I've had the dubious pleasure of reading, for a paper I'm working on, Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. I read the section on belief, where belief means assenting to a proposition that is either true or false about the world (e.g., 'the billiard ball is green.'). In this very simple conception of belief, the world is self-evident. It is just there, and all we need to do is match up our statements with the world. What we can verify through our senses (this includes scientific observation) is what is true. Hence, Harris argues, "religious faith is simply unjustified belief" (where "unjustified" means "lack of evidence").
He has a couple of pages on the possibility that "faith" and "belief" are not the same - and quickly rejects it, because he says, "I am criticizing faith in its ordinary, scriptural sense - as belief in, and life orientation toward, certain historical and metaphysical propositions." He then goes on to talk about Paul Tillich, who is one (among many) theologian who argued that faith and belief are not the same. Harris concludes that most religious people do not have this opinion, and thus his book is aimed at "the majority of the faithful in every religious tradition, not at Tillich's blameless parish of one."
Harris might be surprise to learn that belief (in his sense) and faith are not traditionally considered to be the same. In fact, there has been a lot of Christian ink spilled over the person who believes, but has no faith. The passage he cites in Hebrews (11:1, 'faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen') is case in point. There, the faith of various people (Abel, Abraham, Moses, etc) is extolled as examples for the nascent Christian community. The interesting thing is that all this faith took place around hardships and hope: hardships that seemed insurmountable (like the Isrealites being freed from Egypt), and with a promise from God that seemed a bit incredible. In each of these contexts, 'faith' is clearly seen as trust (which in general is a better translation for the Greek word pisteuein, since the Greeks did not have a discourse on "belief" the way Harris thinks).
Now, Harris' reductio ad absurdum - reduction to absurdity - against this passage is quite amiss. His example of how this Hebrews passage would work is that he has a 'conviction' that Nicole Kidman is in love with him, and since they never meet, his feelings are just an example of her infatuation with him. Thus he sets himself up outside her house, and waits for her.
That this is a rhetorical device to counter any notion of faith outside his narrow definition of belief - which he then imputes on most Christians, by the way, without a piece of evidence (which he couldn't, since he's not too well read in the Christian tradition). Yet for most people, they don't go around thinking about proposition like 'I should believe in God, because only then will I have eternal life.' The question is rather: 'I'm nervous about death. What is the point of my life if it all ends up there? Is there something in this religious message that assures me?'
These are questions, as theologians say, of "ultimate concern" - a phrase Harris uses without the least understanding of what it means. He merely says faith is just unjustified belief in terms of these concerns. Now, evolutionary biology or science has absolutely nothing to say about death, since no one every actually experiences death. There is no observation from an "insider's" perspective. Scientists would say, well this is what happens to the organism when it dies, but saying such an 'objective' fact does not deal with the possibility for an actual person. In other words, the 'ultimate concern' is not even answered by scientists - who would, most likely, say it's just not a scientific question. Yet would this then mean people would stop asking it? Clearly not. Ultimate concerns are just compelling for most people.
Now, if faith is aimed at ultimate concerns, then it is clear the issue is less a propositional one, but rather a orientation issue. This is so because every person deals with plenty of doubt in their faith (doubt is one thing Harris seems to utterly forget). In fact, doubt is one of the most normal things in faith, and some of the greatest mystics and saints have a lot to say on the topic. Faith includes doubt, because faith is an way of being, rather than a way of thinking. In fact, there is a large literature in Christianity about the problem of lack of doubt in faith, because this lack of doubt often indicates unjustified belief. Augustine, for example, thought that one very important part of faith was examining yourself, in order not to be deceived by yourself. Nietzsche was clear about this too: his main argument against Christianity was that it deceives itself, and Kierkegaard's railing against his fellow Christians normally took the form of denouncing their self-deception about the assurance of salvation.
Harris seems to have no recognition that this is even a conversation in Christianity. I personally think that Nietzsche would have just as much of a problem with Harris as he had with Christianity: Harris thinks that somehow science can provide him with everything he needs in life, but he's not cognizant of his own motives concerning science (see my blog post below, "The New Priests."). His positivistic outlook blinds him to his own cultural assumptions, and his own desire for power (as Nietzsche would put it). Thus he, along with Dawkins and Hitchens, for example, can dismiss large parts of Christian thought that just "isn't Christian enough" (like Tillich here, or Hitchens absurd argument that Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer weren't really Christians, or Dawkins' absurd argument that Ghandi wasn't really religious).
Finally, I should point out that Harris, along with Dawkins and Hitchens, have an almost fundamentalist view of the Bible, precisely because they all see belief as a bunch of "propositions." Thus the treat the bible as if it were scientific evidence. I should point out that this view of the bible originated in the late 19th, early 20th century, by Christians who felt threatened by science. There are not all that many Christians who hold this view anymore, despite the press that fundamentalists get now. Thus Harris can say something this stupid: "we must begin speaking freely about what is really in these holy books of ours, beyond the timid heterodoxies of modernity - the gay and lesbian ministers, the Muslim clerics who have lost their taste for public amputations, or the Sunday churchgoers who have never read their Bibles quite through." Like a good fundamentalist, Harris here views the bible as utterly eternal, not affected by the historical epochs it is read it, a uninterpreted "fact" that we can see as evidence for religion's barbarity. But this is a laughable position. Religion is not the book itself, but the people who interpret and use the book. These people are eminently time-bound, people with limited view, and absolutely no handle one what the bible "meant" when it was written. We have no access to the "original" meaning of the words, and so those Muslim clerics who have lost a taste for amputations are merely mirroring their historical time period; those Christians how haven't read through their bible (which, by the way, most Christians didn't even read the bible until the reformation) are pretty much on par for Christians; those gay and lesbian ministers are trying to maintain their faith in the promise of God, but also want to be themselves. Harris calls these "heterodox," but Harris seems to have no clue that the Bible is merely a testimony; the people of God is the subject of religion.
To conclude this rather long post, one might say that Harris is making a typical modern mistake. He conflates "justification" with "proof." Now, these are not the same: justification deals with arguments about things that are quite uncertain, while proof deals with things that are pretty much certain. Thus the ideal proof is a geometrical proof: with one proposition, we can get many really good results. There are varying degrees of this in scientific discourse, and that this goes from the "hard sciences" to the "soft sciences". However, matters of ultimate concern are completely uncertain, and thus these can be justified, even if not proved.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Imaginative Political Leaps, Part II
A few weeks ago I complained about the lack of empathy in our political discourse, and I suggested a Kantian version of a "political imagination" as a way around it. In summary, there is a two-step process of reflection: first, with disinterest, you look at someone else's possible positions, imagining all the many ways a person could possible conceive his or her position.
Once this imaginative political leap has been made, the question then becomes: how might one then decide? Considering that you've fully understood the many possibilities of arguments for a certain position still leaves one with the problem of what to do. Following our earlier example, if someone is fully pro-life, even if they could concede that the right to abortion comes within a certain context of women's right's to their bodies, would this mean they will actually decide to support it? Conversely, if someone is pro-choice, would the context of an appeal to someone's private religious faith really convince someone to support pro-lifers? For both, probably not.
Yet, there is another way to think about this. Kant calls this way the "maxims of the common human understanding." There are three: "1. To think for oneself; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. Always to think in accord with oneself." The first he calls an "unprejudiced" way of thinking, the second a "broad-minded" way, and the third, a "consistent" way. Let's look at each maxim and how they help us come to a decision on a certain reflection.
1. "To think for oneself." This is the principle of autonomy, of being an active thinker. In any imaginative variation, one realizes very soon that to imagine another person's position forces you to take stock of your own. This "taking stock" is exactly what to "think for oneself" means. This does not mean you "question everything"; there could be things that are necessary even to think at all! But it does mean that you realize there are numerous sides to one question, and that you actually have to choose which side you're on in an active way once you know all the different positions. You can finally take full responsibility for your decision. E.g., if you decide to be pro-life, given all the context of the abuse of women, and the history of women's oppression, then your decision will be made knowingly. Conversely, if you still choose the right to abortion, even considering the view that every human person has infinite value, then your decision will fully be your own. Being "unprejudiced" doesn't necessary mean you give up your view, but rather you take full responsibility for it.
2. "To think in the position of everyone else." This is similar to the imaginative variation we talked about before, but now it means that the actual decision must start to include other people's view. While the first imaginative variation was disinterested, now one must choose an interest. This interest should then be based on everyone's position. This does not mean a "majority" of people (like: make a poll, see what most Americans think), but rather the thought must include all the different positions. So, abortion again: it must be recognized that abortion comes in a context where women have been oppressed, and so the possibility of her having a right to her own body must be preserved. At the same time, the baby's body must be preserved as well, since there is an infinite value in that human person. These are goods that everyone must strive for, even in the fact of a seemingly problematic option.
