Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Suffering Pleasure

We suffer pain, but we also suffer pleasure. Fundamentally, to suffer is to be passive, to be acted upon, to be at the mercy of what is not oneself. Excessive pleasure and pain should both be avoided as one avoids heteronomy, the heteronomy of the not-self. Compare Plato, Timaeus 86c:

. . . excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or hear anything rightly, but he is mad and is at the same time utterly incapable of any participation in reason.

It is useful to practice distancing oneself from one’s sensations in order to study them objectively. To sensations good and bad, say: “You are only a sensation, an external occurrence whose effect on me, for good or ill, is partly due to my cooperation and is therefore partly under my control.” The worldling seeks pleasure (‘excitement,’ ‘thrills’) and shuns pain. The sage accepts both as byproducts of worthwhile activities. Tha mastery of desire and aversion is not easy, and it is a good bet that one won't advance far in it; but any advance is better than none.

Plato's Great Inversion

Our long-time friend Horace Jeffery Hodges kindly linked to and riffed upon my recent quotage of a bit of whimsicality from the second volume of  J. N. Findlay's Gifford lectures.  So here's another Findlay quotation for Jeff's delectation, this time from Plato and Platonism: An Introduction (Times Books, 1978):

It is not here, we may note, our task to defend Plato's Great Inversion, the erection of instances into ontological appendages of Ideas rather than the other way round.  It is only our task to show what this inversion involves, and that it does dispose of many powerful arguments.  For despite much talk of the concretely real and of what we can hold in our hands, it is plain that nothing so much eludes us or evades us as the vanishing instances which surround us or which go on in us. Even our friends leave nothing in our hands or our minds,  but the characteristic patterns on which we can, alas, only ponder lovingly when as instances they are dead, and we ourselves and our whole life of care and achievement leave nothing behind but the general memory of what we did and were. (23)

My esteemed teacher's poetic prose may have got the better of him in that last sentence redolent as it is of an old man's nostalgia.  For it is not only Findlay's characteristic patterns once so amply instantiated here below that I now ponder lovingly, but the actual words he wrote, many of them printed, some of them hand-written, that strikingly singular voluminous flow of Baroque articulation so beautifully expressive of a wealth of thoughts. In his books, I have the man still, and presumably at his best, even if he himself, long dead as an instance, has made the transcensive move from the Cave's chiaroscuro to the limpid light wherein he now, something of a Platonic Form himself, beholds the forma formarum, the Form of all Forms.

You will be forgiven if you think my poetic prose has gotten the better of me.

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato's Phaedo 83

To understand Simone Weil, one must understand her beloved master, Plato. So let's interpret a passage from the Phaedo dialogue, and then compare it to some statements of Weil.

At Stephanus 83a we read, "...the perceptions of the eye, and the ear, and the the senses are full of deceit." (tr. F. J. Church) The point is not that the senses are sometimes nonveridical, but that they tie us to a world that is not ultimately real, one that distracts us from the one that is. From the context it is clear that the point is not epistemological but axiological and ontological. It is not that the senses are unreliable, whether episodically or globally, in respect of the information they provide us about an external world of spatio-temporal particulars. They are reliable enough in providing us such information. The point is rather that the senses deceive us into conferring high value on what is of low value, and into taking as ultimately real what is derivatively real.

It would be a mistake, therefore, to read the passage as an anticipation of the modern problematic of the external world from Descartes to Kant to G. E. Moore and beyond. The problem is not how we can come to have knowledge of an external world given that what is immediately given are only our ideas and representations, ideas and representations the contents of which would be the same whether or not there is an external world.  The point is much deeper.  The Platonic inquiry calls into question, not human knowledge of a physical world taken to be ultimately real, but the reality and importance of the physical world itself as correlate of the outer senses.  

On the same page of the dialogue, we read that ". . . nothing which is subject to change has any truth." 'Truth' is here used ontically as equivalent to 'being' or 'real existence.' The mutable is not ultimately 'true' or ultimately real. Why not? Because it is subject to change.  The idea is not that the mutable is a mere illusion, but that it lacks plenary reality, and that lacking full reality it lacks plenary value.  I should add that what lacks plenary reality and value cannot play for us a soteriological role.  

There are thus four  ancient themes here, each of which is contested by the moderns qua moderns and the contemporaries qua contemporaries.  There is the idea that impermanence argues relative unreality.  There is the levels-of-reality theme which I discussed in connection with John Anderson. There is the theme of the intertwinement of reality and value which finds expression much later in the history of thought in the scholastic slogan ens et bonum convertuntur (being and good are convertible) which I take to mean that what is is good just in virtue of its being and in the measure that it possesses being, and that what is good is good in virtue of its being  and in the measure that it possesses being.  Thus things in themselves are not axiologically neutral such that their value predicates are subjectively imposed; it is rather the case that things in themselves in their mind-independent reality are good because they are and in the measure that they are.  Finally, there is the theme that our salvation is bound up with our knowledge of what is ultimate real and thus ultimately good.  This knowledge has ultimate truth and it is this truth that sets us free.

One who can sympathize with these four themes has Platonic intuitions. I suggest that any arguments one develops in support of these four theses will be no more than articulations of these deep intuitions or spiritual insights which one either has or does not have, depending, to allude to Fichte's famous saying, on what kind of person one is. (. . .was für eine Philosophie man wähle, hängt ... davon ab, was man für ein Mensch ist.)"What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on the sort of human being one is."  (Thus a superficial fellow like Rudolf Carnap or David Stove is, predictably, a miserable positivist.)

A little farther down, around the middle of St. 83, we read, ". . . when the soul of any man feels vehement pleasure or pain, she is forced at the same time to think that the object, whatever it be, of these sensations is the most distinct and the truest, when it is not." Plato's point is not that the senses deceive us about what is really there in the sense world, but that the senses deceive us into thinking that the sense world is a world of true being or ultimate reality. Compare the allegory of the cave in the Republic.

