Category Archives: Philosophy
A Vignette on Sense-Data
To convince someone that what he really sees is sense-data, it won’t do to ply him with arguments while he is doubtful about what he sees. If he questions his own eyes, he will be in no receptive state for your gospel—your good news about a medium of unvarnished news. You can insist; he will blink and rub his eyes. He takes himself to be in a poor position to see something. You do not aid him by insisting that he is a perfect position to see something poor. He wants to move closer, to turn on a light, to visit an optometrist. You want him to listen to argument. To convince him you need him convicted by his sight. He needs to take himself to be in optimal conditions for seeing. He should stare and not blink; rub his head and not his eyes. He should not doubt his eyes; he should doubt sans phrase. He should not feel compelled to move closer, to turn on a light or to visit an optometrist. He should listen to your argument while staring fixedly at whatever he takes himself to see. Sense-data only show themselves to doubt sans phrase. Seeing them requires vision mixed with argument. They hide themselves from someone who simply doubts his eyes.
Unbelieving Believers: The Intended Audience of Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Keeping his intended audience in mind is perhaps the most difficult thing to do when reading Johannes Climacus’ Postscript. He writes, neither to those who deliberately reject Christianity nor to genuinely faithful Christians. He is not writing to those who are caught in the throes of becoming a Christian. Each of these audiences can of course find much in Postscript, but it is not written to them. And, far too often, Postscript is criticized as if it had been written to these audiences. (As a result, the book is criticized as if it were apologetics (God forbid!) or as if it were evangelistic).
Now I realize this may seem a strange claim, especially in the case of the last group, those in the throes of becoming a Christian. “After all,” an objector might say, “Climacus’ controlling question is: ‘How do I become a Christian?’ So isn’t he writing to that group?”
No. Climacus’ interest in his controlling question is retrospective, not prospective. He asks the question, and answers it, not as an exercise in evangelism, not as a tractarian, but for the sake of his intended audience, those who believe that they are believers, but who fail to believe. His interest in his question is retrospective because, given the confusions of his intended audience, they will think of themselves as on the far end, as it were, of the question, not on its near end. They need to realize that the way in which they believe they became believers is not a way of becoming believers. I will call the intended audience the unbelieving believers.*
This intended audience is not wholly homogenous. Some of the unbelieving believers account for their becoming Christians by believing it as a historical truth; some account for their becoming Christians by believing it as a speculative truth. But both sub-groups have treated becoming a Christian as coming to be objectively convinced of the truth of Christianity. To the extent that they have been worried about their subjective relationship to Christianity, their appropriation of it, they have taken it to be precipitated from objective conviction. But appropriation does not precipitate from objective conviction. Even worse, objective conviction makes appropriation even more difficult than it already is. Objective conviction requires the inquirer to discipline out of her inquiry all questions of subjectivity, of how she is related to the object. That very disciplining out tends to attenuate or destroy subjectivity.—This is one reason why the unbelieving believer who worries about appropriation expects appropriation to precipitate from objective conviction–the conditions of acquiring objective conviction are hostile to appropriation, so if it is to happen, it will look to those who pursue objective conviction but worry about appropriation like something that really can happen only once objective conviction occurs.
In showing what is really involved in becoming a Christian Climacus aims to shock his audience into recognizing that they are unbelieving believers. Their account of how they became Christians, once they are clear about it and about the way one does actually become a Christian, reveals that they are not Christians. They may be objectively convinced of something–it is unclear it really counts as Christianity–but they are not really believers, appropriators of Christianity.
That unbelieving believers are the intended audience is part of the story why Climacus is not much concerned about answering the objective question about the truth of Christianity. (It is not the full story, but I am unsure I can tell the full story.) His intended audience takes that question as settled. They expect settling it to have settled the question of their faith too. Climacus aims at unsettlement. He will begin with an invitation: “Tell me, and tell yourself, how you became a Christian…”
*NB I use this phrase to suggest the simultaneous similarity and dissimilarity between Climacus’ intended audience and the father of the son possessed by a spirit (in Mark 9; cf. especially 9:24).