3. "Always to think in accord with oneself." The principle of consistency is important, because only then can a solution actually fit both position. This is normally a basic requirement, because in reality, if there are inconsistencies, with one group giving up more and the other less, then eventually the conflict will just erupt again, and the same problems will occur. In our example, we could say this: first, for pro-lifers who see infinite value in every human being, we might want to actually show, beyond mere words, this in practice. Thus anyone woman who gets pregnant will have support for their child in a number of different ways: from free education for the mother, to free child care for the child, to parenting classes, greater restrictions on the fathers, etc. There is a whole host of social support activities that might be encouraged to give support to women and children (and maybe, just maybe, we could spend a little less on developing weapons, and put a little more into children?). For pro-choicers, who see the context of women's oppression and bodily restrictions, we might want them to concede that having an abortion ends up as an evil, and thus work to promote healthy sexual practices, and reduce rhetoric against pro-lifers, who often are more concerned with the child than the parent.
Whether or not my particular suggestions would be advisable to anyone, I don't know. However, I think that if we take these three maxims, and apply it to policy questions after we've imagined all the possible positions, we might come away with more empathy, and hence more effective, political dialogue.
Once this imaginative political leap has been made, the question then becomes: how might one then decide? Considering that you've fully understood the many possibilities of arguments for a certain position still leaves one with the problem of what to do. Following our earlier example, if someone is fully pro-life, even if they could concede that the right to abortion comes within a certain context of women's right's to their bodies, would this mean they will actually decide to support it? Conversely, if someone is pro-choice, would the context of an appeal to someone's private religious faith really convince someone to support pro-lifers? For both, probably not.
Yet, there is another way to think about this. Kant calls this way the "maxims of the common human understanding." There are three: "1. To think for oneself; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. Always to think in accord with oneself." The first he calls an "unprejudiced" way of thinking, the second a "broad-minded" way, and the third, a "consistent" way. Let's look at each maxim and how they help us come to a decision on a certain reflection.
1. "To think for oneself." This is the principle of autonomy, of being an active thinker. In any imaginative variation, one realizes very soon that to imagine another person's position forces you to take stock of your own. This "taking stock" is exactly what to "think for oneself" means. This does not mean you "question everything"; there could be things that are necessary even to think at all! But it does mean that you realize there are numerous sides to one question, and that you actually have to choose which side you're on in an active way once you know all the different positions. You can finally take full responsibility for your decision. E.g., if you decide to be pro-life, given all the context of the abuse of women, and the history of women's oppression, then your decision will be made knowingly. Conversely, if you still choose the right to abortion, even considering the view that every human person has infinite value, then your decision will fully be your own. Being "unprejudiced" doesn't necessary mean you give up your view, but rather you take full responsibility for it.
2. "To think in the position of everyone else." This is similar to the imaginative variation we talked about before, but now it means that the actual decision must start to include other people's view. While the first imaginative variation was disinterested, now one must choose an interest. This interest should then be based on everyone's position. This does not mean a "majority" of people (like: make a poll, see what most Americans think), but rather the thought must include all the different positions. So, abortion again: it must be recognized that abortion comes in a context where women have been oppressed, and so the possibility of her having a right to her own body must be preserved. At the same time, the baby's body must be preserved as well, since there is an infinite value in that human person. These are goods that everyone must strive for, even in the fact of a seemingly problematic option.
3. "Always to think in accord with oneself." The principle of consistency is important, because only then can a solution actually fit both position. This is normally a basic requirement, because in reality, if there are inconsistencies, with one group giving up more and the other less, then eventually the conflict will just erupt again, and the same problems will occur. In our example, we could say this: first, for pro-lifers who see infinite value in every human being, we might want to actually show, beyond mere words, this in practice. Thus anyone woman who gets pregnant will have support for their child in a number of different ways: from free education for the mother, to free child care for the child, to parenting classes, greater restrictions on the fathers, etc. There is a whole host of social support activities that might be encouraged to give support to women and children (and maybe, just maybe, we could spend a little less on developing weapons, and put a little more into children?). For pro-choicers, who see the context of women's oppression and bodily restrictions, we might want them to concede that having an abortion ends up as an evil, and thus work to promote healthy sexual practices, and reduce rhetoric against pro-lifers, who often are more concerned with the child than the parent.
Whether or not my particular suggestions would be advisable to anyone, I don't know. However, I think that if we take these three maxims, and apply it to policy questions after we've imagined all the possible positions, we might come away with more empathy, and hence more effective, political dialogue.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The Machinist: Exploding the unconscious
Ren, Mike, Julie and I saw "The Machinist" last night at the Brattle Theater. The director, Brad Anderson, was there before the film, talking about another film they showed prior. We watched a 120 pound Christian Bale play Trevor Reznik, a machine operator who can't sleep, and who slowly, through delusions and accidents, comes completely undone.
This reminded me of Grace Jantzen's discussion (in her book, "Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion") of what psychoanalytic theory argues about the human subject. The human subject is not a given, i.e. we are not born "who" we are today. Instead, "human personhood is achieved, and achieved at considerable cost. A human baby begins life as a mass of conflicting desires. In order to become a unified subject, some of these desires have to be repressed. This repression of desires is the formation of the unconscious; and from the unconscious, repressed desires may always threaten to erupt. Therefore, strategies have to be put in place to control thought, feeling, and behavior, lest the fragile subject falls apart once again into fragments."
This about sums up the film. For Reznik, however, it's not a bunch of conflicting desires, but rather a traumatic experience, and one conflict: to take responsibility for his actions, where there would be material consequences, or not. In the beginning of the film, he opts not to take responsibility, and so the film is an exposition of the "strategies" of controlling the desire and memory of the trauma, to repress these in a variety of forms. These forms include his insomnia, delusional visions and conversations, and writing notes for himself.
However, this repressions continually cause problems, and the traumatic experience continually asserts itself. For instance, he sees a delusional aspect of himself, which he calls "Ivan." This man - who's hand is deformed, an interesting mirror of Reznik's own deformed body - becomes the focus imaginarius for Trevor's rage and fear. The desire to be punished for his actions is externalized in this delusion, where he becomes the judge, the Law, and Ivan is the subverter, the menace, the one who needs to be punished. He pushes this farther and farther until Trevor thinks he's killed Ivan, only to find Ivan resurrected in the question: "who are you?"
This "who are you" confirms my thesis that the film is about human subjectivity, and the systems of controls we use in order to prevent our unconscious desires from erupting into uncontrollable passions. In the end, Trevor takes responsibility for what he did (and I'm skirting around 'what he did' because it would spoil the film), and the conflict that engaged his system of controls ends, and he finds a type of peace (even though he had to give up his material well-being).
Beyond the "philosophical" content of the film, it is a very affecting vision of what it might be like to have a mental illness. The director takes us between Trevor's delusions visions, and the more "normal" relationships he has, in a way that makes you realize just how debilitating it is to have a "private sense", which many schizophrenics have, for instance. It is very uncomfortable when Trevor sees this delusional Ivan character. Ivan is so uncanny (another favorite psychoanalytic term) that you're completely afraid for Trevor. Then, as you realize Ivan is a delusion of Trevor's, you own reality feels turned upside down.
In general, the director does a nice job imbricating us into what happens with Trevor, and I suppose that's a mark of a good story-teller.
This reminded me of Grace Jantzen's discussion (in her book, "Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion") of what psychoanalytic theory argues about the human subject. The human subject is not a given, i.e. we are not born "who" we are today. Instead, "human personhood is achieved, and achieved at considerable cost. A human baby begins life as a mass of conflicting desires. In order to become a unified subject, some of these desires have to be repressed. This repression of desires is the formation of the unconscious; and from the unconscious, repressed desires may always threaten to erupt. Therefore, strategies have to be put in place to control thought, feeling, and behavior, lest the fragile subject falls apart once again into fragments."
This about sums up the film. For Reznik, however, it's not a bunch of conflicting desires, but rather a traumatic experience, and one conflict: to take responsibility for his actions, where there would be material consequences, or not. In the beginning of the film, he opts not to take responsibility, and so the film is an exposition of the "strategies" of controlling the desire and memory of the trauma, to repress these in a variety of forms. These forms include his insomnia, delusional visions and conversations, and writing notes for himself.
However, this repressions continually cause problems, and the traumatic experience continually asserts itself. For instance, he sees a delusional aspect of himself, which he calls "Ivan." This man - who's hand is deformed, an interesting mirror of Reznik's own deformed body - becomes the focus imaginarius for Trevor's rage and fear. The desire to be punished for his actions is externalized in this delusion, where he becomes the judge, the Law, and Ivan is the subverter, the menace, the one who needs to be punished. He pushes this farther and farther until Trevor thinks he's killed Ivan, only to find Ivan resurrected in the question: "who are you?"
This "who are you" confirms my thesis that the film is about human subjectivity, and the systems of controls we use in order to prevent our unconscious desires from erupting into uncontrollable passions. In the end, Trevor takes responsibility for what he did (and I'm skirting around 'what he did' because it would spoil the film), and the conflict that engaged his system of controls ends, and he finds a type of peace (even though he had to give up his material well-being).
Beyond the "philosophical" content of the film, it is a very affecting vision of what it might be like to have a mental illness. The director takes us between Trevor's delusions visions, and the more "normal" relationships he has, in a way that makes you realize just how debilitating it is to have a "private sense", which many schizophrenics have, for instance. It is very uncomfortable when Trevor sees this delusional Ivan character. Ivan is so uncanny (another favorite psychoanalytic term) that you're completely afraid for Trevor. Then, as you realize Ivan is a delusion of Trevor's, you own reality feels turned upside down.
