Digressions&Impressions

On Productivity in Philosophy; a mitigated defense

A few minutes into the conversation she asks the inevitable question.  “So, what are you working on?”  You say, “nothing.”  Or to make it perfectly clear, you say, “I am working on nothing.”  You are met with a suppressed shock (without the awe) that barely obscures your companion’s dark thoughts: you are living “dead wood,” worse, someone who has the gall to admit it. ...

No doubt this motivational desert was in part created by personal and familial challenges, as well as the extraordinarily disturbing current political climate.  But I’ve become convinced that my deepening disappointment with professional philosophy is what broke the camel’s back.  The solution might have been to sever all ties with professional philosophy—people do—but I’ve been part of this discipline for too long and know too many people.  It remains part of my identity.  It’s worth mentioning that I didn’t stop all writing.  There were blog posts (some relating to the philosophy profession), as well as miscellaneous unpublished writings.  But no traditional scholarship in philosophy...

Academic disciplines in our time have been subjected to a productivity principle: more is better, and a lot more is even better than better, giving rise to a kind of productivity syndrome, in which “more is better” becomes one’s modus operandi.  Alternatives to this MO come to seem unnatural, and quantitative measures take center stage.  For example, while we may rail about the importance of quality, the reality is that for tenure and promotion decisions, as well as a host of other professional perks, quantity rules the day.  Honestly, how often have you heard of someone not receiving tenure because his or her colleagues said that the quality of the work was unacceptable?  Of course this happens, but I am asking you to consider how often.  Having served on many internal and external reviews, my take-away is that quantity, and prestigious venues, are typically what win the day.  Yet, there is no guarantee that a book or article published by a prestigious press is of high quality.  We all know that weak or mediocre books slip through, for various reasons.  Quantity is so much easier....

Academic culture has become monomaniacally infatuated with productivity as a marker of accomplishment, of a successful academic life, of a successful life, and quantitative measures have become increasingly important in determining what counts as success, as we see, of course, in other sub-cultures of endeavor.  It’s increasingly difficult for people in America to consider non-productivity markers as acceptable indicators of a successful life, and academics are not immune to this productivity syndrome.  Quite the contrary.   Although they can be found resisting (mildly) the measurements of productivity foisted on them by university administrators, they also enthusiastically measure themselves.  It’s hard not to impress oneself by the number of one’s publications. ...

Philosophy was supposed to be different from other disciplines, or so I thought some 45 years ago when I was hooked.  Philosophy has been deeply committed to the honing of critical skills for millennia, as well as to enhancing our capacity for thoughtful and sustained reflection on matters public and private.  Philosophers were supposed to be the fearlessly critical ones.  The ones who wouldn’t be sucked in.  The ones who stood back and said, look, don’t uncritically buy into the values of your society.  Question.  Reflect.  Think.  Are these values truly those of a good life?  Socrates was the archetype.  Sadly, too many philosophers have decided to set old Socrates aside, embracing the productivity principle with varying degrees of fervor.  And to make matters worse, a lot of these people have highly visible positions, which makes them, even more unfortunately, the face of the profession.

I was naive to have believed that philosophy would be different—that philosophers would be more vigorously critical (even about their own professional activities) than those in other disciplines—but I never fully gave up on the hope over the years.  Today I am close to despair on this front–hence the motivational crisis.  I don’t want to be part of the productivity system.  I don’t want to be identified with academics or philosophers who suffer from the syndrome....

I left Penn State for Juilliard....You don’t get a more competitive crowd than Juilliard students and faculty, and yet there are significant differences from traditional academia.  There is an intense investment in quality, but few ways to translate this quality into numbers.  It’s not how many Haydn quartets you have played.  Rather, it’s how well you are playing this one.  I am not saying that there isn’t careerism.  But that careerism isn’t tied to quantifiable productivity in the same way it is in academia.  

...

Where were the philosophers who should have been saying that philosophy doesn’t play the productivity game?!?  The unexamined life is not worth living.  And living as a vehicle for production—as an instrument of production instead of as an instrument of action, of life—must be resisted, must be fought.  And fought in the name of philosophy.

...

None of this speaks to the deeply personal and tradition-bound reasons we have for wanting to write philosophy.  But we must find a way to separate the activity of expressing ourselves from the commodification and commercialization of that expression, which is at the heart of the productivity syndrome.

Here is another suggestion: stop writing philosophy for publication for an extended period of time.  Announce this decision to colleagues.  Be willing to say that this is for your good and for the good of philosophy.  Acknowledge that you need time to reflect on what the productivity preoccupation is doing to philosophy and to you as a philosopher.--Mitchell Aboulafia "The Productivity Syndrome (or why I stopped writing philosophy)"

Aboulafia's piece resonated with quite a few friends and was circulated widely on social media. While the piece touches on many issues along the way that I ignore in what follows, in it he offers at least six competing visions of philosophy. Let me list these first:

1. The Socratic one, which involves "thoughtful and sustained reflection on matters public and private" and is willing to be critical of ruling values..  
2. Philosophy as self-expression (in the context of a tradition). 
3. The sophistic one, that focuses on productivity and is incentivized by measures of these.
4. The artistic model focused on quality of performance.
5. The dilettante who writes blog posts and other occasion pieces.*
6. The teaching of philosophy.

It is a bit unfortunate  that Aboulafia runs the question of professional philosophy and the question of philosophy together. Perhaps because I spent a good part of my professional-scholarly life writing about men and women who were never employed in universities or by the Church [Descartes, Hume [who tried to get a position], Hobbes, De Grouchy, Margaret Cavendish, Toland, Mandeville, Spinoza [who declines an offer], Du Chatalet, Leibniz, J.S. Mill, Wollstonecraft, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.], I think it's important to keep track of the difference.

