’s biography

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/born-again-in-a-second-language/?src=rechp

~

To recur to the thorny subject of the Eigenschatten.

The poet and mystic Christian Morgenstern  has discoursed in rhyme  upon this matter:

Das Lied vom blonden Korken

Ein blonder Korke spiegelt sich

in einem Lacktablett –

allein er säh’ sich dennoch nich,

selbst wenn er Augen hätt’!

Das macht, dieweil er senkrecht steigt

zu seinem Spiegelbild!

Wenn man ihn freilich seitwärts neigt,

zerfällt, was oben gilt.

O Mensch, gesetzt, du spiegelst dich

im, sagen wir, – im All!

Und senkrecht! – wärest du dann nich

ganz in demselben Fall?

This we have managed, by a heroic feat of compression, to reproduce, for a world-wide anglophone audience, the original dozen lines by a mere six:  thus doing our ecological bit to stave off the impending Global Pixel Shortage (“Peak Pixel”):

A cork upon a mirror stood;

though had he eyes, ‘twould do no good,

because he stands on self upright,

his mirror image -- out of sight.

E’en we! beamed forth  beyond the sky

see not ourselves  with inward eye.

(This miracle of minimalism we achieved by means of Korf’s own invention,

described by Morgenstern  in “Die Brille”.)

Christian Morgenstern zum Gedächtnis (neu bearbeitet)

"Christian Morning-star."  What a lovely name.

Nun ja, die Schnee-häschen -- die sehe ich auch

He wrote this poem:

Korf erfindet eine Art von Witzen,

die erst viele Stunden später wirken.

Jeder hört sie an mit langer Weile.

Doch als hätt' ein Zunder still geglommen,

wird man nachts im Bette plötzlich munter,

selig lächelnd wie ein satter Säugling.

It is worth learning German just for that.

In the meantime, here is an echo in English.

Korf discovers a new kind of humor

whose effect comes only hours later;

you hear it first in bored incomprehension.

And yet as had a spark lain unsuspected,

one wakes awake in bed in sudden gladness,

softly smiling like a breast-fed baby.

~

Mr. Morgenstern discovered many magical animals, such as : the Mondschaf (lateinisch ‘Lun-ovis’; moonlamb, in the vernacular), and her lunar relative, the Mondberg-uhu;  the mysterious Turtelunke (not yet found in nature -- only a suggestion, to the Maker of things); and the untranslatable Nasobēm.  And we, to entertain him in the afterlife, have reported on a discovery of our own … snow bunnies!

~

Ich bin das ehrlich’ Nasobēm :

welch’ Märchen wär’ mir angenehm?

Schon doch -- ein zaubervolles !

Murphy im magischen Pfandhaus

[Kindle] [Nook]

Hör zu, Maria, zärtliche Vorschläge …

This too, our poet wrote:

Palmström liebt sich in Geräusch zu wickeln,

teils zur Abwehr wider fremde Lärme,

teils um sich vor drittem Ohr zu schirmen.

Und so läßt er sich um seine Zimmer

Wasserröhren legen, welche brausen.

Und ergeht sich, so behütet, oft in

stundenlangen Monologen, stunden-

langen Monologen, gleich dem Redner

von Athen, der in die Brandung brüllte,

gleich Demosthenes am Strand des Meeres.

And we as one, with whom a lamb were placed in trust,

return it, wrapped in bluest blanket:

Palmström loves  to wrap himself in rustles --

half, himself to spare  annoying noises;

half to shield himself from overhearing.

With water-courses  he outfits his chamber,

purling ever, soft, with sough and simmer;

and thus at ease, declaims, amidst the murmur

monologues, full loud, the wind addressing;

hour on hour he strides, soliliquizing:

e’en as the Dean, of Attic rhetorick:

e’en Demósthenes  on sea-strand, sounding.

Weiteres:
http://de.metapedia.org/wiki/Christian_Morgenstern

Gare le Gröfaz !

We earlier remarked upon that gross ungainly coinage,  the widerliches Unwort  “Gröfaz”.  It sounds like something coined by Christian Morgenstern, to frighten the children (Benimm dich doch, sonst fängt dich der Gröfaz!) :

Acronym of the Day:  “Gröfaz”

Yet the word’s unsung  in song or story.  Herewith  we remedy this,  after the manner of Morgenstern:

Der Gröfaz ist ein gräßlich Ding,

dem Greif an Greuel  nicht minder.

Er grübelt grimm  im Grabenring,

und grunzelt gen die Kinder.

*

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weiterblättern möchten,

Bitte hier klicken:

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*

 

[17 XII 2013]  Zudem (was neues):

«GroKo» – eine Wortschöpfung hat es in sich. «GroKo» steht für grosse Koalition und meint die Formel, nach der die neue deutsche Regierung zusammengesetzt ist. Noch bevor die neuen Minister der Regierung ihre Sessel besetzt haben, hat die Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache «die deutsch-lateinische übel verhackstückte Chimäre ‹GroKo› zu ihrem Wort des Jahres 2013 erhoben», wie unser Autor Klaus Bartels schreibt. «Wenn das ein Wort sein soll», so Bartels weiter, «dann hat die Schweiz doch längst schon ihre glücklich allseits koaleszierende, koalisierende ‹Zaufo› – richtig: die Zauberformel.»

http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/uebersicht/koalition-1.18205772?extcid=Newsletter_17122013_Top-News_am_Morgen

Dieses Unwort klingt genau so häßlich wie das unbeweinte « Gröfaz », doch schmeckt es ein bisserl nach Christian Morgensterns Wortküche !