Digressions&Impressions

On philosophical love (or why I fell in love with Iris Murdoch) {Guest Post by Fleur Jongepier.}

[This is an invited guest post by Fleur Jongepier.--ES]

Have you ever fallen in love philosophically with a philosopher? Do you know the reasons why (not)?  Is there even such a thing as philosophical love? I believe there is such a thing, and that having such intellectual emotions is vital to philosophy as well as one’s own academic wellbeing. I also believe it’s intricately related to inequalities of various sorts, and that we also need to think about the sociology, if you will, of philosophical love.

Let me start with a confession: recently, I fell in love with Iris Murdoch. One can fall in love with someone after years of friendship, but this was not like that. I knew of her, but was never really ‘into’ her. I don’t think I was ready fall in love with someone like Iris, someone who worked on the topic of love and someone for whom the loss of faith constituted an important personal-philosophical theme. Back then I thought such topics were too personal to constitute proper philosophy. Also, she was never on any of my syllabi as a graduate or undergraduate student and none of my lecturers talked about her in any serious or respectful way. Happily things are different these days (see e.g. women in parenthesis, the Iris Murdoch research center at the University of Chichester, the journal Iris Murdoch Review, etc.).

In preparation for a lecture on ethics and aesthetics, I recently watched an interview with her on Youtube, and I was smitten. When asked whether she believed one can do philosophy in novels, she said that, at best, a novelist would be engaged in “idea play”. Dostojevski involved in idea-play, the audacity of it! I loved the concept of “idea play”, and I loved her mischievous smile when she said it. (I didn’t really love her accent, but we would get over that.) She said things like “I feel in myself such an absolute horror of putting theories as such into my novels,” and I thought that was excellent. It resonated strongly with my own emerging views on philosophy and literature. But I also wondered whether she really believed it, that the two were so separate even in her own case. And then I wondered if I really believed it, and whether they were so separate in my own case. And so I wanted to get to know her better. I soon bought The Sovereignty of Good, a large pile of her novels, and listened to hours of excellent podcasts. So far, I’ve only read part of the third essay from Sovereignty, and none of her novels. I’m a little afraid I might fall out of love with her, and I’m not ready for that. That’s because I have reasons for loving Iris.

I don’t know if one might have reasons for romantic love, or parental love, or love for one’s friends. As yet I have no explicit views about the relation between love and rationality. All I know is that there are reasons for philosophical love in my own case. There’s a sense in which I needed to fall in love with someone who reflected explicitly on the very discipline of ethics and on how certain ways of doing and teaching ethics can be ineffective if not harmful. I had reason to fall in love with a philosopher who cared about how teaching ethics matters to how persons might (fail to) become better beings. On the importance of distinguishing between theories about the good, and actually being a good person. Given that I recently took up fiction writing again, I also wanted to fall in love with a philosopher who wrote novels and who was (happily?) prepared to make philosophical sacrifices to do that.

I have reason to fall in love with a philosopher who cared deeply about topics that human beings outside of academic philosophy typically also care about. I want to feel passionately about a philosopher who believes that working on humanly important questions is compatible with being a rigorous philosopher. I need to feel close to someone who could show me that writing well and clearly is compatible with embracing ambiguities and complexities in one’s writing. I want to fall in love with a philosopher with different and refreshing conceptions on what rigor and clarity in philosophy and ethics amounts to. I want to be together with someone with whom I might further explore freer ways of doing philosophy; to explore the boundaries of philosophy and fiction; to explore the role of language, rhythm, emotions and real life in my academic work. I want to love a philosopher who loved those things, and I want it to be Iris. 

I had another reason to fall in love with Iris, which has to do with my reasons for wanting to (continue to) be an academic philosopher in the first place. Philosophical love can make that one is unprepared to “let go” of certain positions when confronted with objections, like a dog unprepared to let go of a stick (even when it cannot pass through the gate). The distinct type of doggedness that accompanies philosophical love can – like any other type of love – create serious problems of having myopic views and whatnot. However, it can also constitute a form of intellectual virtue and an important factor to the vitality of certain debates and disciplines. It’s a good thing that, due to intellectual love and passion, some people are prepared to go to great – all too great – lengths, and it’s often because of love that they are so prepared.

Intellectual emotions are important to one’s academic wellbeing. For me, in any case, philosophy is something I want to remain genuinely passionate about, at least sometimes. I’m not prepared for philosophy to become a purely cognitive or instrumental affair of finding good “niches” to publish in.^[1] And even though I see the dangers of philosophical love slipping into heroism – and I’d prefer, with Liam Kofi Bright, there to be #noheroes in philosophy – I still want to be able to fall in love philosophically, with all that that entails. I want to be able to defend certain views, or indeed someone’s work, to irrational lengths. I want to be able to be sometimes epistemically vicious, as Quassim Cassam calls it. I want to be able to be dogmatic, closed-minded, prejudiced, overconfident, gullible, and I definitely want to engage in wishful thinking every now and again. Just as love can be blind (fortunately enough), so too can philosophical love. Such blindness can be a good thing, both for the discipline and the progress and vitality of debates, but also for one’s intellectual wellbeing. I started doing philosophy because I was passionate about it, and I want to keep it that way. But it’s getting more difficult, given the increasing specialization of the discipline and instrumental thinking and publishing strategies. And so I needed fire, I wanted to lose myself in intellectual passion like I used to, and so I had to fall for Iris.