In general, the director does a nice job imbricating us into what happens with Trevor, and I suppose that's a mark of a good story-teller.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Imaginative (Political) Leaps, Part I
One of the things I've often found quite frustrating is the seeming lack of empathy or understanding between various political parties. I grew up in a very conservative part of New York, and have since lived in a liberal part of Massachusetts, and I'm always struck by how both right and left normally talk past each other. Of course, in some ways, everyone already knows this: conservatives think liberals don't even attempt to understand them, and liberals normally make the same argument. Thus, even the notion that collective decision making happens by two different parties is a fault, if anything, of our system. Thus Democrats and Republicans (and their supporters) both want to dominate government, because only then will anything good happen.
I think this desire to dominate the government comes precisely because each party sees the other party as unable/unwilling to understand 'where they're coming from.' It's lack of empathy, as I said.
However, I don't think anybody should try to understand where the other party is coming from. Instead of trying to get into another's shoes by empathizing with where they are coming from, we should try to understand someone by imagining where they can come from.
What's the distinction? When you imagine where someone is coming from, you immediate come up with the problem: do I have to have their interests in mind? If I don't, have I really even sympathized with them? If I do have to have their interests in mind, what about my own interests? What would my party think if I sympathized too much with them? Try this as an experiment: if you are conservative, tell a conservative friend you sympathize with Hillary Clinton's health care plan; if you are liberal, tell a liberal friend you sympathize with Bush's leadership qualities - see how far you get.
This problem can be circumvented if we take up Kant's argument on judgment. He argues that in any judging includes first an imaginative leap beyond our particular viewpoint, in order to see if our view could be consonant with everyone else's. The fact that we can do this is because there is basic machinery that is the same between everyone. In our discussion, we might say that republican democracy is the basic "same" between everyone.
Once we do this operation of imagination, we can then "enlarge" our imagination, or rather start to "vary" the procedure, imagining what different positions might say about the thing we are focused on. E.g., abortion: for conservatives, this is about the life of a child; for liberals, about the right to a woman's body. Conservatives might imagine that this right to the body is within an entire context of women's history, from not being able to vote until less than a hundred years ago, to problems of domestic violence and coercion, etc. This would require - since many conservative don't like feminism, as it were - a disinterested standpoint, or rather a holding off of one's own interests. However, in this imaginative variation, one doesn't to take over the interests of the other person, but just to put these interests in the context of possible positions (of course, another possible position could be that some people who want to get abortions want to unhindered by the "inconvenience" of a baby - which is the only position many conservatives can imagine). On the other side, liberals might imagine that for conservatives, there is a whole history vis-a-vis Christianity that sees human dignity in the fact that God has created them, and that no matter where it starts, or who happens to be in the womb, this person is a creation of God, not of humans.
This is not too far off from what Ryan Mays thinks Wittgenstein does, in a blog response to someone arguing against the "new Wittgenstein". The argument was that Wittgenstein actually liked nonsense, and that the New Wittgenstein readers are too austere in their arguments against nonsense. Mays' point was that for Wittgenstein, one could understanding seeming nonsensical language (like Heidegger's "being") if one imagines what this language could mean. As for Kant, Wittgenstein seemed to hold that imaginative leaps are required when judging.
The next step, beyond this imaginative variation, is reflective judgment. More on that next time.
I think this desire to dominate the government comes precisely because each party sees the other party as unable/unwilling to understand 'where they're coming from.' It's lack of empathy, as I said.
However, I don't think anybody should try to understand where the other party is coming from. Instead of trying to get into another's shoes by empathizing with where they are coming from, we should try to understand someone by imagining where they can come from.
What's the distinction? When you imagine where someone is coming from, you immediate come up with the problem: do I have to have their interests in mind? If I don't, have I really even sympathized with them? If I do have to have their interests in mind, what about my own interests? What would my party think if I sympathized too much with them? Try this as an experiment: if you are conservative, tell a conservative friend you sympathize with Hillary Clinton's health care plan; if you are liberal, tell a liberal friend you sympathize with Bush's leadership qualities - see how far you get.
This problem can be circumvented if we take up Kant's argument on judgment. He argues that in any judging includes first an imaginative leap beyond our particular viewpoint, in order to see if our view could be consonant with everyone else's. The fact that we can do this is because there is basic machinery that is the same between everyone. In our discussion, we might say that republican democracy is the basic "same" between everyone.
Once we do this operation of imagination, we can then "enlarge" our imagination, or rather start to "vary" the procedure, imagining what different positions might say about the thing we are focused on. E.g., abortion: for conservatives, this is about the life of a child; for liberals, about the right to a woman's body. Conservatives might imagine that this right to the body is within an entire context of women's history, from not being able to vote until less than a hundred years ago, to problems of domestic violence and coercion, etc. This would require - since many conservative don't like feminism, as it were - a disinterested standpoint, or rather a holding off of one's own interests. However, in this imaginative variation, one doesn't to take over the interests of the other person, but just to put these interests in the context of possible positions (of course, another possible position could be that some people who want to get abortions want to unhindered by the "inconvenience" of a baby - which is the only position many conservatives can imagine). On the other side, liberals might imagine that for conservatives, there is a whole history vis-a-vis Christianity that sees human dignity in the fact that God has created them, and that no matter where it starts, or who happens to be in the womb, this person is a creation of God, not of humans.
This is not too far off from what Ryan Mays thinks Wittgenstein does, in a blog response to someone arguing against the "new Wittgenstein". The argument was that Wittgenstein actually liked nonsense, and that the New Wittgenstein readers are too austere in their arguments against nonsense. Mays' point was that for Wittgenstein, one could understanding seeming nonsensical language (like Heidegger's "being") if one imagines what this language could mean. As for Kant, Wittgenstein seemed to hold that imaginative leaps are required when judging.
The next step, beyond this imaginative variation, is reflective judgment. More on that next time.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
8 1/2: We're not entirely sure...
I watched Fellini's 8 1/2 last night. It was an experience. From the opening sequence to the very end, it was completely mesmerizing.
It is a story about a director with "director's block" - and in this sense it is quite autobiographical. In fact, apparently much of the film actually captures, not only real situations in Fellini's life, but very immediate emotions at the times.
The director in this film, Guido (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is at a health spa with his production team, trying very hard to start his film, much less finish it. He's collaborating with a guy name Carini, who's a film critic, and between the banal and vapid speeches of this guy and the over-bearing producer, Guido is a tight spot.
To fill in the problem: he has a lover (Carla) who is lonely, and then his wife Luisa (played by Anouk Aimée) comes to town, and eventually sees Carla (played by Sandra Milo), and assumes (rightly) he's having an affair with her. By the end of the film, there seems to be some rapprochement between Guido and Luisa, but we're not entirely sure.
'We're not entirely sure...' This sounded in my mind throughout the entire film. It starts with a dream sequence - a really amazing sequence, where Guido is trapped in a car in traffic, everyone staring at him, exhaust coming into his car. He gets out of the car, and floats over the traffic. But then, when he's high in the sky, a rope is on his leg, and someone on the ground pulls him down. I'm not sure what this is "supposed" to mean, but it points to Guido's feeling that everyone expects a lot out of him, and when he tries to get free, they pull him back in.
This dream sequence sets up a lot - from both Guido's feelings, to the way the film is shot. First, because, as I said, it seems like everyone is pushing in on Guido. In the scene following the first dream, Guido's in the hotel lobby, bombarded by questions from production assistants, actors, actor's agents, groupies, etc. He dances around them, an intricate deferral of all their questions and demands, like he's floating in the air beyond the crowd. When he seems to have evaded them all, his producer comes walking down the steps (who he calls "commendatore", the term they use at the spa for the doctors), and puts in the final question Guido can't evade, pulling him back to the ground.
There are many other seeming dream sequences. E.g., when Luisa spots Carla, Guido has this day-dream of his own harem, with multiple women, and Luisa "understanding" it all. It's a pretty funny and disturbing sequence, because it shows the director Guido (and by implication, Fellini himself) as what he is: a childish man, who cannot love, and so tries to love everyone, but at the same time is harsh and indefatigable in his selfishness. It's not a very nice picture of the man, and it's fascinating that Fellini portrayed the director this way.
As I said, these dream sequences actually set up the way the film is shot. In fact, it's almost impossible to tell when a dream sequence (except the first) begins and when it ends. Some of the things in the film seem like dreams - especially the last shot, when he actually starts the film - but again, we're not entirely sure. It's all so fluid the narrative seems to run through even the dreams, and the dreams seem to be a part of his relationship with the characters. Of course this isn't "true", but the film is shot in such a way that it seems true.
In this end, that's most what I liked about the film: we see reality through the director's eyes, and this points out how, in any film, it is the director that shows us this reality, for very specific artistic reasons. Now, this isn't a "scientific" reality in any sense (which is really a pretty narrow reality anyway), but instead is a world that reflects something true about the world we actually live it.
