Monday, April 20, 2015

The market is not God

Your mind comes into the universe once and only once. Why do we waste time and energy discussing such trivial topics? Let's talk about how we're going to perfect our minds. Let's figure out what steps we can take right now to help each other perfect our minds. Enough small talk. Enough superficiality. Let's dive down to the depths.

There's an empty depth, says Hegel, as well as an empty breadth. Isn't talking about the quest for depth without ever actually saying anything deep just another form of superficiality? No, I don't think so. I leave the depth empty so you can discover for yourself what's there.

Sit in a quiet place, says Siddhartha, and concentrate your attention on your breath. Siddhartha teaches you how to dispel repetitive, superficial thoughts and find the stillness you need to gain access to the depths of your mind. But he doesn't tell you what you'll find there.

Augustine's confessions will be read so long as it and man survive. The latest blockbuster will be forgotten within decades. Talk to God, not to your contemporaries. There's no need to dumb down your vocabulary. Make your readers become more God-like by giving them a challenge. Speak in language that will force them to think. Most will merely close the book and look for an easier one. But the one reader you want—the one who wants to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect—he will persevere.

When Diogenes was kidnapped and offered for sale in the slave market, potential buyers asked what his skills were. “Ruling men,” he replied. Buyers wanted someone to pander to their desires. But a philosopher teaches men to overcome their desires and put better ones in their place.

The writer I admire is the one who rules me. He doesn't offer to entertain me. He says, “I will tyrannize you. I will force you to become better, smarter, holier, harder, more exacting.” He demands that my mind become more perfect in order to understand him.

The commercial writer, on the other hand, doesn't offer to rule me. He allows me to rule him. He doesn't teach me to overcome my philistinism and ignorance. He panders to it. The way to be popular isn't to improve me. It's to pander to my stupidity.

"Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," says Matthew. What's the perfect you? How you will achieve it? Ask yourself this question every day. The answer might not be the same as yesterday.

If I'm purveying food, should I let money be my guide, serving customers with money and sending away those with empty pockets? Or should I let conscience be my guide, serving the most malnourished? Anyone engaged in commerce will be compelled to serve those with money and ignore those without it. This is clearly a very imperfect way of deciding whom to serve and whom to ignore.

Francis of Assisi understood that money was a means of evading the difficult question of who is worthy of help and who should be ignored. He wisely refused to even touch money, and demanded the same of his disciples.

The premise of commerce is that all the rich customer's desires must be fulfilled. But all desires other than the desire to be perfect merely waste time and resources. They should never be fulfilled. They must be completely ignored.

Of course all this flies in the face of common sense. We live in a world in which very few sincerely seek to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We can expect, therefore, that common sense in this world will be an obstacle rather than an aid in the path to perfection. Did Saint Anthony consult common sense before he retreated to the desert? If he had, he would not have become a saint.

I came very close to being a perfect engineer. But a perfect engineer, like a perfect lawyer or soldier, never questions the goals of his activity. His mind is confined to selection of means. Selection of ends is up to his superiors. The question was bound to arise eventually: is it plausible to pursue perfection without demanding that the ends as well as the means be perfect? I asked myself this question after fifteen years. Then I finally understood that engineering could never be a way to fulfill my desire to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. All that time was wasted.

Serious and sustained intellectual attention to any subject, Simone Weil points out, can teach us the discipline we need to devote serious and sustained intellectual attention to God. A perfect understanding of geometry makes my soul more perfect because the discipline I use to obtain this understanding is the same discipline I need to understand the will of God. The activity to which I devote my most serious and sustained intellectual attention is the most important part of my spiritual life.

