One cannot live without being onesided, without choosing, preferring, favoring oneself and one's own, without staking out and defending one's bit of ground. One cannot live without being onesided, but one cannot be much of a philosopher if one is. The philosopher's optics are a synoptics, but life's optics are perspectival.
And so philosophy is enlivened at the approach of decline, death, and doom. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.
Don't flatter yourself that I should care enough about you to insult you.
We have it on good authority that man does not live by bread alone. To which I add: nor by bed alone.
Do I live up to this admonition? Or am I posturing? Is my posture perhaps a slouch towards hypocrisy?
Well, it depends on how broadly one takes 'join.' A while back, I joined a neighbor and some of his friends in helping him move furniture. Reasonably construed, the motto does not rule out that sort of thing. And being a fair and balanced guy, as everybody knows, I recently joined the Conservative Book Club to balance out my long-standing membership in the left-leaning and sex-saturated Quality Paperback Book Club. (It would be interesting to compare these two 'clubs' in respect of their target memberships — but that's another post.)
And what if I join you for lunch, or join in a discussion in a chat room? A good while ago, the anonyblogger who ran The Will to Blog, but then lost the will to blog and deleted his site, opined that my motto ought to preclude my being a conservative. But surely one does not join a set of beliefs. One joins a political party, an organization, a church, and the like. Our anonyblogger might have been making the mistake of thinking that an independent thinker cannot arrive at any conclusions, for, if he did, then he would be joining something, and lose his independence.
In the context of Paul Brunton's thought, "Study everything, join nothing" means that one ought to beware of institutions and organizations with their tendency toward self-corruption and the corruption of their members. (The Catholic Church is a good recent example.) "Join nothing" means avoid group-think; avoid associations which will limit one's ability to think critically and independently; be your own man or woman; draw your identity from your own resources, and not from group membership. Be an individual, and not in the manner of those who want to be treated as individuals but expect to gain special privileges from membership in certain 'oppressed' or 'victimized' or 'disadvantaged' groups.
Be Emersonian, as Brunton was Emersonian:
"Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one one of its members."
"We must go alone."
"But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation."
(All from Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance.")
In Brunton's mouth, the injunction means: study all the religions and political parties, but don't join any of them, on pain of losing one's independence.
Note finally, that the motto is mine (by acceptance not by origin); it does to follow that it ought to be yours.
The proprietor of Beyond Necessity has a post on objective reality which is directed against some New Age mumbo-jumbo. One of the commenters remarks, "Your argument for the existence of objective reality sounds very much like the ontological argument for God, and about as plausible." Ed, the proprietor, responds, ". . . the argument in no way resembles the logical form of the ontological argument."
What I will now do is present a sound ontological argument for objective reality. In so doing I will show that both proprietor and commenter are wrong. The latter because the argument is plausible; the former because it is ontological in form.
Definition. An ontological argument from mere concepts (aus lauter Begriffen, in Kant's famous phrase) is a ratiocinative procedure whereby the being instantiated of a concept is proven by sheer analysis of the concept. It is thus an argument in which one attempts to infer the existence of X from the concept X. For example, the existence of God from the concept God; the existence of a golden mountain from the concept golden mountain; the existence of objective reality from the concept objective reality. Concepts are mental items by definition. So a sound ontological argument will take us from thought to (extramental) being, in a manner to please Parmenides.
To mention a concept I use italics. Thus a word in italics refers to a concept.
1. We have and understand the concept the (total) way things are. It doesn't matter how we acquired this concept. We have it and we understand it. The way things are includes every fact, every obtaining state of affairs. So the way things are is equivalent to the world in Wittgenstein's sense: "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge." (Tractatus 1.1) It is also equivalent to objective reality.
2. Now let us entertain the possibility that nothing answers to the concept the way things are, that the concept is not instantiated. We are thus to entertain the possibility that there is the concept in our minds but nothing to which it applies. We can formulate this possibility using the proposition *There is no objective reality.* Call this proposition P.
3. Could P be true? If P is true, then P is true in objective reality: that is just what 'true' means. So if P is true, then it is true in objective reality that there is no objective reality. This is a contradiction. So we must conclude that If P is true, then P is false. And if P is false, then of course P is false. So, necessarily, P is false, which implies that its negation is not only true but necessarily true: it is necessarily true that there is objective reality. So by sheer analysis of the concept objective reality one can validly infer that there is objective reality. Here then is a case in which an ontological argument from mere concepts is sound.