Climacus on The Reason and The Paradox
I’ve been puzzling over Johannes Climacus’ handling of “the Reason” and “the Paradox”. Part of what is puzzling is what Climacus means by the Reason. Clearly, he is echoing Kant in various ways, particularly the famous opening lines of CPR:
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
One feature of those famous lines that must have attracted Climacus is that they concern human reason. What Climacus discusses in Philosophical Fragments as the Reason is human reason. For Climacus, human reason is created reason, not uncreated reason. That is, that human faculty is itself creaturely in the way that all human faculties, indeed humans themselves, are. Although the point can be muted by the way in which the Teacher is contrasted with Socrates, and the way in which the Teacherly Moment is contrasted with the Socratic moment, Climacus believes that, from the point of view of Christianity, the notion of human reason as divine, and the (related) notion of human immortality, are pagan. Immortality is not something given in human nature as such; it is a loving gift of God, made possible by Christ (the Teacher). Human reason is given in human nature as such, but is not divine, is not of itself immortal.
The Paradox, we must keep in mind, is the Teacher himself: he, the God-Man, is the content of his Teaching. And the Teacher provides the condition for the content of his Teaching: Faith. (The way is prepared for Faith and for the Paradox by our discovering our own error, that is, Sin; and, having discovered it, having taken leave of it, that is, Repented.) But among those things for which we must repent is the arrogance of the Reason, of its complacent assurance that it is all-in-all, that it is divine, immortal. We have to come to see it as limited; its powers can be transcended. –If the Reason views itself correctly, it will see that in fact it asks questions which outstrip its own competence–Climacus will say that the Reason wills its own downfall, that the Paradox is its passion. The Reason will be able to set itself aside, to humble itself before the Paradox. If that happens, then the Reason and the Paradox relate happily to one another in Faith. If the Reason does not view itself correctly, if its sees itself as unlimited, as all-in-all, then the Paradox will be an Offense to the Reason, and the Reason’s relationship to the Paradox will be unhappy. (For Climacus, the Paradox offers the Reason only one of these two relationships–Faith or Offense, tertium non datur. The Reason cannot be indifferent to the Paradox.)
I guess that most of us, and most of Climacus’ readers, have a tendency to fall into a picture of the Reason as divine, as immortal. The philosopher-in-us-all is decidedly pagan. And that makes the relationship between the Reason and the Paradox seem fated for unhappiness, as if it were a collision of the divine with the divine, the immortal with the immortal. Understood that way, it is hard to see why the Reason should set itself aside so as to make room for the Paradox in Faith. Indeed, it is hard to see why the Reason should tolerate faith at all. But if we think of the Reason as creaturely, we can more easily understand that it might need itself to repent, so to speak, that it might be such as not to be all-in-all, that it could set itself aside so as to take its place alongside the Paradox in Faith. Faith then could be seen as that which allows creaturely reason to cast off the burdensomeness of unignorable but unanswerable questions. Not because the Paradox is the answer to those questions, exactly, but because the Paradox reveals that the point of the questions is not to find answers, but rather to allow the Reason to discover what it is (and to keep discovering it): human reason, creaturely reason–call it the Reason, Ltd. In making room for the Paradox, it casts off the burdensomeness of its questions, and accepts a new burden, a new yoke–but this yoke is easy, and this burden is light.
Wittgenstein on Doing Philosophy: Stop or Go?
Yesterday, I had a useful conversation with my friend and former student, Andy Bass. He described how strongly Wittgenstein’s critical remarks about philosophy struck him and how much they worried him. Given what Wittgenstein says, why persist in philosophy? Why not find something else to do?
It seems to me that Wittgenstein’s critical remarks generally should be thought of in this way: (1) Much of what he says is about Philosophy-as-Other, i.e., philosophy not as he does it but as it is all-too-often done. (2) Wittgenstein deliberately employs a deflationary rhetoric about the way he does philosophy.