Nothing stands between the mathematician and God. But when the engineer looks up, his view of heaven is obscured by the market. There are many men and women wiser than he who might help him grow closer to God. But the impersonal market strips all accidental features like virtue and wisdom from its participants.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Menschheitschnitzel

Faust’s student Wagner comes to him in the middle of the night complaining that life is short and art is long, that he will never have time to learn everything he needs to be an eloquent speaker. Faust explains that wisdom is not attained from reading alone.
Is the parchment a holy well from which a drink eternally slakes thirst? No, you have not won refreshment until it has welled up from within your own soul.
If the young Wagner has something he feels passionate about, Faust explains, there will be no need to hunt for words. But if his speeches of love and brotherhood are borrowed from his reading, and don’t come from his own heart, they will never move the hearts of his audience.
All those sparkling speeches you embroider with little cutlets of humanity are no more than leaves rustling in the wind.
The purpose of reading isn't to give me embellishments for my speeches. It isn't to help me to make a stew from the words of others. Feelings of love and brotherhood—“cutlets of humanity”—are of no use unless I digest and assimilate them, so they are no longer merely ornaments, but part of myself.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

You are a genius

If there is a duty to others, it is a duty to become the greatest person you can be. Only then will your help be the greatest help you can give—the help you, and you alone, can give. If you continue on a course of intellectual improvement, the last moments of your life may be worth more to your fellow men and women than all that came before. If you don’t make the perfection of your intellect your primary purpose, you shortchange others as much as you shortchange yourself. Here is how the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke puts it:
The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.
It is an essential characteristic of the human mind that its greatness can never be predicted beforehand. If your teacher says you don’t have the potential to become a great mind, this doesn't mean you lack potential. It means you need a new teacher.

The teacher you want is the one who understands it is you, and not the market, who must decide your project. The teacher you want is the one who understands it is you, and not the academic community, who must define the problem you will solve. If your teacher intends to prepare you for a task defined beforehand, to make a contribution to commerce, to solve a set of recognized problems, then shun him.

When I look back on the advice I received in my youth, I see now that the vast majority was advice to capitulate, to conform, to obey. My would-be advisers were quick with reasons, but the tone of their voice revealed their true motive. They were trying to persuade themselves they had made the right choice when they chose to forsake their own genius. They were trying to persuade themselves the void in their lives where a free and independent intellect might have been, the void that they tried to no avail to drown in puerile pleasures, was something everyone must have, and not just a consequence of their own cowardice.

You are a genius. When someone tells you otherwise, he wants you to forsake the path your genius demands and follow him instead. If he tells you your path is useless, he means it is useless to him. If he tells you you will reinvent the wheel, tell him one who reinvents the wheel understands the wheel far better than one who merely bows down in awe before inventions of the past. If he calls you selfish, tell him that by pursuing your genius you will contribute to the world what you and you alone can contribute, and not a mere carbon copy of the greatness that came before.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. Each day is a new chance to defy the critics who have sapped your confidence. Each day is a new opportunity to take up the quest to develop your genius.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Study! An exhortation to lifelong learning

There is a perpetual temptation to oversimplify the complexities of my life, to settle for deceptively simple answers to philosophical questions. The simple answer efficiently dismisses the question without satisfactorily answering it. Is the life you’re now living the life most conducive to intellectual flourishing among all the possibilities open to you? If not, why are you still living it? If you’re uncertain, why aren’t you investigating? If you’re like me, you’re intent on entertaining and distracting yourself, wasting precious time that might have been used to explore paths to intellectual flourishing.

Never again will an intellect precisely like yours come into existence. If you fail to discover the greatness you and you alone are capable of, this greatness will never be.

Is your work helping you flourish intellectually? If not, why are you still doing it? If you’re like me, it is only to pay for entertainment and luxury that doesn’t help you flourish intellectually either. It’s better to leave that whole life behind. Forsake meaningless entertainment and luxury. Then you’ll be free to quit meaningless work. You can devote all your energy to perfecting your mind.

What about your responsibility to your employer? If he’s anything like my employers, his only aim is to make a profit for himself, to gain power and prestige for himself. Ask yourself frankly, does your employer have a serious and earnest responsibility to society? Or is he beholden only to its so-called shareholders? If not, why do you have a serious and earnest responsibility to him?

