Digressions&Impressions

On Virginia Woolf on Thoreau being a Counterpart of Emerson

But for a time he was to live in the world of men, at least in that very remarkable section of the world of which Emerson was the centre and which professed the Transcendentalist doctrines. Thoreau took up his lodgings in Emerson’s house and very soon became, so his friends said, almost indistinguishable from the prophet himself. If you listened to them both talking with your eyes shut you could not be certain where Emerson left off and Thoreau began ‘…in his manners, in the tones of his voice, in his modes of expressions, even in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, he had become the counterpart of Mr. Emerson.’ This may well have been so. The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength. But that Thoreau lost any of his own force in the process, or took on permanently any colours not natural to himself the readers of his books will certainly deny.--Virginia Woolf (July 12, 1917:) commemorating the 100th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s birth for the Times Literary Supplement.

It's almost a century ago that Woolf published these remarks. I was reminded of her moving essay, and this passage, in particular, yesterday when, in the company of my former supervisor, I heard him (my Doktorvater), say, in passing (in a festive mood after a succesful defense of one of my students), that's just swell.+ (As it happens we had just discussed Allan Bloom's distaste for Zelig.) Now, I was not surprised by his use; I have long known that somehow, without initially noticing it, I have picked up the habit of using this (folksy) expression from him. Luckily, despite my fascination with prophets, we do not share many doctrines (but recall) and, as he will be the first to remind me, I am no Thoreau (and he is no Emerson).

While few philosophers live with their intellectual mentors, the phenomenon that Woolf describes is familiar enough. There are many mannerism associated with certain intellectual environments (when the Oxford trained philosopher of a certain generation in a galaxy far away says (recall), 'I am confused' to you, you know they think you are a moron.) I am sure the next sentence will land me in  trouble (but here goes): for a while, I could unfailingly pick out a Pittsburgh trained philosopher based on the way s/he nodded during a lecture (in apparent disagreement) or used the phrase 'deep' to pick out a favored position. (There was selection bias.)

Of course, what makes Woolf's description (she is quoting a description by a former classmate of Thoreau, the Rev. John Weiss,) especially amusing is that both Emerson and Thoreau strongly attacked conformism and praised robust forms of individuality (recall this post, for example). In fact, Woolf enjoys her own joke so much that she adds for good measure, "The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength." Here she is also recalling Emerson's and Thoreau's interest in magnanimity (of course a strong soul need not always be a magnanimous soul, but, following, say, Thomas (inspired by Seneca), Emerson couples them (for example here) and so does Thoreau) [for a lovely paper on this topic, see Andrew Corsa, himself a former student].

Besides joking, Woolf makes the further point that certain forms of submission may well be the expression of a form of courage.* At first, she does not explain what she has in mind. But she returns to the topic later in her essay, "He was a wild man, and he would never submit to be a tame one." Again, she echoes Thoreau here (his work is suffused with the strong tropological contrasts between wildness/strength/true America vs civilization/weakness/cultured Europe (false America). Somewhat mischievously,** Woolf goes on (in the original quote at the top of this post) to conflate the persona as presented by Thoreau to his readers with the author/the man Thoreau.

Be that as it may, we may say that for Woolf, on her reading of Thoreau,*** that in one's education, or path to wisdom, a species of courage consists in submitting to the right sort of influence or exemplar. In so doing, one need not become inauthentic (colours...natural to himself) nor loose one's identity/strength++ (lost any of his own force), although even the strong soul may do so along the way (permanently).

Woolf here reminds the reader that much true education involves a potentially temporary submission to the will of  another. (My blog-persona reminds you, dear reader, that this is also true (recall) of reading other people's ephemera.) And sometimes education involves oneself in a comical, repetitive mimicking, with or without difference, of other people's ticks or turns of phrase.

    Isn't that swell?

 

On Secular Priests & Technocrats; the Reluctance of Issueing Normative Pronouncements

When I read people from the early 20th century...discussing their reluctance to issue normative pronouncements I frequently get something like the following impression....Our forbearers were very keen to avoid any suggestion that others should defer to their pronouncements on moral matters, they really did not think they should be deferred to as if they were some kind of intelligentsia secular-priesthood. They wanted to avoid it being possible to illegitimately translate the epistemic authority and bully-pulpit one gains as a professor into an ability to command or sway others with especial [sic] authority, since they thought that we have not earned that or for other reasons should not be granted it. Of course one gets involved in moral and political life as a private citizen; but one does so there as an equal, one voice among many. Where one is in some sense speaking or acting with professional authority one must avoid treating one's lectern as a bully pulpit, since one has no right to that bully pulpit.

Standing behind this... is some kind of egalitarian ideal of non-imposition, and a vision of the proper role of intellectuals in public life. I find that people launching the Berlin-esque critique frequently just brush this aside, and treat these people like they are shallow technocrats with no interest in public life....But it seems to me that it's at least plausible that the early analytics were on to something important here, that is worthy of serious reflection in metaphilosophy, and it wasn't just a refusal to engage but a bit of principled egalitarian politics that guided their decisions. As it stands I don't think this non-imposition ideal is quite viable in our present social circumstances --  this because I think that if we none of us say explicitly say ``I think you should adopt these ends'' but it just so happens that all of the professoriate only treat certain goals as worth taking seriously, we have collectively violated the spirit of this egalitarian ideal of non-imposition, even if no-one of us did individually. But those social circumstances are potentially subject to change, and in any case perhaps the ideal could be refined to account for that.