4. Have I pulled a fast one? Not as far as I can see. I have merely analyzed the concept objective reality, teasing out an implication of the claim that the concept is not instantiated.
5. Response to the commenter. The commenter is right to appreciate that the above sort of reasoning is ontological and thus similar to the God proof found in Descartes' Meditation V and criticized famously by Kant. He is wrong, however, to think that the former reasoning is cogent if and only if the latter is.
6. Response to the proprietor. The proprietor is right, as against the commenter, when it comes to the cogency of the above sort of reasoning. But the commenter is wrong to fail to see that it is ontological reasoning in a clear sense of that term. It is a priori reasoning from thought to being, from concept to existence.
Companion post: Four Kinds of Ontological Argument
Some time ago I wrote a post entitled Meditation: What and Why? I was meaning to write a follow-up on the how of meditation, but didn't get around to it. But recently a friend asked for some practical suggestions. So here goes. I recommend first reading the What and Why entry. There I explain what meditation is and list some of its uses.
Time. The best time to meditate is early in the morning, before sunrise. Any monk will tell you that. One can meditate at other times, but it is easiest in the morning for obvious reasons: it is dark, cool, and quiet, and one's mind, refreshed by sleep, has not yet been sullied by the day's doings.
Posture. There is only one really good meditation posture and that is seated on the ground or floor on a comfortable mat and cushion. Shankara reputedly could meditate while sitting in snow, but you and I are not Shankara. I use a regulation Zen black meditation mat and cushion. The mat should be thick and large enough so that no part of the legs or buttocks touches the floor. The cushion, which should be very thick and almost spherical in shape, is placed between the buttocks and the mat. The idea is to elevate the buttocks in such a way that one comfortably achieves a posture in which the back is straight. I do not recommend sitting crosslegged in the full- or half-lotus positions, as this can be hard on the knees. I recommend the Burmese posture as illustrated on the left. The knees and shins are flat against the mat, making for comfort and stability, in a posture that can be maintained easily for an hour or more without moving.
Stretching. I like to do a little stretching before beginning the meditation. While seated in the Burmese position, I bend forward and slowly bring my forehead down to the mat. This is more easily achieved if the hands are clasped behind the back and elevated. Breath deeply and proceed slowly. After a few repetitions, stretch the hands toward the ceiling and extend upwards as far as possible. If you are the bhaktic (devotional) type, this gesture can be one of supplication. I then twist my trunk and neck to the right (left) after placing my left (right) hand on my right (left) knee. Be careful, no jerking. Finally, I do a series of neck rotations. Placing my chin on my chest, I slowly rotate the neck around, keeping the head as close to the body as possible, Do this a few times in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions.
Breath. Now that you are properly seated, concentrate on your breathing. The main thing is to 'belly breath.' Push the diaphragm out and draw the breath slowly and deeply into the lungs. Then exhale fully without holding your breath at any time. Imagine on the out-breath that you are exhaling not only air but all manner of mental detritus: negative thoughts, useless memories, worries, etc. Attend carefully to the breathing process. This attending is already a form of meditation, a form of entering into the Inner Citadel. Imagine that you are trying to draw your center of gravity lower and lower toward the mat and farther and farther away from the discursive mind.
Relaxation. The next step is to relax every part of your body while keeping the spine straight. Starting from the top of the head with the scalp, forehead, facial muscles, release any tension encountered, proceeding to the neck and shoulders, and all the way down. 'Exhale' all physical tensions along with stale air and useless thoughts. If nothing else, this feels good and will lower blood pressure.
Theme. So much for preliminaries. One now needs a theme upon which to focus one's attention. There is no end to the number of themes; one must choose one that is appealing to oneself. One might start discursively, by running through a mantram, but the idea is to achieve a nondiscursive one-pointedness of attention. Some suggestions.
1. A Christian of a bhaktic disposition might start with the Jesus Prayer which is used by the mystics of Eastern Orthodoxy: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." One tethers one's mind to the mantram to the exclusion of all other thoughts, repeating it (in thought) over and over. One then gradually whittles it down to one word, say, 'Lord' by progressively dropping 'a sinner,' 'on me a sinner,' 'have mercy on me a sinner,' and so on. One then repeats 'Lord,' 'Lord, 'Lord,' . . . in an attempt to sink into mental quiet. I describe mental quiet in the above-linked post.
