Gadfly Spring 2010 by The Gadfly

GADFLY THE

the undergraduate philosophy magazine of Columbia University

GADFLY THE

Spring 2010

Shorts You’re Precisely My Cup of Tea A Chat with Senior Philosophy Majors

Sumedha Chablani

Sam Roth

César Adrián Montúfar

Features The Religion of the Secular (read heathen) Age?

Nick Jusino

A Philosophical Framework For Finnegans Wake

20 Shana Crandell

The Lapse of History Hegel and Columbia Xenakis Musical Insensitivity We Can Believe In?

On Love, Or How to Cure the Ills of the Stomach

J.X. Daboin

Our Parents, Ourselves

Rhoda Feng

Bart Piela Puya Gerami

Making Small Talk With Philip Kitcher An Interview

Victoria Jackson-Hanen

Revolutionizing Art A Review of The Emancipated Spectator

Rebecca Spalding

Criticism What Can Philosophy Say About Art? A Debate

From the Editor

STAFF

In Plato’s Symposium, a young Alcibiades, loudly drunk, recounts a charming story about our father of Western philosophy. One morning, Alcibiades relates, Socrates became so fixed in thought that he remained standing in one place all day and throughout the night, pondering; it was only the next morning at dawn that he broke from his reverie, offered a prayer, and continued his walk. This image of Socrates embodies the popular—and perhaps misguided—notion of the philosopher’s role: the unique commitment to focused thought, a concentrated reflection which can appear akin to intellectual clairvoyance. But on that night of uninterrupted calculation, what exactly was Socrates thinking? Socrates’ almost mystic apprehension of the world of Forms may contribute to the inaccurate idealization of the philosopher as one who can access an indefinable realm of human cognition. Nevertheless, the image of Socrates motionless on a winter night points to an inescapable question: what do we think about when we think about philosophy? Socrates himself may have an answer: the philosopher, he alleges in Phaedo, orders “intellectual vision” to come as close as possible to the essence of things. Our very own Philip Kitcher reminds us of this when he states that philosophers excel at “anatomy.” The authors in this issue of The Gadfly all, in some way, seek to grasp the essence buried inside outer form, the reality hidden behind appearance. They all anatomize: whether their subject be a complex novel, a work of art, a musical composition, or even something so elusive as emotional attachment. Through them, The Gadfly seeks to apply the perceptive tools of philosophy to the experiences of everyday life. In this way the Socratic epiphany does not seem so impossibly distant; it is not some unknown event reserved for the few. Instead, philosophy serves us all best as the road towards understanding the structures that lie beneath the surface of experience. Puya Gerami

Thanks to the Columbia and Barnard Philosophy Departments for their support and assistance. The Gadfly is sponsored in part by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University. This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Editor-in-Chief Bart Piela Managing Editor Puya Gerami Shorts Editor Sumedha Chablani Features Editors Stephany Garcia Alan Daboin Criticism Editors Victoria Jackson-Hanen Rebecca Spalding Copy Editor Linda Ma Arts Editor Hong Kong Nguyen Layout Editor Christina Johnston Technology Director Cindy Zhang Business and Finance Manager Michelle Vallejo

ILLUSTRATORS Claire Sabel J.X. Daboin Louise McCune Ashley Lee Natalie Robehmed Constance Castillo Daniel Nyari Maryn Carlson Naomi Roochnik Keenan Korth

You’re Precisely My Cup of Tea A Chat with Senior Philosophy Majors Illustrated by Claire Sabel

Stephanie Wu, Laura Rodgers, Tao Zeng, and Shana Crandell

How did you become interested in philosophy?

Stephanie: I wanted to take a course to discover what philosophy even meant. I still don’t know what it is or means, but I think I don’t know in a more robust way. Shana: Christia Mercer’s “History of Philosophy II” got me hooked. Tao: It’s not Stats or Econ (my other two majors). Which have been your favorite philosophy classes?

Stephanie: Professor Neuhouser’s “Hegel” lecture and “Phenomenology of Spirit” seminar. Laura: “Phenomenology & Existentialism” with Taylor Carman & “Kant’s Ethics” with Patricia Kitcher. Shana: “Hegel” with Neuhouser; “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” with Patricia Kitcher. Tao: “Metaphyics” with Achille Varzi.

Which philosopher, dead or alive, would you most like to meet?

Stephanie: Wittgenstein. Laura: Georges Bataille & Thomas Hobbes. Shana: Leibniz. Tao: Marx.

Which philosopher, dead or alive, would you least like to meet? Stephanie: Schopenhauer? Shana: Derrida, I guess. Laura: George Berkeley, what a bore. Tao: Engels.

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How would you sum up your experience as a philosophy major? Stephanie: Philosophy really helped me develop my close reading skills, which I’ve found useful for writing all sorts of papers and intrinsically enjoyable in my own leisure reading. Shana: Philosophy students arrogantly claim that they can successfuly venture into other disciplines because of their training. I’ve found this arrogance to be quite well-founded. Tao: Professors matter. The same class can be taught very differently by different professors.

What is your advice to aspiring philosophy majors? Stephanie: Philosophy classes assign few pages of reading. Do lots of delicious close reading. Shana: Take grad seminars early and often; one of my regrets is thinking I couldn’t take a seminar on the Phenomenology of Spirit when I was a sophomore. Fear not the G. You don’t have to write a thesis to be a serious student of philosophy. Tao: Take classes outside your major.

What are your plans after graduation? Stephanie: I am going to study German and Chinese for a year, and hopefully hang out with my grandparents in China for a few months. Then, law school. Laura: Moving to Washington, D.C. and looking for a job. Shana: Taking a year to learn German and then heading to grad school, hopefully to end up studying Kant or Hegel for five or ten more years. Tao: Peace Corps.

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The Lapse of History: Hegel and Columbia Sam Roth

Illustrated by J.X. Daboin

he night of October 13th, 1806, must have stretched on endlessly for the residents of the German town of Jena. The French and Prussian armies, between which war now seemed inevitable, fitfully skirmished nearby as they prepared for a decisive battle. In that one small town, remarked a struggling academic at the local university, were forces sufficient to alter the face of the globe. But the lecturer had more immediate concerns. On that night, he raced to complete his first book, facing now not only an impatient publisher but also the violent conflict about to grip his city. By the end of the next day, Napoleon had routed the Prussians and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had finished The Phenomenology of Spirit. But for Hegel,

n April 1968, Columbia student Mark Rudd and a legion of disaffected peers stormed Hamilton Hall, taking up positions outside the office of Henry Coleman, Dean of the College. But Coleman, the uprising’s chosen hostage, wasn’t in. Elbowing his way through the crowd to reach his own office door, he stood next to Rudd and boomed, “I have no control over the demands you are making, but I have no intention of meeting any demand under a situation such as this.” Each group had the power to deny the other, and, as a thousand police officers stormed the Morningside Campus with weapons bared, it became clear that neither was interested in détente. Coleman waited through the night to be freed by his captors the next day.