Plenty of my colleagues in philosophy are responding to recent events by saying that we should, as a profession, be more involved in public life. I quite agree, and as noted I think Berlin was on to something in his critique of the more limited or technocratic mode of political engagement. But I also do sometimes get the impression that some ... of those who launch critiques of technocratic political philosophy really do have designs on operating as a kind secular-priesthood, and have authoritarian ideas of how `layfolk' should relate to the moral-expert professoriate. The early analytic reluctance, when under the guise of a moral professor, to issue normative pronouncements about the proper ends of social life can start to seem very sympathetic to me when I am struck by this. So I hope that not only do we start to engage more with the world of practical affairs, but that as we do so we are self-conscious and reflective about the way in which we relate to our fellow citizens.--Liam Kofi Bright "Defending Technocrats" @The Sooty Empiric.

Liam's very interesting remarks are a response to one of my older post that I recently recirculated again. For the record: I edited his remarks a bit, and so removed some of his careful hedging/clarifications. For the purpose of clarification, let me offer some working definitions of different kinds of philosophers:

• the philosopher as secular-priest: somebody that deploys publicly the epistemic authority and normative bully-pulpit one gains from being a professor in order to pronounce in normative fashion on current affairs from a superior-in-some-sense perspective
• the philosopher as technocrat: somebody that takes (shared) normative ends as given and works out the implications of these akin to an engineer.

The first thing to recognize is that the philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat need not be in tension with each other. One can be a secular-priest philosopher in one's public utterances and be a technocrat in one's (more esoteric) professional publications. The philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat only may seem to oppose each other if the technocrat wishes to pursue her craft in public. These comments do not exhaust the possibilities, of course. But here I shall remain focused on public philosophy (which recall I distinguish conceptually from punditry and advocacy). I distinguish among three kinds of public philosophy (recall). I associate the 'public' in public philosophy with a shared life or common good. That is, public philosophy so understood is committed to a form of minimal political unity--a unity that is constituted by (educational) practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. (In a community of angels or philosophers there would be no need of public philosophy.)

First I list two species of direct public philosophy, which can draw on the results/insights or distinctions of professional philosophy, but need not do so. Then I mention a third indirect species:

1. Normative interventions or participation in public debates by professional philosophers and those trained in professional philosophy.
2. A genre of writing and speaking by intellectuals, who are not professional philosophers -- and do not engage in the debates/discussions among professionals --, yet engage public(s) on philosophical topics. (Sometimes these are topics that are not much discussed by recent professional philosophy.) 
3. Facilitating or enhancing social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good is an indirect form of public philosophy. For such practices can instantiate rational arrangements that make possible, perhaps, constitute a common good which I will provisionally define (recall) as mutual accommodation and modest forms of mutual receptivity such that public conversation -- not war or domination -- can be continued.

Now, let's return to Liam Kofi Bright's analysis of the philosopher qua secular-priest and qua technocrat; it should be immediately clear that these two modes of being do not exhaust the way one can be a public philosopher. His account of the practice(s) of early analytical philosophers on these matters is evocative of a species of Weberianism, whose influence of analytical philosophy is not sufficiently appreciated (recall Weber's (1917) Science as Vocation, "the true teacher will beware of imposing from the platform any political position upon the student, whether it is expressed or suggested." By contrast: "When speaking in a political meeting about democracy, one does not hide one's personal standpoint; indeed, to come out clearly and take a stand is one's damned duty. The words one uses in such a meeting are not means of scientific analysis but means of canvassing votes and winning over others." (10)) As an aside, Weber is clear that public philosophy is the realm of opinion not truth.

Bright's early analytical philosopher primarily practices indirect public philosophy. Even her most public interventions tend to be aimed at facilitating more rational public practices and discussions rather than articulating a normative position as such. Often these interventions have firm ground in normative commitments (in early analytical philosophy these are often treated as optative choices beyond rational scrutinity/grounding--a point Bright ignores), but these are, as it were, withheld with great self-command in order to facilitate a better operation of public reason (recall this post on Stebbing; and this one). Surprisingly enough, here early analytical philosophers anticipate the practices of contemporary students of Foucault (and Deleuze)--who often unmask away this or that public practice and offer us maps of local terrains/practices while intimating their own normative stances, but without defending them.

So, there are at least three kinds of philosophers:

• the philosopher as secular-priest: somebody that deploys publicly the epistemic authority and normative bully-pulpit one gains from being a professor in order to pronounce in normative fashion on current affairs from a superior-in-some-sense perspective
• the philosopher as technocrat: somebody that takes (shared) normative ends as given and works out the implications of these akin to an engineer.
• the philosopher as social facilitator: somebody that engages in public philosophy in order to help stabilize or promote social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good

Of course, there are more species of philosophy, some of them highly relevant to our practices of public philosophy. (I have written on the philosopher-prophet (recall); the philosopher-quietist, the Socratic political philosopher, the puzzle-solver, etc.) My modest point here today is that one can reject being a philosopher qua secular-priest as much as being a philosopher qua technocrat. While there were secular priests among the early analytical philosophers (Russell comes to mind), they tended to understand these priestly practices as distinct from philosophy as such. In fact, I would suggest that the truly striking fact about the recent public turn in analytical philosophy, is that many of its best practitioners combine elements of the secular-priest and the technocrat, that is, they become priestly technocrats. Our friends combine an unquestionable commitment to a robust species of moral realism, and they assume they have access to the normative implications that follow from it. (I take this to be saying pretty much the same as Bright's they "do have designs on operating as a kind secular-priesthood, and have authoritarian ideas of how `layfolk' should relate to the moral-expert professoriate.")