What about your responsibility to your family? Perhaps your children would prefer a father and mother who are flourishing intellectually to toys and luxuries. The cultivation of the mind is far more important than the comfort of the flesh. How can you help your children cultivate their minds if you refuse to cultivate your own?

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The cowardice of our so-called "atheists"

Go back six hundred years and put today’s atheist somewhere where he’ll be tortured to death for questioning the existence of God. What will he do? To answer this question, look at how skeptical he is about sacred beliefs enforced today at the point of a gun.

When it comes to a God in which people believe merely because others believe, with no argument or evidence, our atheist vehemently objects. But when it comes to legal tender for all debts public and private, in which people believe merely because others believe, with no argument or evidence, today’s atheist has nothing to say. This kind of cowardly hypocrisy, perfectly willing to challenge ideologies no longer backed by the sword, but unwilling to challenge equally arbitrary and preposterous ideologies backed by machine guns, seems to me among the most contemptible forms of cowardice.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people stupid enough to believe him,” says Rousseau, “was the true founder of civil society.” Two centuries later, we remain stupid enough to believe tyrants own the earth, with no argument or evidence, merely because we’re threatened with violence if we refuse.

The idea of respecting someone not particularly noble or intelligent merely because he's rich has never been one I could really wrap my head around. It just seems so abjectly servile and cowardly. There were slaves brave enough to talk back to their masters even when they were being whipped to death. But today, when the penalty is far less dire, we don’t even think of disobeying our corporate masters.

The German poet Heinrich Heine complained that his generation obeyed their capitalist lords even without chains or a lash. They were so eager to obey, they hearkened to even the faintest hint from their masters. The slavery was deep in their souls, says Heine, and this kind of spiritual slavery is as dire as any material slavery enforced by whip and chains could ever be.

“The fruits of the earth belong to everyone,” says Rousseau, “and the earth itself belongs to no one.” The propagandists of the power elite tell you it’s a privilege to serve in their corporate tyrannies. Don't listen to them. Put down the new employee handbook. Pick up Rousseau instead. “How much misery and horror the human race would have been spared,” asks Rousseau, “if someone had torn up the stakes and filled in the ditches?” It’s not too late to tear down the electrified fences that exclude us from the enclaves of wealth, and take our world back from the tyrants. The level of corruption in our economic and political system has reached the point that the claims of the world’s billionaires to own all the land and means of production are worth no more than the paper they’re printed on. Let’s tear them up and start again.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Mastering our masters

When Diogenes of Sinope was sold as a slave, he endured it most nobly. For on a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates under the command of Scirpalus, conveyed to Crete and exposed for sale. When the auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling men." Thereupon he pointed to a certain Corinthian with a fine purple border to his robe, the man named Xeniades above-mentioned, and said, “Sell me to this man; he needs a master.”
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 6.73
Diogenes is confronted by a violently enforced social institution in which slaves exist to fulfill the desires of their masters. Courageously defying this institution at the risk of his life, Diogenes insists on giving higher precedence to reason than to violently enforced social hierarchies. Diogenes sees that the Corinthian Xeniades is addicted to luxury. The purple border on his robe shows he’s using resources irrationally, choosing to ornament himself in a world where others suffer dire privation. Xeniades needs a master to rule him, to teach him to behave rationally. Diogenes generously offers to take on the task, to help Xeniades overcome the profusion of intemperate, irrational desires that rule his soul, and put a rational desire to seek virtue and wisdom in its place.

Diogenes’ defiant stance is an example of a philosophical practice in which violently enforced social hierarchies, and the ideological constructs used to rationalize them, are treated as irrelevant for the purpose of deciding the proper course of thought and action. Only a cowardly soul allows itself to be ruled by violence. A brave soul is ruled by reason and reason alone. The ideologies used to rationalize violently enforced social hierarchies are so pervasive, however, a philosopher needs an active approach to neutralize them.