In this film, I thought that "true" thing was almost about art itself. Kant argues that for anything to be considered "art" it must seem unintentional, just like nature, even though we know its intentional. Fellini seems to be pointing this out in the way he uses the film critic Carini. At the end of the film, when Guido quits the project, Carini has this great long speech about how an "intellectual" ('I put you in this category', he says to Guido) knows when to be silent. Mallarmé, for instance, knew when to stop writing. Carini, who throughout the entire film has been ragging on Guido for the "vagueness" of his characters, and his over-use of symbols, now decides for Guido what is the "right" way to see art, as if the artist himself does not see it, and he needs a "critic" or philosopher to tell him. The ridiculousness of this character seems, to me, to point out the ridiculousness of "message" art, or rather art that is supposed to "say" something. This is what Kant was talking about: when you're trying to "say" something, it ends up being propaganda, or some type of "serious" film about a "serious" subject that is interesting as long as the subject is interesting (like 10 minutes), but doesn't in anyway affect anyone. I bet you could name a lot of so-called "serious" films these days that are silly and small for just this reason.
8 1/2 is one of those films that transcends any "message" in this way. In the end, I think this is because we're not entirely sure what is "true" and what is "illusion". We are lost so completely in the images that we never know what it is "saying", but know, somehow, it's saying something. We can only access this "something," though, with our eyes. That is why it's "film."
It is a story about a director with "director's block" - and in this sense it is quite autobiographical. In fact, apparently much of the film actually captures, not only real situations in Fellini's life, but very immediate emotions at the times.
The director in this film, Guido (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is at a health spa with his production team, trying very hard to start his film, much less finish it. He's collaborating with a guy name Carini, who's a film critic, and between the banal and vapid speeches of this guy and the over-bearing producer, Guido is a tight spot.
To fill in the problem: he has a lover (Carla) who is lonely, and then his wife Luisa (played by Anouk Aimée) comes to town, and eventually sees Carla (played by Sandra Milo), and assumes (rightly) he's having an affair with her. By the end of the film, there seems to be some rapprochement between Guido and Luisa, but we're not entirely sure.
'We're not entirely sure...' This sounded in my mind throughout the entire film. It starts with a dream sequence - a really amazing sequence, where Guido is trapped in a car in traffic, everyone staring at him, exhaust coming into his car. He gets out of the car, and floats over the traffic. But then, when he's high in the sky, a rope is on his leg, and someone on the ground pulls him down. I'm not sure what this is "supposed" to mean, but it points to Guido's feeling that everyone expects a lot out of him, and when he tries to get free, they pull him back in.
This dream sequence sets up a lot - from both Guido's feelings, to the way the film is shot. First, because, as I said, it seems like everyone is pushing in on Guido. In the scene following the first dream, Guido's in the hotel lobby, bombarded by questions from production assistants, actors, actor's agents, groupies, etc. He dances around them, an intricate deferral of all their questions and demands, like he's floating in the air beyond the crowd. When he seems to have evaded them all, his producer comes walking down the steps (who he calls "commendatore", the term they use at the spa for the doctors), and puts in the final question Guido can't evade, pulling him back to the ground.
There are many other seeming dream sequences. E.g., when Luisa spots Carla, Guido has this day-dream of his own harem, with multiple women, and Luisa "understanding" it all. It's a pretty funny and disturbing sequence, because it shows the director Guido (and by implication, Fellini himself) as what he is: a childish man, who cannot love, and so tries to love everyone, but at the same time is harsh and indefatigable in his selfishness. It's not a very nice picture of the man, and it's fascinating that Fellini portrayed the director this way.
As I said, these dream sequences actually set up the way the film is shot. In fact, it's almost impossible to tell when a dream sequence (except the first) begins and when it ends. Some of the things in the film seem like dreams - especially the last shot, when he actually starts the film - but again, we're not entirely sure. It's all so fluid the narrative seems to run through even the dreams, and the dreams seem to be a part of his relationship with the characters. Of course this isn't "true", but the film is shot in such a way that it seems true.
In this end, that's most what I liked about the film: we see reality through the director's eyes, and this points out how, in any film, it is the director that shows us this reality, for very specific artistic reasons. Now, this isn't a "scientific" reality in any sense (which is really a pretty narrow reality anyway), but instead is a world that reflects something true about the world we actually live it.
In this film, I thought that "true" thing was almost about art itself. Kant argues that for anything to be considered "art" it must seem unintentional, just like nature, even though we know its intentional. Fellini seems to be pointing this out in the way he uses the film critic Carini. At the end of the film, when Guido quits the project, Carini has this great long speech about how an "intellectual" ('I put you in this category', he says to Guido) knows when to be silent. Mallarmé, for instance, knew when to stop writing. Carini, who throughout the entire film has been ragging on Guido for the "vagueness" of his characters, and his over-use of symbols, now decides for Guido what is the "right" way to see art, as if the artist himself does not see it, and he needs a "critic" or philosopher to tell him. The ridiculousness of this character seems, to me, to point out the ridiculousness of "message" art, or rather art that is supposed to "say" something. This is what Kant was talking about: when you're trying to "say" something, it ends up being propaganda, or some type of "serious" film about a "serious" subject that is interesting as long as the subject is interesting (like 10 minutes), but doesn't in anyway affect anyone. I bet you could name a lot of so-called "serious" films these days that are silly and small for just this reason.
8 1/2 is one of those films that transcends any "message" in this way. In the end, I think this is because we're not entirely sure what is "true" and what is "illusion". We are lost so completely in the images that we never know what it is "saying", but know, somehow, it's saying something. We can only access this "something," though, with our eyes. That is why it's "film."
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The drive to unity
I was reading Kant's aesthetic theory for my class this week, and I came across his argument that all art drives toward unity. He thinks we find pleasure in unifying disparate things we never thought could go together. When I read this at first, I thought, 'what? That's not even close to being true. Doesn't Kant know that "fragmentation", différence, truth with a small "t", etc., are in vogue? Unity! Blah!'
As a test case, I thought to myself, what about Michael Henake's film "Code Unknown" (Code innconu récit incomplet de divers voyages). It is a story of an event in a street in Paris: a young white man drops a wrapper in the lap of a woman begging; a young black man, seeing this, comes to the aid of the woman's honor, and tries to get the white man to apologize; the young white man's brother's girlfriend comes to his defense (not knowing what he did); the cops get involved, and the black man spends a night in jail for disturbing the peace.
The rest of the film is composed of scenes prior to the incident and after the incident, with no apparent reason. The reason I thought of this film is that the scenes almost all start in a character's mid-sentence, and end just as abruptly. In addition, we hear sounds off-camera, and these things seem to be important for the film. Clearly, I thought, this is an example of a pleasing film that is fragmented in a very "postmodern" way! Harvard Students Against Unity (HSAU) was my cry!
Yet when I started to discuss with myself what I liked about the film was that all of these off-camera events and sounds were actually just as important as what happens on camera. Then it struck me: I like that because I can bring all these "absent" events - with the help of a little imagination - into what happens on camera. In other words? I can see the unity in the overall work!
Guess what folks. This is exactly what Kant says: there is no "objective" unity in the laws pertaining to the world. There are laws, but it takes us seeing them as having a purpose that brings them into unity. This, I'm afraid, explodes all my postmodern fantasies, precisely because it means that for there to be fragments there must be a unity already.
So, I guess I'll have to hand in my HSAU union card.
As a test case, I thought to myself, what about Michael Henake's film "Code Unknown" (Code innconu récit incomplet de divers voyages). It is a story of an event in a street in Paris: a young white man drops a wrapper in the lap of a woman begging; a young black man, seeing this, comes to the aid of the woman's honor, and tries to get the white man to apologize; the young white man's brother's girlfriend comes to his defense (not knowing what he did); the cops get involved, and the black man spends a night in jail for disturbing the peace.
The rest of the film is composed of scenes prior to the incident and after the incident, with no apparent reason. The reason I thought of this film is that the scenes almost all start in a character's mid-sentence, and end just as abruptly. In addition, we hear sounds off-camera, and these things seem to be important for the film. Clearly, I thought, this is an example of a pleasing film that is fragmented in a very "postmodern" way! Harvard Students Against Unity (HSAU) was my cry!
Yet when I started to discuss with myself what I liked about the film was that all of these off-camera events and sounds were actually just as important as what happens on camera. Then it struck me: I like that because I can bring all these "absent" events - with the help of a little imagination - into what happens on camera. In other words? I can see the unity in the overall work!
Guess what folks. This is exactly what Kant says: there is no "objective" unity in the laws pertaining to the world. There are laws, but it takes us seeing them as having a purpose that brings them into unity. This, I'm afraid, explodes all my postmodern fantasies, precisely because it means that for there to be fragments there must be a unity already.
So, I guess I'll have to hand in my HSAU union card.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
One's own mark
Growing up, I've always thought my identity through knowing who I'm not, rather than who I am. The latter concept I've always found a bit vague anyway. How does "knowing who you are" work? Are you the total of your actions, your thoughts, what you experience, what events befall you? When is it clear, when are you "transparent" to yourself? When you "feel" that something "isn't you", when you decide something isn't you? Is what I did tonight somehow "inside" me, like water in glass? If I don't remember tonight's events, will the water spill out?
This is a stanza from Louise Bogan's "The Mark":
Loosed only when, at noon and night,
The body is the shadow's prison.