Bright expressed his reservations about priestly  technocrats by appealing to a kind of sympathetic norm of respect toward our "fellow citizens." Unfortunately, Bright here assumes a shared egalitarian ideal. But it is by no means obvious that the (let's stipulate meritocratic) priestly type embraces this ideal in their hearts. More often than not the priestly type pontificates on the cognitive biases of the lay-folk, which undermine their capacities. Even if they do recognize the ideal as binding on  themsleves, it is by no means obvious that the incentives under which our priestly-technocrats flourish promote such an ideal of egalitarianism. Rather, our institutional incentives tend to promote imprudent, expert over-confidence and lack of attention to the cognitive biases on the experts' themselves. I am not suggesting here that these facts explain the reticence of some of our forefathers and foremothers (which may have multiple, overlapping sources), although I would not be surprised if they did.

Middlemarch, Spinoza, and Zadie Smith's Wisdom

In fact, her ability to animate ideas is so acute she is able to fool the great Henry James into believing Fred Vincy a commonplace young man who has wandered into Middlemarch with no purpose, when really nothing could be further from the truth...Fred is in love with a bright, plain girl called Mary Garth who is not convinced Fred is worthy of her love. On reflection, Fred agrees. Of the Three Love Problems that dominate Middlemarch...Fred would seem the least edifying. Yet to Eliot all were equal, and of equal interest, and worthy of an equal number of pages. All her people are striving towards the fullest truth, the least partial good. Except when Eliot thought of striving, she had more in mind than Austen's hope of happy marriages, or Dickens's dream of dream of resolved mysteries. She was thinking of Spinoza's kind of striving, conatus...Instead, wise men pursue what is best in and best for their own natures. They think of the good as dynamic, unpredictable combination of forces, different in practice, for each of us, It's that principle that illuminates Middlemarch. Like Spinoza's wise men, Eliot's people are always seeking to match what is good in themselves in joyful combination other good things in the world...

It's worth looking again at the facts, which means, in the world of Middlemarch, the emotional facts. Fred is in love with a good girl, a girl who does not love him because he is not worthy; Fred agrees with her. Maybe the point is this: of all the people striving in Middlemarch, only Fred is striving for a thing worth striving for...He is not as dim as he seems...What Fred surmises of the good he stumbles upon almost by accident, and only as a consequence of being fully in life and around life, by being open to its vagaries simply because he is possession of no theory to impose upon it. In many ways bumbling Fred is Eliot's ideal Spinozian subject. Here is Gilles Deleuze on Spinoza's wise man; he could just as well be speaking of Fred:

That is why Spinoza calls out to us in the way he does: you do not know beforehand what good or bad you are capable of; you do not know beforehand what a body or mind can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination--

Zadie Smith (2009) "Middlemarch and Everybody" in Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, 34-36 (emphases in original).

Today is Arnon Grunberg's birthday, so I decided to write a Digression about essay-writing philosophical novelists.+

The mark of a great essay is that it both invites us to read (or see/visit) the book (site, etc.) discussed and illuminates us on its own terms. Smith teaches us to read and re-read "Middlemarch...a book about the effects of experience that changes with experiences. It gets better as you age, being, as Woolf, knew, 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.'" (3o) I have long liked Woolf's quip, but it is nice to see it illuminated by Smith by way of correction of the youthful Henry James's inability to understand Eliot's novel.

This is not to deny that Smith does not also give James "his due" (38) -- in 1873 he had claimed that "it is an indifferent whole" [she does not quote this, but hints there is truth in it] --, but she is gentle toward James. Smith does not mock the romantic providentialism he exhibits when he writes about Dorothea, "She exhales a sort of aroma of spiritual sweetness, and we believe in her as in a woman we might providentially meet some fine day when we should find ourselves doubting of the immortality of the soul." After reading Smith it is obvious that James, who could sense the "philosophic" and guessed, in part, the mixture of "Darwin and Huxley" -- missed the important bits, that is, not the metaphysics, but the art of living, in Eliot's Spinozism.

There are, really, two distinct claims in Smith's quoted treatment of Middlemarch. (There is a larger issue in her essay that I ignore here: the fate of being on "the border of the new" (40) qua novelist.) First, the embrace of radical epistemic uncertainty -- Vincy's bumbling "accident"; Deleuze's lack of foresight -- that must be combined with a kind of practical decision-ism when opportunity presents itself to attain the good for one's nature. Moral luck, and bad luck, is ineliminable, but it takes considerable wisdom and self-knowledge to recognize and grasp the good in one's fortune. In his review of Middlemarch, James is so preoccupied with the fate of the intellectual and noble Lydgate (and, amazingly, James faults Eliot for seeming to prefer Ladislaw over Lydgate, who he takes to be "the real hero of the story" [again Smith is too generous to point this out]),* that he completely misses this theme.

So far so good.

But, second, Smith also implies that Fred Vincy's wisdom is a product not just of an immersion in life, but also, -- and this is troubling--, a lack of theoretical knowledge: "only as a consequence of being fully in life and around life, by being open to its vagaries simply because he is possession of no theory to impose upon it." This could easily be read as suggesting that the theoretical life is itself a source of foolishness. To be sure, I agree with Smith's Eliot that (a) we should in our theorizing and writing not bias toward those alike to us, and that (b) imposing a theory on life is a source of great foolishness [recall Hume on De Witt]--one all too common to intellectual and educated people, our people, really. But here she comes close to suggesting, also, that taking theory and theorizing seriously prevents one from the proper form of receptivity toward grasping opportunity in life: theory makes one unwise in action. How to understand then the wisdom of Eliot, who took Spinoza's Ethics so seriously. Are we being told that she could write persuasively about wisdom without being wise? Is she really, at bottom, on the side of the poets against the philosophers?

It is only a partial consolation that Smith allows Eliot a species of practical knowledge conducive to the good life: "In Middlemarch loves enables knowledge. Love is a kind of knowledge..." (37) In fact, the knowledge we gain is the skill at sympathizing with other (Eliot was also quite clearly a careful reader of Adam Smith). The skills that go into such sympathetic ability (e.g. "to feel another's pain as if it were his own" (37)) are, indeed, practical and theoretical; some other time I'll explore if these sympathetic skills can partially vindicate a theoretical life. 