If one feels oneself slipping into mental quiet, then one must let go of the mantram and simply abide passively in the state of quietude, without reflecting on it, analyzing it, or recalling how one got to
it. The approach to mental quiet is a phase of active working; this is difficult enough. Even more difficult is the phase in which one lets go of this work and simply rests in it. There will be a very strong temptation to analyze it. If at all possible, resist this temptation.
2. A more metaphysically inclined Christian who is fond of St. Augustine might experiment with the phrase, 'Lord, eternal Truth, unchanging Light,' reducing it to one word, whether 'Lord' or 'Truth'
or 'Light.'
3. I have had good results with a line from Plotinus' Enneads, "It is by the One that all beings are beings." This is a very rich saying that can be mulled over from several directions. Everything that is, IS. What is it for a thing TO BE? And what is the source of the being of that-which-is? It is by the One that all beings are. What does 'by' mean? And what is the One? Although one starts discursively, the idea is to penetrate this ONE, to become at-one with it. As Plotinus would say, it is a flight of the alone to the all-One. Of course, it cannot be grasped: any grasping is discursive. One is digging for the �
160; nondiscursive root of the discursive mind, a root that is itself rooted in the ONE which is the source of all phenomenal entities and unities.
4. A classical theme of meditation is the Self, or, if you insist, the absence of a Self. Here is one of the ways I approach this theme. I start by closely attending to my breath. I think of it objectively as air entering though my nostrils and travelling to my lungs. And then I think about my body and its parts. Here on this mat is this animated body; but am I this animated body? How could I be identical to this animated body? I have properties it doesn't have, and vice versa. Am I this breath, these lungs, this cardiovascular system, this animated body? Or am I the awareness of all of this? How could I be any object? Am I not rather the subject for whom all objects are objects? Am I not other than every object? But what is this subject if it is not itself an object? How could there be a subject that was not an object or a potential object? Is it nothing at all? But there is awareness, and awareness is not any object. There is patently a difference between the awareness of O and O, for any O. To be for a human being is to be in this transcendental difference. Is this difference nothing? If it is not nothing, what differs in this difference?
One can pursue this meditation in two ways. One can reduce it to a koan: I am awareness and I am not nothing, but I am not something either. Not nothing and not something. How? I am something, I am nothing, I can't be both, I can't be neither. What then is this I that is nothing and something and not nothing and something? One can take this as a koan, an intellectual knot that has no discursive solution but is not a mere nugatory puzzle of linguistic origin, to be relieved by some Wittgensteinian pseudo-therapy, but a pointer to a dimension beyong the discursive mind. The active phase of the meditation then consists in energetically trying to penetrate this riddle.
Note that one needn't dogmatically assume or affirm that there is a dimension beyond the discursive mind. This is open inquiry, exploration without anticipation of result.
Or, instead of bashing one's head against this brick wall of a koan, one can just repeat 'I,' 'I', 'I' in an attempt at peacefully bringing the discursive intellect to subsidence.
More later. Further topics: duration; pre-meditation; post-meditation; strange phenomena regularity of practice; ethical prerequisites.
1. Let's start with the word 'mortal' and remind ourselves of some obvious points. 'Mortal' is from the Latin mors, mortis meaning death. That which is mortal is either subject to death, or conducive to death, or in some way expressive of death. Thus when we say of a human being that he is mortal we do not mean that he is dead, but that he is subject to death. My being mortal is consistent with my being alive and kicking. Indeed, if I weren't alive I could not be said to be either mortal or immortal. Spark plugs are neither mortal nor immortal. Some will say of a car that it has 'died.' But that is a loose and metaphorical way of talking. Only that which was once alive can properly be said to have died.
2. Although 'mortal' applies to all living things, what interests us particularly is 'mortal' as a predicate of human beings. To be mortal in this sense is to be subject to death. But this phrase has at least two senses, one weak the other strong.
WEAK sense: X is mortal =df X is able to die, liable to die, has the potential to die. Mortality as posse mori.