So, first, today it is unlikely that Socrates, who disliked writing for publication, would get tenure on his public philosophy. (The turn to emphasis on productivity is actually fairly recent, I am just old enough to remember tenured folk with very short publication records in many department.)  But there are additional reasons to doubt he would be tenurable; Socrates would be a bad colleague: he would show up late for meetings, be uncollegial, and would take an unhealthy interest in the sexual lives of some of our students. In addition, his relentless willingness to scrutinize and deviate from the norms of society would make him a liability to any university. Socrates's execution is a warning that his is a high risk approach to philosophy for society and the person pursuing it.** I call this the Socratic Problem for philosophy. Nobody has solved it.

To move on: the artistic model is an attractive one because quality is grounded in technique and elite, daily scrutiny by teachers and peers. As Coetzee is fond of noting (see "What is a Classic" and my response here), these can sustain interest in relatively neglected artists, works, and approaches. We can understand literary criticism, Coetzee argues, as a contribution to a culture focused on quality.  But the political economy and infrastructure that sustains such elite art, including Julliard, is ultimately rooted in performance to a wider public or rich donors. And so, in part, in uninformed opinion (which, when applied to philosophy, opens the door to the Socratic Problem). While the artistic model can be applied, in part, to philosophy [and is to be discerned in the ways that philosophers are increasingly becoming ornaments to and the in-house futurologists or ethicists of billionaire-software-entrepreneurs], philosophy faculty and graduates are not public performers in the relevant analogous sense.  That is, and to be a bit deflationary, the artistic model is rooted in institutions focused on professional education (and they rise and fall with the market for these professionals). I don't deny the artistic model is worth having. I admire Robert Pirsig and, more recently, Mathew Crawford, who have both pursued it in their writings (both by pointing to it and living it). Adrian Piper is finally getting the recognition for her version of it. 

Third, philosophy as self-expression within tradition has important merits. It taps into a human need, and connects and extends the past (tradition) into the future. But there are two not quite related problems: (i) few selves are really all that interesting--and, when interesting (note Socrates above), they tend to be a poor fit for department life; (ii) it's hard to see this being a promising strategy for survival in publicly funded institutions, where both financial scarcity and the need for public justification are non-trivial. 

Fourth, the dilettante is by definition unprofessional. I hope it is clear I am no enemy of the dilettante (I hope i am not delusional in saying that I have a track record in which I exhibit and show a certain fondness for blogs and occasion pieces). But by definition the dilettante is not at home in a profession. It's not to deny that all the fruits of a dilettante can be turned into sophistry (I could share my blog numbers and citations, after all), but that would be self-defeating given the aims of Aboulafia. 

So, that leaves teaching and sophistry which is (ahh), despite many national and institutional differences (which can make a huge local difference), the status quo for the profession. Aboulafia and I agree that teaching of philosophy is noble and justifiable, and that the sophistic model is corrosive of philosophy in various way (although it need not be corrosive to society [recall])--most of my blogging history is an attempt to document this corrosion so won't repeat today. Even so, it is a bit unfortunate that (i) Aboulafia ignores that many of us (sophists in our research) keep teaching Socrates, Plato and the other critics of Sophism (then and since) to our students (few other professions can say that!); and (ii) Aboulafia ignores some other noble and self-vindicating alternatives that can be housed in universities:

7. Together with Roger de Langhe, I have offered an ameliorative (and very broad tent) strategy (here) for those of us fated to be professionals in a sophistic system: philosophy as exploratory research. (Go read it, and tell me what you think!)

8. Philosophy as service (recall Dotson).

9. Synthetic philosophy (recall this post)

How to do 7-9 without being corrupted by the pervasive sophism is for another day.

Here I want to close with a critical thought on Aboulafia's conflation of careerism and productivity. For in his disillusionment, he loses sight of the fact that there is nothing wrong as such with people publishing lots of philosophy in scholarly journals (unless one buys into Socrates's privileging of the spoken world over the written one).+ Yes, there are some technical problems (shortage of referees, journal capture, echo-chambers, etc.), and some publications generate inductive risk to society. But intrinsically publishing philosophy is a pleasing activity that keeps all kinds of conversations going -- that just is (recall) the mark of civilization -- and is a public record of our individual and collective efforts. In addition, it is a discovery procedure of what one thinks over time (so, oddly, it contributes indirectly to (2) philosophy as self-expression in a tradition [recall!]) and, if not pay-walled, it is a public good, that is a means to discovery by others (recall).

In fact, I sense in Aboulafia a suspicion of quantity as such. That is, there is not just a veneer of careerism that hangs over quantity, but, in his hands, also superficiality, a lack of profundity and depth. Aboulafia's rhetoric is one that used to be espoused by gentlemen-amateurs in hierarchical societies annoyed at the upstarts (professional, rootless, meritocratic, etc.) who upend existing hierarchy (and the old-boy networks they sustain). But this rhetoric rests on a mistake. (Aboulafia recognizes it is a mistake -- "the system makes it too easy to substitute quantity for quality" --, but can't resist himself.) Most of the best philosophers (we know of today in our traditions) were manifestly addicted to writing their thoughts (in notebooks, letters, etc.). This is no surprise: philosophy is, in part, a written craft, which requires enormous amount of exercise even for those that have scaled -- sorry for the elitism, but I am addressing an elitist argument -- the peaks of our history. This need to practice and exercise the skill is also true for the professional journeymen/women, who publish in journals. Of course, not all of these exercises are worth publishing (that's why we have editors and referees, etc.).