Anaxagoras came from a wealthy family. He gave up his wealth, and the political influence it might have procured, to study science and philosophy. “Thought is something limitless and independent,” he says, “and has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself. … What was mingled with it would have prevented it from having power over anything in the way in which it does. … For it is the finest of all things and the purest.” One thing that is often mingled with thought is, of course, money. For all but the most pure-hearted philosopher, money enters into philosophical reasoning alongside other factors, corrupting its fineness and purity.

In The Republic, Socrates analyzes the situation of a man who has a horde of money, but no other possessions or ties to the city in which he lives. Such a man, says Socrates, is of no use to the city. He’s like a drone that lives in a beehive without gathering any nectar. He’s no more than a parasite on the productive activities of the hive. At first Socrates’ claim seems odd. If we interpret the actions of the servants who wait on the rich man as the servants themselves do, the rich man seems like a benefactor. If we put the institution of private property in brackets, however, we see that the master is idle while the servants are burdened with work. The exploitative, parasitic nature of the relationship then becomes clear.

In sociology, there are two distinct ways of interpreting human actions. We can try to interpret actions in the way actors themselves interpret them, or we can try to adopt an objective “bird’s-eye” view, where we put the actors’ own interpretation of their actions in brackets and try to find an objective interpretation—as if we were visitors from another planet scientifically observing the peculiar behavior of the human race. Workers who don’t question the ideology of private property, for example, see themselves as acting in their own self-interest when they make themselves subservient to the owners of capital. If we adopt the objective “bird’s-eye” approach to studying this phenomenon, however, putting the institution of private property in brackets to try to objectively understand the events, we will see that some human beings (wage slaves) work arduously for the benefit of other human beings (capitalist masters), while the first live in squalor and the second live in luxury.

A comparison between Plato and Adam Smith will help us better understand Plato’s view. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, we find Smith analyzing the phenomenon of the greedy landlord, also from the objective “bird’s-eye” point of view. The greedy landlord would keep all the grain grown on his land for himself if he could, says Smith, but his appetite can only accommodate so much. His vanity, however, has no such limit. He distributes the grain grown on his land to its inhabitants, and in return demands that peasants produce “baubles and trinkets” he can use to impress himself and guests. The result is that the rich, even though they are motivated by nothing more than their own vain and insatiable desires, “are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants.”

I have my doubts as to whether Smith is being sincere in this passage, but assuming he is, we might point out that leisure is also one of the necessities of life, and the landlord’s greed by no means leads to an equitable distribution of this necessity. If the landlord benevolently handed out the fruits of the earth without demanding his peasants slave away fulfilling his vain and insatiable desires in return, the peasants could have had both sustenance and leisure. The landlord’s greed might unintentionally give them sustenance, but it takes away their leisure. And leisure is the first requirement for philosophy.

Smith’s “invisible hand” argument would lead us to believe that whether we interpret the relation between labor and capital as the actors themselves interpret it, or from an objective viewpoint free from private property ideology, we will reach the same conclusion: the owners of capital are beneficiaries of mankind. Plato, on the other hand, doesn’t neglect the factor of leisure in his calculations. He can see that the master is idle while the servants work. Plato thus understands that the objective view gives a starkly different conclusion about the moral status of the idle rich. From the point of view of the ideologically deluded servants the master seems like a benefactor. But in fact he is a parasite.

A man who “participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have such a principle,” says Aristotle, “is a slave by nature.” Because he understands that reason should rule him, but is incapable of reasoning for himself, such a man will naturally desire a master who can guide him on a rational path. Children, for example, often recognize their inability to reason, and therefore look for adults who can steer them on the path to reason.

But this natural slavery, Aristotle insists, must by no means be thought to coincide with the actual, violently enforced institution of slavery as it existed in Athens. Even if we suppose it is just for victors in war to make slaves of their captives, not all wars are just. Furthermore, even if we assume that all masters in one generation genuinely rank high enough in virtue to justify their position, there’s no reason to suppose heirs in the next generation will be worthy of their position. Although we might imagine that “from a good man, a good man springs,” Aristotle points out, “this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish.”



