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  • Robert Pirsig interview …

    Robert Pirsig interview …

    … in the Guardian online, over here.

    “Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a 30,000 page menu and no food.”

    Pirsig is an interesting character.  I’ve read both the motorbike and the boat book and confess to thinking of him as a bit of a new age character, even though one that derives from Western philosophy.  It’s a while since I’ve looked at his work and I suppose I’m not surprised that he’s disapointed with his reception by western philosophy, but then Pirsig always seemed to be a little like one of those philosophers who doesn’t read philosophers, at least not contemporary ones, and who therefore produce interesting ideas but in such a way that they can’t really plug them into any actual debate amongst philosophers.  Of course this isn’t to denigrate Pirsigs’ work at all, merely to suggest that philosophical debate requires the philosopher to engage in that dialogue, to respond to other philosophers around them as well as to Plato and the classics.  Having said that, Wittgenstein was famous for having read very little philosophy and perhaps was just more lucky in being taken under the wing of an active academic (Russell) who could offer him some shelter inside the academy, something that never happened to Pirsig apparently.  Pirsig’s story also has a certain frisson of tragedy, personal and intellectual, that almost requires that he feel somehow disappointed in his success.  Personally I’d rather be in his position, I think – able to publish my ideas in my own way and be successful with them, rather than any ‘academic’ success (whatever that is exactly – well, essentially the sort of sucecss to which one can respond, ‘it’s academic though’ and mean, ‘it’s not really important’, not really ‘engaged in life’).  Still, the grass is always greener…

  • Fugitive thoughts

    Silence doesn’t exist.  Everything just keeps happening, in my head, in my body, all around me.  It’s so noisy here.  I’m a victim of my own consciousness, or inconsequentialness, or, or, or … the words have already gone.  My brain is intransigent.  My thoughts are fugitives.  My ideas suffer from chronic erosion.  I’m working at the rock face but there are no gems.

    My head, my thinks, they’re fissured, constantly deteriorating, or petrifying (I’m petrified, like stone, like a kid in a corner when there’s nowhere left to go), or liquefying (like a Photoshop effect, or garbage kept too long), or coagulating (like an unwelcome menstruation that starts when I’m sleeping and crusts itself around my sex).  Words rot.  Meat.  Bad meat.  Love.  Bad love.  Trash everywhere.

    ‘The real pain,’ he said, he said from his bed, which wasn’t so far from her grave, ‘Is to feel one’s thoughts shift within oneself’.  He didn’t mean change and move and develop.  No.  He was talking about the ravaging stupor, when words become knives, or falsettos that reach a clamoring pitch, until intuition itself is convulsed and frothing.

    I can’t posses them, thoughts, words, they’re elusively inchoate, mortarhate, more to hate … Knowledge must explode in the reader’s mind.  I have a recipe for a car bomb.  Knowledge must violate the self protective distance between reader and text.  Has anyone got a gun?  Do you ever think the unthinkable?

    He said, that time I saw him, puking and shivering, ‘We are born, we live, we die in an environment of lies’.  I want to rebel.  I cannot stand these lacerated perceptions, these scrapings of my soul.  How do you do this?  How do you fabricate and elucidate and communicate?  I can’t do this.

    My conscious aggregate is broken.  There is no cast, there are no pins, no analgesic, nothing that can eviscerate or repair.  I’m stuck here, with my sandy thoughts and vacuous words, inhabited by incomplete abortions, strangulated by the tight bands of ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘Don’t know’.

    I wish to be a dissident, from my madness, from my work, in my madness, in my work, but madness, suffering and silence evade co-option – what does that even mean?  That doesn’t make sense.  Is that necessary?  Sense and Sensibility.  Damn you Jane Austen.  Name dropping, not good.

    ‘I have decided,’ said the woman with the coffee coloured hair and the coffee coloured skin and the coffee smelling breath, ‘That I shall not be performing this evening.’  Who the hell are you?  Fuck off.

    I was bent on my knees, and I thought he would turn to face me, but instead he presented his arse.  Goldfish.  Go away.  Go Away.  GO AWAY.

    ‘A true man has no sex,’ he’s looking at me over his shoulder, his testicles are swinging like a mountain goat’s, ‘He ignores this hideousness, this stupefying sin’.  If he farted now I could see the wrinkle of his anus project a word.