Hegel, of course, was spectacularly wrong. The struggle over ideas was just beginning. the night marked more than national triumph or personal accomplishment. It was the end of history itself. The last serious challenger to the progressive ideals of the French Revolution had been defeated in a blaze of glory. From that point forward, Hegel suggested, the ideals of republican governance would grow ineluctably across the globe. The competition of political ideologies, which had driven international history for millennia, had been permanently extinguished.

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t is easy to imagine the class of 2013 sympathizing with Hegel. Their older classmates have weathered hunger strikes and petty dictators, worn out their voices over navy boys and classroom intifadas, and packed Low Steps—twice—to cheer a former transfer student who went on to bigger things. But not this year. Students who first arrived at Columbia in 2009 have toiled on a sleepy green campus, adrift somewhere north of Columbus Circle. What happened?

It’s hard to claim a lack of provocation. Uyghur Muslim activist Rebiya Kadeer and Islamophobic Dutch MP Geert Wilders both inveighed against enemies—the People’s Republic of China and all Muslims ever, respectively. Student councils debated whether or not to use the boot of oppression to put out your cigarette. For Christ’s sake, a professor punched someone, al- The historical narrative has not ended at legedly on a question of Columbia University. The new conflicts race relations. All this to little may be hard to imagine from within the reaction. Kadeer, for lapse of history. example, engendered a protest of about four people with printer-paper flyers. Wilders, perhaps because he was so ludicrously objectionable, also proved a non-starter. Lionel McIntyre, for all his alleged sins, remains a professor at the School of Architecture. If ever there were a time and place to calm down, it was Columbia in fall 2009. Perhaps the ideological struggles are won and the history of Columbia is really over.

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ithout a doubt, this past year has seen dramatic shifts in the nature of the issues that once excited us. In 2009, Barack Obama’s electrifying promises of change, once the basis for uncompromising popular struggle, became part of a complex and ambiguous political process. Closer to home, the slow development of the Global Core demonstrated that, while questions of multiculturalism persist, the work of radical persuasion is over. Students, even if they disagree about smoking on campus, can hardly challenge the decision-making framework, having directly elected it. It could be that our quiescence, then, is the sign of a university at ease with itself. We have resolved the fundamental conflict—the sharp distinction of interests—at the heart of history. Unlike Napoleon charging the Prussians, we face an amorphous sea of possibilities that move in one direction or another on strange and slow-moving tides. But it’s hard to make that kind of pronouncement without thinking about Hegel at the Battle of Jena because Hegel, of course, was spectacularly wrong. The struggle over ideals in Europe was not over; it was just beginning. In the two centuries that followed, nationalism, fascism and communism, would radically threaten the identity of Hegel’s Western world. So don’t lose faith, freshmen. Your very arrival ensures that, for better or for worse, the historical narrative has not ended at Columbia University. The new conflicts may be hard to imagine from within the lapse of history. But as Hegel and Henry Coleman knew, the night only lasts for so long.

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The Religion of the Secular (read heathen) Age? Nick Jusino

Illustrated by Louise McCune

he attempt by certain religious believers to characterize the relation between scientifically inclined individuals and scientific disciplines as a relation between a faithful believer and his creed is ultimately quite disingenuous. However, as with many errors, there is a certain plausible kernel of truth here that lends credence to the larger claim in the minds of those only too eager to malign science and its advocates for the purpose of saving their religion from perceived danger. The difficulty rests in the claim by the enthusiasts of science that scientific methods are unique sources of objective

knowledge. This is true by any sensible standard but false when one looks to exaggerated criteria of knowledge. Unintentionally, the religious believers’ accusation leads us into an important epistemic debate. When replying to the not unsubstantial boast of the methods of science, the religious believer has two options: he can either claim that religion is more reliable than others think, or he can allege that scientific inquiry isn’t so trustworthy. These are the options for a believer should he care to pursue the question of knowledge and not the question of faith.

There is no meaningful element of faith in science.

hen dealing with qualified scientists, religious people often discover quite quickly that their variety of religious “knowledge” is a far cry from the rigorous knowledge sought according to stringent standards by scientists. Thus if the first option fails, believers find that the second option presents a much harder task. A good scientist (despite her specialization) likely knows how penicillin works, what a genome is and other points of general knowledge. Moreover, she probably knows a great deal of the foundational evidence upon which these matters are based.

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Faced with an uphill battle, the common religious believer might resort to desperate measures, such as unleashing the dreaded problem of induction. But in challenging our experientially wellfounded presupposition that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (e.g., the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold), any religious believer looking to undermine science is in fact undermining the basis of his everyday experience. It can be safely assumed that the believer will predict that throwing water on a fire will put it out and not that H2O will whimsically become flammable itself. Unbeknownst to the believer, he or she relies on induction all the time. Otherwise, crossing a room might become a

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true adventure and opening a door would never be safe as it may open to hell or, still better, to two-dimensional Flatland.

owever, most of us are not so well versed in the history and methods of science. That being the case, such religious believers needn’t devolve into such absurdity in attempting to undermine science among the general public. They instead might allege, in an alternative attempt to devalue the reliability of science and undermine its stature, that lay aficionados of science lack any knowledge of its validity and that they must approach it with the very same (blind) faith with which they approach their own deity. Thus they claim that science is the religion of the secular (read heathen) age. To start in earnest on the topic at hand, I might ask “What do you know?” It is a simple question, but it involves a bit of conceptual work. Let’s tentatively use the classic JTB analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. What,

then, do we know? Well, 2+2=4; on a clear day, the sky is typically blue; Obama is the president; Albany is north of New York City, etc. But do I know Schwarzchild’s radius equals 2GM/c2? Do I know all that much about the theoretical aspects of evolution, let alone the underlying genetics? Or else can I grasp the entirety of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? Can I justify its findings or the methods employed in reaching the conclusions therein—explaining their assumptions, the mathematics and the evidentiary bases behind all of the methods? The answer to many of these questions is certainly “no.” But do I then know that these things are correct? An epistemic quandary is rearing its head here: What do I know and how do I know it? Some believers would like to exploit my ignorance on many

An epistemic quandary is rearing its head here: What do I know and how do I know it? matters as well as my uncertainty and fuzziness about others to their ends. In this way, they would like to demonstrate that there is some significant element of faith involved in believing that science is valid.

here might we draw a line so as to subsume enthusiasts for science under knowledge (perhaps nearer its fringes) and believers clearly under faith? An obvious answer comes to mind. As above, knowledge might be taken as justified true belief. Faith, then, might be a sort of confidence

that is provided by no evidentiary backing whatsoever and directed to something that is inscrutable (e.g., God). If the retort that trust in science is modern faith can be taken as indicative of the epistemic bankruptcy of religious belief (which is probably called “belief ” precisely because it cannot aspire to much justification), then it seems clear how believers might be subsumed under the category of “faith.” Enthusiasts for science then might be subsumed under knowledge, but only if we first define “justification.” For these purposes we might take it to consist in the use of reliable ways of coming to belief. If we think we can produce reliable and sensible reasons for coming to believe in the validity of science, then we can see why confidence in science is not comparable to religious faith.