Some of us are so good at writing professional philosophy that taking an occasional break from such writing can do no harm and may even advance philosophy in the broader sense.  But professional writing, publication, requires exercise, and the best form of such exercise for many is ultimately regular, attempted publication.++ 

 

Le Guin (and William James) on Sacrifice; on Political Aesthetics and Truthful Ideology

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.--Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

The narrator of this "fable" -- Le Guin hesitates calling it that  -- at times situates her (his?) own description in the history of utopian thought: she contrasts the citizens of Omelas with the "bland utopians" (of More). Le Guin, who takes categorization  of her fiction rather seriously (in the playful way in which the serious is properly addressed) may be right to insist it is not a utopia because the narrator also admits not knowing "the rules and laws of their society." But it is possible that we learn more than the narrator realizes (as is often the case in the best utopian writings). Rules and laws are intrinsic to utopian reflection, when considered as a species of (what I call) Socratic political theory [recall here and here]. One might easily be confused about  this point because the narrator describes Omelas as "happy" (without being "stupid" or "naive and happy children") in a way that is often associated with utopian thought.

In order to show that they are genuinely happy, the narrator claims that the Omelasians (the Omelians?) are (i) capable of distinguishing and discriminating among "what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive."  And (ii) they have  chosen to live beyond necessity and allow technology that is "neither necessary nor destructive," but simultaneously to reject the (potentially) destructive kind. That is to say, Omelas is a society with metaphysics (or philosophy) and capable of taking, what we would call, inductive risk seriously. (In some respects -- especially the fact that there is a religion without priests -- it is like the true city of Plato's Republic.) Some other time I hope to reflect a bit more carefully on the logic of modality in which necessity and destructiveness are contraries.* (One would also like to know more about how they apply their knowledge.)

Above, I have quoted the central element of the story, or a necessary ingredient, that is supposed to make the 'joy' and the 'city' believable.** This reveals that a criterion for a happy city is some trade-off or some discordant element.  This element is a sacrifice.+ The happiness of the city is founded in a contract (James calls it a "bargain") which has three clear terms: (a) a miserable child; (b) no talking to the child; (c) "the happiness" of the citizens of Omelas.  Before one complains that this contract is obviously invalid say on the Hobbesian ground that the child is thrown back into the state of nature (really worse--she is deprived her use of reason), it is worth noting that from the perspective of the contracting parties the child is a mere externality. This is true of all contracts in which beyond the contracting parties and the arbiter/sovereign who enforces it, there are always parties who are effected by the contract, but not included (as contracting parties or in its language). The contract would be invalid if the sacrificed child were itself one of the contracting parties. But as Hobbes reminds us (recall), in the state of nature mothers have supreme dominion over their children and can dispose them at will (on my interpretation this justifies right to abortion in his view). This right need not be given up in the bargain. So this is a legitimate contract.

It is tempting to discuss here the question if it is a moral contract. If the child were spoken to -- and so readmitted to community, and so made part of the contract -- its objections and pleas would have to be taken into account. But today I am going to resist the casuistry (although I am quietly relying on your eagerness to do it yourself), and the familiar debates between consequentialists and deontological perspectives, we would have to enter into.[1] For prior to the question of morality, there are two, all too easily ignored, issues that are explicitly raised in the fable. One is a question (with a nod to Hannah Arendt [recall my valedictorian pieces at NewAPPS, here and here]) connected to politics of aesthetics: "the treason of artists," which is a "refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." One of the narrator's points on this issue is that modern artists self-limit in such a a way such that a skill has been lost (or at least 'almost lost')++ that is, the skill to represent joy and happiness without, simultaneously, thereby turning it in a moral tale or a political message. As such artists are incapable of conveying the full richness of human life. (This is something Coetzee also worries about.) The narrative situation of the fable is made complex because our narrator ends up performing what she decries. Part of the issue then is to what degree there is space for non-acceptable and non-believable art. That is to say, by bringing in the question of acceptance and belief, the narrator obliquely reminds us that her art is not isolated, but itself part of a larger political community; our expectations and standards are implicated in her representation.

I emphasize the obliqueness of this issue because, second, the representation of Omelas shows how an ideology that is grounded in the truth, in a society in which philosophy and knowledge exist, is possible.  For, everybody in Omelas (above a certain age) knows of the child sacrifice performed there. (Perhaps, this is even a fourth publicity requirement in the contract!) There is no noble lie here. And it is this knowledge that grounds a lot of the best features of the activities that bring (let's stipulate) true glory to Omelas ("nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science.") That is, this is a society in which its best activities do not require -- something familiar to us -- the effacement of the ugly foundations of flourishing. This is, indeed, a "responsible happiness." (How this connects to "barbarism" -- the narrator introduces the contrast -- is actually a tricky matter, but we can't do everything at once.)

Even so, I insist that their self-understanding is a form of ideology. By 'ideology' I mean (without pretending to have offered an analysis or to be at all precise) a discourse that (i) justifies a status quo -- in which some are subjugated (made miserable, exploited, etc.) -- and (ii) which prevents from conceiving alternatives to the status quo. Only (i) is necessary for something to be an ideology, but (ii) is an important function. This (i-ii) is precisely what happens when the children begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom." What they say is (let's stipulate) all true, but it ends up justifying continued misery for the child. 