    ‘You’re talking through your arse again.’
    ‘And you’re listening.’

    Riviere talks about ‘The blessed opacity of experience,’ how lovely.  I wonder if he could strike me blind.  ‘Hello, I’m eyeless in Gaza,’ but that’s all some great analogy for something I’ve never read and probably wouldn’t understand.

    Fuck, I love this lash of madness.  We’re the heroes you know, the blind and insane.  We’re the martyrs of thought, stranded at the point of extreme social distinction.  We know so much truth that society takes its revenge on us …

    I don’t know what else to say.  I’m going to get stinking drunk and piss in the garden.

    ……

    Hagiography

  • Dennett and The New Atheists

    Dennett and The New Atheists

    There’s a very interesting article on The New Atheism over at Wired magazine, worth a look (particularly, perhaps, for those in my Kierkegaard class).  I particularly liked the following extract from the conversation the author has with withDaniel Dennett, in particular the line about philosophers being the ones who refuse to accept sacred values.

    “Yes, there could be a rational religion,” Dennett says. “We could have a rational policy not even to think about certain things.” He understands that this would create constant tension between prohibition and curiosity. But the borders of our sacred beliefs could be well guarded simply by acknowledging that it is pragmatic to refuse to change them.

    I ask Dennett if there might not be a contradiction in his scheme. On the one hand, he aggressively confronts the faithful, attacking their sacred beliefs. On the other hand, he proposes that our inherited defaults be put outside the limits of dispute. But this would make our defaults into a religion, unimpeachable and implacable gods. And besides, are we not atheists? Sacred prohibitions are anathema to us.

    Dennett replies that exceptions can be made. “Philosophers are the ones who refuse to accept the sacred values,” he says. For instance, Socrates.

    I find this answer supremely odd. The image of an atheist religion whose sacred objects, called defaults, are taboo for all except philosophers — this is the material of the cruelest parody. But that’s not what Dennett means. In his scenario, the philosophers are not revered authorities but mental risk-takers and scouts. Their adventures invite ridicule, or worse. “Philosophers should expect to be hooted at and reviled,” Dennett says. “Socrates drank the hemlock. He knew what he was doing.”

    With this, I begin to understand what kind of atheist I want to be. Dennett’s invocation of Socrates is a reminder that there are certain actors in history who change the world by staging their own defeat. Having been raised under Christianity, we are well schooled in this tactic of belated victory. The world has reversed its judgment on Socrates, as on Jesus and the fanatical John Brown. All critics of fundamental values, even those who have no magical beliefs, will find themselves tempted to retrace this path. Dawkins’ tense rhetoric of moral choice, Harris’ vision of apocalypse, their contempt for liberals, the invocation of slavery — this is not the language of intellectual debate but of prophecy.”

    Read the whole thing here.

  • Just answers

    This afternoon I was chilling out a little after listening to Radio4’s ‘Afternoon Play’. It was an interesting one too, a ‘chiller’. The story involved a guy telling someone a story on a train, a two handed piece between an older man and a younger woman set in the late 1960’s and harking back to Ypres and the First World War for its ghost. I do love a good ghost story and it reminded me of these excellent recordings I have of some H.P.Lovecraft tales. One of those stories, about the music of Howard Zinn if I recall, has these screeching violins and the ‘Afternoon Play’ used little bits of that at the end today. It was as though there’s a sound, quite a specific sound, to this particular genre of story. The world-slipping, uncanny, ‘chilly’ world. Somewhere it’s going to be very cold in those stories. The shiver down the spine.

    This particular story also made me think about a connection with Kierkegaard’s tale of Abraham. The shiver down the spine and the shudder of thought. (more…)

  • What’s in a ‘distinctive meaning content’?

    I’m generally interested at the moment in the distinction between the theoretical and the practical, a distinction that can be found throughout philosophy and which I increasingly think is a dominant distinction, though often in an unthought way. The interest in this distinction is what underlies my current writing project, a book that’s tentatively titled ‘Practical metaphysics’ (more about that another time). It’s also a distinction that is central to Husserl and Heidegger, albeit in various forms. Heidegger’s concern with ‘technik’ for example stems, I think, from a difficulty with the way in which this kind of practical knowledge closes down our relation to being. Husserl, however, seems to be grappling with this distinction in his early struggles to rid logic and philosophy of psychologistic prejudices. At the moment I’m reading back through the ‘Logical Investigations’ and it becomes increasingly clear that Husserl has a strong theory/practice split underlying his arguments against a psychologistic interpretation of logic. (more…)

  • ‘Everyone’s right’ : a useful reminder of the principle of charity

    ‘Everyone’s right’ : a useful reminder of the principle of charity

    As I keep telling my students, one of the main skills of philosophy is the ability to read well.  Along with logic, this art of reading forms perhaps the most basic of philosophical skills…trying to hear what an author is saying often relies upon the ‘principle of charity’.  There’s this interesting quote I came across today whilst I was going through some notes of mine from a course I delivered a couple of years ago (a third year philosophy of mind course at Wolverhampton University) – it’s from Brian Cantwell Smith:

    “Everyone’s right.  Or anyway that’s what I tell my students.  ‘Look’ I say, ‘this paper you are reading was written by a dedicated, intelligent person, who has devoted their life to studying these issues.  The author’s had an insight, uncovered some subtelty, which they’re trying to tell us about.  Imagine that they’re showing us a path through the forest.  Problem is, people write in words; and words are blunt instruments: intellectual bulldozers … big bruisers, that cut wide swathes …

    ‘So here’s my advice’ I go on. ‘Don’t assume this text is written in a language you know, and take your task to be one of figuring out whether what they’ve written is true or false.  You will almost certainly judge it false.  Be more generous!  Assume what you are reading is true, and tell me what language it is written in … tell me, if we were to follow their path further, where would it lead” – p.170; Philosophy of mental representation, ed. H.Clapin; Oxford 2002.

    Good advice…

  • Kierkegaard and the work of faith

    Kierkegaard and the work of faith

    I was talking, on Monday this week, during the lecture of Kiekegaards’ Fear and Trembling, about the conception of faith. The notes that I have just uploaded to the students page don’t really touch on this discussion since they are still predominantly reading notes – though the section in there about the various different forms of conceiving of the work that we are meant to do is central to these thoughts.

    The idea goes something like this: in the ‘Preamble from the heart’ Kierkegaard uses this continuous trope of ‘work’, of having to do some work in order to do justice to the subject. The subject under discussion is Abraham’s faith, his act of intended sacrifice/murder of Isaac, and the faith that underlies this act. Thus there is a certain amount of work that we need to do in order to understand his concept of faith, this experience of faith that is the one that makes Abraham sleepless, anxious. Without this work we will not be able to reduplicate the passion of the thought, we will not be able to truly shudder at the thought of faith.

    If there is a certain amount of work to do, what exactly is this work? How would we know that we’re engaging in it, let alone succeeding in it? What happens through this work…

    The suggestion I was making was that we have to do the work in order to rid ourselves of the concept of faith as a comfort, as a form of knowledge that we have because we have faith – faith, in this ‘comfort’ situation, provides us with a ground or major premiss for a general outlook on life or at least the specific situation of Abraham’s sacrifice. It provides us with some security – but then the issue becomes one of how does it do so and is this what Kierkegaard / Johannes Silentio means…

    If we take the following structure we might see what I mean. We begin with a concept of faith that we bring to the table, something that derives from the commonsense understanding that is given us along with the giving of our language and its various meanings and concepts. We then engage in a work of philosophy, of questioning and thinking, which produces not a different concept (trust, perhaps) but instead a transformed concept of faith. The work both maintains and transforms this concept of faith, replacing the comfort viewpoint with one of trepidation, question, anxiety. This, after all, is precisely the concept of faith that seems to be inherent in Abraham – he is not simply ‘doing as God tells him’ in a comfortable way, in a dumb and unquestioning way – as though the questions never even occured to him. Rather he seems to be presented by Kierkegaard as precisely troubled, shuddering, aware of what he is doing and thus aware of the questions that arise (was it God talking to me, not the devil? why would God order me to do such a terrible thing? how can I murder Isaac? just because God tells me to do it, it doesn’t mean it is right – God must be telling me to do it because it’s right, but I can’t see how it is…and similiar such thoughts.) Without these worries, these anxieties, these questions it seems inconceivable that the struggle Abraham purportedly has could exist – what is the struggle if not with the apparent answers to these questions, answers which would imply disobeying God…faith, as Abraham has it, then seems to not be a comfort but precisely a capacity to act in the midst of the most terrible questioning, to carry out an act or move to do so in the midst of the questions. Without the questions the act of faith becomes dumb – no longer an act of faith, merely one of obedience, requiring nothing active from me but only a slave like passivity. Abraham isn’t just obeying – he is obeying in faith and thus obeying as the struggle with anxiety and questions. It is this struggle that characterises faith, or at least the faith of Abraham as Johannes wants to portray it.

  • Transcendental philosophy and naturalism

    I’ve just got an email through confirming my place for this conference in a couple of weeks, which looks very interesting. This project is being run by Essex University and looks like it may produce some useful clarification of the transcendental / naturalism debate, thoguh I’ve been too busy this year to pay it as much attention as I would have liked. Take a look at the speaker list and subject titles though if Kant, transcendental arguments or the naturalism debate are in your horizon and email them if you want to attend. Details on the website linked.

  • Snakeoil and conversational imperatives

    Snakeoil and conversational imperatives

    veiled+lady_485041815At the moment I’m trying to think through a kind of peculiar imperative, that of the conversation. Imagine a scene: a pub, restaurant or party, one in which the focus is a kind of average everyday, ‘passing the time’ conversation. The subjects roam across TV programs, a little current affairs, perhaps venturing into some personal experience. Maybe the topics don’t even reach this far and consist of a banter about women, men, sex, people that are hated or disliked. At some point in this situation someone begins to express an opinion that is unusual and they continue to express it even when it comes up against confusion and disagreement. Each time someone objects, another reason is given. The game becomes one of giving and taking reasons, except it is at this point that something arises that is no longer smooth. Aggression, anger or a general heightened emotional state begin to be displayed – the scene is decsending into an argument and not a reasonable, debating society type of argument nor an emotionally over-loaded inter-personal conflict but rather a confrontation and disruption.

    (more…)

  • Notes on Rajchman and transcendental empiricism

    Notes on Rajchman and transcendental empiricism

    from+greenwich+to+london+bridge11_1082381684John Rajchman, in his introduction to Pure Immanence, emphasises that it was in terms of the problem of subjectivity that Deleuze posed the need for a new kind of empiricism. The first published work of Deleuze makes such a claim quite reasonable, since it is entitled Empiricism and subjectivity and constitutes Deleuze’s only prolonged public encounter with Hume.  Rajchman makes an interesting attempt to reconstruct a central part of Deleuze’s argument …

    The Deleuzian argument (as suggested by Rajchman’s intro)

    1) The being of sensation is what can only be sensed (aistheteon)

    2) More material and less divisible than sense data, it requires a non-categorical synthesis (example of artworks  – Deleuze came to think that art-works just are sensations connected in materials in such a way as to free aesthesis from the assumptions of the sort of ‘common sense’ that for Kant is supposed by the ‘I think’ or the ‘I judge’) (p.9)

    3) The asymetrical synthesis of the sensible is what gives the Merleau-Pontyian ‘flesh’.

    4) This synthesis thus requires an exercise of thought

    5) However, unlike the syntheses of the self or consciousness the asymmetrical synthesis requires ‘sort of dissolution of the ego’.

    6) sensation is sythesised according to a peculiar logic: “ a logic of multiplicity that is neither dialectical nor transcendental – it is a logic of an AND prior and irreducible to the IS of predications” (p.10 – 11)

    This sensation is prior to all subjects.

    Transcendental empiricism may then be said to be the experimental relation we have to that element in sensation that precedes the self as well as any ‘we’, through which is attained, in the materiality of living, the powers of ‘a life’ (p.11)

    Deleuze takes from Hume the idea of habit – the habit of saying I in particular. Against Locke, Hume put forward the idea that the self is not given, is not a fact, the identity of which then needs explanation. (p.12)

    Hume thus opens up the question of other ways of composing sensations than those of the habits of the self and the ‘human nature’ that they suppose (p.12).