(1) When Wittgenstein is talking about Philosophy-as-Other, he wants to highlight especially the false enchantments of traditional philosophy–highlighting such is important, as Auden notes, because it is a mark of a false enchantment that it “can all too easily last a lifetime”. Austin provides a nice way of characterizing this false enchantment–the self-image of the philosopher as “a specialist in the sui generis”.
(2) Wittgenstein’s deflationary rhetoric about he way he does philosophy is aimed primarily at himself, I believe, at his vanity and his tendency to high hat. Wittgenstein’s way of being in philosophy, deeply personal, ascetic, purified, made it easy for him to treat his way of doing philosophy as something special, too special. He needed to constantly warn himself against that. But the rhetoric is aimed secondarily at others. Wittgenstein did not want his way of doing philosophy to falsely enchant. He knew that it could enchant, and he wanted it to enchant truly, where the mark of true enchantment, as Auden notes, is that it “fades in time.” Wittgenstein’s deflationary rhetoric is a warning to others against false enchantment, and a warning against the future fading of its true enchantment. He knew that eventually the enchantment would go and that we would need then to “walk alone in faith”, as Auden puts it–walking alone in faith without either denying the promise of Wittgenstein’s way of doing philosophy, treating its promises as deceptions, or trying to recover its promise by distorting it into something else, something it is not (a form of naturalism, a closeted metaphysics). No: we must take up our fly-bottles and follow the path alone.
Descartes’ Broom of the System: An Apple? No, Doubt.
(A little ditty for my Intro students–to push them into the Meditations’ deep sea.)
Descartes has gone wrong. He knows it. Between the true and the false there is a double yellow line, and he’s been swerving from lane to lane. He’s been suckered. His senses are untrustworthy, his dreams betrayals and his God, well, maybe his God has been a cheat. His mind, his home, his castle, has been invaded. The walls are full of rats and the roof leaks and the foundation shakes. He needs a fresh start, a spring-cleaning, a clean sweep. He needs repair.
But to repair he needs to test. What does he have worth keeping? How can he decide? He decides to doubt. Not a pale, will-I-make-it-on-time? had-those-leftovers-gone-bad? daily double doubt. No, he wants to doubt a real doubter’s doubt, steroidal doubt, fertility be damned. He will drive out the rats, patch the leaks, and secure the foundations. He’ll rid himself of falsity. He will throw open his windows, prop open the door, let some air in. Breathe deep.
How now to doubt, really doubt? One needs a plan. –He doesn’t want to doubt willy-nilly, randomly. He wants to doubt systematically. The doubt should be endeavored with a bankerish caution. A little doubt first, and then more, and then yet more, until all that can be doubted has been doubted. Then: what is left is for keeps: doubters keepers, believers weepers.
Descartes starts. He starts with eyes and hands, suchlike. –They’ve fooled him. Hands have been faster than eyes. –He can’t believe his eyes. His hands go numb. He has heard without hearing. Things smell funny. He has failed taste tests. So much senseless sensing.
Still, some of that sensing seems sensible. Can he really be wrong about his hand before his eyes? Can that be doubted? Maybe not by doubt like the doubt he’s been doubting. But turn that doubt up. He had dreamt his hand before his eyes when he was asleep, when he saw nothing. He could be dreaming even now. So much for his senses.
But Descartes realizes that not everything in his mind was deposited there by his senses. He believes, well, like math and stuff. Does dreaming doubt doubt that? Maybe not. To turn doubt all the way up Descartes looks heavenward. Maybe there exists a creature like God, but rotten, rotten to the core, wormy. A creature like the Garden-creature, but more seductive. An apple-giver of the worst sort, coiled around the Tree of Knowledge, choking it, all the while smiling its villain’s smile. Maybe that creature, that evil demon, has been fooling Descartes. Not just about hands and eyes, but even about math and stuff. Maybe everything has to go. Maybe nothing is left. Walls, roof, foundation—all to go, and not just rats, leaks and shakes. Nothing left, no, just bits of stone and rubble. –Descartes’ mind gone to ruin. Demonized.