I also had reason to fall in love with a woman, specifically. Widespread sexual harassment and all other types of behaviours in its vicinity in academia has acutely obvious consequences, but also has negative effects that are much harder to identify. I believe being able to (allow oneself to be) passionate about philosophers and their work, especially if they are male, in a position of power, and alive, is one such hard to identity consequence. Due to all sort of incidents near and far, and the disappointment and disgust I feel in response, I’ve come to realize that experiencing philosophical love and passion for male philosophers is not really an option for the time being. Not even dead ones. I’m genuinely sad I (appear) to feel this way, and I feel uncomfortable about how these unreflective disinclinations generalize against all philosophers (m) despite knowing full well there are many lovable philosophers (m) around. But that’s the way it is, and I fear I’m not the only women who has become rather reserved with respect to experiencing intellectual passions. Even if, for some, the disappointment is less acute, it seems we all have reason to be aware of the dangers and inequalities surrounding philosophical love. If only because some philosophers themselves are apparently unable to recognize the not-so-difficult distinction between romantic love and philosophical love, and are incapable of behaving appropriately when intellectual passion comes their way. It wouldn’t surprise me if the safest and most uncomplicated type of philosophical love is, if you would allow me, homoerotic (in acute contrast to romantic homoerotic love, needless to say).

It’s not just women that philosophical love affects differently, it’s also people of colour and persons with mental or physical disabilities. Philosophical love and academic passion can be a privileged thing to feel, to allow oneself to feel, to be open to, to (dare to) act on. Given the importance of being able to experience philosophical love and passion at no cost to oneself, it’s tragic that it’s likely to be less open to some.

Philosophical love is thus likely to be implicitly (or perhaps on occasion explicitly) sexist, racist, and ableist.  This should be evident when one regards the typical receiving end of philosophical love: male, white, abled. That’s simply the result of a lack of diversity in most syllabi, curricula, and department staff. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t have the chance to fall in love with Iris before: I never encountered her during my undergraduate or graduate years, and was taught to love the “cooler” type. I taught myself to be passionate about depressingly analytic styles of writing, where the joy of playing around with language and real life had no place. I eventually fell in love with Dennett, whom I thought was analytically respectable and an engaging writer, thus a fine compromise for my intellectual heart and mind. But not being able to love Iris may well have meant not being able to flourish philosophically more fully, or earlier on.

One might think that the fact that I have so many reasons to love Iris – many of which have rather little to do with her and all the more with me, with feminism, and with various disappointments – is love-debunking. Love-debunking, as one might think of it, is when there are explanations for why you love someone or something that aren’t actually good reasons to love. If you come to see and accept those reasons for love, they would undercut your love. But there’s no reason to think my love for Iris can be debunked (I know, that’s precisely what smitten people would say). It’s true that I have reasons to love her, and know that I do, but that fact in itself isn’t love-undermining. Explaining something doesn’t always have to involve explaining it away (pace, Dennett). For one thing, reasons to love and feelings of love might be different things running parallel: I (sometimes) love philosophy for instance and I recognize, looking at myself from a distance, that being the sort of person I am, philosophy is the sort of thing I must love, tied as it is to my self-conception, and so on.

The point here is this: we do not need to be so worried about the fact that we fall in love with certain philosophers for all kinds of personal and social reasons, good or bad. The fact that philosophical love is often explainable doesn’t make one’s love any less real, deep, or indeed any less of a valuable academic-philosophical drive. Maybe you fell in love with a philosopher because your PhD supervisor not so coincidentally shared the same love. Maybe you fell in love with a certain topic because someone whom you greatly admire was passionate about it. Maybe you fell in love with a book because you thought you needed to love that book to be a “serious” philosopher. I think we all have philosophical love stories like these, and I don’t think they are “fishy” love stories. It’s only to be expected that philosophical love will often, or always, have robust social and personal-level explanations. And it’s not “unscientific” to recognize the reasons why one falls in love with certain debates, books, articles, or philosophers and their work.  It’s better to recognize and acknowledge these socio-personal love-explanations than to pretend, on the basis of some naive idea of academic neutrality and objectivity, that there’s such a thing as pure philosophical love, that is, a purely content-induced love.

Given the dangers of philosophical love and academic passion more generally, one might want to try and root out these emotions and try to avoid them in ourselves and our students and strive towards “impassionate philosophy”. I think that would be a mistake. Such intellectual emotions are crucial to deciding to (try and) become an academic philosopher in the first place, and – for me – to (want to) remain one. Such passions are integral to philosophy and science (see also the recent piece by Helen de Cruz on the importance of awe). One’s relation to philosophy and science requires both the head and the heart. And so instead we need to design our institutions and behave in such ways that we, including our students, can safely fall in love with concepts and debates and, yes, to also fall in love, non-romantically, with philosophers and their work. We need to make sure, by taking diversity seriously on all levels, that there are concepts and debates and philosophers for us to safely fall in love with.