 

Metaphysics, Identity, and Unity of Virtues in Borges

In Book VIII of the Odyssey, we read that the gods weave misfortunes so that future generations will have something to sing about; Mallarmé’s statement, “The world exists to end up in a book,” seems to repeat, some thirty centuries later, the same concept of an aesthetic justification for evils. These two teleologies, however, do not entirely coincide; the former belongs to the era of the spoken word, and the latter to an era of the written word. One speaks of telling the story and the other of books....

Later, Léon Bloy would write:

“There is no human being on earth who is capable of declaring who he is. No one knows what he has come to this world to do, to what his acts, feelings, ideas correspond, or what his real name is, his imperishable Name in the registry of Light…. History is an immense liturgical text, where the i’s and the periods are not worth less than the versicles or whole chapters, but the importance of both is undeterminable and is profoundly hidden.” (L’Ame de Napoleon, 1912)

 

The world, according to Mallarmé, exists for a book; according to Bloy, we are the versicles or words or letters of a magic book, and that incessant book is the only thing in the world: more exactly, it is the world.--Borges (1951) On the Cult of the Books.

While I was reading Al-Ghazali's Deliverance of Error (about which more soon, because it gave me some ideas about the Principle of Sufficient Reason), I came across a reference to the Book of the Brethren of Purity. Wikipedia sent me to Borges. His essay is, in part, about the problem famously remarked upon, as Borges notes, by Plato that "A teacher selects a pupil, but a book does not select its readers, who may be wicked or stupid." (The problem is also a trope in Borges--recall.) This presupposes, controversially, that a true teacher is capable of reading souls. And it also presupposes that a genuine teacher is capable of discerning wickedness or stupidity in his pupils before, as it were, it's too late. The life and fate of Socrates does not entirely inspire confidence in this matter; we can, as Abe Stone taught me, understand, say, the Meno as a reflection on this. Even if we grant the two controversial presuppositions, modern professional philosophers do not  have the luxury of picking their own pupils, except, perhaps, at the level of a dissertation (or thesis). Even then, in the modern context it would be a bit odd, say, to blame Rawls for misdeeds of his students (if there were any misdeeds) unless these deeds were somehow traceable to Rawls's teaching(s), doctrines, or meta-philosophy. This latter point reminds us that we can't entirely absolve Wittgenstein for the annoying features of his school because Wittgenstein clearly encouraged a kind of cult of personality around him (as witnesses in his own age already noted).    

 

Yet, Borges's essay is framed by a bit of historicized history of metaphysics. (Above I have quoted the first and last paragraphs of the essay.) And, indeed, in this history he also discusses the contributions of the three great Monotheisms of a Book (including a subtle observation on Al-Ghazali and the Brethren of Purity.) The historicization turns on the switch from oral to written culture.

 

One way to understand substance monism, is to understand us as imperfect 'entities' without genuine identity. To be sure, Sub specie aeternitatis there may well be perfect identity (A=A), but from the vantage point of the 'letters' in the text there is none least of all about our own all-too-human identities. Even relying on baptismal naming ceremonies will not do.

 

It is tempting to treat Borges's essay as a geneaology of error. There are two bits of evidence for this in the piece: first, because he treats the Muslims, Jews, and Christians in increasing order of "extravagance." Second, post-Darwin, he may well reject teleology. But we would be underestimating Borges if he drew an inference from extravagance to falsity.

 

Identity (A=A) is trivial, of course, from the perspective of eternity. But when we mortals rely on that perspective to do our own metaphysics, we tacitly rely, as Borges hints, on a teleology that presupposes, as it were, an intelligible and epistemically stabilized reality (with 'entities') available for an infinite knower (that just happens to be substance). It would be professional foolishness to call relying on such identity a form of extravagance. But again, even if it is extravagance, it would not follow it is false.

 

On Being a Hypocrite; or on True Teaching

I could swagger about Fortitude and the Contempt of Riches as much as Seneca himself.---Mandeville, Fable of the Bees (recall).

Far different is the purpose of those who are speech-making and trying to win the approbation of a throng of hearers, far different that of those who allure the ears of young men and idlers by many sided or fluent argumentation; philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every one that he should live according to his own law [facere docet philosophia, non dicere, et hoc exigit, ut ad legem suam quisque vivat, ne orationi vita dissentiat vel ipsa inter se vita], that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, there is unity to the color of one's actions [unus sit omnium actio num color].  This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, - that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same.--Seneca, Letter XX (slightly modified translation).

I am no stranger to falling short of my personal ideals (recall) and know plenty of well-established professional philosophers who are moralistic yet routinely exhibit lack of basic decency. I know extremely kind and generous folk who advocate hardship and worse for less articulate and connected others (in the name of utility, good governance, etc.). I know courageous advocates of civic liberties who fail their students by their incapacity at sublimating intellectual eros. So I did not expect it to find it so difficult to continue my series on Seneca's Letters and write about Letter XX in which Seneca addresses the discord between words and actions (and, thus, extends the theme of Letter XIX, recall). Given that Seneca is notorious for the mismatch between words and deeds, it is tempting to read this letter as Seneca's Apologia Pro Vita Sua addressing the known criticisms of his activities under Nero in which he grew rich in the service of a tyrant.

