Digressions&Impressions

Dennett's Faustian Bargain, revisited

For several years, I have been posing the following choice for my fellow philosophers: if Mephistopheles offered you the following two options, which would you choose?

(A) You solve the major philosophical problem of your choice so conclusively that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, part of the field closes down forever, and you get a footnote in history).

(B) You write a book of such tantalizing perplexity and controversy that it stays on the required reading list for centuries to come. 

Some philosophers reluctantly admit that they would have to go for option (B). If they had to choose, they would rather be read than right. Like composers, poets, novelists, and other creators in the arts, they tend to want their work to be experienced, over and over, by millions (billions, if possible!). But they are also tugged in the direction of the scientists’ quest. After all, philosophers are supposed to be trying to get at the truth.

When I have presented the same Faustian bargain to scientists they tend to opt for (A) without any hesitation—it’s a no-brainer for them.--Daniel C. Dennett (2013) “A Faustian Bargain” Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, p. 411.+

Daniel Dennet was one of my undergraduate teachers, and I am pretty sure I heard him try out versions of the “Faustian Bargain” on visiting scholars. (In his book, Intuition Pumps, he describes further variants.) I mention this because at some point, while I was completing my dissertation, I articulated a descendant of the Bargain that I have tried out on some fellow historians of philosophy. It goes something like this:

(A*) You conclusively settle all interpretive problems about the relationship between the infinite and finite in Spinoza’s metaphysics (like Descartes's Circle a notorious problem) such that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, Spinoza becomes easy, and you get a footnote in history).

(B*) You generate interest in a previously overlooked text so that it (not you) gets on the required reading list for centuries to come.   

Most scholars happily and promptly settle for (A*); that’s what we are trained to aim at. The spirit of contemporary scholarship in the history of philosophy has its origins (mediated via Quentin Skinner, perhaps) in Germanic Wissenschaft, after all. But a few respondents are, after some hesitation, tempted by (B*). For, ever since some professional philosophical historians of philosophy started to read canonical works in context, it was likely they would stumble across texts that might seem candidates for (B*). And while getting the past right is a non-trivial task, doing justice to the past and thereby shaping a better future is nobler yet.

Moreover, (B*) is also a near-self-less-act; in it one is the nearly anonymous hand-maiden to another's success. Even if it is motivated (one concludes after reading Nietzsche) by a strange kind of desire for revenge or (echoing Walter Benjamin) by a desire to speak for history's losers, it remains the case that one uses one's skill and judgment to make somebody else's previously overlooked views, insights, or arguments available for discussion. Of course, plenty of scholars are motivated by the true and the good, and (B*) might be one way to promote these. Even so, there is also something quixotic about (B*) because it is so unlikely to succeed. After reflecting on canon-formation throughout history, I suspect that enduring novelty is introduced into the curriculum and people's reading habits not by the conjoined efforts of scholars, but by the ideological and curricular needs of history's proverbial winners who write and rewrite the past to give their own commitments an air of inevitability, the so-called (to adopt a fine phrase by Michael Kremer) 'royal road to me' (recall).

The Walk-On Philosopher

[...] Only Dirck, or Theodore Rembrantsz, an astronomer and surveyor in North Holland, made his acquaintance in that time, when the most remote and obscure villages were hardly less fertile in the growth of philosophy, than the flourishing cities of commerce….

Dirck Rembrantsz was a Dutch peasant, native the village of Nierop, at the end of North Holland, facing Friesland. The exercise he made in the trade of shoemaker in the place of his birth, provided him barely with the means necessary to maintain his subsistence. But he had found ways to overcome his fortune by an exquisite knowledge of mathematics, that he could not help but to grow beyond the detriment of the work of his hands. Mr. Descartes' famous name, linked with the minor satisfaction he had received from the mathematical books he had read in the vernacular, resulted into the leave of his village for consulting [the philosopher].