Now, the story shows that two alternatives in play are (i) continue to agree to terms of the social contract, or (ii) quietly leave town (that's the closing "incredible" paragraph of the story) and end one's complicity with known misery from which one benefits.  One may grant that releasing a child after such degradation may cause as much wretchedness as staying in confinement because she would be released into a collapsing society. But it is notable that they do not seriously contemplate ending the practice when this child dies. That is, in virtue of accurately describing the world they inhabit, they do not prepare for an alternative, communal future path, beyond Omelas.***  

 

 

 

 

When is a book not a Classic?; On Huxley's Crome Yellow.

If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself- not independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is good on Monday and bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem by the appreciation it arouses, then it can certainly be true, because appreciation, or enjoyment, is a subjective condition which cannot be commanded. For a great deal of his waking life, even the most cultivated person has no aesthetic feelings whatever, and the power to have aesthetic feelings is very easily destroyed. When you are frightened, or hungry, or are suffering from toothache or sea-sickness, King Lear is no better from your point of view than Peter Pan. You may know in an intellectual sense that it is better, but that is simply a fact which you remember: you will not feel the merit of King Lear until you are normal again. And aesthetic judgement can be upset just as disastrously — more disastrously, because the cause is less readily recognized — by political or moral disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or alarms you, then you will not enjoy it, whatever its merits may be. If it seems to you a really pernicious book, likely to influence other people in some undesirable way, then you will probably construct an aesthetic theory to show that it has no merits. Current literary criticism consists quite largely of this kind of dodging to and fro between two sets of standards. And yet the opposite process can also happen: enjoyment can overwhelm disapproval, even though one clearly recognizes that one is enjoying something inimical. Swift, whose world-view is so peculiarly unacceptable, but who is nevertheless an extremely popular writer, is a good instance of this. Why is it that we don't mind being called Yahoos, although firmly convinced that we are not Yahoos?...

Swift did not possess ordinary wisdom, but he did possess a terrible intensity of vision, capable of picking out a single hidden truth and then magnifying it and distorting it. The durability of Gulliver's Travels goes to show that, if the force of belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes the test of sanity is sufficient to produce a great work of art.--Orwell (1946) "Politics vs. Literature — An examination of Gulliver's travels."

I read novels primarily for entertainment. As Orwell once argued you get a lot of value for money. But, and this probably marks me as unsophisticated, I also read them for their instruction in the art of living, that is, in wisdom. By the 'art of living,' I do not mean to suggest that novels are sophisticated self-help books (although Alain de Botton is not wrong to insist they are sometimes this, too), but rather that I see them as sources of insight about (ahh) anything. I do so because professional philosophy largely and steadfastly lost interest wisdom. So, for me novels are a means to help perfect my imperfect philosophy. Some of my these Impressions are a partial diary of my engagement with this project.

The previous, paragraph is a kind of apologia for what follows which is an attempt at explaining why, despite its historical significance, I find Aldous Huxley's (1921) Crome Yellow un-instructive. I read the book in a Vintage Classics edition that includes a preface by Malcolm Bradbury, who with the publisher also insists that is "one of the modern classics."  (I have quite a bit to say under the influence of Coetzee on the nature of a classic, but ignore that here.) Unlike some, who treat the book simply as satire, Bradbury is more careful and claims that it is a "comic novel of ideas" (and can "go on being read with complete delight and pleasure.") Bradbury does not deny that the book contains "satirical tales cunningly planted in the story," -- including the brilliant Swiftian, "narrative of  Sir Hercules Occam, the perfectly-formed [and perfectly named!--ES] dwarf who builds his perfect dwarf estate until all is destroyed by a full-sized heir" -- but he is right not to treat the book as satire. For, the book lacks, despite its invocation of Swift at the start of the novel, say, the "disgust, rancour and pessimism" (and anger) that (as Orwell correctly notes) animates Gulliver's Travels.

The main character is Denis Stone a published poet, who visits a great house one Summer shortly after World War I (so 1919 or 1920).* The house is the estate of the Lapiths (a Homeric name, this is a Swiftian gesture),** and that Summer there are three available young women. (He is interested in Anne.) When we meet him he suffers a writer's block while working on a novel and, perhaps this is connected, he admits to a kind of nihilist lack of faith in anything (including his own art). For faith keeps dullness at bay and transforms each event into something meaningful. Early on the reader (and Denis) learns that the would-be-plot of his projected novel -- which is loosely based on his own misguided understanding of himself -- is completely predictable. While he may lack self-knowledge, Denis has enough sense of shame to blush. Shortly thereafter his lack of originality is revealed (which a scene later he takes to be central to art), when he acknowledges that "things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about then." He blames his "education" for this. He goes on to suggest (in a much quoted passage):

One entered the world [...] having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.

Even if one were to grant the truth of these thoughts (and ignore the false, even fatal opposition between life and ideas), there is no sign that he is willing to struggle free from education's effects. I could go on and on pointing out the contradictions and cliches in this timid poet's outlook. None of these, of course, prevent him from being a potentially sympathetic character. But while his shy, longings are familiar enough sources of sympathetic identification, he is revealed as an empty shell, a self-described lover of "words" (and not "things and ideas and people') in two revealing episodes.

First, Denis's inability to act, even when offered a proper exemplar, is revealed in an extended set-piece in chapter XIX. The estate's pater familias, Henry Wimbush, has been working on a history of the family from which he reads to the gathered guests and family in the evenings. One night he tells the story of his not-so-aristocratic grandfather who won the hand of one of the aristocratic, lovely Lapiths, with a mixture of curiosity and not entirely moral, spirit. Denis is incapable of taking a hint.