Upon extended reflection: the key to the letter is the implied distinction between being a teacher and being a philosopher (aka being wise and, explicitly, being great-souled [ingentis animi est]). Seneca identifies himself as a teacher not as a philosopher. He teaches, not unlike Plato [and unlike Nietzsche], in part, by pointing away toward proper exemplars (e.g., Demetrius the Cynic) and by drawing on Epicurean themes. Such exemplars have a three-fold function: (a) they offer an existence-proof that a comportment with integrity, that is, a harmony between right action and words, is humanly possible; (b) he holds up exemplars to be emulated (recall my treatment of Letter 5); (c) it allows him to deflect, in part, the charge of hypocrisy--for he very clearly implies that he falls short of the comportment with integrity while not being so corrupted (by the axiology of the marketplace/public [recall Letter 14]) that he cannot recognize true wisdom in others.

More important, from (c) it follows that (d) Seneca thinks he can bypass the more fundamental version of Meno's paradox (see Abe Stone); he can teach some virtue to Lucilius without being fully virtuous himself in a context where, as he implies, ordinary social institutions do not facilitate even such limited virtue. We may even add that Seneca shows some wisdom by recognizing his own limitations not only in light of exacting pure standards of integrity, but also in light of available human instantiations. (It is, thus, important that Demetrius is not merely a mythical or historical figure.)

So, Seneca knows he falls short of and he does not hold himself up as the standard for comportment with integrity. Thus the traditional charge against Seneca is (somewhat) misguided. Seneca may even hint that he knows intimately what he is warning against (do as I say, not as I did) and, thereby, (against Deleuze's protests) become a better teacher for some pupils (say, ambitious types like Lucilius). It is, after all, by no means obvious that Demetrius un-mediated by, say, a Seneca would be recognized as wise by an untutored pupil. Sincerity of even the noblest expressions does not guarantee moral approval, after all.

Ever since Socrates's trial we know that students' actions can reflect badly on the quality and reputation of their teachers' activities. Seneca embraces this fact--again, like Plato who shows us some of Socrates's more disastrous teaching methods (that's compatible with admiration of Socrates). So, it turns out, that Seneca is closer to the modern university professor than one might initially have thought. Like most of us, he is no holy man, and he does not expect to be evaluated as one.

Rather, Seneca correctly expects to be evaluated, in part, on the consequences of his teaching on his pupils (that is, the addressee and other, later readers of his Letters) and the societies their actions help shape. This is no eternal moral-get-out-of-jail-free-pass. Rather (at least late in life) Seneca embraces that he lives by a rather demanding standard that in addition to complex skills requires considerable luck (recall) and turns each of our teaching and writing lives into trials in which we are judged, fairly (with satire) or not, as causes of unknown (and potentially extended) multiplicity of effects (recall).* We may, then even say -- echoing Spinoza (Ethics 1p36 [recall]) -- that Seneca claims there is true glory [mea enim gloria erit] in being in virtue of such effects.

 

Spinoza on De Witt ("Ultimi barbarorum," Reconsidered)

One of the most famous anecdotes about Spinoza is that after the (1672) massacre of De Witt brothers, he was inclined to place a sheet of paper at the murder site with, "Ultimi barbarorum" (ultimate barbarian) [see, e.g., Della Rocca]. Leaving aside the veracity of the story and what it purports the reveal (here's Deleuze), it also helps frame how readers interpret Spinoza's (1670) Theological Political Treatise.* This is, in addition to its other agendas, commonly taken to be a kind pro-De Witt (or anti-clerical and anti-Orangist) Republican intervention (or, at least, the final five chapters).+ Fair enough.

Now consider this passage from the (1677) posthumously published (and incomplete) Political Treatise, where Spinoza is describing the malfunctioning of an aristocracy:

In every council the secretaries and other officials of this kind, as they have not the right of voting, should be chosen from the commons. But as these, by their long practice of business, are the most conversant with the affairs to be transacted, it often arises that more deference than right is shown to their advice, and that the state of the whole dominion depends chiefly on their guidance: which thing has been fatal to the Dutch. 8.44.

Maybe I am missing something, but this strikes me as a pretty clear analysis of De Witt's trajectory and downfall. (Admittedly, De Witt's family background was more patrician than Spinoza would allow if he is thinking of De Witt, but De Witt's rise to power was a consequence of much richer patricians scheming on his behalf.) Spinoza here resists the urge into turning De Witt into some noble kind of a Cartesian philosopher-king. De Witt was arguably one of the most talented mathematicians of his generation and guided Dutch politics for a generation; nor does Spinoza turn De Witt into a martyr here or into a morality tale about the dangers of the mob. Rather, Spinoza explicitly treats De Witt's power, and subsequent fall, as evidence for the bad institutional design of the Dutch (oligarchic) aristocracy of his age (unless I am all wrong that this passage is describing De Witt).**

There is also a more subtle, speculative issue at stake here; that is, the fate of De Witt reveals that Cartesian philosophy has not generated, and may be incapable of generating, a genuine art of political rule. I am not sure that I can prove this is Spinoza's position (although I believe it his), but if it is not his, then I adopt it as my own. For De Witt was the star Cartesian student of his generation.++ And part of his prominence was his ability to talk as an intellectual equal with, if not superiority to, the social elite of the Dutch Republic (which included other star mathematicians and natural philosophers such as Huygens and Hudde). His fate and the near collapse of the Dutch polity is also a sign that the (Cartesian) new philosophy needs reform if it is capable of providing blue print for political art (recall here, here, here).

Anyway, it obviously does not follow that Spinoza was not outraged at the murder of De Witt brothers; nor does it follow that the Theological Political Treatise is not a republican, anti-clerical tract. But I do think that the passage reveals that Spinoza may have been less admiring of De Witt and even the Dutch Republic as such.