In the Venn diagram above, the universe of men in Athens is represented by a large rectangle. This universe is divided into six regions based on membership in three sets: the set of men who lack a rational principle, the set of men who lack a rational principle and know they lack it, and the set of slaves in the violently enforced social hierarchy. The six regions include three in which violently enforced status coincides with natural status. But there are also three regions where natural and violently enforced status differ. During the time he is enslaved, for example, Diogenes belongs in the category of men who have a rational principle but are unjustly enslaved. Xeniades, if Diogenes’ assessment of him is correct, belongs in the category of men who lack a rational principle but don’t know they lack it, and therefore should be slaves.

On the one hand, Aristotle insists that some men are natural slaves, and “it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.” On the other hand, Aristotle is very careful to distinguish “slavery by law” from “slavery by nature.” And, he insists, “no one would ever say that he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave.” (άνάξιος here translated as “unworthy,” might also be translated “undeserving.”) Although a cursory reading of the Politics might lead one to imagine that Aristotle supports the institution of slavery as it existed in Athens, a more careful reading seems to show that Aristotle’s position is more commensurate with that of Diogenes. Some de facto masters like Xeniades are in fact natural slaves, and need a master like Diogenes to rule them.

When an overweight man hires a personal trainer, the ideal candidate is someone a lot like Diogenes, someone who won’t pander to sloth and gluttony, but will teach our overweight man to overcome his present unhealthful desires and put healthier ones in their place. A woman who hires a tutor to teach her algebra is also looking for a wage slave who will rule her, disciplining her mind in the intellectual rigor needed to manipulate equations without altering their truth value.

These examples are exceptional cases where the master has one desire—the desire to lower body mass index or solve quadratic equations—that demands the conquest of other desires. But the peculiarity of the exceptions makes the rule stand out even more. With rare exceptions, wage slaves are expected to uncritically accept the desires of their capitalist masters as sacrosanct and inviolable. Wage slaves who are very clever in finding means to the ends set by capitalist masters are highly prized. Wage slaves who question ends as well as means soon find ourselves unemployed.

In an ancient and venerable shopkeeper tradition, the customer is king. The demands of a paying customer must always be fulfilled if a profit can be made in fulfilling them. This tradition stands diametrically opposed to an ancient and venerable philosophical tradition, the idea that the rationality of demands must always be called into question, that irrational demands must never be fulfilled.

A waiter who followed the example of Diogenes would refuse to serve an overweight customer and instead teach him to fast. A petroleum engineer who followed the example of Diogenes would refuse to extract more oil and instead teach us to walk and bike. An architect who followed the example of Diogenes would refuse to build a new hundred million dollar mansion for the latest billionaire while the poor remain unhoused. The vast majority of consumer demands in wealthy countries are irrational demands. They should be ignored, just as the demands of spoiled children are ignored. This is the lesson Diogenes would teach us, if we cared to learn it.

Although the institution of wage slavery has replaced that of chattel slavery today in the West, Aristotle’s analysis of the phenomenon of slavery is still very relevant. In today’s world we also observe that the set of wage slaves in the violently enforced social hierarchy by no means coincides with the set of those who are natural slaves. Subordinates in the violently enforced hierarchy are often, in the natural hierarchy, superiors of their masters. Capitalist masters often lack a rational principle and urgently need a master.

I fantasize about a future world where those in positions of power make a show of their asceticism as they do now of their extravagance, where those in control of large fortunes show they are masters of their passions and therefore worthy of their wealth. But I don’t expect this to become reality in my lifetime. What can I do now? It is here that Diogenes offers us a role model, a courageous example of nonviolent resistance. Refuse to fulfill the irrational desires of your master. Teach him instead to master himself. Refuse to obey those unworthy of obedience. Ignore the irrational demands of the powerful. Continue to make wise and rational demands, no matter how many times they go unheeded.