STRONG sense: X is mortal =df X has to die, is subject to the necessity of dying, cannot evade death by any action of its own, is going to die, will die in the normal course of events. Mortality as necessitas moriendi.
Correspondingly, there are strong and weak senses of 'immortal':
STRONG sense: X is immortal =df X is not able to die.
WEAK sense: X is immortal =df X is able to die, but is kept alive forever by a factor distinct from X.
3. Let's run through some cases to illustrate the distinction. God is not mortal in either the weak or the strong sense. It is built into the divine nature (essence) that he cannot die. 'God is dead,' taken literally is nonsense. (Of course, that is not the way Nietzsche intended it to be taken; he was making a cultural point.) God is a necessary being, a being that exists in all possible worlds and at all times in those worlds containing time.
Your humble correspondent is mortal in both senses. Not only can I die, I must die, I cannot do anything to avoid eventually dying: I am subject to the necessitas moriendi. Cryogenics won't help for reasons I won't belabor at the moment. It is worth noting that, according to Christian doctrine, my having-to-die is a contingent attribute of me unlike my being-able-to-die. My having-to-die is punishment for original sin and is as contingent as that sin. My being-able-to-die, however, is grounded in my nature as a soul-body composite, and I am essentially such a composite. Thus it is not my nature to be immortal (in the strong sense), whence it follows that if I achieve immortality (in the weak sense) it is due to a supernatural gift: God freely grants me immortality; I don't have it apart from free divine donation. In this sense I am not naturally immortal: I am not immortal in virtue of my nature or essence the way God is.
Prelapsarian human beings are mortal in the WEAK sense but not in the STRONG. Unlike God, there is nothing in the nature (essence) of such beings to prevent them from dying if they should will to die. But if they do not will to die, God grants them unending life. Postlapsarian human beings, however, are mortal in both the weak and the strong senses.
4. Now what about Jesus Christ? He is one person in two natures; fully man and fully God. But all men are mortal in the weak sense: they can die. So Christ is mortal in the weak sense. But he is not mortal in the strong sense: he is not subject to the necessitas moriendi. He freely chose his death.
So is Christ a counterexample to 'All men are mortal'? It depends on what is meant by 'mortal.' Taken in the weak sense, Christ is not; taken in the strong sense, he is.
5. But there is still a Christological problem that wants solving. If Jesus Christ is God (or, to be precise, the Second Person of the Trinity), then JC is strongly immortal. But if JC is fully human, then he is not strongly immortal, but weakly immortal. How can one and the same person have contradictory attributes?
The Republicans were accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis. But how can you politicize what is inherently political? The debt in question is the debt of the federal government. Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions. As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.
If to hypostatize is to illicitly treat as a substance that which is not a substance, to politicize is to illictly treat as political what is not political. Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.
This is not to say that 'politicize' does not have a legitimate use.
Questions about global warming are not inherently political. They are questions about the earth and its climate. Since the earth is not a political entity, these questions are not political, nor can they be made political. It is therefore illict to politicize these questions as both conservatives and leftists do. Here are three global warming questions that are at the top of the list with respect to logical priority:
1. Is global warming (GW) occurring?
2. If yes to (1), is it naturally irreversible, or is it likely to reverse itself on its own?
3. If GW is occurring, and will not reverse itself on its own, to what extent is it anthropogenic, i.e., caused by human activity? This is the crucial empirical question. It is obviously distinct from (1) and (2). If there is naturally irreversible global warming, this is not to say that it is caused by human activity. It may or may not be.
None of these is a political question. Therefore, it is illicit to 'politicize' them.
Unfortunately, too much of present day 'science' is ideologically-infected. Global warming alarmism is yet another ersatz religion for liberals. See here. Of course, I also condemn those conservatives and libertarians whose knee-jerk rejection of GW is premised on hostitlity to any empirical finding that might lead to policies that limit the freedom of the market.
I received one of these e-mails this morning. Of course, I did not click on the link. It's a malware scam and is explained here.
Being a conservative, I am a firm believer in 'blaming the victim' (within limits of course!) If you allow yourself to be victimized, then you share some of the responsibility for the crime. So I say you have a moral responsibility to not allow yourself to become a victim, to the extent that this is possible. You have a moral responsibility to yourself and to others.
