Maverick Philosopher

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson magnificently and truly. And this from a man who lived in New England where there is no sky to speak of. What would he have written had he been able to bathe his thoughts in the lambent light of the desert Southwest?

Neither Angel Nor Beast

Blaise Pascal, Pensées #329:

Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.

The first half of the thought is unexceptionable: man is indeed neither angel nor beast, but, amphibious as he is between matter and spirit, a hybrid and a riddle to himself.

The second half of Pascal's thought, however, is unfair to the beasts. No beast can act the beast the way a man can. No beast is bestial in the way a man can be bestial. The difference is that while the beast acts according to his nature, man freely degrades himself contrary to his nature. Having done so, he allows his freely indulged passions to suborn his intellect: he constructs elaborate rationalizations of his self-degradation.

It is not our animality that corrupts us but our free misuse of our animality, a misuse that derives from our spirtuality.

The Value of Modesty

Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, tr. Paul Auster, p. 37:

What good is modesty? -- It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.

 

Where a Man Lives

Yet again from Joseph Joubert:

Properly speaking, man inhabits only his head and his heart. All other places are vainly before his eyes, at his sides, and under his feet: he himself is not there at all. (Notebooks, p. 126)

Salvation Through Art? Comments on Some Aphorisms of Wallace Stevens

Herewith, comments on some aphorisms of Wallace Stevens from Adagia, aphorisms that sum up much of the aesthetic attitude  I am concerned to oppose. (To be precise: I am out to oppose it in its imperialistic ambitions; I have nothing against art properly chastened and subordinated to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia.) I have bolded Wallace's lines.

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.

If thought is an infection, then poetry is mental meltdown.

After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

What a paltry redemption! It would be better to say that there is no redemption than to say something as silly as this. Learn to live with the death of God, my friend! Don't insert a sorry substitute into the gap. Don't try to make a religion of what is only a dabbling in subjective impressions. Compare John Gardner, "Fiction is the only religion I have . . . ." (On Writers and Writing, p. xii.)

Some Aphorisms of Otto Weininger

Otto Weininger, Ueber die Letzten Dinge (Wien und Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumueller Verlag, Neunte Auflage, 1930), pp. 65-72. Translations by BV.

Grundzug alles Menschlichen: Suchen nach Realitaet. Wo die Realitaet gesucht and gefunden wird, das begruendet alle Unterschiede zwischen den Menschen.

The quest for reality is a fundamental characteristic of human beings. Where reality is sought and found, however, explains all differences among them.

Der gute Aphoristiker muss hassen koennen.

The good aphorist must be able to hate.

Der Transzendentalismus ist identisch mit dem Gedanken, dass es nur eine Seele gibt, und dass die Individuation Schein ist. Hier widerspricht der Monadologische Charakter der kanstischen Ethik schnurgerade der "Kritik der reinen Vernunft."

Transcendentalism is identical with the thought that there is only one soul, and that a plurality of souls is an illusion. Here the monadological character of Kant's ethics straightaway contradicts the Critique of Pure Reason.

A fruitful thought, though roughly expressed. But what do you want for an aphorism? The idea is that there is a tension between the Critique of Practical Reason, which presupposes the thinkability, if not the knowability, of a plurality of metaphysically (and thus transcendently) real noumenal selves capable of acting freely, and the Critique of Pure Reason in which the subject of experience and phenomenal knowledge is a mere transcendental (not transcendent) subject, a consciousness in general (Bewusstsein ueberhaupt to use a phrase later made famous by neo-Kantians) that is neither mine nor yours but common to us all. It is a crude approximation, however, to refer to this transcendental subject as a soul, as Weininger does. This aphorism would have made a good motto for my doctoral dissertation, which deals with similar problems.

Style . . .

. . . is the physiognomy of the mind. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Do You Seek Power and Position?

Then consider what Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has to say in his Essays (XI. Of Great Place):

Men in great place are thrice servants -- servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to indignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing: Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere. ["Since you are not what you were, there is no reason why you should wish to live."]

You Can't Kill Her

Philosophy always buries its undertakers. (Etienne Gilson)  Who reads Morris Lazerowitz now?

The Diplomat

Not an original aphorism, but a good one nonetheless: A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.

This illustrates the principle that in human affairs it is less what one says than how one says it that matters. Perverse as people are, they ignore or downplay what is primary, the message, to fixate on the 'packaging.'

Fewtril #202

From The Joy of Curmudgeonry:

The sight of people competing to be victims seems to be odd and against the order of things until one considers that they are in fact competing to be victors.

This is a fine example of the art of the aphorism. It is a happy blend of terseness and truth.

A Man and a Woman Look into a Mirror

I just heard it on the Dennis Prager show.  "A man looks in the mirror and sees Hercules no matter how he looks.  A woman looks in the mirror and sees a wreck no matter how she looks."  Those aren't Prager's exact words but that's the gist of it.  The first sentence, at least, is verbatim.  Exactly right. Yet another aperçu from the wise and fertile mind of the best of the conservative talk jocks.