Do I really love Iris though? One might think philosophical love is, at best, love in scare quotes. If one thinks that, then I fear one must be prepared to narrow down the love domain to rather impoverished ends. If one can’t love philosophers but only ‘love’ them, then it seems one can’t love Bob Dylan either, or Bessie Smith, or Francis Bacon, or Sofonisba Anguissola. I’m not prepared to only ‘love’ Bob Dylan, and by modus tollens/ponens, I don’t just ‘love’ Iris either. But if philosophical love is anything at all, what might it be? Philosophical love meets many characteristics of romantic love, though not all (and importantly so!) One importantly shared characteristic is “depth” which makes love different from mere liking. Philosophical love will involve being prepared to dedicate oneself to certain (shared) values and courses of action, even at cost to other projects that one values. Also, loving someone typically involves knowing their faults and loving them regardless (see this Digression).

For me, loving Iris involves being non-instrumentally curious in her work and a willingness to find out who she is, to have a “softer view”, as Julia Driver puts it, on her flaws, and not to try and mold her into my ideal image of her. Most importantly, love, as Murdoch tells us, is a way of getting “away from the self” (or “unselfing”) and to focus wholly and lovingly on the other. One is directed “towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability to so direct attention is love”. If suddenly seeing a kestrel is, for Murdoch, a way of unselfing, then Iris is my kestrel. Loving Iris is a way of focusing wholly on philosophy, seeing strands of philosophy I didn’t even notice before, of forgetting about misbehaviours in academia and to be mindfully passionate in philosophical thought, to forget about my laundry, the bills I need to pay, my own existential worries and self-interested concerns.

And so, for all these reasons, and many others besides, I’ve fallen in love with Iris. I’m well aware that I want to love her, for my own academic wellbeing, philosophical vitality, and fiction-writing enthusiasm. Being Iris, she might be rather displeased that I love her for reasons, she might even think this means I don’t love her, but I love her all the same. (I hope we’ll get through the holidays; I’m not looking forward to the baked beans with olive oil.)

On Working on Problems That Really Interest You; On advice to PhD Students

Work on problems that really interest you. Cross train. Be competent in multiple disciplines and methods. Don't be afraid to start draft/writing before you know all that there is to know. Publish well. Use social media cautiously. Don't think you will be an exception to standard rules because of your race or color. A woman does not get tenure because she been a hard-working institutional citizen rather than research productive. Don't try to please everyone. Make professional friends widely. Go to everything. Develop resilience. Learn to negotiate and to talk about money and goals without embarrassment.--Anita Allen@What Is it Like to Be A Philosopher? [HT Dailynous]

The inspiring and sobering -- so much misconduct in philosophy! -- interview with Anita Allen (whom I have never met, I think) reminded me of an episode at a lovely conference in Edinburgh a few years ago. It was a concluding, closing round-table, and together with the other 'senior' scholars, I was asked if I had any suggestions for the PhD students and early career scholars. I think all of us [apologies to my fellow panelists, if I am mis-remebering!] said something to the effect of, "Follow your passion!" All of us (at different levels of seniority) had done well for ourselves in the discipline, and each of us was busy with and had carved out a distinctive niche/voice for ourselves. I don't recall how much discussion we had about this at the time and to what degree we qualified the point, but for some reason I felt uneasy about the memory. (In other respects the conference was a joy, so it was a strange ambivalence.)

These days, the best advice I can give to PhD students are twofold:

• Get a dog. {If allergic, get a designer poodle}

S/he structures your life (you have to go out regularly; be home on time); you'll end up meeting [interesting] people outside your program, and they will be a more reliable support group if necessary than departmental peers; most important: you'll get to develop your nurturing qualities, and in return you get unconditional love. All of these are goods, but I also think it's the vest antidote for the many ways in which depression hits graduate students. [Obviously, the previous sentence is not advice against getting professional when you show signs of depressive or obsessive symptoms in graduate school.]

• Talk with other PhD students before agreeing to work with a particular supervisor*

I am always amazed by how little research people do before they entrust the most important professional relationship of their career to somebody they barely know. To be sure, each relationship is different and a PhD supervisor who works well with one person, may have more complex relationship with the next. But often the supervisors that create problems, tend to have a string of problems. Obviously due to publicity over sex scandals in philosophy the focus is on inappropriate behavior (of the sort Allen also describes, alas.) But the problems can be very diverse. For example, in grad school, I knew a professor who showed no signs of ever reading not just seminar papers, but also not the chapters of his students' dissertations. I was not alone in noticing this; yet new PhD students kept signing up with him, etc.

The interview says something, I'll copy henceforth:

• "Don't be afraid to start draft/writing before you know all that there is to know."

I love Prof. Allen shares this wisdom! It's not just very important advice for the more obsessive/compulsive types (who will always find reason to keep researching). It's good advice for all of us because drafting/writing is -- when properly structured -- an excellent tool in research. To simplify a great deal, when you have a sense of a thesis and an argument (etc.), writing these down, helps you, on re-reading your own words, point the way toward modifications of your thesis/argument and the need for further evidence. (If you are one of those people, by contrast, who thinks all your written work is fantastic, you can share drafts with others.) By drafting in the context of (say) an outlined chapter, you also can create constraints that will help y ou put yourself in position to make choices about what belongs in the chapter/essay and what should be left for other moments. During my dissertation I would try to cram everything into single, monster chapters. But since then, I have come to see the wisdom of working in more modular fashion. You may also discover, that while writing, you already know quite a bit. [None of this is meant as a discouragement to read the literature and engage  it--there is a strain in professional philosophy that looks down own this, but I am not a member of that party.]