The pivot swings into the light;
The center left, the shadow risen
To range out into time's long treason.
Bogan points out how I've come to my own identity. The shadow is the substantial part of the person in the poem, the body the constricted part, like a bound figure on a white sheet. The shadow, though, shortens and lengthens, expanding and contracting through the waves of time, like periods of elation and despondence, of joys and sorrows, marks of time all.
The only problem is there's a cost: at the height of transparency, at noon, the shadow disappears, while at night, the shadow is exiled in the surrounding darkness. This is the treason of time, that time itself subverts this whole identity process.
Of course, we all know this is the problem, since our identities not only change over time, but seem to be ruined by time. All the questions I asked above have something to do with time, insofar as we wonder: do my experiences, which are fleeting, have any permanence?
That's why we say 'I want to make my mark' - implying that only in etching something, in developing some memorial to our actions in an external thing, will we be remembered as a self at all. It's this drive toward figuring the body as the focal point of a host of shadowy experiences, events, thoughts, and desires, that enables us to have any identity at all.
Yet, we must remember: as Bogan tells us at the height of this focal point's visibility to others - at "noon" - this same body is invisible to ourselves.
This is a stanza from Louise Bogan's "The Mark":
Loosed only when, at noon and night,
The body is the shadow's prison.
The pivot swings into the light;
The center left, the shadow risen
To range out into time's long treason.
Bogan points out how I've come to my own identity. The shadow is the substantial part of the person in the poem, the body the constricted part, like a bound figure on a white sheet. The shadow, though, shortens and lengthens, expanding and contracting through the waves of time, like periods of elation and despondence, of joys and sorrows, marks of time all.
The only problem is there's a cost: at the height of transparency, at noon, the shadow disappears, while at night, the shadow is exiled in the surrounding darkness. This is the treason of time, that time itself subverts this whole identity process.
Of course, we all know this is the problem, since our identities not only change over time, but seem to be ruined by time. All the questions I asked above have something to do with time, insofar as we wonder: do my experiences, which are fleeting, have any permanence?
That's why we say 'I want to make my mark' - implying that only in etching something, in developing some memorial to our actions in an external thing, will we be remembered as a self at all. It's this drive toward figuring the body as the focal point of a host of shadowy experiences, events, thoughts, and desires, that enables us to have any identity at all.
Yet, we must remember: as Bogan tells us at the height of this focal point's visibility to others - at "noon" - this same body is invisible to ourselves.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
On Reading
Since I lack the time to read novels right now because of school, I have been listening to novels in my car on the commute (about 45 minutes one way). I read Chuck Palahniuk's new book "Rant", and just started Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union".
I remember once hearing someone else who read a book by listening. It was funny, because, even though they understood it, they said, "well, I read that, but it didn't count, since I listened to it." This is curious to me, and makes me wonder: since I listened to "Rant", did I actually read it?
What does it mean to say I've "read" a book? In the ancient world, to "read" something always meant to "read aloud", usually in a group context. What would they say about having "read" a text, if they were in the group that listened? Would they have said they read it? I'm sure I could find some textual evidence, maybe in Augustine or Epictetus that would attest to this.
In any case, the ancients had a different way with language. Even the way they learned language was more oral than we do. For instance, the "unit" they learned was actually the syllable, rather than the "word." Learning this way made sense to them, because you primarily hear syllables, whereas words are comprehended as a number of "sounds elements," i.e. syllables. We see words as units because we think of words on a page.
This reminds me of that discussion Wittgenstein has about reading. Reading is not clear at all he thinks. Try to think about it - when do you say reading has happened? When I have passed my eyes over a line, read them in my mind, and thereby comprehend? Or is it rather when I "reproduce", or derive a reproduction from the "original" line? I like this example Wittgenstein gives: "Try this experiment: say the numbers from 1 to 12. Now look at the dial of your watch and read them. - What was it that you called 'reading' in the latter case? That is to say: what did you do, to make it into reading?"
The point, of course for Wittgenstein, is that we think of reading, or any activity, within a family of other terms (that's why he can say: "the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind of way as its sound."). That's why its weird for some people to think of "listening" to a book on tape as the same activity of "reading". We listen to music, to the tv, etc., but we never listen to "novels". Actually, when we say "I've read such and such a book" we use that term in a different sense than when we say "I'm reading this sentence." It didn't "count" for that person I talked to because it wasn't the "activity", but the result was the same.
So, the question is: if I am in a social situation, talking about literature, and someone says, "oh, I've read "The Yiddish Policeman's Union", should my response be, "me too?" Would I be lying?
I remember once hearing someone else who read a book by listening. It was funny, because, even though they understood it, they said, "well, I read that, but it didn't count, since I listened to it." This is curious to me, and makes me wonder: since I listened to "Rant", did I actually read it?
What does it mean to say I've "read" a book? In the ancient world, to "read" something always meant to "read aloud", usually in a group context. What would they say about having "read" a text, if they were in the group that listened? Would they have said they read it? I'm sure I could find some textual evidence, maybe in Augustine or Epictetus that would attest to this.
In any case, the ancients had a different way with language. Even the way they learned language was more oral than we do. For instance, the "unit" they learned was actually the syllable, rather than the "word." Learning this way made sense to them, because you primarily hear syllables, whereas words are comprehended as a number of "sounds elements," i.e. syllables. We see words as units because we think of words on a page.
This reminds me of that discussion Wittgenstein has about reading. Reading is not clear at all he thinks. Try to think about it - when do you say reading has happened? When I have passed my eyes over a line, read them in my mind, and thereby comprehend? Or is it rather when I "reproduce", or derive a reproduction from the "original" line? I like this example Wittgenstein gives: "Try this experiment: say the numbers from 1 to 12. Now look at the dial of your watch and read them. - What was it that you called 'reading' in the latter case? That is to say: what did you do, to make it into reading?"
The point, of course for Wittgenstein, is that we think of reading, or any activity, within a family of other terms (that's why he can say: "the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind of way as its sound."). That's why its weird for some people to think of "listening" to a book on tape as the same activity of "reading". We listen to music, to the tv, etc., but we never listen to "novels". Actually, when we say "I've read such and such a book" we use that term in a different sense than when we say "I'm reading this sentence." It didn't "count" for that person I talked to because it wasn't the "activity", but the result was the same.
So, the question is: if I am in a social situation, talking about literature, and someone says, "oh, I've read "The Yiddish Policeman's Union", should my response be, "me too?" Would I be lying?
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Cache: Skeletons in the closet
Julie and I just watched "Cache" (hidden, in French), a film by Michael Haneke. It is a fascinating film. A couple, Georges and Ann, receive anonymous video-tapes that consist of hours and hours of a camera fixed on their apartment. The first tape has nothing with it. The second tape, a different angle and time from the first, has attached a child's picture of a boy, blood coming from his mouth. The third, this time connected with a picture of the farm house Georges grew up in, has the picture of a chicken with its head cut off. The next is just images of some apartment building, and then a door.
We learn that Georges believes the tapes are being sent from Majid. Majid was the son of Algerian farm-hands who lived on Georges' farm as a young child. When his parents were killed in the 1961 protest by Algerians (200 of which were drowned in the Seine), Georges' parents want to adopt Majid. Georges tells a few lies about Majid, and his mother sends Majid away to a children's home.
The stage is set here: Georges' guilt becomes his moving force. He goes to the apartment that was on the video, and of course Majid is there. Georges confronts Majid (now a broken middle-aged man), and Majid has no clue what he's talking about. After Georges threatens Majid, he leaves, and they receive another video. This time the video is of the conversation Georges just had with Majid, and then Majid's reaction: Majid cries.
After this, things start to unravel. Finally, Georges goes again to confront Majid. Majid says, 'good, you're here, I want you to be here.' Then Majid brings him into his kitchen, takes out a pocket knife, and slits his juggler vein.
This film did a brilliant job showing the effect of guilt, and the reality of it. Clearly, Georges projected his guilt on Majid. We don't know if Majid sent the tapes, but if he did, he acted pretty well when he was crying. I personally think there is something profoundly theological about the tapes: they are this thing that just comes into Georges life, unannounced, almost in a transcendent way. We never learn (although the last shot makes us suspicious) who the tapes are from, and what the purpose of them was.
Now, the question of whether or not Georges should feel guilty is important. I mean, Georges was a six year old kid when he lied, and his mother ultimately made the decision to send Majid away. Six year old kids are both selfish, and lack responsibility that you would impute to adults (for good reason - they also lack the freedom!). At the same time, his mother would have presumably sent Majid away without Georges' false testimony, and Majid's life has clearly been difficult and heartbreaking.
So, Georges certain would have some guilt. Yet, Georges will not confess to his wife, or to anyone, that he does feel this guilt. It is the lack of openness, the closure between Ann and Georges, and Georges with himself that is so striking. The rôle played by husband and wife seem to be political agents: they are there just for the functioning of the house, and that's it. For Georges it only makes sense that he would unwittingly project his guilt everyone around him: he won't talk about it, while it is burning him alive.
I think it is a very profound problem, this problem of guilt Haneke brings up. We continually deal with it, do we not? We're always acting in ways that hurt others, intentionally or unintentionally, and the consequences of these actions are beyond our control. We may want to use that as an excuse for our guilt, but at the same time, if we are honesty, it matters little our "intention" (or, if you're inclined to determinism, the mechnistic functions of our "memes").