nfortunately, many religious persons who would lob the allegation at hand have adopted unrealistic and very different criteria for the justification of knowledge. They would prefer a hyperreliable sort of knowledge precisely because it places an overwhelming burden on any supporter of science with its sheer impracticability. Hyper-reliable knowledge is unimaginable in the vast majority of human endeavors (save perhaps mathematics and logic) and so it’s not of much worth addressing, though I will note that many believers who would even attempt this crude tactic fail to approach a great many aspects of their own lives with that same hyperbolic skepticism. They don’t apply it to their own religious beliefs or to the great many sorts of social media that they might care for (e.g. televangelists). Nor do they entertain the idea that they might be brains in vats or else under the spell of an evil demon (though they might be tempted to resort to Descartes’s embarrassingly bad features

solution and its requisite circular justification of God.) Instead, in setting the bar for knowledge so ludicrously high they count on it resulting in everyone’s having only some variety of “faith.”

In this case, we must take a nonfoundationalist view of knowledge here; we are not moving from premises to logical conclusions. Rather, we are basing our understanding on previous views deemed reliable. Given inherited knowledge, sciut let’s see if we can ascribe to ence will be continuously revised for all enthusiasts of science any sort of foreseeable time. This is a virtue of science knowledge on the weaker criterion in that, unlike religion and faith, it takes no provided above, i.e. if we can produce re- dogmatic given at its word as unassailable liable and sensible reasons for coming to and a justification of itself. Science—conbelieve in the validity of science. Quite ob- trary to the false image painted by some believers of a despotic Science, unlike religion and faith, closed authority— even invites the likes takes no dogmatic given at its word. of “intelligent designers” to take a shot at viously the internal affairs of science and explaining relevant matters, though scienscientists in their professional contexts re- tists ultimately find their “theory” facile, main unassailable. The strict methodolo- without positive explanation but only naygies, community standards and means of saying. So while our confidence in science peer review are effective ways of ensuring might not meet the exaggerated Cartesian quality. In terms of education and societal standard, it is still very reliable while reliconfidence in science, its successes are the gious belief remains otherwise. most striking and convincing justification here is no meaningful element of anyone could point to. By its successes scifaith in science. Setting the bar for ence shows remarkable reliability across a knowledge too high is intended to range of contexts. What about the deep epistemic result in everyone having some variety of attack of religious enthusiasts? A text- faith as found in religion. However, with book might say inherited genetics deter- its strict standards of proof, replicability, mine the features of an organism, but do I peer review, etc., science offers great obknow this? Do I know that DNA is made jectivity. Science is objective enough, befrom arrangements of adenine, guanine, ing based on the reliable knowledge of thymine and cytosine? Well, no, not if that preceding generations, though it always means that I must have myself repeated reserves the option to correct itself, somethe experiments that allegedly demon- thing religion could never do. Furtherstrate these things. But this is not such a more, it is reliable enough to adequately worry on the eminently practical criterion. justify confidence in it. The allegation The theories are cogent. The information that confidence in science is comparable came from reliable sources of qualified to the baseless faith found in religion is a professionals whom I trust. And it has particularly facile one that no respectable subsequently proved theoretically sound religious believer could advance. Instead, as the basis of later experimentation and only those who themselves see the world advances from which I derive much prac- through blind faith could accuse others of doing the same. tical benefit.

10 THE GADFLY Spring 2009

Debate:

What can philosophy say about art? Illustrated by Ashley Lee

The Lack of Precision Bart Piela

he philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Many philosophers have taken Wittgenstein’s suggestion—albeit, interpreted outside its context—to mean that all that we can say in philosophy is what we can say precisely. The project of analytic

philosophy has been to make investigation as precise as possible. Can a philosopher say anything precise about art? Decidedly, no. It is not that it is impossible to think about art; certainly it is, and the results can be fascinating. But contemplation of art through proper philosophy is, in fact, impossible. Philosophy requires smooth systematization and, to a large degree, the tools of logical analysis. Those tools cannot be applied to something so imprecise as human creativity.

Philosophy requires smooth systematization and the tools of logical analysis.

rt relies on the various contradictions inherent in subjective experience. When reading a single passage of Tolstoy’s masterwork, War and Peace, the reader feels simultaneous love and hate, envy and repulsion, affirmation and denial. It is this sort of passage that is likely to receive the astute attention of literary criticism. Napoleon is at once the greatest of all men and the smallest. He is the freest and the most bound. It is up to the reader to decide what to make of this. To a large extent, what we have heard

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in our introductory humanities classes is true: “There is no wrong answer.” There are only more compelling answers. But how compelling these answers are is based on wit, persuasiveness and style. Not on logic. Add to this already contradictory, imprecise form of expression an even more contradictory and imprecise possible range of subjective reactions—what does one get? We can only say what we think the artist was thinking. And even the artist is not committed to what he or she is thinking, since much of his or her expression is subconscious. Not every artist is committed to the precise order of Raphael. Consider the chaos of Pollock.

Some principles of subjective experience might be articulated. But this is only possible within the framework of the philosophy of psychology, or even psychology itself. Philosophy of art thus becomes a branch of psychology, and that is certainly not what its proponents want. Philosophy’s greatest success comes when it is applied to disciplines with inherent precision, like mathematics and physics. The body of twentieth century analytic philosophy should be seen as progress in philosophy, just as the advances in mathematics and physics have been seen as progress. It is very doubtful if philosophy will ever have such success in art; in fact, that kind of success may just be unattainable.

Wealth of Discourse Puya Gerami

n Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains his reasons for banishing all poets from the ideal city-state: he fears the pernicious ‘imitations’ of artists who could corrupt the stable order of his Kallipolis, citing the “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy. For Socrates, reverend martyr of Western philosophy, there is something seductive, mesmerizing and inescapably dangerous in the verse of the tragedian or the sculpture of the artist. Because of this, the philosopher uniquely chooses to banish art from his utopian fantasy. There is no room for creators in the static world of the philosopher-king. But Socrates’ frustrated attempt to exile art from the realm of the thinker is not philosophy’s rejection of aesthetics.

