Maverick Philosopher

How the World is Like Chess

A wise saying about chess, often attributed to Goethe, but apocryphal for all I know, goes like this. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

Something similar is true of the world. The world is is too real, too much with us, for us to detach ourselves from it easily; but it is too deficient in being to satisfy us. One cannot take it with utmost seriousness, and one cannot dismiss it as a mere game either. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

Marcel Duchamp and the Superiority of the Useless

Marcel Duchamp abandoned art for chess because of the latter's superior uselessness. Art objects, after all, have exchange value as commodities, and may make the artist some money. But with few exceptions chess lies entirely beyond the sphere of the utile. In this sense, the art of the 64 squares is the highest art. There is little danger that Caissa's acolytes will fill their bellies from her service. There is just no market for the artistry of chess games, not even those of the very highest quality. Here you can review some of Duchamp's games.

An Old Chestnut of a Chess Joke for the Holiday Season

A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why," they asked.  "Because", he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

Seneca and the Consolations of Chess and Philosophy

A correspondent reminds me of the following passage from Seneca's De Tranquillitate XIV, 6-7, tr. Basore:

Will you believe that Canus spent the ten intervening days before his execution in no anxiety of any sort? What the man said, what he did, how tranquil he was, passes all credence. He was playing chess when the centurion who was dragging off a whole company of victims to death ordered that he also be summoned. Having been called, he counted the pawns and said to his partner: "See that after my death you do not claim falsely that you won." Then nodding to the centurion, he said, "You will bear witness that I am one pawn ahead."

A little farther down, at XIV, 10, Seneca pays Canus the ultimate tribute:

Ecce in media tempestate tranquillitas, ecce animus aeternitate dignus, qui fatuum suum in argumentum veri vocat, qui in ultimo illo gradu positus exeuntem animam percontatur nec usque ad mortem tantum sed aliquid etiam ex ipsa morte discit. Nemo diutius philosophatus est.

Here is tranquillity in the very midst of the storm, here is a mind worthy of immortality — a spirit that summons its own fate to the proof of the truth, that, in the very act of taking that one last step, questions the departing soul, and learns, not merely up to the point of death, but seeks to learn something even from death itself. No one has ever played the philosopher longer.

The Tal and the Short of It

Why, with so many painful losses to my 'credit,' do I continue to submit my aging self to the rigors of tournament chess? Because the strenuous life has a property Bobby Fischer once ascribed to 1. P-K4: it is "best by test."

Chess: A Road to Health and Wealth?

H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess (Oxford UP, 1913), p. 164:

Hippocrates and Galen apparently found in chess a potent antidote to diarrhoea and erysipelas, and prescribed it with success, while Aristotle figures among the many hypothetical inventors of chess. Another story tells how Galen once met a friend whom he had not seen for some time, and learnt that he had been into the country to see a farm which he had purchased with the result of his gains at chess, whereupon the physician exclaimed with what sounds like a strong flavour of irony, 'What a fine thing chess is, and how profitable!' Pure fiction, the whole of it, of course.

Above the Urinal at the Chess Tournament

Urine check!

I didn't make that up. It was at some cheesy Knight's Inn or similar venue in Phoenix in the early-to-mid 'nineties, when Myron Lieberman presided in his inimitable manner over well-attended tournaments and Ed Yetman, bandanna around his neck and sidearm strapped to his hip, manned the book concession. Say what you want about the chess scene, it is chock full of colorful characters.

The Neuroanatomy of a Chess Player

'I Don't Mind Losing'

'I don't mind losing' illustrates the non-identity of sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. Anyone who understands English knows what the sentence in question means. Its meaning is fixed by the rules of the language system, English. But what the sentence means is what very few people mean when they produce a token of the sentence.

A gentleman came to our chess club but once. And this despite our showing him every hospitality. For he lost every game. He had played seriously as a youth but hadn't recently. I explained to him that we are a bunch of patzers and that soon enough he would be winning games. He replied, "I don't mind losing." But he never came back despite a follow-up call or two.

In the mouths of most if not all 'I don't mind losing' means: I mind losing and I mind admitting that I mind losing, which is why I pretend not to mind losing.

ADDENDUM: If you read the above carefully, you will have noticed that I enclosed the sentence under comment with single quotation marks on two occasions but double quotation marks in the middle paragraph. Why? In the middle paragraph I was quoting an actual person, whereas on the two other occasions I was not quoting, strictly speaking, but mentioning a sentence. You may want to take a gander at my post  Use and Mention. It's fun for the whole family. And from there you can get to my post On Hairsplitting.

Chess Enthymeme

In life there are no takebacks. "Chess is life." (R. Fischer) Ergo, etc.

Of Blogging and Blitz

Blitz chess is supposed to hurt one's slow game, but it is not altogether clear: blitz teaches one to size up a situation very quickly indeed, a skill needed when one drifts into Zeitnot in a slow game. Blogging may hurt one's slow writing, but again it is not entirely clear: blogging teaches one to get to the point, with pith and precision.