Second, and in many ways this is the climax of the novel (chapter XXIV), Denis discovers he is not "his own severest critic" when he reads Jenny's red notebook full of drawings. (He never wonders why he is able to find it.) Jenny  is deaf, and he has shown little interest in her throughout the novel. It turns out he recognizes his own ridiculousness and foolishness in Jenny's caricatures of him. While his hurt is understandable, he draws entirely the wrong lesson:

There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself....One is apt...to be so spellbound by the spectacle of one's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presents itself to other people as well as to oneself."

None of this is false. But he shows no curiosity about Jenny (not even after his discovery), who is revealed as the most interesting person among the babbling other guests. In fact, it's clear that his lack of curiosity (a leading theme throughout the slim novel) condemns him not to get anything he wants. This is made abundantly clear to the reader.

It may seem perverse that I grant that the book is a comic novel of ideas -- in the way, say Zadie Smith's White Teeth is -- and yet fail to engage with neither the comedy nor the ideas. There is, in fact, quite a bit of comedy, and not a few moments that are the jumping-off places for further reflection (about which some other time). But by not challenging, even flattering the reader's felt superiority to its main character, the novel stimulates our pride and, most fatally, our complacency and so is unworthy of our engagement.***

On Civilization (Coetzee style)

Is that what civilization is: an unwhispered agreement that no one, no matter how insignificant, should be allowed lose face?--J.M. Coetzee, Youth, p. 157.

There are three important characteristics of civilization mentioned here: (a) a tacit agreement or norm; (b) fundamental (even if minimal) equality; (c) a taboo against causing or facilitating others to lose face. Losing face produces both (d) loss of respect for the person principally concerned among others and (d) embarrassment or (or depending on the culture) shame in the person principally concerned. (In context, Coetzee's narrator, who is 'Coetzee,' accepts Japan as an obvious site for such a norm, but recognizes that England may have it, too.)

As an aside, this understanding of civilization is one of the transformative by-products of the youthful's Coetzee struggle with loneliness,  his inability to produce art and sexual coldness, and his recognition of his own misanthropy, not to say, being a bastard (especially to women). Earlier in the (auto-biographical) novel, Coetzee had accepted other understandings of civilization including (i) an elitist "Anglo-French" conception centered on rare, particular literary cultural products exemplified by Athens, Rome, the "Germany of Walther von der Vogelweide, Provence of Arnaut Daniel, the Florence of Dante and Guido Caculcanti, to say nothing of Tang China and Moghul India and Almoravid Spain" (pp. 24-26) on the authority of the philanthropic Pound T.S. Eliot; (ii) a political conception centered on Christian values and history of colonial settlement in Southern Africa (p. 38-9) on the authority of self-interested and partial politicians.

It would be reductive to see in Coetzee's tripartite understanding of civilization merely a coordination problem among unequal members of a society --- England's classes, South Africa's racial and linguistic communities, etc. -- who struggle to find a thin, abstract layer of mutual, equal respect. For, preventing the loss in face in others requires judgment and tact. General rules can guide us in preventing us from generating circumstances in which these may be necessary and can, even, (Adam Smith is very good on this) help us feel what we ought to feel absent any feeling at all (or correct against self-deception). But general rules cannot teach us the skills and tenor of character needed to navigate social nuance. (Perhaps, deep learning will solve this problem, but I am skeptical.) Coetzee's narrative suggests that individuals, even whole cultures, can achieve adulthood without ever mastering the skill.

I often Digress about civility (see here) and civilization (see here). At one point (here) I had suggested that civilization is no more than the art of keeping conversation going; and that philosophy's role in civilization is to teach the skills and develop the concepts that allow conversations to be continued or, alternatively, the state of war to be held at bay.  At first sight Coetzee's and my approach have little overlap. But it's not too difficult to see that Coetzee's analysis of civilization can be treated as a means to achieving what I have been calling civilization. This, then, results in civilization being, (a) a tacit agreement or norm; which presupposes (b) a fundamental (even if minimal) equality among members of a society;* in which there is (c) a taboo against causing or facilitating others to lose face in order (d) to keep the conversation, including silences and long-stutters, going.

Professional philosophy today is pretty good at fleshing out and analyzing (a-b). And I believe it is even capable of teaching the skills and concepts necessary for these. As I often document (and as Eric Schwitzgebel, Michael Rea, and Amy Olberding have also emphasized in various ways), professional philosophy today is horrid at (c-d)--that is we often instantiate uncivilized behavior (in the sense discussed here) and we probably lack the skills to teach it to others. That is to say, we may, in fact, at the margin contribute to the decline of society's inability to keep conversation going.

A Further note On the Trigger Warnings Controversy

[T]hey bewitch our souls...so that I myself, Menexenus, when thus praised by them feel mightily ennobled, and every time I listen fascinated I am exalted and imagine myself to have become all at once taller and nobler and more handsome. And as I am generally accompanied by some strangers, who listen along with me, I become in their eyes also all at once more majestic; for they also manifestly share in my feelings with regard both to me and to the rest of our City, believing it to be more marvellous than before, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the speaker. And this majestic feeling remains with me for over three days: so persistently does the speech and voice of the orator ring in my ears that it is scarcely on the fourth or fifth day that I recover myself and remember that I really am here on earth, whereas till then I almost imagined myself to be living in the Islands of the Blessed,—so expert are our orators.--Plato, Menexenus, 235a-c*

It is odd to read about the scorn ('new infantilism') heaped by self-described friends of a humanistic or classical education -- professors and commentators alike -- on the request for trigger warnings by college students encountering poetic and graphic scenes of rape in their required courses (recall this post to which the current one is a footnote). For in their ridicule, these cosmopolitan, mature types suggest that they do not really believe the once common rhetoric of the transformative potential of literature and the other arts. From their public utterances we may  infer that these false shepherds of culture appear to practice a detached, ironic stance toward the texts and material they teach and study; they seem literally unable to imagine to be swept away by poetry and rhetoric, to be un-moored from one's own identity by film,  and to be captivated by another's train of thought in a work of fiction. They understand themselves as stewards of traditional learning, but they reveal that they read with detached minds and closed hearts who are unable, it seems, to learn from their students' searching questioning.   