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Rather it is philosophy’s recognition of the enigmatic, often unclassifiable nature of human expression. For the last two and a half millennia, a host of philosophers— from Aristotle to Hegel to Benjamin— have attempted to define the dynamics of aesthetic experience. Philosophy seeks to inquire, conceptualize and, above all else, demystify. Thus many thinkers have chosen to critically demystify the seemingly superhuman qualities of art by more fruitfully understanding its complex relationship with human identity and perception. What makes an object a work of art? How do we perceive and define beauty? How does one construct a hierarchy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art? These provocative questions can only be approached with

Philosophy at its best penetrates the inherent contradictions of reality.

the philosopher’s lens, equipped with the ability to distinguish and systematize. Ultimately philosophy can reveal to us the intricate processes involved in constructing and viewing art. Only philosophy leads us to understand far more precisely our differentiation between ‘art’ and ‘non-art’.

hilosophy is at its best when it is used to penetrate the inherent contradictions of reality, carefully annihilating the dogmatic pretensions of received truths. It cannot be limited to the static results and mathematical certainties of logic. Philosophers hope to understand a world, and a human world-view, that is constantly transforming itself. Art is central to our existence because it represents this perpetual flux. Many of the most revered thinkers became acquainted with philosophy only while falling in love with art at the same time. Sartre’s last book is his attempt

to understand the writings of Flaubert; Nietzsche’s first ends with a paean to the music of Richard Wagner. What explains this unique relationship between philosophy and art? If the role of philosophy is to understand what it means to be human, art boldly attempts to express that very wish. Unsurprisingly, the most talented philosophers seem to be astonishing artists in their own right: Socrates banishes all poets from the Kallipolis and lambasts the deceptive rhetoric of the Sophists, but he is perhaps the greatest oratorical wordsmith of all time. The philosopher is undaunted by what first appears indefinable. If philosophy is the thinker’s mastery of critical understanding, then nothing, not even the protean, difficult nature of art, ought to escape its comprehensive vision.

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Making Small Talk with Philip Kitcher Victoria Jackson-Hanen Illustrated by Daniel Nyari

(i)

Tell me about your background. How did you get into philosophy?

I began as a mathematician, and I got bored with doing mathematics. I thought I wouldn’t do any creative work in it. My tutor suggested that I do history of science, so I did this in my third year at Cambridge, which I had to do to finish my residence requirement for the degree. While I was doing history of science, I got interested in philosophy of science. I then went to graduate school in philosophy without having taken any philosophy classes, which was nearly disastrous. But I survived, and I worked in philosophy of science for the first part of my career. But I’ve done lots of other kinds of philosophy at various stages along the way.

One of them being philosophy of literature.

(ii)

Yes.

So what is philosophy of literature? What kind of questions does it ask?

Two different kinds of questions. There is an approach to philosophy of literature that is allied with aesthetics: questions about the presentation of character in literature, the different forms of narration, that sort of thing. Then there is philosophy of literature that is the study of philosophical themes in works of literature, which I regard as something many European philosophers have often done. Many doubled as literary figures in their own right. Think of Camus and Sartre,

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and in certain respects Schiller and Dostoevsky. You’ve got that tradition well established in Europe, whereas in English language philosophy it’s been much less prominent—although there are some like John Stuart Mill, who is one my heroes. I was personally extremely excited by Stanley Cavell’s essay on King Lear called “The Avoidance of Love.” It’s a really great essay. That’s what led me to think that there could be serious work done in philosophical explorations of literature. That’s now becoming much more frequent, and a number of people have written philosophical works exploring themes in literature. Henry James is very popular, but others like Robert Pippin and Martha Nussbaum have all written things about this. It’s a developing genre. I’d like to see more of it taught at the undergraduate level. I’ve actually taught from quite early in my career courses on the philosophy of literature. Part of this goes very deep into my past because when I was fifteen, I was in the British educational system and there you had to specialize at fifteen. I really found this a very difficult choice because one side of me really wanted to do English, French and German, and the other side of me wanted to do mathematics and physics. I was quite torn. I have to say, it was Lydia Goehr who got me to do philosophy of literature at an earlier stage than I thought I would. She invited me to write an essay on the legacy of Don Giovanni in Wagner. That got me started and once I did it was difficult to stop!

(iii)

In what ways does the philosophy of literature connect with the work you do in other areas?

Well, it doesn’t really connect with the philosophy of science at all. It connects with some of the philosophical questions you ask in CC. So, in a way, all those years I spent teaching CC were perfect for preparing me for these sorts of philosophical questions. Lit Hum and CC are all about the nature of the good life. Literature is often a very vivid exploration of that. I find Joyce particularly good, but not just Joyce. I’m very interested in Thomas Mann, and Shakespeare, of course. I have all sorts of tentative projects for doing things in the philosophy of literature. I’m very interested in ethical and social change, and so a play like Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice seems to me to be a very interesting study of change between two sorts of ethical attitudes: one based on informal relations of sympathy and another based on very definite rules. I think there are vast amounts of stuff you can do in the philosophy of literature. We’ve only just begun.

(iv)

How does having knowledge of the philosophy of literature enhance the experience of reading?

If you’re interested in philosophical themes in literature, then you tend to gravitate towards particular kinds of literary works. You tend to read them incredibly closely, as closely as you read the most difficult texts in philosophy. It seems to me that as I’ve been doing this I’ve really been immersing myself in some texts in ways that make me feel that my previous

readings of them were utterly superficial. You just see things in them, and you follow them through. You read very carefully indeed. It’s a distinctive way of approaching a text. I often find that much secondary literature about a text I find most interesting to probe is often not very probing or helpful at all. People are interested in different things. Philosophers, once they really get inside a text, are going to think about it in a very distinctive way.

Joyce’s prose work really wrestles with questions about how lives can flourish and how they can fail to flourish.

(v)

What is your favorite book written by a non-philosopher, and how is it philosophical?

Well, this is really hard. The obvious thing to go for would be Finnegans Wake. Joyce’s prose work really wrestles with questions about how lives can flourish and how they can fail to flourish. So you have a bundle of stories of how lives can just be blocked and pinched and narrowed and confined. Then you have in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man this vision of a character with tremendous aspirations to escape from this pinched, debased world in which life can never really succeed. It’s interesting because Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist, thinks he has to soar—hence the name—and it doesn’t work. We know that it’s dubious at the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then when we see him again in Ulysses, he’s come down in a complete crash. Ulysses is all about people who have lost a sense of where they’re going. Stephen has lost a sense of where he’s going. Leopold

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Bloom is lost and wandering, and Molly is lost and wandering. In the end, there’s a movement back together, but it’s left wonderfully uncertain. And then there’s Finnegans Wake: different style, immensely interesting, difficult and complicated. It seems to me to be all about how you come to terms with your life at a moment when you can’t really do much to change it, when its shape is fixed. It’s immensely complementary to the book I’ve just been teaching in Lit Hum, Montaigne’s Essays, also written under the awareness of approaching death. I think Joyce wrote an extraordinary novel about things that you can’t face directly, and therefore float in dream language and have to be approached obliquely. They have to be approached again and again and again to reassure yourself that you’ve really worked everything through and that the reconciliation, when it comes, is real, genuine and not premature. Joyce was not a tragedian by nature. He wrote a comedy as Dante wrote a comedy. His books are funnier than Dante’s. But his books are funny in that there is a possibility of reconciliation.