In Praise of the Useless

Morris R. Cohen, A Preface to Logic (Dover, 1977, originally published in 1944), p. 186, emphasis added:

It would certainly be absurd to suppose that the appreciation of art should justify itself by practical applications. If the vision of beauty is its own excuse for being, why should not the vision of truth be so regarded? Indeed is it not true that all useful things acquire their value because they minister to things which are not useful, but are ends in themselves? Utility is not the end of life but a means to good living, of which the exercise of our diverse energies is the substance.

Or as I like to say, the worldly hustle is for the sake of contemplative repose, it being well understood that such repose can be quite active, an "exercise of our diverse energies," but for non-utilitarian ends.

What Blanshard Might Have Said to Derrida

A correspondent reminds me that today is Brand Blanshard's birthday.  Born on 27 August 1892, he died on 19 November 1987.  Here is a line from Blanshard's On Philosophical Style, Indiana University Press, 1967, pp. 52-53:

Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.

The entire essay is available online here.

My Favorite Pascal Quotation

Blaise Pascal, Pensees #98 (Krailsheimer tr., p. 55):

How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping.

Please forgive the following reformulation. Point out to a man that he is crippled, and he won't contradict you, though he might take umbrage at your churlishness. But point out to a man that his thinking is crippled and he is sure to repy, "No! It is your thinking that is crippled."

The Worst Thing About Poverty

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 38, written in 1940:

155. The worst of poverty — today at any rate — the most galling and the most difficult thing to bear, is that it makes it almost impossible to be alone. Neither at work, nor at rest, neither abroad nor at home, neither waking nor sleeping, neither in health, nor — what a torture — in sickness.

Money cannot buy happiness but in many circumstances it can buy the absence of misery.  Due diligence in its acquisition and preservation is therefore well recommended.  The purpose of money is not to enable indulgence but to make  possible a life worth living.  Otium liberale in poverty is a hard row to hoe; a modicum of the lean green helps immeasurably. Things being as they are, a life worth living for many of us is more a matter of freedom from than freedom for.  Money buys freedom from all sorts of negatives.  Money allows one to avoid places destroyed by the criminal element and their liberal enablers, to take but one example.  And chiming in with Haecker's main point, money buys freedom from oppressive others so that one can enjoy happy solitude, the sole beatitude. (O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo!)

Nietzsche on Bentham, Mill, & Co.

"If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does." (Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows," #12.)

The art of the aphorism at its best.

In all fairness to the English I should point out that it was an Englishman who provided what is perhaps the best refutation of hedonism we have, namely, F. H. Bradley in his "Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake"  in Ethical Studies.

Life Without Questioning

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book One, Section Two (tr. Kaufmann):

. . . to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors [discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.19] and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing -- this is what I feel to be contemptible . . .

My sentiments exactly.

Marriage a Long Conversation?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All-Too-Human (tr. W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 59):

Marriage as a long conversation. When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but the most time during the association belongs to conversation.

Fairly good advice, but how would old bachelor Fritz know about this, he who in another place recommends taking a whip along on a date?  (To be accurate, Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, Portable Nietzsche, p. 179, puts in the mouth of an old woman the saying, "You are going to women? Do not forget the whip! Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiß die Peitsche nicht!")

In my experience, marriage is not a long conversation so much as it is a long and deep and wordless understanding.

Wer schreibt, der bleibt

"He who writes, remains."

Write on!

An Excuse for Escribitionism

Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals, p. 53:

Anyone, providing that he can be amusing, has the right to talk of himself.

 

Thomas Mann on Politics

From Thomas Mann's journal entry of August 5, 1934:

A cynical egotism, a selfish limitation of concern to one's personal welfare and one's reasonable survival in the face of the headstrong and voluptuous madness of 'history' is amply justified. One is a fool to take politics seriously, to care about it, to sacrifice one's moral and intellectual strength to it. All one can do is survive, and preserve one's personal freedom and dignity.

Onesided, but forgiveably so.  Pertinent to the present.

For the New Year: Looking Away Shall Be My Only Negation

One of the elements in my personal liturgy is a reading of the following passage every January 1st. I must have begun the practice in the mid-70s. My copy of The Gay Science was purchased in Boston and is dated 15 September 1974. (You mean to tell me that when you buy books, you do not note where you bought them, and when, and in whose presence?)

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Four, #276, tr. Kaufmann:

For the new year. -- I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year -- what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all and all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

(Amor fati: love of fate.)

Style and Thought

I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his:

The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44)

This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman can get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:

Style is the physiognomy of the mind.

Advice for Contemporary French Philosophers

Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, p. 26:

When a thought gives birth to obscurity, it must be rejected, renounced, abandoned.

Would that contemporary French scribblers would heed this rule penned by a Frenchman in 1796. But they may not be capable of heeding it since

Clarity of mind is not given in all centuries. (28)

An Ambiguous Translation from Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical. (Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, tr. W. S. Di Piero, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69)

Do you see how the translation imports an ambiguity that is not present in the Italian original? 'Poor philosopher and wise man' could mean either (poor philosopher) and wise man or poor philosopher and poor wise man.  There is no such ambiguity in the original since poco qualifies both filosofo and savio.