That works of art, including many thought canonical, can be dangerous to their readers and the society that permits them is an un-cool thought--one that gets suppressed by the banality that pases for a literary education. For, too many of our teachers assume that by branding a work 'fiction' we have created a convention by which it is treated as harmless speech a mere diversion without anything at stake (recall my exchange with the Dutch novelist Grunberg). But dictators and censorious religions (not to mention Plato) know better--imaginative works can inflame the soul and worse--some of them known to incite killing (cf. Charlie Hebdo).

One belittles our civic religion, which embraces a hard-won freedom of speech protected by law and people's hearts, by failing to recognize what is at stake in it: it is not just intended to protect "the language and imagery" of beautiful and harm-free speech. We do not get the (for lack of a more lovely term) freedom-enhancing effects of texts without risking incurring some of the dangerous effects; this is both why free speech is nowhere absolute and the limits of it are constantly contested as well as why the nature of responsible speech is of recurring significance in philosophy and the arts. A true educator recognizes the fragility of the experiment in living that occurs when student and teacher are receptive to (well) the demonic.

The above is not meant to deny the legitimate concern over the spread of trigger warnings if, as is likely, these become yet another instrument of the rent-seeking technocrats that run the modern university by which they curtail and intimidate professors and instructors (see here).** But if one treats the Liberal Arts as merely about lovely language and escapist fantasy, one should not be surprised if the rest of society decides one is dispensable.

 

On the Laws of Identity and the Writing Life

Sometimes the better you knew somebody, the more impossible any real talk became.--Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer (124)

Memory itself was like another kind of echo, everything duplicating endlessly, in shadow versions of itself. (127)

[W]riting showed his own failings to him. The struggle that was involved was a demeaning and dutiful one, a matter of grinding craft rather than lofty art. Not that he was a fake; his interest had always been real. But he saw in others a hunger, a voracious need to comprehend or capture life by transforming it into a language, which he didn't share. (320)

In “What is a Classic?,” the novelist and critic, J.M. Coetzee insists, while flirting with the idea of the survival of the literary fittest, that classics sustain and survive ongoing scrutiny in the long run from a variety of perspectives, which may include – judging by Coetzee’s practice -- their creative re-writing. Such ongoing scrutiny is certainly a necessary condition on the being of a philosophical classic; one may suspect it is a kind of performative requirement for a classic.

In his essay, Coetzee identifies four features that enable a work to become a classic. While in context, he does not speak of philosophy the features carry over to a considerable degree (and, in general, philosophy is often on Coetzee’s agenda): (1) the work needs to be studied and discussed in small circles, relatively untouched by the general public’s fashion; (2) one can become an advanced student in a discipline based on some kind of competent engagement with canonical works; (3) there needs to be ongoing learned commentary or criticism; (4) the existence of a form of advanced emulation through creative imitation or reworking. In addition, Coetzee implies (5) that a work only counts as a classic if it can, eventually, catch the interest of a wider audience beyond the most advanced professionals.

As an aside, one may doubt that (4) occurs in philosophy. It’s probably not a good strategy to try to get a monograph published, following Kant’s architectonic in the first Critique. Even so, here’s an instance of (4) within recent professional philosophy: an important essay in the recent revival of analytical metaphysics is, O'Leary-Hawthorne & Cortens (1995), “Towards ontological nihilism.”[1] Given its provenance in Syracuse’s philosophy department it is no surprise that it generously mentions the dominant figure of that department, Jonathan Bennett, of the last third of the twentieth century. But as it turns out, the rhetorical and argumentative-methodology is deeply indebted to Bennett's Rationality—a work familiar to Hawthorne and Cortens (recall here and here). This fact could go unnoticed because Bennett’s Rationality is not mentioned in their piece.[2]

A classic instance of (4) is Zadie Smith's homage to Howards End [sic], On Beauty. In fact, while I had seen images of the Merchant Ivory film, I only read Forster's novel after being inspired to do so by reading Smith's novel first. A more complex case of (4) is Damon Galgut's Arctic Summer, which tells the post-Howards End-life of E.M. Forster (primarily the events surrounding the writing of Maurice, published posthumously 1971 and A Passage to India (1924), but also Alexandria:  A History and a Guide and Pharos and Pharillon) as a novel. To complicate matters, Arctic Summer is also the title of an unfinished work by Forster, and another writer, Cavafy, has more than a walk-on presence. One could grow dizzy fast if one tried to map the relationships amongst original and copy in this novel--words and lived experience strain at the law of identity.