Okay, with that out of the way, what about the following your passion advice ("Work on problems that really interest you")? I am less sure about this. It's worth noting that this can be high risk high reward strategy. (Prof. Allen's case is instructive: she 'left' professional philosophy to go to law school, then left a high status law firm, etc.) But that also means you may not succeed in your ambition (in getting a PhD, a post-doc, a tenure track job, etc). Given that the people who get interviewed in What it is Like and who show up as keynotes, this also creates obvious selection effects; you hear from the 'survivors'. Moreover, there are other, non-trivial costs  along the way; your intellectual community may be small, and so you will feel isolated and lonely.  If you are doing something genuinely distinctive and original, you may also face genuine intellectual hostility ("why is that philosophy?") and opposition. The  peculiar fact of academic philosophy is that there is simultaneous eagerness for novelty and enormous intellectual brutality against people that branch out. (Not to mention the fact, that we continue to glorify the sharp-witted take down of others.) As Prof. Allen suggests (perhaps reflecting on different issues), Don't think you will be an exception to standard rules.

To be sure, nobody really knows what will be thought significant a few years out. And given that it is out of your control, you probably should not worry too much about it (as the sports psychologist echoing Seneca recommend). But a PhD is not just a contribution to original research, but also credentialing and the moment when you acquire a whole range of competencies. In that respect it is significant that Prof. Allen started working on "problems that really interest her" after, if I understand correctly, she had acquired a PhD and a law degree (so credentialed and very competent). (Maybe I am wrong about this--apologies if so.) It's not that I don't agree with her (and others) that soulless academic work is pretty pointless (and God knows the world does not need more publications that lack intellectual necessity). 

One final thought: often when people suggest, follow your passion, there is an implicit suggestion that there is just this one thing that can really interest you. (Prof. Allen does not claim or imply this; just a further thought.) The idea is a bit analogous to the Aristofanesian-Platonic idea of the one true love. Maybe there is truth in the story, but it fails to do justice to the more subtle point that becoming competent is in part the facility of becoming passionate about unexpected things.**

Now, most of us are acquainted with the panic that we may have one idea and so better milk it for all its worth. (I'll spare you my favorite example of the senior professor who is de facto always writing the same paper.) I don't doubt narrow-minded hedgehogs exist and maybe most of us are better off by being such a hedgehog. But I suspect that what the hedgehog focuses on is very context-specific, and that it could have been otherwise, even otherwise for that individual. 

 

On Loving for Both

Se o teu coração não quiser ceder
Não sentir paixão, não quiser sofrer
Sem fazer planos do que virá depois
O meu coração pode amar pelos dois--“Amar Pelos Dois”.

If your heart doesn’t wish to give in
Not to feel passion, not to suffer
Without making plans of what will come after
My heart can love for the both of us--"Love for Both of Us."

On Monday, in a moment of melancholy, I was curious to learn who had won the Eurovision song festival. I had not watched the festival in a long time. But was pleasantly surprised to learn that Salvador Sobral had won singing his sister's song. I was enchanted by the fact that an introverted, longing ballad had won. Despite listening loyally to Catarina's Brazilian Music on Fridays, and a general, excessive fondness for Brazilian coffee and football, I don't understand a word of Portuguese (except for obrigado). So I had no idea what I was listening to.

I hesitated checking the lyrics knowing that the spell would be broken: pop tunes are too often trite, cliche, and shmaltzy. I can't say I was surprised it was a melancholic love song. The way I understand the song, the vocalist has been left by his/her beloved. Rather than accepting the end of the affair, the vocalist decides not to let go and will (stubbornly) go on loving for two.

Even though the desire to treasure something of value after it has passed is noble, the protagonist is a fool, of course; and may well have some kind of clinical disorder. (I leave it to others to label it.) Experience teaches that is better to move on after one has been dumped (after a period of mourning or reflection). This is not to condemn the fool who can't be otherwise.

I was about to let go of the song when I reflected on the oddity of saying about oneself that one has a big heart, which from stoutness shades into magnanimity. (A modest person would never say s/he could love for both; but a magnanimous person...) We tend to say that philosophy just is love of wisdom. But to philosophize often means unrequited love. By this I do not just mean the elusiveness of wisdom or truth. Rather, too often, in practice, our favorite means, argument, is designed to end discussion rather than to generate shared pursuit or mutual exchange. In the hands of many argument becomes a means of silencing--a weapon in a duel of brainpower.

Here my train of thought halted... too often in a philosophical exchange we need from each other a willingness to love for both, and there are few greater, rare joys when we give it to each other.

 

Necessary Illusions in Love and the Great Machines of Happiness: on Emilie Du Châtelet's Discourse

In order to be happy, one must have freed oneself of prejudices, one must be virtuous, healthy, have tastes and passions, and be susceptible to illusions; for we owe most of our pleasures to illusions, and unhappy is the one who has lost them. Far then, from seeking to make them disappear by the torch of reason, let us try to thicken the varnish that illusion lays on the majority of objects.--Emilie Du Châtelet, Discourse on Happiness [Discours sur le bonheur.] translated by I. Bour & J.P. Zinsser, p. 349.