The question is, what do we then do?
We learn that Georges believes the tapes are being sent from Majid. Majid was the son of Algerian farm-hands who lived on Georges' farm as a young child. When his parents were killed in the 1961 protest by Algerians (200 of which were drowned in the Seine), Georges' parents want to adopt Majid. Georges tells a few lies about Majid, and his mother sends Majid away to a children's home.
The stage is set here: Georges' guilt becomes his moving force. He goes to the apartment that was on the video, and of course Majid is there. Georges confronts Majid (now a broken middle-aged man), and Majid has no clue what he's talking about. After Georges threatens Majid, he leaves, and they receive another video. This time the video is of the conversation Georges just had with Majid, and then Majid's reaction: Majid cries.
After this, things start to unravel. Finally, Georges goes again to confront Majid. Majid says, 'good, you're here, I want you to be here.' Then Majid brings him into his kitchen, takes out a pocket knife, and slits his juggler vein.
This film did a brilliant job showing the effect of guilt, and the reality of it. Clearly, Georges projected his guilt on Majid. We don't know if Majid sent the tapes, but if he did, he acted pretty well when he was crying. I personally think there is something profoundly theological about the tapes: they are this thing that just comes into Georges life, unannounced, almost in a transcendent way. We never learn (although the last shot makes us suspicious) who the tapes are from, and what the purpose of them was.
Now, the question of whether or not Georges should feel guilty is important. I mean, Georges was a six year old kid when he lied, and his mother ultimately made the decision to send Majid away. Six year old kids are both selfish, and lack responsibility that you would impute to adults (for good reason - they also lack the freedom!). At the same time, his mother would have presumably sent Majid away without Georges' false testimony, and Majid's life has clearly been difficult and heartbreaking.
So, Georges certain would have some guilt. Yet, Georges will not confess to his wife, or to anyone, that he does feel this guilt. It is the lack of openness, the closure between Ann and Georges, and Georges with himself that is so striking. The rôle played by husband and wife seem to be political agents: they are there just for the functioning of the house, and that's it. For Georges it only makes sense that he would unwittingly project his guilt everyone around him: he won't talk about it, while it is burning him alive.
I think it is a very profound problem, this problem of guilt Haneke brings up. We continually deal with it, do we not? We're always acting in ways that hurt others, intentionally or unintentionally, and the consequences of these actions are beyond our control. We may want to use that as an excuse for our guilt, but at the same time, if we are honesty, it matters little our "intention" (or, if you're inclined to determinism, the mechnistic functions of our "memes").
The question is, what do we then do?
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Craft of Thought, Reviewed
I just finished Mary Carruthers' book The Craft of Thought. It is a fascinating account of medieval monastic "memory" techniques, and how these techniques actually were much more about "invention" and creativity than a mere regurgitating another culture (which is usually the story from historians, scientists who don't like the fact monks preserved European culture, and a host of other people with axes to grind).
There are a number of extremely interesting things in the book, from the use of the "planned cities and buildings" of the Bible (the Tabernacle of Moses, Solomon's temple, Ezekial's temple, and John's temple) as forms of "locational" memory, to the use of illuminated texts for reading. Yet what struck me the most was the central metaphor for "memory" and thinking in monastic culture, the machina memorialis.
The notion of a "machine" in ancient and medieval culture is what Isidore of Seville identified as a hoist that architects or masons (masiones) would use to lift up the "fabric" of a building, setting this superstructure on a foundation. Extending this metaphor (using 1 Corinthians 8), monastic culture thought of a "memory machine" as constructing a building on the "foundation" of the Bible. Thus, memory was not a "faculty" that we have, allowing us to regurgitate information (although, it is true, the foundation must be able to be regurgitated - this is why all monks learned the Psalms by heart), but rather to creatively play with the foundation.
The best analogy would be a jazz musician: s/he learns "turns", phrases, scales, and other melodic and harmonic devices, and finally "standards", practicing hours and hours so that when they "improvise" they have something to say, and they don't need to think about it. Jazz is very formulaic in this sense, but it is free precisely because "memory" functions not as a mere iteration of previous learned material, but instead a building, an erecting of architectures of harmony and melody that out-strip, but do not overcome, the foundation in scales and basic harmony.
There were many devices monks (and the ancients) would use in order to use memory in this way. E.g., they would make "fables" in order to remember the stars. One of the most short-sighted and narrow-viewed modern people think is the Greeks and Romans thought that stories of Orion and other constellations were meant to "explain" what we now know "scientifically." Yet the entire point of these stories was to enable a sailor to remember that in the autumn Orion and his dogs 'chase' Pleiades, thus enabling him to locate the stars quickly. Fables, etymologies (which philologists really hate), actual buildings, and art, all help in the memory work.
Another aspect of the "machine" of memory is an ethical point. John Cassian (one of the founders, along with Augustine, of western monasticism) used the metaphor of machine in connection with a "mill". One has the grain one wishes to produce flour with, so you put the grain in the hopper, it goes down onto the stones, and is crushed and refined so as to produce flour. However, in order to produce usable flour, you must have good grain to begin with. Analogously, with memory, it depends on the ethical intentions of the person "remembering". We have a phrase for this: 'garbage in, garbage out.'
So what's the point of all this? For monks, it was so you could have meditative experiences, and ultimately to arrive at the beatific vision that is God. There are many examples of texts where this is attempted. E.g., Hugh of St. Victor describes the Ark using an "allegorical" method. This method - which means much more than a mere "non-literal" reading of the Bible - is almost a meditative performance, where he's taken his entire memorial foundation, and then, interlacing seemingly incongruous texts and images, he sets out to explain a very boring (to our minds) part of the Bible as one of the most glorious and spiritually expansive parts. Hugh and others were trying to "hoist" themselves beyond where they were.
Carruthers does a fantastic job of bringing this world into ours, of showing how the monastic view of memory was much more expansive and interesting than ours. Of course, I think most people would recognize that, in many ways, human memory does not function like a computer. Even if our brain maybe more "powerful" than a computer, it is not a computer; our memories are all flawed. We fill in lots of lacunae in order to have a coherent narrative of our life, fill-ins that are most likely "wrong" and "un-factual." Seriously though, who would want to read a memoir that was just a re-counting of every detail of our life, accurate to the T? That would be beyond boring, because it would not tell us anything beyond mere details. While this may be "real," in a very restricted, lab-induced, narrow sense, it isn't imaginatively real.
Just like monks, we remember our life in order to get somewhere, somewhere beyond where we are now.
There are a number of extremely interesting things in the book, from the use of the "planned cities and buildings" of the Bible (the Tabernacle of Moses, Solomon's temple, Ezekial's temple, and John's temple) as forms of "locational" memory, to the use of illuminated texts for reading. Yet what struck me the most was the central metaphor for "memory" and thinking in monastic culture, the machina memorialis.
The notion of a "machine" in ancient and medieval culture is what Isidore of Seville identified as a hoist that architects or masons (masiones) would use to lift up the "fabric" of a building, setting this superstructure on a foundation. Extending this metaphor (using 1 Corinthians 8), monastic culture thought of a "memory machine" as constructing a building on the "foundation" of the Bible. Thus, memory was not a "faculty" that we have, allowing us to regurgitate information (although, it is true, the foundation must be able to be regurgitated - this is why all monks learned the Psalms by heart), but rather to creatively play with the foundation.
The best analogy would be a jazz musician: s/he learns "turns", phrases, scales, and other melodic and harmonic devices, and finally "standards", practicing hours and hours so that when they "improvise" they have something to say, and they don't need to think about it. Jazz is very formulaic in this sense, but it is free precisely because "memory" functions not as a mere iteration of previous learned material, but instead a building, an erecting of architectures of harmony and melody that out-strip, but do not overcome, the foundation in scales and basic harmony.
There were many devices monks (and the ancients) would use in order to use memory in this way. E.g., they would make "fables" in order to remember the stars. One of the most short-sighted and narrow-viewed modern people think is the Greeks and Romans thought that stories of Orion and other constellations were meant to "explain" what we now know "scientifically." Yet the entire point of these stories was to enable a sailor to remember that in the autumn Orion and his dogs 'chase' Pleiades, thus enabling him to locate the stars quickly. Fables, etymologies (which philologists really hate), actual buildings, and art, all help in the memory work.
Another aspect of the "machine" of memory is an ethical point. John Cassian (one of the founders, along with Augustine, of western monasticism) used the metaphor of machine in connection with a "mill". One has the grain one wishes to produce flour with, so you put the grain in the hopper, it goes down onto the stones, and is crushed and refined so as to produce flour. However, in order to produce usable flour, you must have good grain to begin with. Analogously, with memory, it depends on the ethical intentions of the person "remembering". We have a phrase for this: 'garbage in, garbage out.'
So what's the point of all this? For monks, it was so you could have meditative experiences, and ultimately to arrive at the beatific vision that is God. There are many examples of texts where this is attempted. E.g., Hugh of St. Victor describes the Ark using an "allegorical" method. This method - which means much more than a mere "non-literal" reading of the Bible - is almost a meditative performance, where he's taken his entire memorial foundation, and then, interlacing seemingly incongruous texts and images, he sets out to explain a very boring (to our minds) part of the Bible as one of the most glorious and spiritually expansive parts. Hugh and others were trying to "hoist" themselves beyond where they were.