 

On Top of the World

While I was thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now raising my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augustine's Confessions, a gift that I owe to your love, and that I always have about me, in memory of both the author and the giver. I [Page 317] opened the compact little volume, small indeed in size, but of infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever came to hand, for I could happen upon nothing that would be otherwise than edifying and devout. Now it chanced that the tenth book presented itself. My brother, waiting to hear something of St. Augustine's from my lips, stood attentively by. I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: "And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." I was abashed, and, asking my brother (who was anxious to hear more), not to annoy me, I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain...--Petrarca (1336).

There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible--Burke.

Today's post is an act of escapism after spending a morning serving on a committee that allocates grant money to scientists that have perfected the art of sincere over-promising and diligent accumulation  of strategic publication records; I picked up Cassirer and Kristeller's The Renaissance Philosophy of Man.

I used to associate Mt. Ventoux with the ritualized memorial of the death of Tom Simpson and, more favorably, the awe-inspiring time trial win by Jean-François Bernard in 1987 to be followed by disastrous team-tactics toward Villard-de-Lans. But now I can set those alonside Petrarca's account of his climb* of the mountain which, according to Wikipedia is 1,912 m (6,273 ft). (I read it in Nachod's translation in the Kristeller/Randall volume, but link to another one.) The logician, Buridian, is said to have gotten there first, but Petrarca's account is worth reading if only because of his astute comments about the trickiness of selecting travel companions.

The passage quoted above is near the end of Petrarca's description of his thoughts once he reached the top of the mountain together with his brother and two servants. In fact, the reported thought occurs at the start of sun-set. I am not the first to note that Petrarca, who describes his conflicted will alongside his narrative of the day-long journey up the mountain, echoes the conversion moment in Augustine's Confessions, where, carried along by the chanting kid's voice, which he decides to interpret as a command from God, Augustine picks up Scripture and is inspired to convert to Christianity by Romans 13:13-4, which induces a serenity of heart without doubt [quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt].

Petrarca quotes a passage from the Confessions in which a post-conversion Augustine describes people's hankering after the sublime while lacking self-knowledge.** It is tempting to say that Petrarca treats Augustine as teaching him the significance of the spiritual life.

That's not all false, of course, but it is worth noting that in Petrarca this spiritual journey is re-interpreted as a call to a philosophical life. I don't just claim this just because of the emphasis on self-knowledge. Rather, I recognized (recall this post) Petrarca's quote from Seneca's eight letter (one of those "pagan philosophers"), nothing except the soul is worthy of wonder; for the soul, if it be great, naught is great, which characterizes the greatness of soul of the self-sufficient, even sublime mind--one that attains immortality by skilled emendation or posthumous fame.

The physical, strenuous exercise of the climb prepares the body for a turn to philosophy, that is, the transformation of a weak, unstable mind into one that can face even death with equanimity. That the turn to philosophy is treated as a transformative, Pauline experience in the manner of our very own L.A. Paul is, of course, no surprise as such. But precisely at that transformative moment Petrarca is not just unable to talk with his pious brother (who had been extolled as the perfect climbing companion),*** but his brother's need is a source of possible irritation. Petrarca's account is so beautiful that one might miss the ugliness of the moment in which fellow-feeling is not permitted.

I do not wish to rule out ways that are philosophical yet permit exquisite co-affectivity rather than a withdrawal from human need, that is, philosophical escapism. But not for the first time I am struck by how alluring philosophical escapism can be felt from within and how discordant it can be seen to be from without; Petrarca's poetic-philosophical-confessional shows that mountaineers can indeed see farther.

The Hebrew Bible in Spinoza's Ethics (with a joke about Kripke and Lewis)

According to Spinoza, "Euclid...wrote only about things which were quite simple and most intelligible." (Theological Political Treatise 7:67; [III/111]; hereafter TTP--I am using a draft of Curley's translation [res admodum simplices et maxime intelligibiles scripsit]--ES) One may wonder what's so "simple" about Euclid? Here Spinoza is relying on the thought that the essences of geometric objects lack power. (These essences are formal causes (see Hübner on the significance of formal causes in Spinoza.)) This means that their (necessary) consequences/effects are negligible in various ways. By contrast, from the essence of God or Substance "an infinite number of modes" follow "in infinite ways." So, on my reading of the Ethics, unlike in his earlier work, Spinoza does not embrace Divine simplicity (while he does embrace doctrines that are often related to it).

Now, Spinoza offers his remark on Euclid to offer a distinction between two kinds of interpretive practices: books that require no contextual knowledge of the author and those that do. To paraphrase Spinoza, books about simple natures can be read straight up and circumstances of composition are irrelevant; the author behind the text is irrelevant (even effaced by the text). To put it as a serious joke: the author of Euclid is a mere name and is rigidly so designated. But books about the most powerful (that is most complex) natures can only be interpreted in light of a lot of contextual knowledge about the author's life and the production of the book. If crucial details go missing, the author's name functions as a placeholder for possible counterparts of the authorial persona behind the text.

Given that Spinoza's Ethics is about the least simple, that is, the most powerful essence, Spinoza demands from his reader to be fully aware of his life and times. And, in fact, it is often forgotten that the Ethics was published in the Opera Posthuma at the completion of his life alongside a fully controlled presentation of the details deemed relevant to Spinoza's life--a carefully controlled selection of letters as well as showcasing his interest in Hebrew Grammar, his interest in political theory, the Tractatus Politicus (with its debts to Machiavelli) and his programmatic embrace of the emendation of the intellect (with its debts to Seneca). And from these documents the identity of the author of the TTP could also be inferred (so my appeal to it in reading the Ethics is not illicit).

My stage is set.

In the Ethics Spinoza informs his reader that his metaphysics of substance and his so-called parallelism doctrine(s), in particular, are sophisticated -- that is, properly emended -- versions of confused Jewish theology.  (As he writes "Some of the Hebrews seems to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God's intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same."--Spinoza (E2P7S) [in Curley's translation]--recall my discussion back at NewAPPS).)