At the heart of the so-called 'age of reason,' we find an embrace of the utility of illusions. For, according to Du Châtelet illusions are necessary to feel certain pleasures, and these pleasures ("satisfied tastes and passions") make us happy. In order, then, to enjoy some tastes and passions one must be in the grip of certain illusions. It's clear from what follows that according to Du Châtelet not all tastes and passion require illusions. Some goods like -- food or certain 'sensual pleasures' -- can be enjoyed without illusions (but see **). So, on her behalf, I'll distinguish between simple pleasures and complex pleasures. It's only the consummation of complex pleasures that require illusions in order to be enjoyed.

Before I get to the nature of complex pleasures, it is worth marking Du Châtelet's distinction between prejudices [préjugés], which are to be emendated, and illusions. A prejudice "is an opinion that one has accepted without examination, because it would be indefensible otherwise." (p. 352) All inherited tradition, which is tacitly or explicitly assumed correct,  falls under this definition; it is no surprise that religion is Du Châtelet's exemplar of a prejudice. While Du Châtelet is clearly some kind of (Leibnizian) Deist, she is no friend of revealed religion which she thinks makes people unhappy (in this life). As we know from her commentary on Scriptures, she finds these texts to be full of contradictions and absurdities. But the key point for Du Châtelet is that it only requires ordinary intelligence and modest education to correct prejudices. Prejudices are not useful (to healthy souls).*

According to Du Châtelet, an illusion is "not an error." For errors are "always harmful" (354). She defends the "love of study" as a sure means to happiness, especially in independent and magnanimous souls (357--some other time I discuss her self-attribution of magnanimity and her analysis of glory in this context). So, an illusion is a defensible opinion, which gives us an "agreeable feeling" accompanying complex tastes and passions.** Such an opinion one has accepted after scrutiny, even though it's possible, even likely, to be false, but one chooses not to destroy their functionality (355). On an epistemic level Du Châtelet's category of an illusion is close in spirit to the character of Spinoza's universal tenets of faith, which can be beyond rationally knowable, but ought to avoid knowable falsehood. (Of course, Du Châtelet's illusions have a different social role than Spinoza's tenets.) While one can choose to correct or maintain an illusion, one cannot control becoming in the grip of one; it's involuntary and relies on natural mechanisms (physiology, imagination, etc.); in this context she speaks of the "great machines of happiness." She offers as an exemplar optical illusions, which tend not to disappear even when one knows quite a bit about optical science.

Love is sustained by such necessary illusions according to Du Châtelet. Now, it seems that when speaking of 'love,' Du Châtelet has in mind loving another and not being loved, although the fact that one's love may be reciprocated is necessary part of love. That is, she is writing from first-personal perspective and not analyzing the relation or relationship of love. Love involves a kind of pleasure that follows from a giving oneself over to one's feelings of tenderness. Being tender to another feels pleasing, and this just is love. Such tenderness comes in degrees: the love she feels for a plant (which is barely capable of reciprocation) is different from the love she felt for Voltaire. In fact, it's quite clear from context is that Du Châtelet is more interested in passionate tenderness than a wholly calm tenderness.

Love has two further characteristics: (i) it makes "us wish to live"++ and (ii) it promotes  gratitude not to the one that loves us, but to God or Nature.+ That is to say, love indirectly makes us aware of and receptive to something larger than our human selves. For lack of a better word, I'll use 'cosmos' here.

• So, love is a pleasing, passionate tenderness for another that makes us wish to live and makes us receptive to the cosmos.

Interestingly enough, Du Châtelet notes that there can be excessive love such that there is no space for reciprocation. And she thinks men in her social class get turned off by excessive love.

But what, then, are the illusions that accompany love? On this point Du Châtelet is rather terse, despite the fact that she has quite a bit to say about love and, especially, how to comport oneself after a beloved loses interest. This is, I think, also a clue: in love, one must believe that it will last forever.

On Love and philosophical knowledge

[5]    Love is not blind, nor yet forgiving. "O yes, believe me," as the song says, "Love has eyes!" The nearer the intimacy, the more cuttingly do we feel the unworthiness of those we love; and because you love one, and would die for that love to-morrow, you have not forgiven, and you never will forgive, that friend's misconduct. If you want a person's faults, go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know. And herein lies the magnanimous courage of love, that it endures this knowledge without change.

[6]    It required a cold, distant personality like that of Thoreau, perhaps, to recognise and certainly to utter this truth; for a more human love makes it a point of honour not to acknowledge those faults of which it is most conscious. But his point of view is both high and dry. He has no illusions; he does not give way to love any more than to hatred, but preserves them both with care like valuable curiosities.--Robert Louis Stevenson, "Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions" Cornhill Magazine, June 1880.

One of the joys of blogging is that my readers educate me constantly; last week David Duffy called my attention to Stevenson's essay on Thoreau. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the point of Stevenson's essay, which is an unsparing portrait of Thoreau, is to vindicate Thoreau's political thought and behavior as a good man's horror for injustice. 