His [Descartes'] fame had portrayed him as a man of the world, who was easy to access, and the idea of a secluded philosopher did not withheld him, even when the entrance of his solitude was guarded by some Switzers. But he was put off by the valets of Descartes as a bold farmer, and they only informed the master of the house, after Rembrantsz returned two or three months later, in the same outfit as the first time, and demanded to speak to Mr. Descartes, with the resolution of a man who seemed to confer with him on important business.

His appearance did not contribute to a better reception than before, and when the news was brought to Mr. Descartes, he was depicted as an importunate beggar, who in the eyes of the servants used his wish to the talk about philosophy and astrology, as an excuse to ask for charity. And to avoid going into that, Descartes sent him some money and wished him [Rembrantsz] to say that he would dispense the trouble to speak to him [any further]. Rembrantsz, whose poverty not had affected his heart, refused the generosity of our philosopher, and decided that his hour had not yet come, and he returned home this time, in the hope that a third trip would become more succesful. This reply was reported to Mr. Descartes, who regretted not have seen the peasant and who ordered his people to give him notice, when he returned.

Rembrantsz returned a few months later and this peasant, who had such a passion to meet Mr. Descartes that he already had made two trips in vain, was recognized, and he was finally satisfied in what he had sought so hard and with such perseverance.

Descartes recognized his skills and merits in this field and would pay back his [Rembrantsz'] troubles with interest. He [Descartes] was not satisfied with the teaching of all his problems, but provided him with the methodology to correct his arguments. He welcomed him yet among a number of his friends, without paying attention to the lowness of his position, but considered him among those of the first rank, and he assured him that his house and his heart was open to him at all times.

From that time on, Rembrantsz, who lived only five or six miles apart from Egmond, frequently visited Descartes, and with his school he became one of the leading astronomers of his time. He had mastered so well the knowledge of his [Descartes'] principles, that in the rest of his life he only build on these foundations.-- Adrien Baillet (1691) La vie de Monsieur Descartes, part 2, pp. 553-556, translated by Huib Zuidervaart in THE CORRESPONDENCE OF DIRCK REMBRANTSZ VAN NIEROP (1610-1682), edited by M. Rijks.

There are, I am guessing, about  forty-thousand professional philosophers world-wide. I am an experienced enough historian of philosophy to assert confidently that even if our civilization continues and digital storage is perfected most of us will -- just a handful excepted -- be forgotten within a generation or two, three, even if we would deny that the Golden Age of analytical philosophy is past. As it is, only a few of us are actually read outside a small, narrow group of specialists at any given moment; a charismatic PhD supervisor may stretch this audience a bit wider. Even most of those that today have a disciplinary or wider public audience are almost certainly incapable of competing in an enduring fashion for scarce, future curricular time, or the more intimate choices of discerning future readers. It's easy to imagine that Berkeley will disappear from the curriculum once the empiricism/rationalism divide is set aside as parochial or, to hit closer to home, that Davidson will be a mere footnote to Quine and Whitehead, while Mandeville, De Grouchy, and Swift will be rediscovered time and again by readers trying to make sense of living in a (let's stipulate, Chinese-speaking) corrupt, commercial civilization (recall this review).

If we reflect on our situation, I suspect most of us console ourselves with the idea that through our teaching we touch the minds of the young and, in so doing, help give their lives, which will radiate in all kinds of unexpected directions, some shape. I know that some of my peers are convinced that they are part of a progressive (even scientific) enterprise within the intellectual division labor in which their contributions allow future generations to progress even closer to the truth; even if they remain anonymous to future generations they will have participated in a great trans-historical project. Such delusions are harmless. Some of us contribute more concretely by offering philosophical reflections that might help our communities navigate what may seem urgent and confused matters. I am not denying, of course, that even the most distinguished (reflexive and privileged, etc.) of our philosophical peers is undoubtedly mostly just enjoying her intellectual activity immersed in the problems and puzzles that animate her thought drawing a generous salary that secures her from the more common anxieties consequent hunger and lack of shelter.

Even so, sometimes the unremarkable play a walk-on role in history, and this is not dispiriting. Let me explain.