Great literature is a way of ethical experimentation with values. Thomas Mann also strikes me as extremely interesting. There’s one thread that runs through two of Mann’s greatest novels, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. That thread is the conflict between the liberal values of the Enlightenment and the richness and depth and turbulence of reactions to the Enlightenment. Mann is working his way through this material and trying to come to terms with a sense of passion, depth and seriousness of existence that the Enlightenment in some ways doesn’t do justice to, while at the same time recognizing its dangers. It’s no accident that both

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books turn to the opposition of two figures, one of whom is profoundly dark and dangerous, and the other who is apparently refined and civil and enlightened. The difficulty in both cases is finding either of them to be satisfactory. These are both deeply philosophical books. Not surprisingly in Mann’s case, he has this famous passage in a book that he wrote to try to justify Germany’s participation in the First World War, where he writes about reading Schopenhauer, and the passage concludes, “One only reads that way once.”

Philosophers tend to be very good at what one might call anatomy.

(vi)

What do you think literature can tell us about philosophy?

I think philosophers tend to be very good at what one might call anatomy, that is, recognizing certain kinds of structures. So if you think about Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, it gives you a picture of the categories in which you might try to understand “the good life.” Novelists, as it were, put flesh on this skeleton and really give you a vivid understanding of how one might live through something. Dewey, another one of my heroes, is really committed to this idea that great literature is a way of ethical experimentation, experimentation with values. I think there is something to this idea. In one place he says that our understanding of what is valuable, and what it means and the ways in which values are consolidated and spread has not so much been carried out by philosophers as by great works of drama and poetry and literature. I think that’s a real insight.

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Xenakis:

Musical insensitivity we can believe in? César Adrián Montúfar

Illustrated by Natalie Robehmed

n his short essay, “Xenakis, prophète de l’insensibilité,” Czech novelist Milan Kundera explains that his love for the music of Greek composer Iannis Xenakis comes from its rejection of sentimentality. He praises the ‘soothing objectivity’ in Xenakis’ music as a break from the oppressive predominance of emotion in the European canon. For Milan Kundera, the unconditional vindication of sentimentality as a palliative against the coldness of reason had been exposed at the time as a structure of brutality. Objectivity, cleansed of emotion, became the source of true beauty. Its incarnation was the expression of order and rationality in the music of Iannis Xenakis. It is one thing for music to be directed by sentimentality to a greater or lesser degree, and quite another that its beauty be founded on insensible and objective rationality. This opposition can be elucidated by an example.

sic there is a voice speaking. It tells a story and expresses something that belongs to the composer. The role of the listener is to uncover this voice and interpret the story it is telling. Xenakis’ “Concret PH” calls for a completely different attitude from the listener. The piece consists of the altered, distorted sounds of burning charcoal; this is the only “story” behind the music. The listener is not oppressed by what the composer is trying to express. The music is not about telling but about showing. One’s experience of the piece is governed by listening objectively.

notorious result of Xenakis’s formal approach is his use of what he calls stochastic processes. A stochastic composition gives traditional compositional choices over to a probability framework that randomly produces complex masses of sound. The complexity of the sonic interactions is Objectivity, cleansed of guided and shaped by the strucsound pillars that Xenakis emotion, became the tural erects for the composition. In source of true beauty. the pieces that are “calculated” in this way, Xenakis’ aesthetic onsider Alban Berg’s expressionist choices can only be seen as very thick Piano Sonata Op.1 as a counterex- brushstrokes. While listening to “Metasample to Xenakis’ “Concret PH.” taseis”, one can observe a rather simple The sonata’s highly enriched harmonic diagram presenting certain fundamental language sets it apart from the typical B aspects of the piece, relating to the sound minor piece. At the time of its composi- landscape or to the textural density opertion, tonality was the accepted conven- ating in time during the piece. The diation for subjective conflicts in music. Berg gram’s description is clear and illuminatoperates at the limits of this convention. ing; it shows what is happening globally in From the first few measures the listener is the music on a single sheet of paper. On meant to understand that behind the mu- the other hand, by listening to the sounds

THE GADFLY Spring 2009

resulting from the stochastic framework at the local level, one hears how the enormous complexity of the music embodies Xenakis’ rejection of traditional craft and artistry.

compositions. One must objectively listen to the piece to really take it in. There is something genuinely soothing about the objectivity in Xenakis’ music as each piece attempts to construct a sound world of

he masses of sound in Each piece attempts to create Xenakis’ music (whether they are produced by a sound world of its own. calculation or not) have inner lives, but they do not, on their own, affect its own. The listener is not required to the listener emotionally. Even so, Xenakis have knowledge of history, or of the life does not choose to reject traditional beau- of the composer, or to share a common ty to replace it with expressionist “ugli- background in the conventions of tonalness.” He does not insist on breaking ex- ity. This is the kind of music where only pressive conventions, but proposes a lack attention to sound is essential for enjoyof convention. Qualitative judgment of ment. any individual sound is renounced in the midst of the music’s bulky yet unintended Milan Kundera’s article is available, in an Italcomplexity. Large-scale clarity is the only ian translation, in the Columbia Music Library valid parameter for judgas part of a multi-authored book ing the sound events on Xenakis, edited by that occur in his Enzo Restagno.

shorts

A Philosophical Framework for Finnegans Wake Shana Crandell

Illustrated by Constance Castillo It is the fault of your myopia and not of the essence of things if you believe that you see firm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming. You need names for things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river in which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one which you entered before. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks)

innegans Wake is hard to understand. More often than not, students of the Wake focus on its narrative content at the expense of understanding the form in which it is delivered, or set aside the ambiguous narrative and treat individual words and paragraphs as puzzles to be solved. I will take a slightly different approach. I will attempt to present a philosophical framework in which to understand its difficult language and its ambiguous and elusive narrative content. I will do this with the help of the preSocratic philosopher Heraclitus and the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. My intention is not to argue that Joyce had either of these figures in

The “Finneganese” lexicon must surpass ordinary language in its capacity for signification. mind when working on the Wake. Rather, I want to show how these three figures— Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Joyce—fit together to form a compelling philosophical system, and how this system can help elucidate Joyce’s often mystifying text. Finnegans Wake can be thought of as a sequence of dreams that affords its 20 THE GADFLY Spring 2010

reader access to the dreamer’s unconscious experience. The dream experience Joyce presents is delivered in a “dreamlanguage” suited to the indeterminate and often conflicting nature of the dreamer’s thoughts and anxieties. The experience he wishes to convey requires this dream-language. This is the basis of the theoretical framework I wish to propose for reading Finnegans Wake. However, since the dreamlanguage is both syntactically and morphemically English, this claim needs to be more specific. The project of Finnegans Wake does not require an entirely new language with its own grammar and syntax; rather, it requires what I will call a flexible lexicon. The “Finneganese” lexicon must surpass ordinary language in its capacity for signification in order to be adequate to its content. This flexible lexicon, I will argue, allows Joyce to achieve a level of truthfulness that is otherwise impossible.