Last year, in discussing John Williams' Stoner, we encountered how love can be a means toward self-knowledge:

• Love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another and unintentionally learns more about oneself as reflected in the insights and actions of the other.

As is often the case in novels about the literary life, one may treat this as a metaphor for reading novels. So, it then follows that:

• Reading a novel is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know imagined others and unintentionally learns more about oneself as reflected in the insights and actions of the others. 

Let's call this the by-product knowledge of self through engagement with the other, real or imagined. While it may be logically possible that there may be ways to gain the same knowledge through other means than by way of the by-product knowledge of self, its existence suggests that in so far as philosophy aims at self-knowledge we may need loving engagement with others to achieve this. 

But love may also be an unintentional means toward knowledge of other. This is not to deny ('unlocking mysteries' and all that) we may also sometimes love in order to know more about the beloved. Since few of us are saints -- and the true saints would, to simplify Susan Wolf's famous analysis, probably be insufferable, maybe unlovable in the way that Thoreau seems (again to quote Stevenson) a "cold, distant personality" --, as we become known to our lovers our flaws and shortcomings become known to them, too. This is, after all, what makes some of us feel vulnerable even with modest forms of intimacy. That is to say, love can produce by-product knowledge of other (and, in addition, we may be that other). We recognize this fact about love, because its rupture (or worse) often is said to involve betrayal. When one experiences it (betrayal), it cannot be treated as mere curiosity.

Stevenson has no doubt that such by-product knowledge of other can generate conditions under which we can exhibit magnanimous courage; this is a fancy way of saying, love puts one in a position to keep some secrets. One may even say that from this vantage point discretion is a key virtue of true lovers.

I was going to end my post there. But here's an afterthought: on Stevenson's account, Thoreau's willingness to spill the beans on the nature of love, suggests he is not a jilted or disappointed lover of mankind; rather Thoreau is a less humane (and in a certain sense dishonorable) lover of humanity. If we allow -- and this may be a step too far for some -- Thoreau to be a philosophical exemplar (and it is worth asking what the conditions are for philosophy to sustain horror at injustice), this suggests that philosophy is, in part, too, about uttering truths that from the perspective of society dishonor mankind in the service of a (for lack of a better term) higher love of humanity. If that's right then, indeed, there are many professors of philosophy, but few philosophers. 

 

That love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another and unintentionally learns more about oneself as reflected in the insights and actions of the other. - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/01/love.html#sthash.KqqwRImn.dpu

Why Philosophy Cannot be (normal science-style) Kuhnian; On Bosanquet & Russell

[Philosophy] can never be revolutionised by discovery, as, for all I know, a particular science may be, and as a particular branch of technique certainly often is. This, I take it, is the meaning of saying that in it you cannot make discoveries. Philosophy rests on the whole spectacle of the ordered universe, and on the judgments of value which are essentially and rationally implied in that visioin. To revolutionise it would be more than to pass from one civilisation to another, though that is perhaps the nearest realisable analogy. It would almost be to pass from one universe to another. In estimating such sayings as these, it must be remembered that philosophy does not make itself. It is in the main a reading of civilisation.
And it cannot fail to be progressive. A limited technique, which is readily revolutionised by a discovery, can hardly be progressive. A whole way of doing is abandoned, and a new one takes its place. But the vision of reality, which embodies the changes of life and knowledge, while retaining the singleness of its first impressions, must necessarily progress so long as thought survives. It must progress, because it incorporates new matter with old. If it dropped the old in passing to the new, then indeed there would be change, but no certainty of progress.--Bernard Bosanquet (1914-15) "Science and Philosophy"

Alex Klein was kind enough to call my attention to Bosanquet's response to Russell's lectures ("On Our Knowledge of an External World.") Bosanquet's target here is the very idea of a scientific philosophy (which Bosanquet traces back to Kant's "famous aspiration to the sure march of science." [Bosanquet is quoting the preface to the second edition of the first Critique]; Bosanquet also notes the indebteness of Russell's epistemology to Kant.) In particular, his target is the picture later associated with Kuhn in which a science is about generating breakthrough, revolutionary discoveries. And, again, anticipating the Kuhnian idea that such a paradigm shift entails (almost) the passing "from one universe to another." Bosanquet explicitly allows that this (Kuhnian) position is true for the sciences (and, to be a bit anachronistic, engineering), but not philosophy.

Bosanquet rightly discerns that if one embraces philosophy as a  (Kuhnian) normal science then one opens the door to revolutionary changes and thereby undercuts the very idea of genuine progress (rather than paradigm-dependent-progress).  This insight does not rest on Bosanquet's conception of philosophy or his faith in progress and the eternity of the human species ("But the vision of reality, which embodies the changes of life and knowledge, while retaining the singleness of its first impressions, must necessarily progress so long as thought survives.")

Preserving first impressions matters a lot in love, of course, and philosophy.

Against Russell's attempt to cleanse philosophy from practical interest and feeling (recall), I have some sympathy for Bosanquet's desire to keep value and human interest within philosophy: ("its object, prima facie, is the universe, with all its activities and values, among which the theories of exact science with their objects form only a certain proportion." (6)) It is no surprise that Russell rids philosophy of sympathy (recall), while Bosanquet embraces a "complete and sympathetic outlook over our world," (17; some other time I'll discuss his attack on relations and his defense of evolutionary thought.)