As I have argued at length elsewhere, it is easy to be dazzled by the geometric presentation of the Ethics and to overlook what I tend to call the 'holistic character' of the Ethics. Many of the scholia (as well as the corollaries and appendices/prefaces) are polemics with theologians (amongst the metaphysicians and, I note with heightened awareness, satirists so mentioned). But many are also a privileged commentary on the text (as is E2p7s). Outside a mathematical context, a scholium can also mean a discussion or commentary. Some of the commentaries are, in fact, dialogic (in Bakhtin's sense) in character where alternative interpretations are explored.

That is to say, Spinoza's Ethics is both in subject matter and in presentation closer to the Hebrew Bible than one might imagine at first glance. (No, I am not claiming it is identical.) So, in addition to offering arguments (and insights) he also leaves behind a document of alternative positions to his own familiar to anybody who has opened a Hebrew Bible with commentaries. I do not want to exagerate this claim, of course. (But then again, it may be worth experimenting with an edition of the Ethics that contains the most important commentaries on the Ethics in the margins--imagine Clarke, Toland, Hegel, Schelling, Joachim, etc. Mogens's Lærke's book on Leibniz's responses to Spinoza is very instructive exemple of the the gains of such an approach.)

In fact, Spinoza himself contributes to the commentary of the Hebrew Bible in the Ethics. Despite the fact that the TTP is one long argument that Moses ought not to be understood as the author of the Hebrew Bible (Spinoza argues that Ezra put the Hebrew Bible together at, and to constitute thereby, the re-founding of the Hebrew polity [recall]), in the Ethics he accepts the trope that "Moses" is the author of the "history of the first man." (Mose significari in illa primi hominis historia). This is one of several ways in which Spinoza is more pious (in Spinoza's sense) in the Ethics than he is in the TTP.

Later in the week, I'll address some of the details of Spinoza's  re-interpretation of the Fall. But I close by noting some remarkable features of E4p68. The official proposition is explicitly a false and inconceivable hypothesis (Huius propositionis hypothesin falsam esse, nec posse concipi). I am not sure what the status of an inconceivable claim is in Spinoza's machinery. But Spinoza immediately limits the claim by noting that it is true of the nature of (finite) man. And to talk of the essence of man is, according to Spinoza, just to talk of God as the cause of humanity existence.* Now, this raises complicated questions about the metaphysical-epistemic status of finite modes in Spinoza's metaphysics familiar since Hegel. Again, I set these aside.

Here I just note that Spinoza goes on to bring together (a) his elucidation (or reinterpretation) "Moses" account of cosmogony and creation. Spinoza is explicit that quite a bit of the Ethics bears on the re-reading of "Moses" account ("other matters which we have already proved,"). (b) Spinoza claims that the very "freedom" that was lost in the "Fall" was recovered by the patriarchs (that is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). From (a)-(b) alone we learn that suitably reinterpreted, Adam before the fall, as well as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are free men in Spinoza's sense (that is, as the previous proposition suggests): "A free man is one who lives under the guidance of reason, who is not led by fear (IV. lxiii.), but who directly desires that which is good (IV. lxiii. Coroll.), in other words (IV. xxiv.), who strives to act, to live, and to preserve his being on the basis of seeking his own true advantage; wherefore such an one thinks of nothing less than of death, but his wisdom is a meditation of life." (I have used the Elwes translation here.) This is another sense in which the Ethics is more pious than the TTP. But that's  not the end of it. For (c) Spinoza reinterprets the narrative about the Patriarchs, too. These are said to exhibit the "spirit of Christ." That is to say, this spirit can exist before the historical Christ exists. As I have pointed out before, in the TTP Spinoza allows that a historically distant predecessor is a unique anticipation or exemplar (recall my analysis  and the role of the Quran in this). But he also allows a kind of backward projection of the exemplar onto earlier anticipations. And (d) what Spinoza means by "spirit of Christ" is not  intelligible from the Ethics alone, one needs to turn to the TTP for that (my PhD student Jo Van Cauter is working on this). So, here is a non-trivial sense in which the meaning of the Ethics relies on the TTP, that is, one needs to know something about the author. 

historically distant predecessor as a unique anticipation or exemplar, - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/07/spinoza-and-abraham.html#sthash.zofhpaHD.dpuf

 

Leaving Your Ego at Home: on being a historian of philosophy

And, herein lies, I think, one of the great things about doing philosophy through historical figures like Leibniz. Whilst it’s very hard to leave your ego at home, there is less personal at stake when trying to discuss what you think Leibniz thought about x than when trying to say what you think about x. For one thing, everyone knows deep down, it would be crazy to think that they understood Leibniz an sich, and, for another, we all know he was a lot better at philosophy that we will ever be! And yet the joy of thinking philosophically is ever present.--Paul Lodge.

If I am granted the (extremely) controversial claim that studying Leibniz is no different than studying any other canonical, and would be canonical, author,* then in the quoted passage from Paul Lodge, one can read (at least) four claims about being a historian of philosopher: 

1. One's ego is less involved in studying a canonical philosophy than philosophizing directly.
2. The people we study are "a lot better at philosophy" than "we will ever be."
3. It is nearly impossible to fully understand a canonical philosopher.
4. Being a historian of philosophy is a joyful activity.