n the epigraph above, Nietzsche paraphrases and augments a fragment from Heraclitus. Heraclitus, via Nietzsche, denies stable, eternal, permanent being in favor of flux. The river is a metaphor for this. Those things in the world we might pick out and name as unchanging entities are, in fact, constantly

in the process of changing—just as the water of a river is replaced by new water, though we call that river by the same name. Constant and eternal change is, for Heraclitus, the essential nature of the world. His claim that the “rigid permanence” of language is fundamentally unsuited to the nature of reality reveals the unusual capacities of the Wake’s flexible lexicon. Here’s an example: “Funferall” is perhaps the most famous of Joyce’s madeup portmanteau words. Tim Finnegan’s funeral— the namesake of Finnegans Wake—is an event unlike most other funerals. The story goes that after drunkenly falling from his ladder, Tim Finnegan is pronounced dead. When a guest at his wake spills a bottle of whiskey, however, he miraculously rises from his deathbed. A word like “funeral’” can refer to a single thing, in this case Tim Finnegan’s funeral, and to funerals generally, i.e. to a funereal essence, as though there were an unchanging entity that corresponds to that essence. But some funerals, e.g. Tim Finnegan’s funeral in which the honored dead man is alive and partakes in the fun, bear no resemblance to that essence. The word “funferall,” unlike most words in the English lexicon, allows for Tim Finnegan’s wake to be both a funeral and a fun-for-all. It is flexible in the sense that it can accommodate seemingly opposite properties into a single word.

contradiction)—which cannot be captured within the bounds of ordinary language—can be captured by a lexicon that is equally as malleable as the entities to which its units refer. The way Heraclitus accounted for the transitoriness of the world was via the phenomenon of, as Nietzsche described it, “polarity.” A seemingly singular, unchanging entity is actually composed of opposite forces, and is itself, in some sense, those opposite things together. Heraclitus’ (and Nietzsche’s) insight is not the obvious point that things change through time. Rather, their insight is that it is contrary to our ordinary conception of the world—one in which there is the constant,

eraclitus’ conception of the fundamental nature of the world (namely, flux and

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“Being”—to truly account for the contradictoriness that constant and eternal flux entails. Because things change and pass out of existence, every entity in the world must be ascribed the opposite properties

It rumbles from beyond the rigid bounds of human langauge. “being” and “not-being”—for Heraclitus and for Nietzsche this means that in some sense, the fundamental nature of the world is contradiction.

his notion (which is, it is worth noting, quite different from our ordinary use of “contradiction”) applies to

the unconscious mind—the territory of Finnegans Wake. A distinguishing feature of the unconscious mind is that it is tolerant of a certain kind of dissonance of which the conscious mind is not. Contrary emotions, even contrary accounts of a single event, condition or thing, might be entertained simultaneously by the unconscious mind, while the same set of contraries might, by the conscious mind, be triaged, and the unfit dismissed or repressed. It is the project of Finnegans Wake to reveal those dissonant emotions and accounts that the conscious mind 22 THE GADFLY Spring 2010

does not tolerate. The flexible lexicon is the tool with which this project is carried out. The project of excavating the unconscious mind—and allowing for the confusion that lies at its core—can be messy and unpleasant. It is, as Joyce describes it, “[seeing] life foully the plak and the smut.” As the dreamer examines his life through the central figure HCE, the most repulsive facts of human life emerge. The nauseating, the horrifying, the painful and the mundane are brought to light. The grit of human life—in its conscious and unconscious conditions— is exposed in the radically flexible language of Finnegans Wake. It gives expression to a human scale of contradiction—a

scale on which at one end the conscious mind is working in rigid, individuated, non-contradictory terms, and at the other, the unconscious mind is working in murkier territory. It is Joyce’s aim to give every point on this scale a substantial and necessary place (in strictly Nietzschean terms) in his final and most elaborate artwork. For Nietzsche, this kind of expression is true in an important sense. If an artwork gives maximally human expression to human life, it is true to its subject matter. Insofar as Joyce permits of the unpleasant and the everyday—the “plak and the smut”—and the contradictory mental activity that generates it, both via the flexible lexicon I have described, he has provided a truthful and ultimately,

I think, affirmative picture of human life. Every awful detail is unearthed and proclaimed in order that it may get the famous “Yes” that concludes Ulysses.

eraclitus’ account of the world as flux and contradiction has a second implication for Joyce’s project. Individual humans are among those entities that are utterly transitory and hence, in strictly Heraclitean terms, contradictory. Insofar as we are individuals with names and life spans, we are both being and not-being. I have described truth in the sense of maximal expression of a given sphere of the world—in our case, human life. A second kind of truth is also achieved in Finnegans Wake: the contradiction that underlies the world beyond the scale of humanity is also given expression. The life Joyce examines is a nameless one, and it is nearing its end. The primary figure through which life’s questions are considered is designated by the three letters H, C and E. In perhaps the most telling instance, these initials stand for Here Comes Everybody. In an important sense, Finnegans Wake operates on a level beyond that of the individual, and aims to defend the status of human The unconscious mind is tolerant life generally of a certain kind of dissonance of within an uncertain picture which the conscious mind is not. of the world beyond it. For Nietzsche, this is truth-giving in an important sense: if the transitoriness of human existence is permitted and even embraced, then the fundamental contradictoriness of the world is given true expression. In form and in matter, Finnegans Wake issuccessful on this count; its language, to quote Nietzsche, “[strains] to its limits to imitate music.” It rumbles from beyond the rigid bounds of human language to deliver universal ideas. The dream figures in Finnegans Wake, who have perhaps arrived at their final night, demand more vitality, and they demand it in the fleeting and contradictory form in which it exists. They “[escape] from liquidation by the heirs of their death,” writes Joyce. Their finitude is also their infinitude.

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On Love, or How to Cure the Ills of the Stomach J.X. Daboin Illustrated by Maryn Carlson

t sounds shocking to say that love is a matter of the will, a conscious and irrational choice—a delusional yet active decision by the individual. How could it be that a feeling so potentially damaging to the self is chosen freely? Why doesn’t this rob love of its great hold on us? When we see a friend who is lovesick, are we not supposed to feel pity for them since they are in the clutches of something beyond their control? Or when we are in love, don't we like to believe that it could not have been otherwise, that there are greater forces at work against which we cannot and should not battle? I think the cure—once our stomach lining have been thoroughly damaged by the barrage of emotional stress associated with this emotion called “love”—lies in the realization that we are responsible for our feelings and what we choose to do with them. This is the philosophical antacid that nature provides to those poor souls afflicted with the devastating pangs of love.

here are many who merely deem love as a passive sensation and hold that what we love is what we find agreeable to us. They are bold in attempting to explain something that ap-

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pears so absurd and see`1mingly inexplicable through the lens of science. These persons make two assumptions: (i) that we can explain love and (ii) that love is something beyond our choice embedded in the laws of nature.