Carruthers does a fantastic job of bringing this world into ours, of showing how the monastic view of memory was much more expansive and interesting than ours. Of course, I think most people would recognize that, in many ways, human memory does not function like a computer. Even if our brain maybe more "powerful" than a computer, it is not a computer; our memories are all flawed. We fill in lots of lacunae in order to have a coherent narrative of our life, fill-ins that are most likely "wrong" and "un-factual." Seriously though, who would want to read a memoir that was just a re-counting of every detail of our life, accurate to the T? That would be beyond boring, because it would not tell us anything beyond mere details. While this may be "real," in a very restricted, lab-induced, narrow sense, it isn't imaginatively real.
Just like monks, we remember our life in order to get somewhere, somewhere beyond where we are now.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
"...Train like an athlete.."
I was considering what to post this evening, when I realized I haven't explained the title of this blog, nor have I explained the epithet.
I have been thinking about "practices" an aweful lot as of late. Nietzsche used this term "Gewissensbisse" to describe the "pangs of consciousness" (which, by the way, Joyce has the best translation of this word: the agenbite of inwit) that ascetics in Christianity attempted to produce in themselves. In addition, he thought they eventually even enjoyed such "pangs," and traced this long genealogy from the Desert Fathers to modern scientists.
I think there is a great deal of truth in this, although I do not think of it in negative terms. In other words, I actually think "exercise" (one translation of the greek word askesis, i.e. ascetic) is the primary way in which we come up with "truth."
Now, some I'm sure don't like this: isn't truth supposed to be "absolute", i.e. indisputable? It is clear, or rather it is something you just have to agree with, or else you're "wrong." If this isn't the case, what about murder? How could you always condemn it if there weren't absolute standards with which to judge?
The big problem for this absolutist positions is that of "verification." We just have to figure out some way, among all the opinions floating around, to "verify" which one is true (let's not get into the circulatiry here - i.e. how is it possible to verify that something is true unless you already know the truth?). This is where Nietzsche's (and indeed, almost the entire ancient philosophical traditions, including Christians) notion of "training" fits: there is no access to truth without first a change in one's being. Or, another way to put it: one must become an ascetic in order to access the truth.
I can still be objected, however, that this is elitist. The problem I have now is just this: how does one have an ascetic practice that is at once actually transformative, but at the same time somehow available to everyone?
I have been thinking about "practices" an aweful lot as of late. Nietzsche used this term "Gewissensbisse" to describe the "pangs of consciousness" (which, by the way, Joyce has the best translation of this word: the agenbite of inwit) that ascetics in Christianity attempted to produce in themselves. In addition, he thought they eventually even enjoyed such "pangs," and traced this long genealogy from the Desert Fathers to modern scientists.
I think there is a great deal of truth in this, although I do not think of it in negative terms. In other words, I actually think "exercise" (one translation of the greek word askesis, i.e. ascetic) is the primary way in which we come up with "truth."
Now, some I'm sure don't like this: isn't truth supposed to be "absolute", i.e. indisputable? It is clear, or rather it is something you just have to agree with, or else you're "wrong." If this isn't the case, what about murder? How could you always condemn it if there weren't absolute standards with which to judge?
The big problem for this absolutist positions is that of "verification." We just have to figure out some way, among all the opinions floating around, to "verify" which one is true (let's not get into the circulatiry here - i.e. how is it possible to verify that something is true unless you already know the truth?). This is where Nietzsche's (and indeed, almost the entire ancient philosophical traditions, including Christians) notion of "training" fits: there is no access to truth without first a change in one's being. Or, another way to put it: one must become an ascetic in order to access the truth.
I can still be objected, however, that this is elitist. The problem I have now is just this: how does one have an ascetic practice that is at once actually transformative, but at the same time somehow available to everyone?
Monday, July 02, 2007
The necessity of waste.
Bataille once said, "humanity recognizes the right to acquire, conserve, and to consume rationally, but it excludes in principle nonproductive expernditure." Today, my wife was attempting to put Microsoft XP on her new Mac, the software she acquired with the purchase of her last computer. She called about the "product key", and asked if it was alright to "roll over" the software from her last computer. The service associate said, "the software lives and dies with the computer itself."
Now think about this. Software, which by definition "floats" around, above and through hardware, something like a word floats around the definition the dictionary gives it, lasts longer than hardware, if one chooses to use it. Software requires an agent to initialize it, to give it body and form. It needs hardware in order to be used, but of course, this hardware can be any old machine. The software-machine is the tide of the ebb and flow of the sea, needing any old beach in order to bring down its white, frothy caps.
But Microsoft, in our wonderful capitalistic system, is much more concern about money than about products themselves. The products are merely means to an end, an end which is an abstract thing, the almighty dollar. This dollar can be exchanged for other things, things one needs or wants. Yet what would be the best way in order to procure said money? The creation of waste.
Yes, waste is one of the most essential categories in our economy, because without sufficient waste, money would be impossible. You see, waste allows for expansion, and expansion is the only way for money to grow, and for capitalist exchange to be possible. Waste is the silent partner in the growth of our social machine.
Hegel points this out well. In his discussions of poverty in his Philosophy or Right, he tries to help us understand just how the wealth of a society is directly related to its poverty in capitalist societies. You see, there is something of a dilemma when it comes to what to do with the poor. If you support them (in charity), you immediately devalue their humanity, because they would be dependent on the wealthy. We can see how the English poor laws helped both deal with poverty, while at the same time create a group of people who did not see themselves as equals to the wealthy, and conversely, the wealthy believed themselves superior to the poor. On the other hand, if you helped provide work for them, there would be too much production. Hegel puts it like this: "it is precisely in overproduction that the lack of a proporitionate number of consumers who are themselves productive that the evil consists, and this is merely exacerbated by the two expedients in question. This shows that, despite an excess of wealth, civil society is not wealthy enough - it.e., its own distinct resources are not sufficient - to prevent an excess of poverty and the formation of a rabble [i.e., the poor]."
What is the way out of this capitalist dilemma? I mean, needing a group of people to be poor in order to stop overproduction is pretty harsh, don't you think? One small solution is waste: don't worry about overproduction, because what you produce shall last for such a limited amount of time, and so the consumer will continually consume. Admittedly, this does not solve the full problem; if we had zero unemployment in this country, overproduction would be rampant, and everyone would suffer. Instead, if we displace the "lack" here from people to things, we can still be capitalists and have our cake too.
What is the consequence of making waste necessary to the growth and survival of a system? Especially when so little can be recycled, it seems to me, at least, there is no incentive to treat our world like a place that should be sustained. Eventually, waste creates a desert.
Now think about this. Software, which by definition "floats" around, above and through hardware, something like a word floats around the definition the dictionary gives it, lasts longer than hardware, if one chooses to use it. Software requires an agent to initialize it, to give it body and form. It needs hardware in order to be used, but of course, this hardware can be any old machine. The software-machine is the tide of the ebb and flow of the sea, needing any old beach in order to bring down its white, frothy caps.
But Microsoft, in our wonderful capitalistic system, is much more concern about money than about products themselves. The products are merely means to an end, an end which is an abstract thing, the almighty dollar. This dollar can be exchanged for other things, things one needs or wants. Yet what would be the best way in order to procure said money? The creation of waste.
Yes, waste is one of the most essential categories in our economy, because without sufficient waste, money would be impossible. You see, waste allows for expansion, and expansion is the only way for money to grow, and for capitalist exchange to be possible. Waste is the silent partner in the growth of our social machine.
Hegel points this out well. In his discussions of poverty in his Philosophy or Right, he tries to help us understand just how the wealth of a society is directly related to its poverty in capitalist societies. You see, there is something of a dilemma when it comes to what to do with the poor. If you support them (in charity), you immediately devalue their humanity, because they would be dependent on the wealthy. We can see how the English poor laws helped both deal with poverty, while at the same time create a group of people who did not see themselves as equals to the wealthy, and conversely, the wealthy believed themselves superior to the poor. On the other hand, if you helped provide work for them, there would be too much production. Hegel puts it like this: "it is precisely in overproduction that the lack of a proporitionate number of consumers who are themselves productive that the evil consists, and this is merely exacerbated by the two expedients in question. This shows that, despite an excess of wealth, civil society is not wealthy enough - it.e., its own distinct resources are not sufficient - to prevent an excess of poverty and the formation of a rabble [i.e., the poor]."
What is the way out of this capitalist dilemma? I mean, needing a group of people to be poor in order to stop overproduction is pretty harsh, don't you think? One small solution is waste: don't worry about overproduction, because what you produce shall last for such a limited amount of time, and so the consumer will continually consume. Admittedly, this does not solve the full problem; if we had zero unemployment in this country, overproduction would be rampant, and everyone would suffer. Instead, if we displace the "lack" here from people to things, we can still be capitalists and have our cake too.