Even so, Bosanquet is too comfortable in presupposing a like-minded audience and he underestimates the appeal of Russell's philosophy; not just its "cosmopolitan" outlook (against his own embrace of a "national" philosophy), it's appeal to transferable method (as opposed to his own faith in the "judgments of great men" (15)), but especially because Russell has always been clear about his own rejection of the Kuhnian conception of philosophy as normal science.  Russell's scientific philosophy is  methodological ((recall) and one might add an embrace of a certain set of epistemic virtues) not paradigmatic. To put the point from a Kuhnian perspective: Russell is at ease with a kind of permanent change in the content of philosophical claims and this makes it very suitable to the modern age (even if we give up on his theory of theory conception).

Philosophy as a Barrier to the Virtuous Life; On a Reformed Protestant's Perspective

Platoʼs Socrates sometimes conveys the impression that one cannot be truly virtuous without being in possession of a philosophical theory about the nature of virtue, or goodness. From a Christian point of view, however, living well (morally and otherwise) does not depend so much on philosophical understanding as on life in the Church. Scripture enjoins us to cultivate the "fruits of the spirit"—love, peace, patience, and so on—and to be "transformed by the renewing of our minds", which is largely supposed to be a matter of learning to love God and neighbor in a way that emulates Christ. There is no indication that theorizing about these things will help us much in our efforts to accomplish them….[p.35]

One of the most important job skills of an analytic philosopher is strongly correlated with whatever skill is involved in successfully rationalizing bad behavior, deceiving oneself, putting a positive spin on bad circumstances, and so on. Also, there are certain modes of behavior—ways of being ambitious, or arrogant, or disrespectful to others, for example—that seem much easier to fall into in professions (like philosophy) where reputation, and having oneʼs own reputation elevated over the reputations of people with whom one works, is often correlated with promotions, job security, pay raises, and the like. To this extent, I find that being a philosopher (or being an academic generally) poses certain obstacles, or challenges, to my own moral and spiritual development as a Christian. Accordingly, I see a variety of ways in which being a Christian can, or should, enable one to achieve a degree of critical distance from certain kinds of widespread but dysfunctional norms and values in the profession. This is, of course, not to say that being a Christian is the only way of achieving such distance; but it is, or should be, a way of doing so. Michael Rea "Reformed Protestantism" [pp. 37-8; emphases in original--ES; HT: Helen de Cruz at Philosopherscocoon]

Helen de Cruz wrote a lovely post about Michael Rea's "programmatic" paper (p. 2). In it she quotes the last paragraph of the essay that I also reproduced above. That paragraph offers two claims that I paraphrase:

1. it is difficult to be moral (and spiritual) as a professional academic because of institutional factors in which certain success goods are zero-sum and the way to obtain these success goods is by way of behavior that hinders the practice of virtue (including collaboration, community and spiritual development);
2. Analytical philosophy generates habits of thought that exacerbates the problems diagnosed in (1).

In commenting on Ruth Chang's reflections on the discipline, I also noted that analytical philosophy disciplines habits of thought that generates deformed intellectual reflexes (so that our moral sentiments or reactive attitudes misfire); in particular, we are likely to withhold sympathy/comfort when we ought to extend it (recall). So, I agree with Rea's (2), although he emphasizes (and this is echoed by De Cruz) the role of intellectual skill in self-deception and rationalization of one's bad behavior.* I also agree with Rea's (1); as I note in the context of blogging about analytical egalitarianism, professional academics are offered a whole bunch of incentives and success goods that ought to be made transparent  and theorized about in how we reflect on ourselves (and, especially, the ways we try to improve the world). Ideally, we would help contribute to a better institutional design that would ameliorate and reduce the problems associated with (2) and, if possible (1). Rea himself seems to think that being a Christian may contribute to ameliorating (1). In the piece he is very cautious about linking "the relation between Christian faith and politics" (p. 36); he notes that "from the fact that Christians as such ought to be involved somehow in this sort of corporate work not much seems to follow about exactly what form that involvement ought to take." (Rea p. 36) So, we are not offered a Christian framework for institutional reform toward the good (yet).

But despite the cautious stance, it is still worth noting that Rea's programmatic piece offers a more profound challenge (one that De Cruz does not note in her piece). If you look at the very first passage quoted at the top of this post, Rea revives a version of the opposition between Athens ("Plato's Socrates") and Rome/Jerusalem ("life in the Church"/emulating "Christ"). In particular, Rea's stance is distinctly deflationary about the value of philosophical theorizing and its contribution toward living a moral life; to be clear, Rea falls short of Nietzsche's charge that (much) philosophy is a sickness. But in reading the paper as a whole, I came away thinking that for Rea philosophy plays a decidedly instrumental, subservient role in one's "life in the Church;" it is crucial in theology and in analyzing the relationship between reason and faith.** So, when, for example, Rea explains his version of sola scriptura, he recognizes constraints from "moral intuition" (pp. 13-14), but not moral philosophy as such. So, Rea is in some respects rejecting the post Spinoza-Adam Smith-Kant consensus here. As he puts it: "Moral theory is, at best, a secondary or tertiary aid." (p. 35) I say in 'some respects' not just to do justice to the tentative nature of Rea's piece, but also because Rea's position is compatible with (and perhaps subtly intended in this way) to let moral philosophy shape our 'moral intuitions' indirectly--after all, as reflection on his treatment of some of the more morally problematic literal claims in Scripture reveals, Rea wants to leave room for, shall we say, inspired moral progress over time. 