Claim (1) will come as a surprise to those only focused on the often minute squabbles among historians of philosophy. Even so, there is an important element of truth to (1). This is not because historians of philosophy are by nature less ego driven or vain -- Schliesser is exhibit A to the contrary --, but because part of the training of becoming a historian of philosophy is a disciplined bracketing of one's ego. For, whatever one's ultimate goal(s) in being (momentarily) a historian of philosophy (and there are huge disagreements over this), an attempt to grasp another thinker(s)'s text is a key part of it. One central benefit of this disciplined exercise in understanding another is to become self-aware of one's presuppositions that one brings to the text. When historians of philosophy complain about anachronism, what they really worry about is the unthinking, un-methodical, even unconscious imposition of the reader's thought-world onto the text. This unconscious thought-world is a whole series of expectations about how words, concepts, meanings, terminologies, grammar, values, as well as political and cultural practices (etc.) relate to each other. We can become aware of such hard to detect expectations of our ego, when we systematically confront utterances by others that do not fit our expectations in usual even uncanny ways.

So, the historian of philosophy is increasingly skilled at being self-ware of central, usually hidden, features of her own ego while she gets increasingly skilled at entering into another person's text. So, the disciplined student of the history of philosophy is following the Delphic injunction to know herself. Along the way she learns to 'bracket' her own ego in  the midst of grasping the text of another. In practice, this 'bracketing' of one's ego is always imperfect, which is why, say, the writings of historians of philosophy tend to reflect the ruling fashions of the generations of their teachers (give or take). Either way, one way to understand Lodge's claim is to see that when one philosophizes 'directly' (without mediation of historical texts) the hidden life of one's ego is, even if one has a naturally modest nature, not as systematically bracketed all else being equal. In practice, of course, all else is not equal, and there are lots of other philosophical and social practices that can generate some such bracketing of one's ego (say disciplined by formal technologies, or by dissonances through one's cultural back-ground, etc.). Having granted that last point, so many of the worst social incentives in philosophy reward the hyper-projection of one's ego onto metaphysical or social reality; the previous sentence is not as cryptic as it sounds. Here's a small example: status in our discipline tracks rapid come-backs, witty put-downs, and bold conjecture (backed up with plausible enough systematic analysis); we rarely reward, in our public esteem, sympathetic colleagues that are incredibly good at listening to another and bringing out the best feature of their interlocuter's views. (Obviously, when we are drafting a paper we very much appreciate having the sympathetic colleague.) Being trained as a historian of philosophy is to be trained into becoming a sympathetic colleague. (Again, this is compatible with the further thought that a historian of philosophy is uncouth, listens to bad pop music, a jerk, etc.)  

On Rules for the History of Philosophy...or a defense of methodological anachronism

The distinguished historian of philosophy, Peter Adamson (from "without any gaps" fame; the podcasts are a big hit), has articulated "some guidelines encapsulating what I see as good practice in studying the history of philosophy" (quoted from rule 1) on his blog. He is up to the ninth rule as I write this. The rules themselves are an "open-ended encouragement to strive for an ideal which is not practically reachable" (see rule 4; see also rule 8). I very much like this feature of the rules because it encourages us to think of our practice as an open-ended process (and puts the idea of a gapless history in nice perspective). There is a further worthy feature of the rules that is never stated explicitly, but a kind of animating principle behind them: to treat the authors we are studying as serious thinkers in their own right--a judgment that vindicates, in part, earlier readers; for, "any text that has survived to get into your hands has already been through a process of selection by earlier readers," (rule 2).

Before I get to a more principled qualm about his rules, I want to offer one immanent criticism of the first rule: "It's possible for the same idea to appear independently more than once." Yes, this is possible and undoubtedly occurs, and it might generate interesting questions about the conceptual possibility space available to certain philosophers such that 'forced moves' get rediscovered--I call such forced moves: social-conceptual-necessitation. (Having said that, I thought his example of Al-Ghazali and Hume on causation especially poorly chosen; (a) we know that Malebranche was almost certainly familiar with Al-Ghazali through discussions in Aquinas and Suarez [I apologize for forgetting where I first read this!], and Hume certainly knew his Malebranche; (b) until Dario Perinetti has completed his study of the La Fleche library we don't really know what Hume (and Descartes) might have read in his most formative period.) But while I am no fan of a certain kind of lineage-tracing popular among historians of ideas, this rule also has the likely tendency to discourage inquisitiveness. In particular it is very tempting to assume that 'great' thinkers didn't read or read little--some philosophers (Descartes, Spinoza, Carnap, Lewis, etc.) even play with a recurring Meme along these lines.* But we need/ought not trust their self-presentation in these matters. We miss moves in an author if we are unaware of her interlocutors. My concern is not just a matter of getting the context right (cf. rule 4); we literally do not notice if some options/alternatives are quietly foreclosed. It matters, for example, that Spinoza had More's Utopia in his library (and almost certainly read Bacon's New Atlantis); this means he was almost certainly aware of alternative ways to think about, say, gender relations and ways to organize religious-theological pluralism in society (as well as property relations, Biblical hermeneutics, etc.) even if he never went back to Plato. Aware of this, we might upon re-reading Spinoza notice that he has developed resources to reject those alternatives or we might start to see cracks in his edifice (etc.).  [Below I return to rule 1!]

Even so, the rules are problematic, especially because they come with the weighty authority  of an emiment and popular scholar. Leaving aside the fact that Adamson seems to be ignorant of the methodological discussions among other historians of philosophy of the last few years, Adamson never recognizes that there are alternative ways to study the history of philosophy in which some of the vices he recognizes may well be necessary virtues. I'll pick one example: Adamson is extremely concerned to have the historian avoid anachronism (see rule 4, 7, 8, 9). As it happens I have more tolerance for the kind of un-selfconscious anachronism that trained historians of philosophy are taught to reject; such un-selfconscious anachronistic readings of a text can, but need not, be interesting on their own terms ('what axioms in S4 or S5 would Spinoza or Leibniz reject?' can be hugely illuminating both to our understanding of Spinoza or a time-slice of Leibniz and to the modern student of modal logic). But that's not what I have in mind in defending here.