To find reality the soul must "gather herself together" and "stand aloof from the senses" using them "only when she must . . . ." Pleasure and pain, desire and fear (aversion) must be avoided since they pin the soul to the body, and by pinning it to the body, pin it to the changeful world of sense. Inner purification and meditation, by which the soul "gathers herself together," are necessary for the philosopher's approach to the Real. The true philosopher aims at a separation of the soul from the body, and so must not fear death. We fear death because we love the body and its pleasures.

We now turn to some statements by Weil. The following three paragraphs stand under the heading Profession of Faithwhich begins her Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations:

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

The first statement conveys the Platonic conviction that ultimate reality is beyond the world of sense. But Weil goes beyond Plato and deeper into mysticism by holding that the reality beyond the sense world is inaccessible to human faculties. At St. 84, Plato has Socrates say that (intuitive) reason is the faculty whereby we contemplate what is "true and divine and real."

The second statement conveys the Platonic thought that the soul's longing can never satisfied by any sense object.

The third statement suggests a way of arguing that the sense world cannot be ultimate: if we take it to be such we land among insoluble aporiai. 

The Consolations of Philosophy

I feel a little guilty at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day.  It is fascinating to watch my beloved country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  And if the philosopher is an old Platonist who has nearly had his fill of the Cave and its chiaroscuro, he is ever looking beyond this life, and while in no rush to bid it a bittersweet adieu, is not affrighted at the coming transition either.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.  The old Platonist owl lives by the hope  that the dusk of death will lead to the Light, a light unmixed with darkness.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however; it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey -- no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

On the other hand, it ain't over until it's over, and as citizens we must fight on, lest our spectatorship of all time and existence suffer a premature earthly termination.  The joys if not the  consolations of philosophy are possible only in certain political conditions.  We are not made of the stern stuff of Boethius, though we are inspired by his example.

Existence and Power: Commentary on Plato's Sophist 247e

At Sophist 247e, Plato puts the following into the mouth of the Eleatic Stranger:

I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected, in however small a degree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once.  I am proposing  as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power. (Cornford tr.)

The gist of the passage is that what makes a thing real or existent is its (active) power to affect other things or its (passive) power to be affected by them.  In sum,

D. For any x, x exists =_df x is causally active or passive.

Thus everything causally active/passive exists, and only the causally active/passive exists.  The definition rules out of existence all 'causally inert' items such as propositions as Frege construes them, namely, as the senses of context-free indicative sentences. And of course it rules out sets of Fregean propositions.  But what about the mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) set of the books on my desks?  Each of the books is existent or real by (D) and so is the object resulting from the bundling of the books together; but the set of these books is arguably abstract and thus causally inert.  So if (D) is true,  we cannot admit mathematical sets into our ontology.  For such items do not enter into causal relations.  Fregean propositions and mathematical sets are therefore putative counterexamples to (D).  If these counterexamples are genuine then (D) fails extensionally: the extension of the existent is wider than the extension of the causally active/passive.

But what interests me at the moment is not the extensional correctness of (D) but  a deeper question.  Even if we assume that (D) is extensionally correct, i.e., that all and only  existents are causally active/passive, does (D) tell us what it is for an item to exist?  When we say of a thing that it exists, what are we saying about it?  That it is causally active/passive?  My answer is in the negative -- even if we assume that all and only existents are causally active/passive.

My reason is quite simple.  For an item to be capable of acting or being acted upon it must 'be there' or exist!  'Before' it can be a doer or a done-to it must exist. (The 'before' is to be taken logically not temporally.) The nonexistent cannot act or be acted upon.  There is no danger that winged horses will collide with airplanes.  The reason is not that winged horses are abstract or causally inert objects; the reason is that they do not exist.  Winged horses, if there were any, would belong to the category of the causally active/passive.  But they don't exist -- which is the reason why they cannot act or be acted upon.  They are not abstract items but nonexistent concrete items.  Existence, therefore, is a necessary condition of an item's being a causal agent or patient.  It follows that existence cannot be explicated in terms of power as per the Eleatic Stranger's suggestion.  Existence is too fundamental to be explicated in terms of power -- or anything else.

If you are having trouble seeing the point consider the winged horse Pegasus and his singleton {Pegasus}.  Both of these items are nonexistent.  One is concrete (causally active/passive) while the other is abstract.  But neither can enter into causal relations.  To say that Pegasus is concrete is to say that Pegasus, were he to exist, would belong among the causally active/passive.  What prevents him from being such is his nonexistence.  His existence, therefore, cannot be explicated in terms of causal activity/passivity.

There is a tendency to conflate two different questions about existence.  One question about existence concerns what exists.  Answers to this question can be supplied in the form of definitions like (D) above.  But there is a  deeper question about existence, namely, the question as  what it is for an existing thing to exist.  What I have just argued is that this second question cannot be answered with any definition like (D).  For even if you find a definition that is extensionally correct and immune to counterexamples, you will at the very most have specified the necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing's  being among existing things.   You will have not thereby have put your finger on what it is for an existing item to exist. 

Suppose you say that, 

For any x, x exists  =_df x has properties. 

This proposal has an excellent chance of being extensionally correct: necessarily, everything that exists has properties, and everything that has properties exists.  But the proposal does not get at the existence of an existing thing precisely because it presupposes the existence of existing things.  This is because all such definitions are really circular inasmuch as they have the form:

For any x, x exists =_df x is ____ and x exists.

Existence itself eludes definitional grasp.  Even if the existent can be defined, the Existence of the existent cannot be defined.  For more on this fascinating topic, see my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002), pp. 2-8.