"Study everything, join nothing." I am sometimes asked for examples. Here are some from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary under the entry Regalia. (Borrowed from Gilleland the Erudite):
. . . Knights of Adam; Visionaries of Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians; Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror; Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star; Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
Melina Merkouri, Never on Sunday
Mamas and Papas, Monday, Monday
Rolling Stones, Ruby Tuesday
Simon and Garfunkel, Wednesday Morning 3 AM
Donovan, Jersey Thursday
Easybeats, Friday on My Mind
Sam Cooke, Another Saturday Night
Bonus cut: Jerry Lee Lewis, Lonely Weekend
1. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, and there is no denying its value. Our doxastic predicament requires it of us. We have beliefs galore but precious little knowledge, especially as regards the large and enduring questions. Lacking knowledge, we must inquire. For that we need freedom of inquiry, and a social and political environment in which inquiry is, if not encouraged, at least allowed. But people who are convinced that they have the truth would stop us. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." (Human All-Too-Human #483) This is typical Nietzschean exaggeration, but there is a sound point at its core: People who are convinced that they have the truth will not inquire whether it really is the truth. Worse, they will tend to impose their 'truth' on us and prevent our inquiry into truth. Many of them will not hesitate to suppress and murder their opponents.
My first point, then, is that toleration is a good because truth is a good. We must tolerate a diversity of views, and the people who maintain them, because we lack the truth and must find it, and to do so we must search. But we cannot search if we are under threat from fanatics and the intolerant. Freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are important because truth is important.
This implies that we must tolerate many views and actions and people who are deeply offensive to us. The 'artist' Serrano of "Piss-Christ" notoriety is a good example. He has a right to express himself as he does, just as we have a right to protest against him. He has no right to taxpayer money, however, and any liberal who thinks that a refusal of government sponsorship amounts to censorship is an idiot pure and simple.
2. But how far does toleration extend? Ought one tolerate those who do not respect the principle of toleration? To me it is self-evident that one ought not. If toleration is truly a value, then one ought to demand it not only of oneself but of others. My toleration meets its limit in your intolerance. I cannot tolerate your intolerance, for if I do, I jeopardize the very principle of toleration, and with it the search for truth.
Radical Islam, in its fanaticism and murderous intolerance, has no claim on the West's tolerance. It is no breach of tolerance on our part to demand that they behave themselves. We must also demand of them that if they want to be tolerated, they must tolerate others, Jews for example. They must not be allowed to benefit from the West's tolerance in order to preach intolerance and hate. Just as they have right to their beliefs, we have a right to ours, and a right to enforce our beliefs about toleration on them if they would live in our midst.
3. Toleration is a value because truth is a value. A toleration worth wanting and having is therefore not to be confused with indifference towards truth, or relativism about truth. Leszek Kolakowski makes this point very well:
It is important to notice, however, that when tolerance is enjoined upon us nowadays, it is often in the sense of indifference: we are asked, in effect, to refrain from expressing — or indeed holding — any opinion, and sometimes even to condone every conceivable type of behaviour or opinion in others. This kind of tolerance is something entirely different, and demanding it is part of our hedonistic culture, in which nothing really matters to us; it is a philosophy of life without responsibility and without beliefs. It is encouraged by a variety of philosophies in fashion today, which teach us there is no such thing as truth in the traditional sense, and therefore that when we persist in our beliefs, even if we do so without aggression, we are ipso facto sinning against tolerance.
This is nonsense, and harmful nonsense. Contempt for truth harms our civilization no less than fanatical insistence on [what one takes to be] the truth. In addition, an indifferent majority clears the way for fanatics, of whom there will always be plenty around. Our civilization encourages the belief that everything should be just fun and games — as indeed it is in the infantile philosophies of the so-called 'New Age.' Their content is impossible to describe, for they mean anything one wants them to; that is what they are for. ("On Toleration" in Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, Penguin 1999, pp. 36-37.)
4. To sum up. A toleration worth wanting and having is valuable because truth is valuable. It is threatened in two ways. It is threatened both by those who think that have the truth when they don't and those who are indifferent to truth. What is interesting is that the postmodernist nincompoops who deny truth in the name of toleration are powerless to oppose the fanatics who will impose their 'truth' by force. If all is relative, then the fanatics have all the justification they need to impose their 'truth' on us: it is true for them that they possess the absolute 'truth.'