Love is not passive, nor is it a force outside us that we cannot control. There are some who go further in making these assumptions and hold that we are determined by an evolutionary model that calculates all our choices. This is a position common among naive biological hacks, the same persons who say our notions of beauty or morality are based purely on what we deem as beneficial to the survival of our species (e.g. in the case of beauty, men supposedly prefer doe-eyed, full-lipped females because these facial features suggest youth and fertility). Newsweek magazine's pseudoDaniel Dennetts want us to believe that there is no self beyond what the body or "mind" (generally under an evolutionary model) dictates. Expounding on the different secretions of love, these thinkers reductively believe it to be a matter of neurons.

hose who disregard all things beyond the body unimaginatively mistake love for "comfort." They are passive and focused on the corporeal, but they are not in love. These are generally persons who are in relationships that are ignorant of and do not celebrate the great cultural, human heritage of "love." It is true that love does not have to be a burning poetic passion all the time; but the most "human" thing these persons could possibly aspire to is the search for comfortable companionship. They will not drink of the divine ambrosia man has created in this phenomenon called love, but fill their hungry stomachs from the filthy trough of mere animal instinct laid before them. You will hear both parties express (in order to add a "human" dimension), "I cannot open up to someone emotionally if I do not open up physically," or “We started hooking up and then he kind of just grew on me.” “Necessity” being sated, they then label whatever semi-civilized aspect borne thereafter with the word “love.” The self is passively determined by immediate desires and the search for these to be satisfied.

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III

here are yet others who see love as an imperative for that far worse imperative of our current culture, a vague sense of "happiness." For them, love becomes a duty and a force impelling the lover to action. It is evident that our culture supposes that in order to lead a fulfilled life, we must find love. It is true that love, like health, enhances our experience. There is a problem, though, in the insistence that love has to work. It becomes beyond our choice to stop caring, struggling and fighting for it. They believe that a feeling of love entails a sort of duty to make this love "happen." Even in couples where both persons love each other in equal amounts, it is not always the case that they should keep alive this manifestation of each other’s love, (i.e., the concrete, monogamous and exclusive relationship). These persons will define themselves as “romantics” and speak of the force of love beyond their control, or

The manifestation of our will lies in the forming of the fiction. Love (exclusively romantic) as a sort of god to be worshipped, whatever the price. Sometimes they might define love as some foreign, mysterious and enchanting force that can disappear at any moment. There is a contradiction in all of these statements, which lies chiefly in describing love in cultural, poetic terms while at the same time deeming it as something beyond human comprehension.

IV e must realize that love is in great part an active matter of the will. We will be able to see

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this most clearly in the case of the person who does not have to love, but continues to do so. Let us imagine the case of someone whose love is not materialized or reciprocated in any way; imagine the most lovesick fool. Bad timing, physical limitation, misuse of words, a lack of prudence or shrewdness, strategy or manipulation—one or more of these have contributed to the person's lack of love being returned. What, however, in full knowledge of hopelessness, allows the lover to keep loving? Is the person completely and incomprehensibly blind in their devotion or is there a hidden and defiant element of freedom? This freedom is very subtle and it lies in the choice to be deceived. Love is the active faculty of the imagination working in tandem with the will in order to choose to be deluded. We see the passive voice here—“to be deluded”—but we shall see that the greater part of love is to be deluded by ourselves. We form a fictive narrative when we are in love in which the imagination goads our feeling.

he narrative of the love story itself begins with the welcoming of untruth. Let us examine the first stage, that of seduction, which lays this groundwork. Do we not choose to be lied to by some over others? Imagine yourself at a party, being hit on by a ridiculous braggart—you easily accept that you are being fed lies because this person does not interest you on any level. Now imagine yourself on that first date with someone you find physically attractive. The person quotes your favorite author, exaggerates their aspirations and “projects,” pretends to care about what your sibling studies, etc. and we are at some level aware of all this. Let us suppose also that the person is not all that great. The “What if ?” that arises when the physical presence of the

person is gone is the first instance in which we are allowed to enter into the realm of imagination. We allow ourselves to be seduced by “possibility.” We are not yet in love with the person, but what our imagination has conjured up is already making us choose to allow things to happen.

oes it not cause us pain, though, to simply live in our minds? Love is an active choice of the individual to participate in a fiction, and it is when she realizes this that the lack of its materialization in the world of phenomena seems harmless, or at least less painful. We want our ideals and the workings of our imagination to leave their stamp upon the world of things—everyone wants their will to be manifested in their actions. We do not want to live in the clouds. A retreat from the outside world into our mind, believed to be separated and free, is not favored all of the time, although many believe it is the key to a certain sort of happiness, where man is free from the contingency of the external. What is the case with love? If it is a matter of the will does it not cause us pain when it is not manifested, materialized or reciprocated? This is where the separation between love and desire lies. Desire lies in the realm of phenomena. Desire fetishizes the material and wants it to be arranged in a certain way. But in the case of love-delusion, desire is eventually transcended. This comes when we realize just how paltry the reality really is. Reality does not deserve our fiction— “This is not the man I fell in love with, why should I want to be with him?” Reality is disappointing, sullied and, often, simply not worth it. Sometimes the mere contemplation of an ideal is even preferable, although it can become too distracting. Once faced with the hideousness of naked reality, there comes a point, even after having dragged on for so long, that nothing fruitful can come from letting it occupy our mind.

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Our Parents, Ourselves Rhoda Feng

Illustrated by Naomi Roochnik

orld life expectancy is rising. According to the United Nations, ten percent of the global population is age sixty or older. In 2050, that percentage will more than double. The shift towards an older population portends that today’s teenagers will have to deal not only with the practical demands of work and home, but also with the by-no-meanssmall responsibility of caring for their aging parents. It remains to be see to what extent the wave of aging will alter the parent-child relationship.

n 1892, William DeWitt Hyde, president of Bowdoin College, wrote, “Children owe to their parents obedience and such service as they are able to render. Parents owe to children support, training and an education sufficient to give them a fair start in life.” Most of us acknowledge that grown children should care for their parents, minister to their needs and provide them succor in old age, but do most of us also use such terms as “debt” and “owe” when discussing parent-child relationships? Do we, in fact, owe anything to our parents?

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Gratitude and Filial Piety

n the Confucian tradition, the relationship between parent and child was more important than that between friends, husbands and wives and even between ruler and subject. Children, who were considered physical extensions of their parents, incurred an enormous “debt” due to the notion that they “owed” their existence to their parents. To repay their parents’ for their zi, or nurture, children were expected to practice xiao, or filial piety. They had an obligation to obey their parents, respect them, look after them in old age and perform elaborate rites of ancestor worship after their deaths. In The Analects, Confucius even condoned lawbreaking if such a transgression was necessitated by filial obligations.