It would be misleading to treat Galgut's novel only philosophically, but we should also guard against the other risk -- facilitated by its sensual craft -- of ignoring its philosophical profondity entirely. Under "cover of Plato," (39) -- caves, shadows, homo-erotic love, and all that  -- we can take a second look at the second quote; the nature of identity is at the heart of matter. Self-identity is paradigmatic identity (A=A), of course, but in memory the second A is also not quite the first A because -- to adopt Humean terms -- force and vivacity fade away in echoes. If the second A is epistemically indistinguishable from the first, feel free to generate a Sorites-style series of As, in which the the dividing line between the force and vivacy of the first and last A is insensible at any given moment in the series. To assert A=A even in its shadowy-nth-iteration, is to falsify experience; to embrace fakery, that is, the inability to recognize the significant difference between original and copy. (The previous is not an argument to leave logic behind in one's aesthetics; logic is a necessary pre-condition to aesthetic judgment!)

To capture life by words, when the desire of comprehension is a consequence of need, is doomed to failure. One might object that if lived experience is already linguistic then there is no gap. Undoubtedly some people inhabit a fully linguistic world. But Galgut's novel shows that there is another, more childlike immersion in life, fully sensual and -- miraculously -- intuitive (in Spinoza's sense) that is not opposed to knowledge, but more knowing than the falsifications afforded by language.

One might think, then, that Galgut indicts the writing lives of novelists and philosophers alike; all these can exhibit are the shortcomings of authors (most keenly to the author). For, we try capture by words and in doing so always transform the matter (even if we maintain form). In Arctic Summer there are more than a few hints that knowledge is an obstacle (see first quote above) not a goal.

Even so, the novel is also a defense of the "grinding craft" against the "lofty" visions of genius imposed on us by society and our own endlessly recycled images, popular among false philosophers. It is a rejecton of "smallness of soul, a narrowness of the heart," which undermines even the loftiest "ideals" (295; the context is the British racialized, colonial/imperial project). Such spirited craft may also be a consequence of need, of course, but it is not guided by such hunger, but by the internal demands of craftsmanship. Craft is easily devalued by knowing types (craftiness is not a term of praise), but even Plato defends its nobility and necessity at times.  That philosophy is a daily grind is, of course, one of the core commitments of these near-daily digressions.

In reflecting on the nature of a classic, I was reminded of Prospects & Presumptions, Julia Neugarten's homage to Jane Austen. (Neugarten is a bold young Dutch novelist writing in English.) The slender novella has a preface by the author. She writes, "Writing, I discovered, was one half discipline and one half lack of self-consciousness." Craft and immersion indeed make up the writer's life, but if the laws of arithmetic would allow it, I would add another "half:" the embrace of fate.

 

On Being a Non-Vegetarian

I am unsure when I realized that the moral arguments against eating meat and fish are compelling. It was some time after my period of being a practicing vegetarian (being in a relationship with a vegetarian). I would not be surprised if reading and teaching Coetzee's novels moved me decisively.

Thus, I admire the vegetarians.

As a non-trivial aside, I am no fan of European animal rights's movements that have for very obvious political reasons focused on ritual slaughter of animals -- practiced by unpopular, weaker, and often disadvantaged minorities -- as some of the main means of getting the message out  (as opposed to taking on the much more powerful agricultural-industrial-killing complex) and thereby entrenching other very serious systematic patterns of exclusion. I am not claiming hypocrisy. But one often gets the impression that among animal welfare advocates there is not just contempt for religious minorities, but also that one happily takes advantage of other people's xenophobia in the service of noble ends. This is not to excuse cruelty toward animals, if any, practiced by religious minorities and also not to deny that religious thinkers and authorities ought to have ongoing reflection on reforming their own practices.* 

Despite knowing it's wrong, I continue to eat meat and fish, albeit -- as a good bourgeois citizen -- the more expensive 'biological' and 'humane' stuff sold in the upscale farmer's market and specialty stores (with exclusive labels, etc.). I have wondered if I should describe my behavior in terms of weakness of will, or the power of (Humean) habit. Undoubtedly a bit of both. My behavior is certainly not some kind of rejection of morality or the feelings that might animate it; the idea of eating my (now long deceased) pet dog continues to horrify me. I am inclined to think, however, that my continued immoral behavior also reveals something else: that I tend to experience the pull of morality alongside other normative and non-normative pulls; some of which revolve around meals as a shared experience -- admittedly that sounds better in principle than the practice of trying to ensure that an overtired kid gets to be put to bed on time -- in which well prepared meat and fish add aesthetic, emotional, and sensual lustre to a meal. Unlike today's philosophical fashion, I am inclined to think that morality does not trump all other normative realms, so maybe my behavior is consistent with my larger normative commitments. (I am leaving aside here issues of health.) Of course, even if one were to grant my normative pluralism, it does not follow that my behavior ought to be excused.

I sometimes worry that knowing that it's wrong to eat, say, steak contributes to my pleasure of eating steak. There are guilty pleasures, after all, and it strikes me that -- given my occupation -- such guilty pleasures compensate for the cultivated tendency to 'over-think' quite a bit. I suppose akrasia can be a consequence of guilty pleasure, so maybe this should be my all things considered (that is self-deceptive) self-diagnosis. But I note that this akrasia is, then, in part philosophically induced and, oddly enough, that contributes to the pleasure.

Stoner and Augustus On Love and Freedom (and Parenting)

There is a variety of love more powerful and lasting than that union with the other which beguiles us with its sensual pleasure, and more powerful and lasting than that platonic variety in which we contemplate the mystery of the other and thus become ourselves; mistresses grow old or pass beyond us; the flesh weakens; friends die, and the children fulfill, and thus betray, that potentiality in which we first beheld them. It is a variety of low in which you…have found yourself for much of your life, and it is one in which our poets were happiest; it is the love of the scholar for his text, the philosopher for his idea, the poet for his word. Thus Ovid is not alone in his northern exile at Tomis, nor are you alone in your far Damascus, where you have chosen to devote your remaining years to your books. No living object is necessary for such pure love; and thus it is universally agreed that this is the highest form of love, since it is for an object that approaches the absolute.