In the market, rational and irrational desires are indiscriminately mixed. Because of the impersonal nature of market transactions, we seldom get to meet the capitalist masters who benefit from our services. The market is an opaque wall that stands between wage-slaves and our masters, preventing us from seeing them and deciding for ourselves if they are worthy of our help. The miner in the quarry doesn’t know whether the marble he hews will be used to build a fourth mansion for an unscrupulous billionaire or a shelter for the homeless. If we’re serious about following Diogenes’ advice, never serving irrational masters, then any enterprise that ultimately holds itself accountable to the market is strictly off limits. As the hegemony of the market grows ever wider—it now seems to be on the verge of engulfing even the universities—those of us who refuse to serve irrational masters will find ourselves driven into an ever-tighter corner by our intransigence.

“The wise man must not be ordered but must order,” demands Aristotle, “and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.” Is Aristotle merely expressing a utopian dream? In the real world we see unwise men give orders all the time. We see their orders obeyed. Do we have to wait for a better world with wiser rulers to fulfill Aristotle’s demand? No. The example of Diogenes proves that Aristotle’s demand can indeed be fulfilled by an individual philosopher, not in a future world, but right now in this world, no matter how unwise its rulers are. The wise woman will hear unwise men barking orders at her. But she will ignore them, and thus will not be ordered. She will issue orders to unwise men, whether they are heeded or not. She is a voice crying in the wilderness, begging an unwise society to find its way to wisdom.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Methodical cowardice

If I say that literature and philosophy are mere artistic diversions, I in effect concede that the forms of discourse those in power take seriously (law books, contracts, diagnostic manuals) are the best ones. This is precisely the concession that literature and philosophy refuse to make. The form of rationality that sees the power of other human beings in the same way it sees the laws of nature is merely a systematic and methodical form of cowardice. If I decide my career plans based on what is lucrative rather than what seems to me true and just, I have allowed those in power to decide for me what is true and just. What we call “practicality” is in fact no more than cowardly capitulation.

Suppose a woman helps those she finds most worthy and asks for nothing in return. When she comes to me asking for help, she can offer no money. Even if I want to help her, my duty to my employer makes it impossible. Although I would never concede its truth, the principle that in fact guides my actions is the supposition that only those with money are worthy of help. If a waiter were to behave as a rational and humane distributor of food, turning away fat wallets and feeding the poor and hungry, he would be fired in an instant. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” says Upton Sinclair, “when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” It’s difficult to get myself to understand that the principle by which I choose whom to help and whom to ignore is a false principle.

Property rights are a fiction. This fiction, however, happens to be one that those in power take seriously. This makes them, in a sense, a fact. The Spanish Inquisition tormented atheists, and thus made the existence of God, in just the same sense, a fact. The rationalizations offered are also similar. If we didn’t all believe in God, society wouldn't please God. If we didn’t all believe in property rights, society wouldn't produce the largest possible amount of property. The cowardly hypocrisy of today’s skeptics, who proudly announce they are unwilling to believe in fictions, and yet show themselves perfectly willing to believe in fictions enforced by the state, continues to perplex me.

If the world is barbaric, then adjusting to the world as it is will make me barbaric. It is only insofar as I remain unadjusted that I retain any trace of humanity. The quest for unity of theory and practice has been largely discarded by thinkers of today. Theory must now adapt and reconcile itself to practice, no matter how irrational or barbaric that practice may be. The temptation to give up on the unique course of ethical development my mind sees before it at each moment, and conform to the pre-established course of bourgeois life, is ever present.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Memento mori

Memento mori. Remember death. Think every day about death.”
—Advice from ancient Rome.
If, when I aesthetically evaluate potential paths in life,
I always keep in mind that life has an endpoint,
Then I will see
A life that consists of an ever increasing crescendo
Of desperate attempts at self-gratification
Followed by silence
Is not a beautiful life.

If I remember death, I will remember that I must invest my intellectual and moral energy in something good that will endure beyond my death, and not squander it on what is transient.

A principle that seems to me wise is to abstain from all activities that are not conducive to intellectual excellence. Some of the consequences that follow from this principle are nicely elaborated in the Brahmajala Sutta, one of the texts of Theravada Buddhism:
Abstain from weapons and violence.