Wait, though; wait just a demon-damned minute! Descartes’ mind gone to ruin. Right. Right. There is something left. Descartes. Someone’s standing in the stone and rubble. Our doubter! (Bless his doubting heart!) The demon can do his worst, has done his worst, but he has to do it to someone. Someone’s got to be his patsy, his fool. And Descartes is the man for the job. Fool him once, shame on you, fool him twice, shame on you, –all you are doing is establishing his foolish existence. Because he can be fooled, he exists. Because he can get everything wrong, he exists. What the demon can’t fool him about is his fitness to be fooled. To be the jester in the demon’s court Descartes must be. He submits, as all do, to the dialectic of Hamlet: to be or not to be. And while that is the question, Descartes knows the answer. To be. He is. He thinks, maybe foolishly, but he thinks, so he is.
There, in the midst of doubt, stands Descartes. He’s waiting for the midst to clear.
Socrates, Kierkegaard and The Realistic Spirit? (David Swenson)
Our time has experienced a reaction from the intellectually aristocratic unreality of the post-Kantian idealists, which has thrown us into the arms of the plebeian unreality of the naturalistic philosophers, whose sense of reality is satisfied by the massive, the extensive, the numerical, the quantitative; and thus we have merely exchanged one abstraction for another. But just as in ancient times the career of Socrates furnished perhaps the best commentary upon what a sense for reality means, so in modern times the life and thought of Kierkegaard offer an illuminating commentary upon the philosophy of the real, or upon realism in philosophy.
How to Read TLP?
(Class Handout.)
(1) How to read TLP? –One proposition at a time, like a logiholic.
(2) TLP is a prose poem of logic–it complicatedly inherits a literary tradition inaugurated by Parmenides.
(3) Wittgenstein (from Culture and Value) around 1930, but apropos of TLP (and, mutatis mutandis, of PI):
Each of the sentences I write is trying to say the whole thing, i.e., the same thing over and over again; it is as though they were all views of one object seen from different angles.
(4) Wittgenstein considered titling TLP something else–Der Satz, The Proposition. The book isolates the look, the physiognomy, the sound, the structure of the proposition–a literary and a logical task. It prioritizes the proposition stylistically and philosophically.
(5) Ronald Gregor Smith wrote of Martin Buber’s I and Thou:
To the reader who finds the meaning obscure at the first reading we may say that I and Thou is indeed a poem. Hence it must be read more than once, and its total effect allowed to work on the mind; the obscurities of one part…will then be illumined by the brightness of another part. For the argument is not as it were horizontal, but spiral; it mounts, and gathers within itself the aphoristic and pregnant utterances of the earlier part.
Just so, exactly just so, of TLP too. I have been stressing the necessity of allowing the total effect of TLP to work on your mind.
A Note on Talking Lions And Cavell
A quick thought. Recall Cavell’s wonderful description of Wittgenstein’s famous line that “if a lion could talk we could not understand him”(II, pg. 223). He describes the line as “penetrating past assessment ” to “become part of the sensibility from which assessment proceeds”. If it does less than that, he concludes, the line is “philosophically useless”. Shouldn’t we describe one of Cavell’s most famous lines, a question, in the same way, mutatis mutandis?
Can philosophy become literature and still know itself?
On the Subjugation of Pit Bulls
Another in my on-going line-up of unfinished essays. This one is a bit different, though, focusing, as it does, on the plight of the Pit Bull. It was written, as I note, in tribute to Vicki Hearne and much under the influence of her work. I should note also that the essay is written for (what Robertson Davies calls) the clerisy, not for philosophers per se. It really is unfinished. Whole sections are missing or are present in telegraphese. Comments welcome.
Quantum Est In Rebus Inane 