I do not believe, however, that children necessarily owe their parents filial love simply because they are the fruit of their parents’ loins. Nancy Jecker, Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, rejects what

The “gift of life” is not enough to warrant the gratitude of children. she terms the “Law of Athens,” which establishes a debt of gratitude on the part of children to their parents for begetting them. Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas supported such a view of filial obligation, but Jecker claims that children should treat their parents with filial piety only as a token of gratitude for the beneficial acts that their parents performed out of love—and beyond duty—rather than for the mere act of begetting. Jecker’s refutation of the “Law of Athens” is sound and sensible, given that the “Law” is oblique shorthand at best and sophistry at worst. uppose, for instance, that parents have babies for the sole purpose of eating them (as in Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic world) or selling them to others as food (as in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”). Doesn’t it then make

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sense for such children to loathe their parents instead of being grateful to them for the “gift of life”? The “gift of life” is not enough to warrant the gratitude of children. A parent’s continued nurturing of, and love for, his or her child is the only

Confucians perceive filial piety as the wellspring of all other virtues. solid basis for filial piety; after all, it is not uncommon for adopted children to express filial piety to their adoptive parents despite the absence of a biological bond.

Friends Don’t Owe Friends

o what exactly does one make of parent-child relationships? Why are certain terms not appropriate in describing such relationships? Philosopher Nicholas Dixon contends that a parentchild relationship should be based on the friendship model, which seeks to emphasize the voluntary and loving aspects of the parent-child bond. Unlike the word “duty,” the word “debt” is annexed to the notion of a burden that can undermine parent-child relationships. In J. M. Coetzee’s fictionalized memoir, Boyhood, the author ruefully recounts, “The thought of a lifetime bowed under a debt of love baffles and infuriates him to the point where he will not kiss [his mother], refuses to be touched by her.” It would seem perverse to describe an invidious parent-child relationship using positive words, but if a child has a loving rapport with his parents, words with negative connotations should be omitted rather than carelessly shoehorned into discussions. Otherwise, one does injustice to

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one’s parents and to oneself by implying mendacious permutations of the truth.

onfucians perceive filial piety as the wellspring of all other virtues. Building upon this idea academic Philip Ivanhoe urges us to view filial piety as a “cultivated disposition,” an irreducible virtue distinct from gratitude and duty. In her seminal essay “What Do Grown Children Owe Their Parents?” philosopher Jane English argues that one should avoid using words like “debt,” “favors,” “investment” and “owing” when talking about a parent-child relationship. Such a relationship should be viewed as a friendship that is founded on love instead of the exchange of favors that occurs between people who are not friends. English supports her revisionist position by stating that strangers, not friends, exchange favors, which engender debts that can be repaid, canceled or discharged. Once a friendship ends, the demands of mutuality end as well. Sacrifices are vital to sustaining friendships, but the root of filial obligations is friendship itself rather than any sacrifices made. Friends perform voluntary acts of kindness for their friends out of the kindness of their hearts, rather than being motivated by “mutual gain” or the promise of return on investments.

The root of filial piety is friendship, not sacrifice. To love one’s parents is not necessarily to follow all their advice. If my parents pushed me to become a professional pianist or artist, I could oppose their demand without eroding our friendship, by claiming that I would be happy with neither vocation. A child’s love for

his parents naturally grows in accordance with the amount of diligent love bestowed upon him. The “amount of love” is, of course, unquantifiable, but the full weight of its import impresses itself upon the subject through the power of memory. Recalling the attentive care he received as a child, the grown adult seeks to care for his parents out of love, friendship, gratitude and the cardinal virtue of filial piety.

Lessons in Love

sserting the role of fiction in instilling moral virtue, Thomas Jefferson once remarked: “A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written.” The filial love and

respect Cordelia feels for Lear stems from all the love, education, care and nurturing he has given her. Her recalcitrance to her father’s love contest is more poignant than any flattering answer could ever be. She proclaims, “You have begot me, bred me, loved me / I return those duties back as are right fit / Obey you, love you, and most honor you. When I was younger, I believed that my parents’ prudential wisdom was all the reason I needed to blindly follow their advice. With the recognition that friendship, love and gratitude form the actual bedrock of my relationship with my parents, I have become more appreciative of all they have done to raise me. And so, I welcome the upcoming years of personal growth and continued devotion to my parents.

2895 Broadway, New York, New York 10025 Phone: 212.666.7653 Fax: 212.865.3590 features

little philosophy books Revolutionizing Art: A Review of Jacques Ranciere’s The Emancipated Spectator Rebecca Spalding Illustrated by Keenan Korth

acques Ranciere’s new philosophical study, The Emancipated Spectator, tackles the role of the aesthetic in contemporary society with the intensity and rigor that one expects from one of France’s most penetrating cultural critics. The book is in many ways a complementary text to Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster, in which the author explores what he calls “intellectual emancipation.” In that text, Ranciere argues that ignorance and knowledge are simply structural positions that the student and the schoolteacher occupy respectively, rather than states of being that define each actor. True intellectual emancipation emerges when both the student and the

It is ultimately more fruitful to emancipate each actor fom his or her structural position.

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teacher recognize their arbitrary relationship, allowing the student to pursue her own path to knowledge without adhering to the prescribed ends of formal education.

anciere applies the same concept to the artist and the spectator of art in The Emancipated Spectator when he defines emancipation as “the blurring of the boundary between those who act and those who look; between individuals and members of a collective body.” Instead of the simple application of “emancipation” to certain works of art, Ranciere articulates his theory by critiquing the conventional postmodern treatment of the spectator. He points out that many postmodern theorists criticize the passivity of the spectator. These theorists believe that the artist must either

make the spectator aware of her passivity or else involve the spectator in a way that would make her “abdicate the very position of the viewer.” For Ranciere, the two distinctions of activity/passivity and artist/spectator are false. Instead, it is ultimately more fruitful to emancipate each actor from his or her structural position in order to reveal that each is an equally creative member in a collective group. The act of perceiving art proves to be as imaginative as the act of creating it. On this view, the artist and the spectator are equally responsible for the consumption and commodification of art and image. While the artist may, through grotesque images, critique the consumer’s commodificiation of art, the artist is actually reaffirming this commodificiation and reasserting the power of late capitalist culture.

ever afraid to tackle political issues, Ranciere dives headfirst into the ArabIsraeli conflict, the war on terror and September 11th, although he has trouble making these events relevant to aesthetics. Anyone familiar with Ranciere’s work will immediately recognize and appreciate his trademark style in The Emancipated Spectator, while anyone new to Ranciere will enjoy his rigorous and unapologetic treatment of today’s world of images.

criticism