Abstain from gossip.

Abstain from shows.

Abstain from games.

Abstain from luxury.

Abstain from discussing politicians, criminals, food, beverages, clothing, places, families, cities, wars, battles, heroes, rumors, speculations on how the world was created, speculations about existence and non-existence.

Abstain from accusing, denying, goading and challenging.

Abstain from being the messenger of those in power.

Speak polite, likeable, exact, well chosen words that will make the hearts of your hearers joyful.
In a world dedicated to superficial and ephemeral pleasures, I must perpetually be on my guard. I must abstain from many things. I must always strive for intellectual excellence in the moment, and work to leave a legacy of intellectual excellence to future generations.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Enlightenment as bourgeois decadence

Inquiry into the ends of human action, David Hume tells us, can be taken only so far. “If you push your enquiries farther, and desire a reason why a man hates pain, it is impossible he can ever give any.” But when the sincere philosopher asks himself why he hates pain, the question to him is a serious one, and he may decide there is no reason. When a limb is amputated, the patient often feels pain in the phantom limb for the rest of his life. It is, in fact, only biology that demands we hate pain. The mind is perfectly capable, as every ascetic and flagellant can attest, of overcoming its biological programming,. Hume pays no heed to ascetics and flagellants, perhaps because he perceives them as irrational. But aren’t they in fact more rational than he, having overcome the biological prejudice against pain and risen to a higher level of intellectual autonomy?

Hume admits there is no rational reason for hating pain and loving pleasure, and yet he is unwilling to try to overcome these irrational biological prejudices. Here we see that in Hume’s world common sense prevails over reason, or, better put, common sense defines what it means to be reasonable. The idea that excellence is rare, and can therefore never accord with anything common, whether common beliefs or common tastes, is not one that Hume is willing to entertain.

“The ultimate ends of human action,” says Hume, “can never be accounted for by reason.” For Hume, the ultimate ends of human action are to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He has reduced man from rational animal to pleasure-loving animal. Should we be surprised, then, that he sees no reason in the aims of a being whom he has stripped in advance of his reason? A rational being strives to know and understand. He accepts pain. He does not fear it. He accepts death. He does not fear it. Hume’s life, like that of the typical bourgeois, is no more than a cowardly quest for comfort and convenience. All heroic sentiments, including the passion to learn and understand, have given way to the petty concern for material comfort.

Hume tries to separate the functions of reason and taste in the human mind, assigning knowledge of truth and falsehood to the realm of reason, and knowledge of beauty and deformity to the realm of taste. But the distinction is untenable. Why does the philosopher seek to learn the truth in the first place? Because he has a taste for it.

For a philosopher, the ultimate ends of human action are knowledge, wisdom, enlightenment, happiness and virtue. These are precisely the same ends any rational being desires, the ends that reason itself, the ens intelligens, desires.

The eternal philosopher, says Wallace Stevens, is the one who remains always on the road from self to God—or more precisely, since the number of ways from self to God is limitless, on one of the many roads. The poem that would be “unimpeachably divine,” Stevens says, is the poem that would allow us to leave behind the faults of animal life. The best philosophy is part of this unimpeachably divine poem. Proto-pragmatist philosophers like Bacon, Locke and Hume want to traverse the road in the other direction, so that philosophy will return to its human limitations and rely on the humble evidence of “the teeth, the throat and the bowels” (Stevens’ expression), and not on the divine will to truth at any price.

Tell a man his desire for wealth and pleasure may be corrupting his reason so he can’t see clearly. He blinks. What’s reason for, if not for the pursuit of wealth and pleasure? In his intellectual life, reason occupies a very humble place. The teeth, the throat and the bowels occupy the places of honor in his kingdom. Reason drudges thanklessly under their whip and sleeps in the servants' quarters. Even those who are exceptionally clever in finding the means to wealth are seldom perplexed by the fact that the end goal to which all their intelligence is directed is precisely the same goal the least intelligent aim at.