There is a sleazy singer who calls herself 'Madonna.' That moniker is offensive to many. But we in the West are tolerant, perhaps excessively so, and we tolerate the singer, her name, and her antics. Muslims need to understand the premium we place on toleration if they want to live among us.
A San Juan Capistrano councilman named his dog 'Muhammad' and mentioned the fact in public. Certain Muslim groups took offense and demanded an apology. The councilman should stand firm. One owes no apology to the hypersensitive and inappropriately sensitive. We must exercise our free speech rights if we want to keep them. Use 'em or lose 'em.
The notion that dogs are 'unclean' is a silly one. So if some Muslims are offended by some guy's naming his dog 'Muhammad,' their being offended is not something we should validate. Their being offended is their problem.
Am I saying that we should act in ways that we know are offensive to others? Of course not. We should be kind to our fellow mortals whenever possible. But sometimes principles are at stake and they must be defended. Truth and principle trump feelings. Free speech is one such principle. I exercised it when I wrote that the notion that dogs are 'unclean' is a silly one.
Some will be offended by that. I say their being offended is their problem. What I said is true. They are free to explain why dogs are 'unclean' and I wish them the best of luck. But equally, I am free to label them fools.
With some people being conciliatory is a mistake. They interpret your conciliation and willingness to compromise as weakness. These people need to be opposed vigorously. For the councilman to apologize would be foolish.
How to disentangle profundity from puffery in any obscure formulation? Clear thought stops short, a victim of its own probity; the other kind, vague and indecisive, extends into the distance and escapes by its suspect but unassailable mystery.
(131)
Excellent except perhaps for ‘victim,’ which betrays Cioran’s mannered negativism. Substitute ‘beneficiary’ and the thought’s expression approaches perfection.
Indolence saves us from prolixity and thereby from the shamelessness inherent in production. (133)
An exaggeration, but something for bloggers to consider.
To be is to be cornered. (93)
Striking, and certainly no worse than W. V. Quine’s “To be is to be the value of a variable.”
Nothing makes us modest, not even the sight of a corpse. (87)
Cioran hits the mark here: the plain truth is set before us without exaggeration in a concise and striking manner.
Conversation is fruitful only between minds given to consolidating their perplexities. (163)
Brilliant. Philosophy, as Plato remarks (Theaetetus St. 155) and Aristotle repeats (Metaphysics 982b10), originates in wonder or perplexity. Fruitful philosophical conversation, rare as it is and must be given the woeful state of humanity, is therefore a consolidation and appreciation of problems and aporiai, much more than an attempt to convince one’s interlocutor of something. Herein lies a key difference between philosophy and ideology. The ideologue has answers, or thinks he has. And so his conversation is either apologetics or polemics, but not dialog. The philosopher has questions and so with him dialog is possible.
Time, accomplice of exterminators, disposes of morality. Who, today, bears a grudge against Nebuchadnezzar? (178)
This is quite bad, and not become of its literary form, but because the thought is false. If enough time passes, people forget about past injustices. True. But how does it follow that morality is abrogated? Cioran is confusing two distinct propositions. One is that the passage of time disposes of moral memories, memories of acts just and unjust. The other is that the passage of time disposes of morality itself, rightness and wrongness themselves, so that unjust acts eventually become neither just not unjust. The fact that Cioran’s aphorism conflates these two propositions is enough to condemn it, quite apart from the fact that the second proposition is arguably false. A good aphorism cannot merely be clever; it must also express an insight. An insight, of course, is an insight only if it is true. Nor is an aphorism good if it merely betrays a mental quirk of its author. For then it would be of merely psychological or biographical interest.
There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both. (134)
A statement of Cioran’s nihilism. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, it is self-contradictory. It cannot be true both that nothing exists and that an inner smile, a bemused realization that nothing exists, exists. So what is he trying to tell us? If you say that he is not trying to tell us anything, then what is he doing? If you say that he is merely playing at being clever, then I say to hell with him: he stands condemned by the very probity that he himself invokes in the first aphorism quoted supra.
Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing. (144)
An even more pithy statement of Cioran’s nihilism. But if the consciousness of nothing is nothing, then there is no consciousness of nothing, which implies that the nihilist of Cioran’s type cannot be aware of himself as a nihilist. Thus Cioran’s thought undermines the very possibility of its own expression. That can’t be good.