I will be told that the aphorism as a whole makes clear the intended meaning.  Indeed, it does, but I have just wasted time on disambiguation.  Why not write it right the first time so that the reader needn't puzzle over the meaning?  It is relevant to point out that a philosopher is not the same as a wise man. A philosopher is a lover, not a possessor, of wisdom. 

"You, sir, are a pedant."  And proud of it.  We could use more scrupulosity in all areas of life.

Nascimur uno modo, multis morimur

We are born in  one way, we die in many ways.

Commentary here at AudioLatinProverbs.com.  (A tip of the hat to Seldom Seen Slim)

Karl Kraus on the Art of the Aphorism

Beim Wort Genommen, p. 132:

Einen Aphorismus zu schreiben, wenn man es kann, ist oft schwer. Viel leichter ist es, einen Aphorismus zu schreiben, wenn mann es nicht kann.

It is often difficult to write an aphorism, even for those with the ability. It is much easier when one lacks the ability. (tr. BV)

Karl Kraus on the Two Kinds of Writers

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Beim Wort Genommen (Muenchen: Koesel Verlag, 1955), p. 111:

Es gibt zwei Arten von Schriftstellern. Solche, die es sind, und solche die es nicht sind. Bei den ersten gehören Inhalt und Form zusammen wie Seele und Leib, bei den zweiten passen Inhalt und Form zusammen wie Leib und Kleid.

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, content and form fit together like body and clothing. (tr. BV)

Karl Kraus on Blogging

Karl Kraus, Beim Wort Genommen, p. 124:

Warum schreibt mancher? Weil er nicht genug Charakter hat, nicht zu schreiben.

Why do many write? Because they don't have enough character not to write. (tr. BV)

Having It Both Ways

Karl Kraus, Beim Wort Genommen, p. 194:

Wenn einer sich wie ein Vieh benommen hat, sagt er: Man ist doch nur ein Mensch! Wenn er aber wie ein Vieh behandelt wird, sagt er: Man ist doch auch ein Mensch!

A person who has behaved in a beastly manner excuses himself by saying, "I am only human!" But when he is treated in a beastly manner, he protests, "I too am a human being!" (trans. BV)

In Sartrean terms, we invoke either our facticity or our transcendence depending on which serves us better at the moment. Well, our nature is metaphysically dual; we may as well get some use out of that fact.

Amiel on Duty

"Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world while at the same time detaching us from it." (See here.)

This is a penetrating observation, and a nearly perfect specimen of the aphorist's art. It is terse, true, but not trite. The tip of an iceberg of thought, it invites exfoliation.

If the world were literally a dream, there would be no need to act in it or take it seriously. One could treat it as one who dreams lucidly can treat a dream: one lies back and enjoys the show in the knowledge that it is only a dream. But to the extent that I feel duty-bound to do this or refrain from that, I take the world to be real, to be more than maya or illusion. Feeling duty-bound, I realize the world.

And to the extent that I feel duty-bound to do something, to make real what merely ought to be, I am referred to this positive world as to the locus of realization.

But just how real is the world of our ordinary waking experience? Is it the ne plus ultra of reality? Its manifest deficiency gives the lie to this supposition, which is why great philosophers from Plato to Bradley have denied ultimate reality to the sense world. Things are not the way they ought to be, and things are the way they ought not be, and everyone with moral sense feels this to be true. The Real falls short of the Ideal, and, falling short demonstrates its lack of plenary reality. So while the perception of duty realizes the world, it also and by the same stroke de-realizes it by measuring it against a standard from elsewhere.

The sense of duty detaches us from the world of what is by referring us to what ought to be. What ought to be, however, in many cases is not; hence we are referred back to the world of what is as the scene wherein alone ideals can be realized.

It is a curious dialectic. The Real falls short of the Ideal and is what is is in virtue of this falling short. The Ideal, however, is not but only ought to be. It lacks reality just as the Real lacks ideality. Each is what it is by not being what it is not. And we moral agents are caught in this interplay. We are citizens of two worlds and must play the ambassador between them.

An Aphorism of Giacomo Leopardi and a Comment

Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837) was just a name to me until Michael Gilleland inspired me to read some of his work. Here is an aphorism from Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, Bilingual Edition, trans. W. S. Di Piero (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 105:

Men are shamed by the insults they receive, not by those they inflict. So the only way to shame people who insult us is to pay them back in kind.

The only way? This ignores a second way, namely, by turning the other cheek. In some circumstances, this is the most effective way to shame the aggressor.  But there is a second problem with Leopardi’s aphorism. If you insult me, and I insult you back, you are more likely to feel justified in having insulted me in the first place rather than to feel shamed. In addition, you may feel that a further insult is called for to answer mine. Being perverse, human beings rarely take repayment in kind as settling the matter. If Hamas orchestrates a murderous attack on Israeli noncombatants, and the IDF responds with a counterstrike against Hamas combatants, the latter never consider that the score has been settled. Hamas will not say, "We attacked you, and you responded in kind, so now we are even."