What is the consequence of making waste necessary to the growth and survival of a system? Especially when so little can be recycled, it seems to me, at least, there is no incentive to treat our world like a place that should be sustained. Eventually, waste creates a desert.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Belief, the mighty State, the new Priests
"Scientific knowledge as nonbelief is truly the last refuge of belief, and as Nietzsche put it, there never was but one psychology, that of the priest" (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 111).
This point makes me think about Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. All four have had books out in the last couple of years about the delusion, danger, and absurdity of religion, arguing that a much better explanation can be provided by evolutionary biology and other sciences as to how the world works.
I must admit, I haven't quite been able to stomach all their writing quite yet. I've read snippets, here and there (introductions, various chapters, etc.). For instance, I was reading about one of Richard Dawkins pet peeves, which is calling a child a "Catholic" child, or a "Muslim" child. Why would you do something so stupid, Dawkins asks us - they haven't had a chance to know whether or not they believe in God! They haven't made the decision, haven't justified their belief, so no one is justified in calling them by any religious appellation.
This is pretty representative of these thinkers and their analysis (although, one might say Dennett probably the least of these). For these thinkers, religion turns on the problem of belief, and more specifically, belief construed as what philosophers call "correspondence." What this means is that belief is understand as an equation or identification between what someone thinks, and the "state of the things."
The mighty State, yes indeed. If I believe the world is round, well well, science has the proof that the "state of things" is in my corner, like a boxing coach encouraging me in a ten rounder with Mr. Truth. Mr. Truth will not get the best of me, because my concept, my idea of the world, is in accordance with that "objective" thing we call the world. "Science" can help, using its particular method, and with its particular communities' approval. If I can provide evidence that the state of things and is the same as what I think, then I have a "justification" for what I think, and this would be a legitimate belief.
Now, what's wrong with this picture in regards religion? Heck, what's wrong with this picture in regards everyday life? In my mind, something very basic: no one actually lives their life justifying their beliefs. I suppose everyone has "moments" where they do, but in actual fact, religious people certainly don't, and neither do scientist (except regards their work). How many scientist have you ever met who asked whether or not one needs science? It's assumed that the veil should be torn from Isis, and nature should be rent and analyzed for "knowledge's sake." Religion on its part is not so much about belief as about communities (hence the root, re-ligere, meaning to "bind together," used for the old Roman door hinges) and practices, and in general, religious people actually view themselves in relation to these, rather than in relation to "belief."
First of all, communities are essential to most religions because, as Aristotle said, humans are political animals, and empirically, communities have enabled people to form associations which in some way provide for them. In the first century of our era, for instance, the Hellenistic world was full of communities for religious purposes. These communities created space for collective action (in any number of ways) that couldn't be found in other channels within the repressive Roman empire (for instance, wealthy women, who's political positions were devalued, helped finance many religious movements, including one famous missionary, St. Paul).
More basic, religions are defined by their practices, not so much by their beliefs. This is why Dawkins is completely wrong to require a "decision" on the part of children about their beliefs (one might even say this shows that Dawkins is the product of a Protestant environment). Religions are not generally about "belief", but about practices that help form certain types of persons. All religions are concerned with the formation of a certain type of person, and they do this in a number of ways. Muslims, for instance, require prayer five times a day. The physicality of this prayer, with the bend to the knees, bend to the floor, and then prostration, does more than just "symbolically" represent a person's dependence on God. Through physical practice one feels dependence, one works at subordination in one's own muscles. We can reflect and say that this represents the "Muslim" (i.e., one who submits to God), but for a Muslim, this is a practice and discipline of the body, before it is a "representation" of anything.
One can also see how focus on belief distorts how religious people understand why they are religious. The argument from people like Sam Harris, Hitchens, or Dawkins, is that evolution explains the world much better, and that religion misrepresents the origins of the world. Yet, the only people who actually care about "explanations" for the world are either scientists or creationists (who, by the way, are perfect caricatures for evolutionary thinkers to sink their teeth into). The "origins" of the world don't really have any cash value when you are a poor Ecuadorian farmer struggling to survive, or a single mother with no support network working two jobs. These are the kinds of questions most important to religions (although many counter-examples can be provided, no doubt), and when you just get down to it, not that many people care about origins. They mostly care about their friend they attend church with, the discussions they have about their sufferings and their triumphs, and the joy in hearing Psalms that have meant consolation in struggling times. Explanations are good for professors who make their livings trying to show their professions they are exceptional, but for everyone else, they really don't do a lot.
This all brings me back to the quote I started with. These atheists are actually rather bland and trite in their condemnations of religion, because they are the other side of the religious coin. They high-priest is no longer the pope or Billy Graham, but the evolutionary biologist, or the neurobiologist. They are the courts who declare this or that individual's experience as delusional, or this or that argument 'absurd according to the data science now has.' Nietzsche was right about them.
This point makes me think about Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. All four have had books out in the last couple of years about the delusion, danger, and absurdity of religion, arguing that a much better explanation can be provided by evolutionary biology and other sciences as to how the world works.
I must admit, I haven't quite been able to stomach all their writing quite yet. I've read snippets, here and there (introductions, various chapters, etc.). For instance, I was reading about one of Richard Dawkins pet peeves, which is calling a child a "Catholic" child, or a "Muslim" child. Why would you do something so stupid, Dawkins asks us - they haven't had a chance to know whether or not they believe in God! They haven't made the decision, haven't justified their belief, so no one is justified in calling them by any religious appellation.
This is pretty representative of these thinkers and their analysis (although, one might say Dennett probably the least of these). For these thinkers, religion turns on the problem of belief, and more specifically, belief construed as what philosophers call "correspondence." What this means is that belief is understand as an equation or identification between what someone thinks, and the "state of the things."
The mighty State, yes indeed. If I believe the world is round, well well, science has the proof that the "state of things" is in my corner, like a boxing coach encouraging me in a ten rounder with Mr. Truth. Mr. Truth will not get the best of me, because my concept, my idea of the world, is in accordance with that "objective" thing we call the world. "Science" can help, using its particular method, and with its particular communities' approval. If I can provide evidence that the state of things and is the same as what I think, then I have a "justification" for what I think, and this would be a legitimate belief.
Now, what's wrong with this picture in regards religion? Heck, what's wrong with this picture in regards everyday life? In my mind, something very basic: no one actually lives their life justifying their beliefs. I suppose everyone has "moments" where they do, but in actual fact, religious people certainly don't, and neither do scientist (except regards their work). How many scientist have you ever met who asked whether or not one needs science? It's assumed that the veil should be torn from Isis, and nature should be rent and analyzed for "knowledge's sake." Religion on its part is not so much about belief as about communities (hence the root, re-ligere, meaning to "bind together," used for the old Roman door hinges) and practices, and in general, religious people actually view themselves in relation to these, rather than in relation to "belief."
First of all, communities are essential to most religions because, as Aristotle said, humans are political animals, and empirically, communities have enabled people to form associations which in some way provide for them. In the first century of our era, for instance, the Hellenistic world was full of communities for religious purposes. These communities created space for collective action (in any number of ways) that couldn't be found in other channels within the repressive Roman empire (for instance, wealthy women, who's political positions were devalued, helped finance many religious movements, including one famous missionary, St. Paul).
More basic, religions are defined by their practices, not so much by their beliefs. This is why Dawkins is completely wrong to require a "decision" on the part of children about their beliefs (one might even say this shows that Dawkins is the product of a Protestant environment). Religions are not generally about "belief", but about practices that help form certain types of persons. All religions are concerned with the formation of a certain type of person, and they do this in a number of ways. Muslims, for instance, require prayer five times a day. The physicality of this prayer, with the bend to the knees, bend to the floor, and then prostration, does more than just "symbolically" represent a person's dependence on God. Through physical practice one feels dependence, one works at subordination in one's own muscles. We can reflect and say that this represents the "Muslim" (i.e., one who submits to God), but for a Muslim, this is a practice and discipline of the body, before it is a "representation" of anything.
One can also see how focus on belief distorts how religious people understand why they are religious. The argument from people like Sam Harris, Hitchens, or Dawkins, is that evolution explains the world much better, and that religion misrepresents the origins of the world. Yet, the only people who actually care about "explanations" for the world are either scientists or creationists (who, by the way, are perfect caricatures for evolutionary thinkers to sink their teeth into). The "origins" of the world don't really have any cash value when you are a poor Ecuadorian farmer struggling to survive, or a single mother with no support network working two jobs. These are the kinds of questions most important to religions (although many counter-examples can be provided, no doubt), and when you just get down to it, not that many people care about origins. They mostly care about their friend they attend church with, the discussions they have about their sufferings and their triumphs, and the joy in hearing Psalms that have meant consolation in struggling times. Explanations are good for professors who make their livings trying to show their professions they are exceptional, but for everyone else, they really don't do a lot.
This all brings me back to the quote I started with. These atheists are actually rather bland and trite in their condemnations of religion, because they are the other side of the religious coin. They high-priest is no longer the pope or Billy Graham, but the evolutionary biologist, or the neurobiologist. They are the courts who declare this or that individual's experience as delusional, or this or that argument 'absurd according to the data science now has.' Nietzsche was right about them.
from "Voyages"
-And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love...
Hart Crane, from "Voyages"
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love...
Hart Crane, from "Voyages"
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