Will you accuse me of applying logic to Cioran’s aphorism? But what exempts nihilists from logic? Note that his language is not imperative, interrogative, or optative, but declarative. He is purporting to state a fact, in a broad sense of ‘fact.’ He is saying: this is the way it is. But if there is a way things are, then it cannot be true that everything is nothing. The way things are is not nothing.
“It is of no importance to know who I am since some day I shall no longer be” – that is what each of us should answer those who bother about our identity and desire at any price to coop us up in a category or a definition. (144)
This presupposes that only the absolutely permanent is real and important. It is this (Platonic) assumption that drives Cioran’s nihilism: this world is nothing since it fails to satisfy the Platonic criterion of reality and importance. Now if Cioran were consistently sceptical, he would call this criterion into question, and with it, his nihilism. He would learn to embrace the finite as finite and cheerfully abandon his mannered negativism. If, on the other hand, he really believes in the Platonic criterion – as he must if he is to use it to affirm, by contrast, the nullity of the experienced world – then he ought to ask whence derives its validity. This might lead him away from nihilism to an affirmation of the ens realissimum.
X, who instead of looking at things directly has spent his life juggling with concepts and abusing abstract terms, now that he must envisage his own death, is in desperate straits. Fortunately for him, he flings himself, as is his custom, into abstractions, into commonplaces illustrated by jargon. A glamorous hocus-pocus, such is philosophy. But ultimately, everything is hocus-pocus, except for this very assertion that participates in an order of propositions one dares not question because they emanate from an unverifiable certitude, one somehow anterior to the brain’s career. (153)
A statement of Cioran’s scepticism. But his scepticism is half-hearted since he insulates his central claim from sceptical corrosion. To asseverate that his central claim issues from “an unverifiable certitude” is sheer dogmatism since there is no way that this certitude can become a self-certitude luminous to itself. Compare the Cartesian cogito. In the cogito situation, a self’s indubitability is revealed to itself, and thus grounds itself. But Cioran invokes something anterior to the mind, something which, precisely because of it anteriority, cannot be known by any mind. Why then should we not consider his central claim – according to which everything is a vain and empty posturing – to be itself a vain and empty posturing?
Indeed, is this not the way we must interpret it given Cioran’s two statements of nihilism cited above
? If everything is nothing, then surely there cannot be “an unverifiable certitude” anterior to the mind that is impervious to sceptical assault.
Again, one may protest that I am applying logic in that I am comparing different aphorisms with an eye towards evaluating their mutual consistency. It might be suggested that our man is imply not trying to be consistent. But then I say that he is an unserious literary scribbler with no claim on our attention. But the truth of the matter lies a bit deeper: he is trying have it both ways at once. He is trying to say something true but without satisfying the canons satisfaction of which is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of anything’s being true.
My interim judgement, then, is this. What we have before us is a form of cognitive malfunction brought about by hypertrophy of the sceptical faculty. Doubt is the engine of inquiry. Thus there is a healthy form of scepticism. But Cioran’s extreme scepticism is a disease of cognition rather than a means to it. The writing, though, is brilliant.
The quotations are from E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered (New York: Seaver Books, 1983), translated from the French by Richard Howard.
From the pen of E. M. Cioran:
Indolence saves us from prolixity and thereby from the shamelessness inherent in production.
The aphorism is from Drawn and Quartered.
Is all production vain and shameless? Perhaps not if one keeps one's productions to oneself. But writing books, articles and blog posts is not just production, but publishing, making public. Is publishing mere vanity and self-promotion?
In given cases it can be. And whether one of those cases is my case is not for me to decide. But surely it would be absurd to claim that all publishing by anyone is mere vanity and shameless self-promotion. Take the books of John Searle. He thinks he has solved the mind-body problem. He has done no such thing. Yet his books are enormously rich and stimulating despite some error and confusion. I am glad he has written his many books and made his contribution to our common ongoing philosophical quest. He has given me many hours of pleasure and elevated thought.
All living is self-asserting. But there is self-assertion and there is self-assertion. Personal assertion in the service of the impersonal truth is more than mere personal assertion. Thereby is vanity substantiated and shamelessness redeemed.