And yet in some ways it may be the basest form of love. For if we strip away the high rhetoric that so often surround this notion, it is revealed simply as a love of power…It is the power that the philosopher has over the disembodied mind of his reader, the power that the poet has over the living mind and heart of his listener. And if the minds and hearts and spirits of those who under the spell of that appointed power are lifted, that is an accident which is not essential to the love, or even its purpose.

I have begun to see that it is this kind of love that has impelled me through the years, thought it has been necessary for me to conceal the fact from myself as well as from others. "Augustus to Nicolaus of Damascus"--John Williams Augustus: A Novel (306)

In the face of death and delirium (when one can be "more reasonable than most men"), there are, we are told, three kinds of love:

1. One consequent the pleasure of, let's say, body-coupling. (This is fleeting.)
2. One (Platonic) consequent our intellectual awareness of our lack of knowledge about our intimates—a form of unstable, self-knowledge that is revealed to be an imprisonment.
3. An enduring love that the scholar-craftsman feels for one's necessary creations, which – upon further reflection – is revealed as love of power.* 

It is no surprise that an emperor would identify his own ruling passion with a love of power; nor surprising that a novelist would have him say so. It is a bit more surprising that at the end of this novel about the art of ruling, which is simultaneously about the art of parenting, the novelist would allow his reader to entertain the thought that her immersion in the written text is a form of subjugation to the author's craft.

So, we are back in familiar terrain of the modern novel: the novelist as prosecutor of his own craft. We might say that the main defense of the novelist is that he acts from "necessity" ((305) or "destiny" (295)). While the propagandist's utility for the novel can be aimed at directly (recall), if there is genuine utility to the novel – elevating minds toward greatness (recall this post on Grunberg/Coetzee) – it is an unintentional byproduct of the love of power. (This is the secondary defense.) Williams lets us enjoy the irony that the emperor is wiser on the novel's possibility, and takes it more seriously, than his poet-propagandist (recall Maecenas here and here). But this very possibility is also destabilizing psychologically and politically; for the novel leaves no doubt about the dissatisfaction that follows from wise rule. Our excellence is revealed under duress (privation), not in prosperity.

This writer's necessity is not opposed to freedom (although there seems little room for the readers's/subjects' freedom--John Williams's sudden popularity offers a window on our limited aspirations). On the contrary, Augustus is recorded as claiming:

A definition of analytical philosophy by a true critic; Or Margaret Fuller discovered

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions. Of these the only law is, "Speak the best word that is in thee."--Margaret Fuller (1840) "A Short Essay on Critics" The Dial, I, July.

The only true criticism of these or any good books may be gained by making them the companions of our lives. Does every accession of knowledge or a juster sense of beauty make us prize them more? Then they are good, indeed, and more immortal than mortal. Let that test be applied to these Essays which will lead to great and complete poems--somewhere.--Margaret Fuller (1844) "Review of Emerson's Essays."

I 'disovered' Fuller by chance yesterday; well not wholly by chance--I have Anca Gheaus to thank. While ruminating on the role of Emersonian ideas in Butcher's Crossing, I decided to teach my 2015 Spring seminar on 'natural philosophy,' -- a course I inherited and, by the absolute rules of Belgian bureaucracy, whose title I can't change -- on Emerson's On Nature (and a few other essays), Thoreau's Walden (recall) and, perhaps, if there's time, Cavell's The Senses of Walden. All books I have been meaning to re-read in part in light of each other. But before I set this all-male syllabus in stone, it dawned upon me that especially with such works of, permit the expression, male anxiety, a feminist voice could be illuminating. I asked around and that's how I encountered Fuller. After spending my first day with her, I note with surprise that at the origin of true American philosophy -- who could invent this? -- we find a distinctive feminist; more about that in the future. (In defense of my teachers, I could say that they left me to find Fuller by way of their oversights and silences.)

Fuller measures Emerson with the most exacting standards and, and after nobly refuting the charge that he is unclear and not logical, finds him, nevertheless, wanting: "We miss what we expect in the work of the great poet, or the great philosopher-- the liberal air of all the zones; the glow, uniform yet various in tint, which is given to a body by free circulation of the heart's blood from the hour of birth."* Despite Nietzsche's well-known admiration of Emerson, it is likely that Fuller's point will have to be conceded. (But I withhold judgment until after my seminar.) Yet, even falling short of greatness, Fuller insists there is plenty to strive for, and in the passage quoted above she gives us a method to develop the standard of judgment of all good books ("the only true criticism of these or any good books may be gained"). The method is:

• make them the companions of our lives.

I read this as meaning that such books are not so much a mirror to our lives, but themselves are true friends (recall Seneca, and here), in part, exemplar, in part, running commentary on our experiences, and, in part, means by which we make others, ourselves, and the world intelligible. Undoubtedly, some will flinch at this because it so obviously is meant to have some books displace the Bible in the seasons of New England (and Homer in Athens, etc.). Perhaps, 'displace' is the wrong word because (part of) the Bible is one of the many good books.* I am unsure if Fuller meant this method to be necessary or sufficient, but I am inclined to think she thought it necessary.

The standard itself is an enduringly positive answer to the following question: