Yet There Is Method In It

I have been recovering from a stomach thing (“the father of all afflictions”). The good news is I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It was awesome, but certainly not light reading. I had maintained notes of approximately 50 recurring characters! For this literary genre, the length is second only to War and Peace. I mention this book on this philosophy blog as it is a dense philosophical and psychological work. Apart from the many moral situations faced by the characters, they are not afraid to discuss social, spiritual and philosophical issues in depth. Also, it is not obvious to me the author is pushing a particular agenda, although others have dismissed Dostoevsky as merely pushing orthodox christian propaganda. He seems to make a strong case for and against christianity and moral relativism.

The character Alexey (Alyosha) is perhaps the closest to the author’s ideal man, in this work. Prince Myshkin from this earlier book, The Idiot, is perhaps a higher ideal. But both love humanity and the world. Both are deeply religious and principled. They rush around trying to fix everything and usually, tragically fail (is this the author’s ideal!?). Indeed, Myshkin is driven to insanity by his high principles. Alexey keeps his head but is more human and more passionate than Myshkin. He is after all, the son of this father: the “sensualist” Fyodor Karamazov.

Ivan: “It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base?”

Alexey’s brother Ivan Karamazov is an intellectual, a strident moral relativist and possibly a strong atheist. His view is: given the rejection of God and an afterlife, the are no laws to say “love thy neighbour”, therefore “everything is lawful”. This brief expression, rather like a sound bite, borders on a false dichotomy, but Ivan (and the author) is smart enough to not over simplify. He is referring to the existential questions raised by the apparent absence of objective morality. When Ivan is attributed with “everything is lawful”, he said it plainer as “But in my wishes I reserved myself full latitude in the case”. Full latitude in this context includes murder or indeed any other action.

Rakitin: “And did you hear his [Ivan's] stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful?”

Ivan also states his parable of “The Grand Inquisitor”, in which Jesus returns to Earth, but is taken from the people by agents of organised religion and told he is now superfluous considering the current aims of the church. The inquisitor recalls the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness and which are metaphorically faced by the church. The church now chooses differently than Jesus’s choices in the biblical story. This amounts to an accusation of the atheism of organised religion. This chapter has been published separately from the rest of the book.

I was interested to read an expression of the eternal return, which just precedes Nietzsche’s statement in The Gay Science (1880 vs 1882). Although they seem to have expressed the same concept, the way the idea is described is strikingly similar. Dostoevsky has Ivan, driven towards insanity by (possibly misplaced) guilt, hallucinating a devil appearing and talking to him. Nietzsche also writes of a demon appearing at night to foretell the eternal return. Nietzsche appears to have discovered Dostoevsky between 1886 and 1888, based on his sudden gushing praise in Twilight of the Idols. Gypsy Scholar thinks they both may have found the idea in Heine.

Devil to Ivan: “Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth — and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious…”

I mention this as the idea is given far higher weight in Nietzsche, being a central theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra. In Karamazov, the world view which Dostoevsky calls by short hand “underground” is touched upon, as Dimitri is faced with the possibility of being sent to Siberia for 20 years (singing hymns to God from underground). This was of course discussed in depth in Notes from Underground, which serves as a sort of preface to his longer masterpieces. I am inclined to think that Smerdyakov is the most underground character in the book, in competition with Rakitin and Ivan, on bad days.

Anti Citizen One

PS The Onion reports on a film adaptation of many peoples experience of the book…

I finished Pullman’s “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” in a few hours reading. It is certainly an original and subtle subversion of institutional religion, even compared to His Dark Materials. I don’t want to spoil the style and plot but I think I can say it is a retelling of the gospel story. It has many slight twists which make it a perfect book for fans of postmodernism. Competition between truth and history is explicitly discussed. Most of the famous stories are included but modified to make them more naturalistic; meaning they occur in a manner that is consistent with everyday experience. There are many references to events and artistic works that have since occurred. I detected hints of the medieval history of the church, Plato, Blake, Kierkegaard (Abraham And Isaac) and perhaps a discrete hint of Monty Python (“Penny for an ex-leper?”).

I was playing with the idea of listing gospel messages that are contrary to mainstream contemporary Christianity. Well, Pullman did it better than I could!

Anti Citizen One

I thought I would write a few random thoughts on The Open Society and Its Enemies by Popper. First off: it is excellent. It is a defence of democracy though an analysis of Plato’s The Republic. At times, it seems rather supportive of Socrates and mentions many occasions in which he was liabled by Plato. I am very suspicious of both because they are both philosophical idealists. Popper connects idealism to totalitarianism when applied to political problems (if I understand his point). He also restates the basis of humanitarianism because it was straw manned by Plato. Plato claims that egalitarianism is itself injustice as it treats naturally unequal things as equal – leading to social problems. I was very happy when Popper avoids this and avoids the is-ought problem and the naturalistic fallacy to say that it is individual demands that give the state legitimacy. Popper defines an open society if the government can be changed without recourse to violence. If the individual is forgotten by the state, it ceases to have a claim to justice. The analysis is very critical of Essentialism, Radicalism, Utopianism and supportive of gradual, piecemeal and empirical social change. The ultimate moral responsibility rests on individuals within the state – which is almost an existential basis for a state (strange but true). This interpretation is subtle – when the state is formed to reduce suffering, it is not because the ultimate judgement we make on the world is it is a suffering place. Nietzsche here would warm us of making judgements of that sort! (Fellow suffering is the “deepest abyss”.) But we can take measures as individuals, with our judgement being the “first motion” of ethics, and the judgement that we should help the suffering is contingent (and may change in time). This effect puts the doctors choice to be doctors as the basis of health care. Since their choice lead them to that vocation, it might be expected they have the self motivation to do a good job. If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. This is the antithesis of our customer and victim centred culture, of course!

I wonder what part 2 will be like? I love the title, also. I love emphasising the second part “… and its ENEMIES….”.

Anti Citizen One

I finished The Voyage of The Beagle about Darwin’s early travels. People keep asking me who wrote it – as if all historical figures can only be seen in light of later historians! Well, he wrote it himself based on his personal journal. The trip was probably an inspiration for evolution but at the time, he held more conventional beliefs. The book focuses on observations while sailing and on land expeditions in the southern hemisphere. He discusses a wide variety of social, biological and natural phenomena – this generalist approach to science is refreshing. He occasionally makes positive religious references and comparisons. He feels great patriotic pride at being English and the improvement, as he saw it, of various peoples around the world, primarily through missionary activity. He often makes clear his strong feelings against slavery. A few observations are striking as possible foreshadowing his later work, including:

• Certain species occur together and never occur separately
• Certain species are unique to a particular habitat and do not occur in a distant similar habitat
• Many species are comprised of sub-species
• Habitats, geology, ground level and climate change in time, sometimes suddenly and sometimes slowly
• Two nearby places can be completely different habitats
• Some habitats often have new arrivals of species, others are isolated
• The vast majority of fossils correspond to extinct species
• Some species are very rare and are hardly ever seen by humans. (Why would God bother creating that?)
• Rushing to hasty conclusions is a common mistake

Anyway, a good book there. I also have “Origin” but I will take a rest from biology for a few weeks.

AC1

I recently finished Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Emerson. It was well worth reading. Emerson was ordained as a pastor but distanced himself from institutional religion. He developed his ideas of transcendentalism and the value of the individual. He utilizes paradoxes in writing and his call for to me at peace with your own nature puts him as a precursor to existentialism. (He is a contemporary of Kierkegaard but I am not aware of any cross influence. Nietzsche did read Emerson but probably not Kierkegaard.)

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

In his iconoclastic “Divinity School Address” he calls for ministers to use ones own instinct to reinterpret religious teaching and not to rely in previous experts to define doctrine that is set in stone.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man [Jesus] is made the injurer of man.

Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.

They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

As you can probably tell, his writing style is very quotable. But it takes a surprise effort to read, as his sentences tend to be fairly lengthy. This is not ideal for scan readers. In agreement with Kierkegaard, he does think there is an objective (and transcendental) truth behind everything. But the unknowableness of this objective truth makes it rather superfluous to my mind.

Anti Citizen One

by Machiavelli

I short book and very concise for it. It examines the strategic and personal traits of successful princes. What makes the book notable is Machiavelli’s view of “successful” is in terms of a prince maintaining or expanding their realms. For our times, he seems rather paranoid of invasions and defeats – but then it was a serious concern in 1500′s Italy (or what is now called Italy). For him, the end always justifies then means. His view of people is rather low, being concerned mainly with self interest. He calls for Princes to do “good” when possible and “evil” when necessary. To say a person should do evil almost turns the concept on its head. It certainly flies in the face of objective moralists.

Regarding the current wars in Afghanistan, I don’t think Machiavelli would approve of the current approach. Western armies have injured but not eliminated their enemies. They have installed a puppet government instead of direct ruler who resides in the territory. They have not established permanent colonies (the Romans were well known for this). The West has instituted new laws which are a lack of continuity from local customs. A stranger to the land has become powerful, through links with groups in Pakistan. Western forces mostly don’t speak the local language.

Perhaps it is unwise to apply Machiavelli’s ideas to the modern world, but it is likely that they would succeed in rapidly subduing newly acquired territory. But does the end justify the means? One cool name for a chapter: “Of cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved of Feared”. They don’t write them like they used to…

Anti Citizen One

I finished The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus. It was generally very interesting. For several pages, I thought this is really deep. For the rest I was left baffled, which may have been the intention! He quoted generously from Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. (I did not recognise a single Nietzsche quote for memory.) Since the book is pro-paradox it can’t be summarised in any conventional sense. It is a foundational text in absurdism, I would imagine. I admire his clear statement of his assumptions – that the world is absurd. In a sense, attempting to justify this is impossible. He is appealing to those who already know this is the case. I am not really sure I am one of those entirely but I can feel where the thought originates. To me, it is a reaction or over-reaction to idealism – that there is order behind the apparent chaotic world. The idealism is rejected… obviously. But to cling to the idea that the world is chaotic? Or to use his terms, humans are unreasonable and the world is not reasonable and therefore inhuman. There are many responses to this lack of reasonableness. The famous response is suicide (and this makes this work infamous). The absurdist response is revolt against the world and without hope that the world can become humanised. A third is acceptance and embracing it, with a hope of a leap into meaning – Kierkegaard is said to have taken this option.

It is refreshing to read an author who is more well read in existential writings than myself, but I still read it from a existential and frankly Nietzschian viewpoint. The main objection to my view is how does Camus separate himself from this world he finds so inhuman? The world can only be experienced through his body and any judgements of the world reflect more on his body than on the world. Although I’m sure Camus does not need lessons in existentialism:

…that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.

Meaning the metaphysical world is inhuman. But the metaphysical world cannot be known except by accepting (tacitly or otherwise) the testimony of our senses. So where does the expectation that the world should be “reasonable” originate? In our nostalgia i.e. ourselves? But with the rejection of metaphysics, we reject the a-priori idea of reasonableness of the world. Of course, Camus does not claim that people generally share his view. He spends effort distancing himself from Kierkegaard when I perhaps would have been interested in a constrast with Nietzsche (surprise surprise!) The appendix discusses Kafka’s work and interestingly rejects it as absurdist. The possibility of K reaching The Castle is, according to Camus, retained. I don’t see the stark contrast he draws between that and The Trial. The protagonist tenaciously seeks access to The Castle or acquittal from The Trial. Both are predicted by other characters to be impossible. And even if he does access the Castle, which is never described since the author abandoned the work, he probably would find another layer of bureaucracy and another and another – in the same fashion as Kafka’s parable Before The Law.

Anyway, it got the juices flowing. Knowledge of Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky is recommended before reading this work!

Anti-Citizen One

I finished reading Mere Christianity by C S Lewis. Well written but the ideas are not worth analyzing on this blog. (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” LW) But there are two points of interest that made reading it worth while. Kierkegaard fans might like to read the final chapter of “Christian Behaviour”. It is like a pro-institutional version of SK (yikes!) and he references the verse speaking of “fear and trembling”. Nietzsche fans might like to read the chapter “The New Men”, where he claims the “superman” is in fact a Christian. He uses one similar expression by likening Christianity to lightning, perhaps a distant echo of Nietzsche calling the superman “lightning out of the dark cloud”.

Anti Citizen One

PS Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion contains better arguments FOR god than this! (among other things…)

A first reaction on CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity: he really likes inductive arguments and arguments by analogy. He attempts to use these to argue for the existence of objective morality. But, given that both these forms of argument require some subjective value judgments, how is it possible to arrive at a non-subjective conclusion? Or to put it another way, if he needs to subjectively decide on what basis an analogy is valid, the conclusion must be equally subjective. Or to put it a third way, subjective axioms lead to subjective conclusions.

And don’t get me started with his comparisons of a-priori/tautological knowledge (e.g. mathematics) and a posteriori knowledge (morality in this case).

Anti Citizen One

PS Perhaps I should have followed Zarathustra’s advice (emphasis mine):

But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools:
“What do ye know of virtue! What could ye know of virtue!”

by Ben Dupre

It’s a good refresher for many key ideas in philosophy. He advances each theory with sincerity and also states the main objections to the idea. That most or all ideas in philosophy have very strong objections is itself revealing. Many of the ideas I had heard in far more depth – for example the design argument (for and against) is covered in 4 pages – after I have read Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But many ideas I had not considered, such as the main themes in aesthetics and Nagel’s ideas on moral luck. I was again reminded of the total incoherance of morality in the section of supererogatory acts and various others. The clarity of presentation of each idea was surprising; I guess it was good he did not try to discuss Hegel! But, no discussion of existentialism… anyway, a good read in all!

Next to read, Mere Christianity. (Why do I think I will need some “fresh air” after reading that book?)

Anti Citizen One