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:

On Historical Necessity and Morality (Art & Propaganda in John Williams's Augustus)

In the matter of passion, whether of love or war, excess is inevitable. Yet I have always been bewildered when, in the ease of peace, men raise the questions of praise or blame. It seems to me now that both judgments are inappropriate, and equally so. For those who thus judge do not judge so much out of a concern for right or wrong as out of protest against the pitiless demands of necessity, or an approval of them. Necessity is simply what has happened.--Maecenas to Livy, in John Williams Augustus: A Novel (70)

You forget that I am artist myself, and know the necessity of asking what to ordinary people would seem the most insulting and presumptuous things. How could I take offense at that which I myself would do, without the slightest hesitation, for the sake of my art? I detect the odor of a moralist. And it seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind. And it would be a heavy burden for even the deepest friendship to bear.—Maecenas to Livy (128)—John Williams Augustus: A novel

There was no possibility of virtue without the idea of virtue; and no effective idea of virtue that was not encoded in the law.--Octavius to Damascius (302), John Williams Augustus: A novel

If we allow ourselves the thought, we probably tend to think of propaganda as not-art or, perhaps, as bad art.+ Williams's clever novel reminds us that some of the greatest art (Virgil, Horace, etc.) is, in part, propaganda for what we might call, military dictatorship and empire. In addition, in the second quoted passage above, Williams portrays the chief artist-propagandist, Maecenas, not just as a Spinozistic-fatalist -- with his repeated invocation of necessity --, but as would-be-censor of the historian Livy. It is to Williams's credit that he makes us see both the case for benevolent, imperial dictatorship as well as the price the establishment this extracts not just on the protagonists themselves (notably Augustus and his daughter Julia – ultimate Augustus trades the daughter of flesh and blood for an "adoptive daughter" [the Roman empire], a trade that, in turn, is said to be made legitimate because "acknowledged" by "the adoptive daughter" [that is the laws] (306; as if all trade requires the sanction of law) -- ), but also on the arts (history, poetry, and philosophy).

Few professional historians would claim that they are in the business of judging. In so far as Historicism has won the day (see Beiser's majestic book), historians see themselves as scientists (if not akin to natural scientists than at least as practitioners of their very own special Geisteswissenschaft) and not as moral judges. Obviously, even those that advocate moralism in history would wish to see it consequent knowledge.* Williams's (1972) novel (recall this post) subtly invite us to see constraints and power in (or outside) the margins of works of art, history, and philosophy. Williams's readers were familiar with the McCarthy era, of course, so, perhaps, they need little such reminding. It is an open question to what degree some readers at the time thought the US was, itself, heading -- amidst major disagreements over civil rights and Vietnam war -- toward its own civil war (and to what degree they were tempted to follow the model of benevolent dictatorship). Perhaps, too, Williams makes the reader reflect on the nature of the post US-Civil War settlement (which, after all, is a key feature of Butcher's Crossing (recall my post)).

In Williams's portrayal of Maecenas, art (poetic and historical) is (amongst other things) supposed to be useful. In context, it is entailed that if political circumstances had been different some other art would be useful. The moralist is said to be useless because he can't contribute to knowledge-generation and, less explicitly, change what's happened. Meacenas's argument presupposes not just the Hobbesian idea that within the context of state of nature, there is no justice, but a distinction between two kinds of judges (moralists/artists). Those that judge appropriately with authority (and force) and those that judge – for lack of a better word -- frivolously. By 'frivolous' (recall) I do not mean consequent-free; the novel is very clear that death (Cicero) and exile (Ovid) may well await frivolousness.

Philosophical Escapism

I experienced my first taste of philosophical escapism, Mackie's The Miracle of Theism, in a cramped, rented apartment in Glyfada, a suburb of Athens. Mackie's wonderful book had been recommended by H.M. Kuitert, a Dutch reverend and theologian, in the Saturday Books section, in a page devoted to "unread treasures," of NRC Handelsblad on Dec 24, 1994. The conceit behind the section was, I think, to ask people to read a non-fiction book that they owned (and probably should have read long before).* Mackie's elegant book with its crisp, clear prose and razor-sharp arguments was the perfect companion to distract me from my shame at my failure at being loved. This shame stared me in the face whenever I glanced at my beloved.

To be sure, engaging with philosophy is not so cerebral that one feels nothing. Like David Hume I am inclined to think that most thought is felt; in particular, focused, philosophical thought can be intensely felt. So, in reading Mackie I displaced the possibility of painful shame (held at bay by my numbness) with joy and marvel at the intellectual world that he opened up for me. Such displacement is routine in philosophy. Given the drabness of many feelings and the dreariness of many experiences, such displacement may well improve the lot of our lives.